VincisBlog

Today I found this description about OpenBSD philosophy:

Unlike some of the other Free OSs, the leaders of the OpenBSD project have no desire that everyone in the world runs OpenBSD.  Perhaps more than usual, most of the OpenBSD users believe in the “Right OS for the Job”, not “Our OS is The Answer, now what is your question?”. (here)

I cant say that this was new to me, nor that it surprised me. But somehow I found this view refreshing as an opposition to many distributions that maybe too much think about marketing. Maybe marketing is a silly concept at all? I can imagine some of you might say you think like that for a long time. But maybe thats maybe because you never seriously thought about it as a possible partly positive concept?

One other thing came to my mind today: I have invested large parts of my free time into packaging some months ago, but now I dont do it at all. This was due to my switch to OpenBSD on the desktop. This was mostly a smart move. I am only missing a few things now. But then maybe some of you also know this effect: When you are into something you think its important and you think you need to do it - until you switch your habbits - and then you dont do it any more - and if you look back you maybe cant imagine why you really did invest THAT much time into that. I think this is true for many hobbies. We are all kind of blind. We all think we only have the time we use and we also think what we do is essential, while mostly I would estimate that most of what we do is (sorry) useless crap,  trumpery. This is also true for the business world. And thats also why the rubbish piles get larger and larger - people consume more stuff and throw it away. Maybe what we need would be a different culture - one which is already there - like: be efficient in what you do but have fun and cultivate your lifestyle - without using all this bloated products … just live and act. Maybe I am just tired of all that nonsense you hear every day (or have to buy). To me it seems we tend to live a copy of life and not live they way we could. Its all just a cheap copy. But maybe its just the view from me of my life - but I see this also in other peoples lifes, from the outside.

I haI now have virtualized all my servers with a vmware. I have chosen to use the rPath LAMP appliance for the web stuff and an OpenBSD Mailserver from Johan Allard. You might say why I buy a virtual appliance and not do it all by myself. The reason is simple.

1. my main provider Firstdedicated decided to increase prices drastically (nearly 100%). BEcause of that I has an extraordinary right to end the lease  which I did.
2. But that ment I had to set up all servers very quickly.

I had only did some minor testing before so I was lucky to get a helping hand to set up vmware-server on my new provider Hetzner. The new server should run about 4-5 virtual servers.

As I looked more deeply into what the LAMP appliance does I was not so happy with some decisions. Like they configure it with no root password. This leads to a phpmyadmin that tells me that I shouldnt work with a root mysql access without no password. And sure thats true and also I have changed that. Then I think the LAMP appliance primarily builds on rPath - and is not built up from the ground. So there are a lot of packages that one does not need. Like Postgresql. I like Potgresql and indeed think its better than Mysql. But I think a LAMP appliance which means “Linux, Apache, Mysql, PHP” should just contain that. The on a simple “conary updateall” which should give me the latest packages I got a brand new kernel but without a vmware trove which is required. The question is why should the appliance update a very critical component like a kernel and then fail to update. Personally I think the kernel should be the last think to update because it requires a reboot and should only be updated either if it gives you very better performance, features or fixes serious bugs. On an appliance not being able to reboot is fatal. So I would rather expect an appliance to be most conservative when it comes down to the  kernel. Personally I really dont care about any feature additions kernel wise. Where I do care most are updates to the latest PHP, because that tends to be vulnerable and all other components that are critical. But is working ok for now, but I think I will switch to an OpenBSD Apache appliance soon.

