Linux and Open Source Experiences

[tcpip]

A few bits of good Linux and free software news over the past few days. The first is that a game that I helped design, Cargo, has officially been launched. My own contribution was mainly in character, story, and theme development. The next item was the release today of the final report of the ACIP (Australian government Advisory Panel on Intellectual Property) review of the Innovation Patent System. LUV made a submission to the panel, which has come with a beneficial result; it is recommended that "no method, process or system shall be patentable" (i.e., no software patents). A summary of the relevant sections of the report is provided. If adopted - and it should be - this will be a great result for software development in Australia, and I cannot help be pleased with with the thought that my own contribution to the debate seems to have helped.

In less endearing software news, purchased a new laptop in the weekend (a Toshiba Satellite C50 PSCJEA-01N011), with a requisite MS-Windows install for one of caseopaya's medical device. Which meant some direct experience with the horror that is MS-Windows 8 (I can see why most people are still using Windows XP), and the annoyances now involved in setting up a dual boot system due to the new OS, UEFI, and firmware issues (resizing disk, turn off secure boot, encountering graphics mode problems. Eventually settled with Ubuntu rather than the preferred Debian Mint due to these hardware issues. It is certainly a flawed plan on Microsoft (and Toshiba's) part to make their systems less friendly to other operating systems - sure it certainly worked in the past, but now it seems increasingly easy for users to interpret such 'censorship' as broken by design (a "damaged good" in economic terms) and route around it by choosing alternatives.

As a final relevant item of news, covened the LUV Beginners Meeting on Saturday, with Daniel Jitnah presenting on web browsers with Linux. Now whilst this may seem to be an almost trivial topic, Daniel did cover a surprisingly wide variety of issues, from the history of the web (including Line Mode browser), the degree that various browsers satisfy the "free software" criteria, and modifications and extensions with browsers such as Firefox. Afterwards a brief committee meeting outlined our plans for Linux miniconference in the La Trobe valley (Morwell to be exact) on July 19; five lectures, install fest, etc, with lunch provided in a well-located local Anglican church hall. I will be speaking on Why Linux Is The Future of Computing, covering several trends in devices, "the Internet of things", high performance computing etc.

Comments

[iris]

I think that whole history of the web speech sounds pretty awesome, although I don't much about specifics for that type of thing. I mean, I'm just a very casual web-designer and the only thing that ever got to me when it came to browsers was how Firefox always wanted to be a special snowflake when it came to how it handled coding and it bothered me. I know I'm very ignorant about it, but yeah. xD

[tcpip]

Heh, from the Firefox (et al) point of view it's IE that wants to be a special snowflake. The amount of CSS/HTML code around that has a special "this is to get IE to work" is boggling. Unless you meant some other special snowflake component of Firefox?

I must admit I never bothered stepping outside the standards. If a browser doesn't implement a standard that's their problem, not mine.

[delphipsmith]

I love my Toshiba satellite - four years and still going strong. My sympathy however with Windoze 8 (yuk). Also Cargo = so cute!!

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Four years is good for laptops. I'm quite fond my old Thinkpads (yes, multiple). They're as tough as old nails, and still pretty fast.

Cargo is really cute especially for the target age group. Some very nice perspectives result from play.

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

Why not use one of those rather than buy a new laptop with unknown evils lurking within?

Unfortunately, I can't help but think that making systems less friendly to other operating systems is a fine strategy if people still buy them. Only fails if the purchaser takes the item back and switches to another brand.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

As per the post, we need a machine with MS-Windows for caseopaya's medical device.. And thought we may as well take the path of something new.

Word of mouth is still potent advertising. :)

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

Obviously, I have no idea what device this is, but I can't imagine it needs the power of a current machine to communicate with. You'd need something running flat-out gigabit speeds to get close to sucking all the power of a current CPU on comms, so I'm guessing it'd need orders of magnitude less than that.

Windows 8 and UEFI pushes it well into the realm of masochism for such a project for me. (My usual upgrade method is to dd partititions or even whole disks onto the new machine's drive.)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Nothing too dramatic; the insulin pump requires Internet Explorer on MS-Windows (yes, we've tried it with WINE etc, no it doesn't work).

Ultimately it wasn't that masochistic. Windows8 and UEFI makes the initial process counterintuitive and annoying with a couple of extra steps involved, but still technically trivial.

I should do a write-up of what I did, just for anyone else who falls into the same category.