To help out folks who would want to try the latest versions of Ubuntu, Fedora, Slackware and various other flavours of Linux, I am selling these on eBay India (payment through credit card / internet banking). The idea is to make these available to those who do not have access to it via their friends and don’t have the Internet Bandwidth to download it
You can find the items for sale here
This morning, on the way to work, I was listening to a Podcast featuring Jeff Waugh of Gnome & Ubuntu Linux fame talk about Ubuntu Linux. An excellent podcast covering the rationale behind the Linux for Human beings and how things are run at Ubuntu
The most important thing that struck me real hard was the ‘Ubuntu Code of Conduct’. Quoting from the Ubuntu Code of Conduct page :
We chose the name Ubuntu for this distribution because we think it captures perfectly the spirit of sharing and cooperation that is at the heart of the open source movement. In the Free Software world, we collaborate freely on a volunteer basis to build software for everyone’s benefit. We improve on the work of others, which we have been given freely, and then share our improvements on the same basis
The actual code of conduct is made up of 6 principles:
It is stated that this code of conduct helps the Ubuntu hackers communicate and collaborate as then make path-breaking moves in making a Linux distro that is cool, neat and just works (always)
As I read it, I felt that this has far reaching implications not just for Ubuntu & the Open Source Software world, but life in general (& more specifically work life). Personally, I would try & follow these principles in letter & in spirit in my daily life, not for any other reason, but simply because it makes a lot of sense to me
On another note, we at eBay follow 4 principles which we call ‘The eBay Behaviors’
To me, the Ubuntu Code of Conduct embodies everything that ‘Keep it Human’ stands for
Is it time for Linux on the Desktop ?
Apologies for asking the question that perhaps would make it to the top of the most debated by yet unanswered questions of the modern age …
Having used Linux for about 5 years (on & off and not quite on a dedicated basis, with distros ranging from Red Hat 6.0 +, Mandrake 7+,, Slackware, Debian, Fedora and a few more that I may not remember), though I was rather passionate about this entire Open Source, Free as in Freedom & Beer, Anti-Microsoftish attitude that permeated the tech industry in the late 90s and early 2000s, I still remember that getting these distros to work without having to resort to any sort of command line magic was next to impossible. Installing and using a Linux distro meant that you were a geek (or something very close to it) and new your Hard disk partitions, Network settings, ext2 vs ext3 etc etc. And lets face it, an overwhelming majority of the Universe didn’t
Thus, much to the angst of Linux-lovers, it remained largely in the data centers, powering millions of servers and hardly made a dent in the desktop (Novell not withstanding)
A couple of weeks ago, I managed to lay my hands on Ubuntu Linux (Dapper Drake), which has been catching a few headlines in the non-Linux web world too. I started off my desktop, slipped the disk in and whoom … it got on … booted up my machine (using the Live CD) and gave me a neat looking Gnome desktop (I am a Gnome lover forever) with an Install icon !
I said wow ! now that is surprising … and I clicked on the Install icon, Went through the regular language, keyboard layout, time zone, user inputs (& I thought, OK … here we go, another of those distro installs that is going to be a challenge). Partitioning the hard disk was a but of a challenge (but nothing out of the world, given that I had done this before) & then it started installing the packages … I was a bit miffed at not seeing any indication of the time left for this to complete, but in a few minutes time I realised why this wasn’t all that required. This bloddy thing had finished installing Dapper Drake on my desktop in about 5 minutes and was ready to reboot !
Holy Smoke … that was bloddy fast. I have never seen a Linux distro install of this kind. I am so sold on Ubuntu Linux now … this is cool
In case you are considering it, go for it. The CD’s for FREE ! Check here for more details
It looks like Linux is almost ready for the desktop !
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