And after my server switch I also updated my OpenBSD desktop to version 4.3. This went quite well. I am still missing Epiphany 2.20.3 but there is a patch I need to test, soon. There are only a few other things I am missing on OpenBSD. When it comes to web this sure is flash support. I couldnt get that working ok with Opera and gnash, the free version has a very high CPU load still. Another thing is support for USB sticks. This doesnt seem to work dynamically/automatically as I would expect. But those sticks are very common, so they need to work if you want OpenBSD as a viable desktop alternative.Shouldnt be too hard. I always had a very high load average on this machine. I am now testing the “cwm” window manager as a GNOME replacement. Why cwm? Because OpenBSD works on this one as a new default as far as I understood. It was inspired by evilwm and so its similar to wmii. I think this is the right direction. Let me show you the quick reference:

C-M-Enter Spawn a new terminal.
C-M-Delete Lock the screen.
M-Enter Hide current window.
M-Down Lower current window.
M-Up Raise current window.
M-/ Search for windows.
C-/ Search for applications.
C-M-n Label current window.
M-Tab Cycle through currently visible windows.
M-S-Tab Reverse cycle through currently visible windows.
C-M-x Delete current window.
C-M-Escape Enter group edit mode.
C-M-[n] Select group n, where n is 1-9.
C-M-0 Select all groups.
M-Right Switch to next group.
M-Left Switch to previous group.
C-M-f Toggle full-screen size of window.
C-M-= Toggle vertical maximization of window.
M-? Spawn “Exec program” dialog.
M-. Spawn “Ssh to” dialog. This parses $HOME/.ssh/known_hosts to provide host auto-completion. ssh(1) will be executed via the configured
terminal emulator.
C-M-q Spawn “Exec WindowManager” dialog; allows you to
switch from cwm to another window manager without
restarting the X server.

for more see the cwm manual on OpenBSD. This allows very nice interaction with the GUI. cwm works on a file basis and has included some ideas from 9wm (plan 9 like window manager).The development of the official cwm has halted sometimes at 2005 it seems and is now developed as part of OpenBSD. This I think is one of the core principles of OpenBSD - a operating system as a whole - or lets say many BSD strive to do that. But like FreeBSD - they encourage to use Apache as a port . But this means that only some maintainers work on it - and its not considered part of the OS like in OpenBSD. So you cant really blame the OS if it fails. I think the big goal OpenBSD has and would go for if it had all ressources it could have is to have a full operating system that gives the people all the basics they need - so for the desktop - log in graphically, read the web, write mails, write letters, import photos from the camera. Right now OpenBSD mostly gives these features either per default via the command line or through  maintained packages. So you get a thunderbird and epiphany and OpenOffice.org or gthumb. But these are all maintained by different parties, they are NOT part of the OS. The OpenBSD team just cant do it all, but I am sure they would love to. Just like the plan9 guys. I think those goals could be accomplished. I dont see such efforts in Linux. Linux has accepted the fact that there are countless projects which each fight against each other. Linux really just is the kernel - and they try to accomplish some minor common sense which you can see in the LSB (Linux Standards Base) and also partly in the FreeDesktop project (which also is for other platforms). The problem is that all those effors go towards a new Linux desktop which does not have a common vision and is basically a “Windows done right” or some wannabe Mac. But that cant lead to something convincing.

I have just removed the flinux.wordpress.com blog of me. Why? Because its primary purpose was to write about “Foresight Linux” in the past. There were many articles who talked positively about it, then as I turned my back on Foresight I changed the name and description and also wrote some negative comments about Foresight. Also the articles in their were very much similar to this blog. So I have decided to remove all old content. I am neither fixed on any sort of Linux or on Linux at all. I use what fits best and my comments are not ment for one specific OS, windowmanager or OS. I have really turned my back on many technologies by now. There is no much sense to talk negative about projects that are just aint worth it. I have seen a lot and basically it all boils down to “Don’t believe the hype”

I like to talk a bit of what I am doing locally in my hometown. One thing is that I have worked the last two years in helping to organize a Linux even called “Kieler Linuxtage“. In 2007 we had over 500 visitors and all attendends thought it was a big success, given that we were only a small team. In relation to the population in our region we attracted much more people per inhabitant than other large events in Germany.

