Friday, December 31, 2010

Damn canonical

This would be a very bad post for all *buntu loyalists. So, read ahead, at your own risk.

The year ending 2010 is the perfect time to check out the contributions made by big corporations making money out of GNU/Linux. When I talk about contributions it is "code" and nothing else. The contribution of canonical towards the GNOME project is 1.0+ %. This can be checked by googling it. I dont want to give redundant links towards this information. Ubuntu is in todays position mainly because of the GNOME project. Let us be clear that many newbies who have started using GNU/Linux see only the front end and they are not bothered what happens at the back(rightly so). So the visual shell which has held many newbies is the GNOME project utilities, which canonical has used unbashedly since its inception. Just changing to a new visual shell and ape all the futuristic activities of a fruit company is no reason to stop contributing to the GNOME project.

Entrepreneurs are supposed to make their own roads and Mark shuttleworth is not an entrepreneur, he is not a free software evangelist, He is a business man. He is bothered about all the dollars he has pumped into his business. He is bothered to recover the investment he has put in. It is not giving result as he had expected. Now canonical is going on a fast track to ape a commercial company and stand out as a cheap alternative to it. Selling music in mp3 format is the first commercial aping he has done. No entreprenuary idea here.

So is canonical contributing to make GNU/Linux more stable in the deep hearts of it. Let us see what is the contribution of canonical in the linux kernel. surprise....!!!!. It is not mentioned in the list released by the Linux foundation. I am very confident canonical and Mark shuttleworth will continue to ape the fruit company right down to its DNA and come out with a cheap fruit which has nearly all the same qualities but will never become one.

Thanks to all the big corporations who have supported and improved the GNU/Linux eco-system and specifically all the hobby developers who are keeping this project on. Let us keep the computing world "free as in freedom" for the future generations.

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

doudou GNU/Linux, what?

You read it right. Pls spell it as doodoo GNU/Linux as per the home page of the project. The project is started by a french developer but is ready with majority of languages in the world and the developer would be happy if anybody would help him with other languages.

Why is it special?

It is for children. It is built on the ever dependable GNU/Debian Linux base and is very pleasing on the eye. I am very sure that children would love the interface and be at home with this pleasing distro. There is also ongoing efforts from the developers to incorporate "parental control" so that children would not be taken to un-wanted places over the public network. There have been numerous efforts to make a GNU/Linux spin for children. But none have had enough success. ButI believe that doudou is on the right path and users in turn should give their valuable feedback to the developers so that they can take the project in the right direction.

I am one who believe strongly that children should be taught of freedom concepts in the earlier ages itself and what better way than to introduce them to the "free as in freedom" concept of GNU/Linux.

Welcome aboard kids. The tux welcomes u.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

is ur data safe and private on the cloud

This is the right time for the general public to realize the pitfalls of storing private/individual data on the cloud. I believe these could be the reasons. If i am wrong and if anybody comes across this post can pls comment.

1. Richard. M. Stallman who foresaw two decades of user requirements has warned the general public about the dangers of storing private user data on the cloud.
2. How many computer users know, what is a cloud?
3. Have all the people read between the fine print before storing the data on servers hosted in an unknown/undisclosed continent/country.
4. Have all the unassuming general public gone through the licensing or terms and conditions of the cloud storage deal.
5. Web service providers(the web sites we access, the services we use on the public network) collect so much information about us by collecting data regarding our tastes/affinities without we giving anything or telling anything about the same.
6. The general public can now think how much they would know about us if all our data was given into these very people's hands.
7. I would suggest cloud to all the companies in the world which would reduce the entropy of the world.
8. The same cannot be said about the general public. In the present scenario where u are never alone or u can never "run away" your data in the big data corporations would make u naked to the entire world.
9. This will be experienced by the general public after few examples come out. Let us hope that it is not too late.
10. I completely agree with Sri RMS that individual data belong to the individual themselves and cannot be used to generate information about the individual.
11. Anybody including the government agencies need not ask you if they want to take out data related to you from the remote servers. For govt agencies law is the only pretexts for others there is alwasy money.

Yes man is a social animal, But every human is unique, and that uniqueness can be honored only with his own private space.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

freedom software: quality or quantity

The title of this post would have made any proprietary software manufacturer grin from ear to ear. For me quantity of software is what matters. Why?
1. Freedom software developers should stop aping proprietary ones and develop unique ones as they have been developing from UNIX days.
2. An application in beta stage, if interesting will attract developers/users who in turn act as catalysts in pushing the development.
3. Freedom software requires code, in addition to donations in terms of cash.
4. We should accumulate enough unique code snippets which can be joined together to form several unique assys of these snippets.
5. Generation of new ideas can be achieved when the block to "perfect" programs is removed, thereby there may be a half hearted development of a unique idea owing to lack of coding/development time/ability.
6. The above step is the only way we can foster new ideas and increase the freedom software circumference.
7.Ultimately we should be following the "small tools" UNIX philosophy.

Start building unique small unique apps, and about the quality leave it to the freedom software universe.

Sunday, December 12, 2010

The perfect dream pad

That, now is the question lingering on every phone/laptop/pad/slate/netbook manufacturer across the world. I have a few suggestions for them

1. Follow the iphone/ipad completely and implement every aspect of it exactly, ofcourse, implemented originally.
2. Take a radically different approach and design that intermediate computing device which every user across the world is waiting for(Dont ask me what that would be, But i will definitely tell what i think that device would be)
3. ape the iphone/ipad completely and go beyond it and continue to do so.

In my opinion the device people are awaiting are definitely a pad. But, I want it to be a complete netbook replacement. Pls note that I am asking a netbook replacement. It should have enough muscle to run decent desktop apps. Miniature processors with multiple cores will be the future. so these pads which are replacement to netbooks will in future house processors which will be able to run all the desktop apps. Once u have all the desktop apps running, the cloud is just a small part of it. Did i forget that it should be a complete phone. There u have the complete convergent device. I would be delighted if it ran a freedom os like GNU/Linux. It should not be a half hearted freedom os like android or some chrome shit.

Will i get my dream pad?

Thursday, December 2, 2010

rolling release, hmm

Ubuntu wanted to shift its release philosophy to a rolling one. Right now, they are following a release interval of 6 months and one LTS every 3 years. A release like this is tested for the individual and also for how the whole(all packages and their relations) behave. There will be havoc if any specific package from the next release is installed with the whole of the present release. The ubuntu project started owing to the fact that there was no regular release of Debian GNU/Linux. If 6 month release is stopped then the reason for starting ubuntu is immediately questionable. The best option for canonical at this point would be to contribute directly to debian gnu/linux and make it the best alternate os in the world.

Debian GNU/Linux on the other hand is a rolling release from inception. The developer team studies the individual packages and their relations as a whole on a consistent basis. With ubuntu wanting to ape Debian GNU/Linux on this front also, I would believe there would not be any input from ubuntu in it. It is like u just remove the name "debian gnu/linux" everywhere and replace it with ubuntu.

Of late I heard that even open suse wants to go rolling!!!!!!!

Let us see how many of these people can change their release philosophy to a rolling one.
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