Intrepid Ibex and I

Got a little bit o' free time and thought would install Intrepid Ibex. Had Hardy Heron installed already and wanted to do a clean install this time. Well, took some tweaking and installed it. Damn, I must say that Ubuntu seems to be kicking ass with every new release! I did not even have to setup the network - all automatically setup for me. No need for extra UPS software - all installed and running. Nvidia proprietary driver installation after my permission! Installed Wine. Installed NTFS Configuration Tool. Mounted up my Windows partitions. Installed Winamp. Smoothen screen fonts. All up and running. More detailed writeup might be up in some weeks.

Why I Hate proprietary software

Ok this post is not about why I like the Open Source Movement. Its the views of Eric Raymond, author of the awesome book, The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Its an interesting point of view. Not the usual geeky, kiddish ideas that say "I don't like Microsoft because of this blah blah blah". More militant in his views (as usual), Eric says how he felt like a slave when working with proprietary software and some people who have coded for a long time never realise that they are after all, slaves to the system!

"The stupid and the timeservers were lucky. It was the really bright, creative people among my peers that hurt the most. And we were all very young and malleable and eager to please; it took me years after I’d escaped to understand that I had a right to feel angry about how I had been used, and many of my peers never figured that out at all."

Interesting ideas and thoughts and if you are a coder, open your eyes and read the whole post here....

FUD

FUD. A term that not many of us may have used but have certainly used as a strategy. As I was reading up on some books on Open Source, I came across this term and read up on its definition in Wikipedia (Oh! what would I do without you!!). FUD - Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. It kinda reminds me of what you'd feel like if you were facing the Black Gate of Mordor. Bile rushing up your throat, you become uncertain about your actions and doubt creeps in. Its worse when you stop believing in yourself. Self doubt more like? Just imagine you are running a business and you choose to go with Open Source tools. It may be because of the financial situation or just cause you believe in Open Source. In comes a competitor or just someone who actually wants to help. He creates a situation or utters something meaningless. Or should I say with just enough meaning to make you think twice on the steps you are taking. You face the Gates of Mordor through again!.

Wikipedia mentions in its article - "By spreading questionable information about the drawbacks of less well known products, an established company can discourage decision-makers from choosing those products over its wares, regardless of the relative technical merits. This is a recognized phenomenon....."more here.

Its kinda disgusting to see that this is an accepted business strategy and well, part of business ethics. Ethics as in, its an accepted practise!!. Well, its also quite ironical to see that though IBM was accused of starting this practise, it itself was at the receiving end when SCO launched a series of FUD attacks against it!!.

Well, how can I talk about Open Source and FUD and not mention Microsoft in the same sentence? Hehe, I just did it!!. Also reading up on this incredible book - "Open Sources - Voices From The Open Source Revolution" and some information on the web (more like Wikipedia), I came across the Halloween Documents. These were a series of internal memos and whatnot that Microsoft was circulating amongst its staff about Linux and the Open Source Movement. Its kinda funny that though Microsoft is so derisively dismissive of Linux et al in the open, its actually a little worried about the inroads that Open Source is making!!. These documents have been comprehensively ripped by Eric S Raymond and he has done a great job of it.

You can read up on Eric's article here and the Halloween Documents FAQ here.

Want to join the bandwagon? Be part of the FOSS Exhibition in December this year!!.

GNOME's 10th Birthday!!

Since 1997, the GNOME project has grown from a handful of developers to a contributor base of coders, documentors, translators, interface designers, accessibility specialists, artists and testers numbering in the thousands.

As the leading user experience platform for Open Source and Free Software operating systems, GNOME has received massive commercial adoption and support among distributors such as Novell, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems and Ubuntu, and software vendors targeting those platforms such as Eclipse, Google, Mozilla and VMWare.

More on their official site......here!

IBM Saves $250M Running Linux On Mainframes

Yeah to all you haters of the Open Source Movement - shove this up!!

Jajuk

Well, I came across Jajuk - Just Another JUKebox from Lifehacker. This is a really cool player. The main multimedia player on my computer has been Winamp, for all these years. But looking at the features that Jajuk has to offer, I think its time to finally change!!. This seems like the software that could make a change much like Firefox or Wikipedia did!.

Check out a great screenshot tour on LifeHacker - here...

To check out Jajuk and download, visit this link...

Best of all, its opensource!!....rocking....