But also some problems appeared on the surface. One thing was that one multi day event a year doesnt satisfy all needs that users have, then many people missed some more introductional talks about Linux and we faced the fact that we who organized the event also had to do all stuff like watching the rooms, making photos, everything  - only 2 or 3 people helped in addition. From my perspective this was the result of a much to closed group. We, the KiLux (Kiel Linux Initiative) consisted of round about 10 people. We had requests of people who liked to join the core group but these were dismissed by the majority of us. The argument was that a small group is better for deciding things. That might be true - but what still was missing was some possibility that allowed citizens to help us organize Linux events - or get involved better. As after the Kieler Linuxtage 2007 the result was not really as previously announced an opening of the organisational structure I found that something else needed toi be done to allow people who were willing to get involved.

So I initiated a regular monthly meeting of our KiLux Community called “KiLux /usr Meeting”. We meet in the rooms of a computer/internet club called Toppoint e.V. every last friday of a month. So we dont have the need to consume drinks or food and also have the ability to use some existing infrastructure. KiLux is a mixed virtual organisation consisting of smaller and bigger companies and computer clubs and individuals. KiLux community is the community branch which is meant to be more free and easy to get together. Its is there for people to exchange their knowledge in a free flow - nobody should hold back his wisdom in order to make a profit. We had 5 meetings since November 2007 and each was very interesting with new people coming in. For the Toppoint Club it sure is interesting that a lot more people get to know about them and also we all learn how we can do things while we are doing them. I think part of the problem we were facing in Kiel that lead to degration of the Linux culture was that new people often were turned away by the talks and did not get the feeling that they learned something or maybe even thought they were not welcome. So people came and then left. Since years two groups announced their existence in the internet while they did not make any meetings - so many people did not find an active group and might finally have been given up.

So these meetings are very vital. Everybody can come along with his special problems and meet people who can hopefully help. Or at least he can ask questions and everybody who attends learns that those open questions do exist. So we learn about what users like to know. Direct contact. Direct learning. This is not always easy. It can be nice to just hang around with the folks you know or work on the things you find most interesting. But this often leads to groups that tend to be too self focused and closed rather than open. I try to live some of the philosophies I am talking in this blog and elsewhere and one of these is that I try to maintain a positive culture within our local Linux and open source community. I think too many people or lets say geek think that this is irrelevant. They think what matters is the latest kernel or some other stuff - and this can indeed be freaking cool. But what is all this with some nice folks you can talk with? Our current problem is still that there is a huge gap between some experts and some folks that join Linux just now and not much in between. So its hard work to close this knowledge gap. We cant help everybody - the way to go is to organize events, bring some people together and then let them exchange knowledge. ne can help by giving talks or asking questions, moderate a bit, but I think lesser is better. I think people who attend an event should know best what they know and what they need to know (”known unkowns” & “uknown unknowns” ) - so when you structure a meeting too much people wont be able to ask the questions they have in mind or others wont be able to tell all they know. Some strcutureis important and ok, especially one should make clear that people shouldnt do stuff that is offtopic. Joining a meetings should be 100% not 50%. And also people should listen to each other. Something I think many have lost the  ability to.

Ok, thats about the community part. The community can take part in the next Kieler Linuxtage and  I would expect that more of them would come or the event will get richer with new ideas if we are allowed.

