Updating from Ubuntu 8.04 LTS?

A Phoronix article suggests that Dell should update the Ubuntu on its Inspiron netbook. Michael Larabel wrote:
Besides running faster, the newer Ubuntu releases have better hardware support, various package updates, many improvements to GNOME, and all sorts of other features. Ubuntu 8.04 is nice for its Long-Term Support with Canonical continuing to [...]

Fedora Community

Max Spevack hold a talk about the Fedora Community on 2009 FOSDEM. Which I suggest you listen first before reading on:

Essentially I think Max grabbed the “Community” at the wrong handle. He elaborated a lot about how Red Hat and Fedora  work together and ow they enable people to build uppon [...]

Commenting on GNOME 3.0

First of all I think that this is the first time for some time that I see GNOME taking the right steps and the right direction when they announce the GNOME 3.0/plan. I have left marketing team because there was no marketing plan – no direction and man opportunities missed. So I was very astonished [...]

Why Google should not aquire Twitter…

Twitter does not define any open standards. Actually microblogging is not high tech. On instant messaging Google chose the open Jabber/XMPP standard. Twitter is technological rather uninteresting. The only interesting subject could be the user base. OTOH those who buy Twitter will have to deal with all the old cruft.
Google did buy the [...]

OTR encryption denied widespread acceptance

It is so sad to see that many clients do not support OTR enryption, still. It is supported by some, like Pidgin, Adium, Kopete. But other big clients like Psi and Gajim will not support it. Gajim states ” won’t support OTR because it hasn’t a XEP.“
OTR is not a clean and perfect standard, thats [...]

Rediscovering microblogging

I, just now, am rediscovering the use of microblogging. I have looked at Twitter an microblogging in the past and found it unnecessary. I had an identi.ca account for some months now, but I did not use it very often. But I had the feeling that it could be useful.
I think it is. I have [...]

First impressions of Ubuntu 9.04 beta

I have just updated to newest Ubuntu. Here are some points of interest:

Thes removed the shutdown option from system menu. You now HAVE to use the stupid applet. IS this a GNOME or an Ubuntu decision. Personally i dont like this applet for shutting down. I always used the system menu. The applet looks so [...]

Make movies free (Theora video)

As I wanted to (for the first time) convert an MP4 video to a patent free version with OGG Theora I found that the solutions is simple. There is a command line tool “ffmpeg2theora” for Unix systems. This is part of “OggConvert” and sure is available for many Unix based operating systems.
I started “GNU Screen” [...]

Stop button abolishment – a very bad idea

As far as I know it started with Apples iPod. To make things more “simple” it was decided that this box did not need a stop button. The open source world was excited about this decision and made similar things in many audio/video applications. Actually I think thats one of the worst decisions they could [...]

In need of a major new GNOME panel

I suggest that people start working on an alternative GNOME panel now. I have seen some suggestions on a GNOME wiki page, but I think most directions are very wrong. Like what you see here:

Essentially these are imitations of the fancy Mac panel. But I think that the Max panel does [...]