The other idea I was following was the “KiLux Business” initiative. The idea is that Linux professionals but also potential or existing Linux customers get together to cooperate or talk about what is important or how to do Linux marketing. Right now there is not much cooperation. The computer market is structured by the bug guns in the computer business while the small companies all try to do their thing while heavily competing with each other to the still few Linux and open source customers. So in affect they mostly steal each others customers. Thats understandable but also stupid. Too few are willing to cooperate and to really attack the Microsoft dominated world. I have no doubts that with a bit more organisation we could locally be able to get a much bigger piece of cake, because we could convince more potential customers to trust on Linux and similar stuff. But as people only follow their own interest they might gain more in the short run for ONLY themselves - but in the long run we all loose - especially when we start talkng bad about our competitors. I think we should instead try to help all of us  to be more successful in selling Linux and open source. So for instance I am helping people to get the best local contact for OpenOffice.org, so the customer that is interested in switching to OO.org gets the best results. One more customer for open source - one common goal! I know this might sound stupid because I dont get any money out of this deal - but I think in our KiLux Business network it is also cool to take a provision in some cicrcumstances especially once things are going better in our direction. But right now I think its more important to aquire more users that all of us could work on than if I or we would think that everybody should try his best - or we wish him/her well but do not help - and he/she looses a contract. Sure the help should have its limits - everybody can decide in where this limit is. More importantly in discussing open questions and issues we generate new common wisdom that will help us at the next occasion on which software we choose or what we suggest our customers. Like what distribution we  choose as a basis od our installations. I could also figure to be interesting when the dialog between customers and professionals will happen. If “we” professionals listen to a customer and together try to find good answers. This is a whole different dialog then some may prefer when talking to “their” clients. As you can expect there is alsways somebody who can point out some false statements. So KiLux Business has to try to be some neutral instance, a melting pot of ideas and interests.

One other thing is the polical agenda. Strategically free standards like OpenDocument are of vital interest for the future of FLOSS! Why is that? Because here we have some very strong arguments - and also if the governmental organisations choose to prefer free standards and  use software like OpenOffice.org this gets us a foot for all kind of applications. A typical workplace that consist of only a desktop and an office can easily choose to use Linux and OpenOffice.org - most if not all use cases can be handled with that combination. If we get to the point where free standards like ODF are the defacto standard we are at the point where we can roll up every other product. So lets say there is a basis of Linux desktop workplaces but still some Windows machines for specific applications. most likely we can either replace them with either other FLOSS applications or surround the Windows applications in a virtual environment which could be much easier to maintain. We already have some political parties in our upcoming local elections that have on their agenda to migrate to free standards. I hope that this idea will gain some dynamic and already have done some activities so that in my city and my province this might get on the political agenda and will be decided for the first time at some point this year. We still need to be prepared better on what Microsofts agents are doing, to who they talk and how they make sure that political decisions are made to serve their companies agenda.

Here you can see where the different spots are related to each other. Because if we say we want open standards… who can deliver? You cant migrate a whole province with just one person - and most likey also not with 5-10 people. So we need to get organized. This can even mean that we suggest some company we dont like because they prefer Windows. If they have the trust of an organization and are willing to help their customer migrate rather help them doing the migration than to spread some FUD. If you really can compete with them do it, but dont play with the potential customers, rather try to convince this company to pull on our side of the rope! So thats another side - if we want that people switch we have to not only convince potential customers but also our potential competitors. Companies like SUN, IBM and Novell backing Linux has helped us a great deal. I agree that these companies are often not friendly and small companies are often nicer and better to their customers and competitors - but if you try to exclude them the whole migration will take a lot longer. And still your chance to get a contract is larger when the customers use Linux as of they are locked-in some proprietary application. Our weapons are openness and a network of mutual trust. Those things will need years to grow, but we can already harvest some fruits.

Its important  not to stop where we are right now but to constantly push things forward and move on, because companies like Microsoft learn, too - we must be quicker and smarter and work on all frontiers to gain ground. We sure have all different views and different agendas. But we should be able to agree on some terms and be able to work together in our all interest.

Regards from Germany

Thilo

KiLux

Whats the difference betweena tv set and a PCs? You know you can buy a tv and then maybe use it 6-7 years without being forced to do any updates or replace it, unless you want something better, bigger, whatever. I came to this question why tv sets are so different when it comes to rhythms. I have no insight in industry development cycles but here is what I assume:

• A tv set may be developed in about one year from the first ideas to production?
• A company might release new models every two months. As only new models get media attention?
• Nonetheless an average customer may only buy a new set each 3 or 4 years.
• A tv has limited functionality and maybe technology doesnt progress so fast any more

Now about PCs:

• May be the development also needs a year or so?
• release cycle is the same?
• There is a difference and this is the operating system. This is not part of the production cycle. Operating systems are constantly developed and released, there are security fixes, small improvements, new functionalities and also major releases
• The customer expects new hardware to ‘just work’ with his new PC.
• The customer is forced to update the software for the system to be still secure enough.
• Doing this fundamentally changes the computers basics.

One reason why PCs are so much more open for changes is that they are less mature and also are used in much broader ways. So like via the internet there come new technologies which did not exist two years ago. So if a PC would not change it would soon not be uptodate.

But I also like to question if this really makes that much sense? Why are PCs more open to attack? Frankly because theire inwards are often open to the world via the internet. But doesnt that mean that much of the operating system and software that is used just does things wrong?

I really think a PC should be secure by default without anybody needing to fix things. How could this be accomplished? Well first and foremost my simple reducing the size of the operating system, because every line of code you spare means statistically reducing the possibility of brokenness!

PCs need to be task oriented, which could  also mean that some things wont just work without patching or extending the system. But a restrain can benefit the functionality. The years of development of the PC have shown that it can do a lot of things now, already. I think maybe its time to shift the development and deployment strategy. Currently all OSes include auto- or semiautomatic updates via the internet. This doesnt always makes a computer  work better or more secure. So why not rather work on a secure and working basis and then make a thought trough strategic deployment?

Today there exist two kind of operating systems - the free once and the proprietary once.  The later are oriented in marketing - so customer orientated but not necessary pro security - and innovation is something for visibility or for customer lock in.

Free operating systems are developer orientated, or orientated to those who make deployments - if they mix with the developer group. So people who make deployments but cannot connect to the developers have a problem. There are distributors that try to moderate but at the same time make money. They hire developers and take money from customers. Other distributions like Debian dont actually have a distributor company. All in all its not the developers that directly connect to the users, although the potential is there, but mostly the geeky user fraction is connecting - so free operating systems become geeky.

All operating systems have a problem giving the customers or users what they want or need. Because they tend to oversee the real problems. They are more busy fixing stuff and getting the next release out than actually solving the problems of the customers. And the distributor companies are more busy in earning money , so they rather care that they earn some cash - and fixing problem is rather the point of promising, not fixing (which are two totally distinct actions).

I believe that a good marketing means to solve the problems of customers/users - so that is the real task, which I think proprietary operating systems currently often do better, while never satisfying. So they keep customers as happy and hungry as they need them. Quenching the hunger is something that is not on the target list of anybody, really.

Sometimes you find exceptional developers who indeed primarily think of the users problems, which is easier the more technical the stuff is or the more the user and developer base mix. The hardest thing is to deliver a product where developers are very distinct from the user base. Part of solution could be to indeed teach users to use the tools (operating system) the way it was meant to be used. So this again is an argument against the “just works”.

Some products dont need teaching. Like cars. People learn driving cars - and the manufacturers job is to just sell it. If somebody can not drive the manufacturer or car salesman wont teach him or her.

I believe that teaching has to be part of using an operating system, as you provide a product that is not as transparent as a car or a tv set. If you wont teach them, people wont use it. Especially if they are quiet familiar with one operating system and you like them to switch. Unless they are already lost and frustrated you wont get them to change.

But teaching is not enough. Another important thing is that you need to listen to the users! So the developers need to understand the feedback and act if necessary. This doesnt mean that you do what the users tell you. Somebody needs to understand the real needs. I have seen developers acting with the word of pragmatism as they were thinking that they will just do what people want. But this doesnt provide the vision. The developers (as a general term of people who workn on the distribution) need to understand the needs an plan on how they can satisfy the needs of the users. They also have to know that  a few loud users do not make a majority of the user base. There are no easy ways to get a operating system that is good. You will always loose some users, because you cant always make the right decisions for everybody.

Another interesting topic is on how to actually make decisions and move on. There is also no easy answer. The best thing one can do is to start with a vision and then work on getting there. So every decision that is made should be checked on what effects it will have. You need to comply on some common standards that make up some rules - and which means that people can rely on these points for at least as the vision that developers are working on, if you cant provide the solution now or soon.

One danger that I see many operating systems have a problem with is that they focus too much on the technical things. So they indeed think that if they talk about this, that it matters. But the thing is that the technical stuff is rather a stream of changes one needs to deal with. The decisions and selections are more important than the features. Features and news are willingly marketed and somehow developers are expecting the user base to be anxious to whats coming. Actually most wont be. The people often are more worried if their data is secure and overall if they can work as they are used to. I dont want to suggest that change is bad - I just like to say it doenst really matter that much - its not the number one issue for most users. People are happy if the computer and the software works better, als long as this doesnt mean that some core functionality is going away. Asit turns out often developers dont care that much about data losses as they are just too excited about the latest and greatest stuff.

So communication is important. Maintain a common understanding of the problems and of the decisions that are to be made. It should be transparent on how things are secided. And a users needs to be able to foresee the future. So he likes to get a released on a promised date - and he likes the operating to behave as expected. People accept changes if they are well though through and explained in detail. This is best accomplished with open discussions. Of course I am talking about free operating systems here, mainly.

How should an ideal operating system behave? It should keep what it promises. So  if you arent there yet dont make stable releases that are aint just it! its ok to make alphas and betas - butdont suggest to use them if it will let down your users.  Below the line you as a developer are responsible for the quality of the software you release. Always think that loosing data can have a fatal effect. Like:

• Somebody looses data and then looses a big customer or….
• looses his job…
• an important action can not be executed - like the computer is used to organize food deliveries and with the data loss it means people could die because things take more time…
• medical data gets lost and also somebody looses his live.
• Maybe the software is used in a mission in space and the mission fails dew to software failure,
• …

Developers tend to forget about that computer are used EVERYWHERE. Indeeda computer can mean the difference between live and death today. So an attitude of “please use our OS, but if it fails dont blame us” is not acceptable. Not always are consequences so fatal. But what do you want to suggest? Do you want people to use your OS really on every circumstance or do you just want it to be used by geeks who just want to play?

So if you suggest that your software “just works” you should make sure that it does. Strangely though my impression is that “just works” almost always means “always fails”, while more conservative software more oftenly “just works” without it being marketed in  that way (rather by the “security” feature).

I hope to have inspired at least some developers and makers to rethink the way they do software and operating systems and maybe give users some impression of what they should demand and expect.  Sure this is also true for those who select operating systems and deploy it. they should choose those operating systems that meet the criterias that are important for their users. You may think that what I say is trivial, but I think often OSes are chosen by what they know best themselves or what is latest, or where they get the most share of the end price. So sometimes some Linuxes from big companies may sell better because they are more expensive and so the merchant can easily add an amount of money  that fits the price of the end product. So he does not necessarily makes a quality choice.

To summarize - the choices are not easy - everybody can make a mistake - whats important is that you LEARN from your mistakes - so if some operating systems had led you down, leave them! Dont go back to them or to OSes and distributions which are similar to them. If you dont do this… you have been warned.  This is true for every part of what I just wrote.

And as the final closing: Still dont let others or yourself steal you the fun on working with computers. If you be careful in some points you can have fun and experimenting is fun, too - which is nice if you are not on a production system or you are a carefree individual.

Regards,

Vinci

Really somebody to watch. But be careful… fasten your seat belts!

I have taken a deeper look into Ubuntu. Those are some things I find weird:

1. Firefox is the default browser. I think this is ugly, but anyway… if you try to install Epiphany the problem is you can only install Epiphany without the extensiosn via the graphical installer. As this is the suggested method this means that most users wont ever be able to have adblocking and other cool extensions that come by default with the browser. Its really funny, because I know a lot of people who dont like Epiphany because it doesnt have all those nasty little extensions - but they dont see how elegant it is. Its potentially VERY fast and gives you a whole lot of good extensions that dont exploit your system. On Firefox you never know what you get when you install random extensions from the web. Actually their plugin system fails to be as secure as it needs to be. I have seen people with about 50 plugins that are partly incompatible. People dont think. If you allow people to install all kind of crap, they will do so - and then it doesnt make much difference if the core would be secure. As long as the browser doesnt give me some core and secure plugins it doesnt really provide me the needed functionality. Thats why I am really advocating Epiphany. Konqueror might have been some similar advantages, but I havent looked at it that much.
2. One of the most important feature for users like me who came from the Mac was that the upper right corner in GNOME also had the application switcher menu. Ubuntu chose to replace it with the “Leave” button (to log off, shutdown, restart). So this had two disadvantages: a) One of the most important menus is gone and b) People levae the desktop instead of switching - also this makes the GNOME desktop work very different on Ubuntu than on standard GNOME, VERY fatal. I suggest to change that.
3. the small trash on the lower right is just too small to be used effectively . When shall I use that one? Why should the desktop only contain icons of the user? I agree that the common desktop concept has a problem which is mostly this: The desktop can only be seen fully when the user hasnt any applications open. But OTOH a small trash is very hard to use especially for children, old people or people with disabilities.
4. There are no icons on the default desktop. Which leaves the user to only use the menu. Why is the desktop user switcher on my default? I would think that 99% of all desktops are only used by one user - and as space is valuable this applet wastes space.
5. There is no system tools sub menu. Where is gconf-editor? Not only did the gconf-editor make it hard to find some settings, now Ubuntu also hides the editor and makes it even harder to tweak settings. Um, why?
6. Still my Ralink RT61 wireless connection drops all the time  (without NM realizing this). This is extremely annoying this happens with WEP as well as with WPA. On Foresight Linux this only happened with WEP.
7. The messages NM posts to the log are not very informative compared to Foresight so I cant really help debugging. Has anybody disabled some debugging in the Ubuntu package?
8. Synaptic opens too much windows and is complicated to use. It also doesnt help the user to install the right packages. It tries to help, but it also lacks a lot of packages.I think PackageKit looks much more promising and I hope Ubuntu will pick this in the future.

I will keep testing Ubuntu in this notebook, because we will have an install event at the end of march. And there is really no alternative to use Debian and Ubuntu. Foreisght? Sorry, you still havent enought localization support and also many things dont work, like you can only scan images in one resolution (FL-825). Fedora? Sorry but as long as the community policy is not going to change that is not up for discussion? Gentoo? Nope, not for newbies!  OpenSuse? That might be an alternative, but nobody  know would like to help installing that

I think for a local LUG there is no other option than the combination Debian & Ubuntu für install fests. There could be many others but all I have looked at so far decided to make things harder.  “PClinuxOS” might make some sense. I have seen it installed and it has a nice configuration center. But it also had weir weirdnesses. But I could imagine to install and test it at least.

Remember: If we help installing we want people to be able to ask others or come back to us. So we wont pick any esoteric Linux, even if it would be better. Unlessthe majority in a LUG is convinced that this is the best.

My big hope was that Foresight would rise, would have good hardware support (scanners, cameras) and localisation by now. But all my core points werent worked on. I am still sad about this fact, especially because I think I will never love Ubuntu. Ubuntu is just like the big elephant you cant ignore. And this means also that it really doesnt matter if ots providing good software. I think if it brings people to Linux it is good. People can then switch later if they want. People will think its good as it is trendy. So the marketing still works.

Just got an idea of what makes upcoming applications important - its about “verification” and trust. Just like the nice video about the older term “trusted computing. Everything that is happening in the web are actions or interactions. Exchange of informations, tasks, savong of data, recalling of information. We need to trust our storage media or the information pathways. We also need to verify that our data is intact, so that we will not experience a data loss or that the data will be manipulated and become inconsistent.

This is not a mere technical issue but also political. We need to verify who we can trust, be it humans, companies or the government. Like with the new basic right of confidentiality and integrity of data, that was created in Germany by a high court.

I think that if we develop this basic right further it may be essential for every interaction in the formerly called called cyberspace - which is an extension of our ego and natural life.

Our situation is that we can not verify. But if we cant, we can not trust, which again means that we act and interact without a confident feeling. Which is like in a totalitarian state. Our privacy gets stolen and our own and personal integrity is hurt.

Its not that we are in danger, but that this situation is here for a long time. And humanity has experienced similar attacks long before the computer was invented. It is about control, about power. Those who control the pathways control the people and what they think.

What we need to accomplish is to regain control for each individual on every action and interaction. This would give the power back to where it belongs. Control of information outside an indivual about the same individual shouldnt be accepted at all.

As I saw my favourite radio station has done a video to their 500th show I thought I should make a hint . The mostly play Funk and old school hip hop.
Its stationed in Montreal, Canada

People like to search - and often people like to search for specific stuff - like a wikipedia article, the Amazon product base, a movie in IMDB or in social bookmarking. I have thought about that for a while. Firefox lets you install search plugins to be able to select this more comfortable and Epiphany also allows you to define “intelligent bookmarks”. But is that all really intelligent?

1. You should not need to install a random plugin on your system or browser. An installation is like an operation of a human - there is always a chance that something goes wrong or you get infected. Also what Firefox gives you is a selection of websites. The options to search are: ENDLESS. Which means that the search plugins menu could be endless and you could have a never infinite list of plugins.
2. Defining intelligent bookmarks isnt always easy, especially when its not simply URL based but hidden in a search form.

How would a really intelligent search work?

I don’t know how you search but I often do something like this: I look for a technology or a product - lets say I search for an USB microphone - this means I need to know what makes up a good microphone - I need some customer opinions - and also a comparison of prices. In this search might be involved: tech sites, Wikipedia, review sites(like dooyoo or ciao.com), online shops,… . The problem with search with a general search engine is, that it doesnt understand my search. How could it? I think thats only possible with user collaboration and when the users give feedback about their search. The problem with that is that people are leaving a search site when they browse other content. What could we do? I think the only possibility is to integrate intelligence into the browser itself. I should be able to save “search paths” into my browser - maybe not bookmark a page but mark a sentense that gives me an answer and link that to the question. So you might start with just typing in a question in you local browser. This now uses a desktop search engine to  look up if there is a similar question. So you might even get saved answers by typing in the question - like “How much euro is 1 us dollar” or you even could say “euro dollar”. Typing in “time” could give you the time. or when the desktop would not know what you mean or you explcicitly tell it to search online it could try to identify your search like:

1. euro, dollar  - both are currencies - so the user most likely wants to see their relation.
2. usb microphone - the desktop could know or maybe lookup in some databases that this is some technical product - question would be if the user wants to understand how they work, want to get this working on his computer just buy such thing or get some recommendations.

• About recommendations: Users could interactively say what recommendations they like - or could trust some users (friends, colleagues) what recommendation sites might be helpful.

Maybe Wikia is now on the way of implementing this - but personally I strongly believe that the important part has to be the browser or desktop search engine. And then it can link to specialised searches like Technorati - but maybe rather fetching the content than opening a web site. I think opening a website should be the last thing to do. I dont think it makes much sense to load tons of websites on a local computer without any need of all that material - and also - why loading a web page, stripping out the adds as good as possible and then search for the real content. This is all because of too much crappy business models based on advertisements - while this all takes much more of our valuable time and makes getting the information we want or need much too hard.