There are a few reasons. One is that it’s pointless, or it’s too hard, or it’s just a matter of complexity. I want to talk about this last issue around the complexity of our ideas in our community.

I don’t think it’s required to get every single person fully understanding Free Software social justice issues and supporting those views. I don’t think it’s even a matter of getting a single other person to move completely over to new ideas in whole.

I believe in common knowledge; our ideas will spread out slowly being reformed into concepts and ideas that fit into people’s existing world views. Each time you interact with an individual and don’t shy away from sharing your views and passion for the importance of these issues, you move forward the commonly held understanding on the issues.

when you see Free Software being understood by the common person, that’s when you know the Free Software activism has been successful. I don’t believe Free Software can be truly successful and robust without common people’s basic understanding. Otherwise it shall always be abused and re-purposed into proprietary platforms and appliance like products.

Please, everyone, stop. Ubuntu and Debian systems are built to install packages, not compiled code directly from Make files. Many advanced users will actually package their own code up to install it on their own systems, there is no need to make install in Ubuntu.

Now I don’t care so much if you want to play with compiling things, learn debian packaging and pbuilder, that’ll compile things too. But guides for users shouldn’t be written like this, more time could have been spent on getting a stable PPA fixed up and directing users to use that.

In closing: Consider users are smart but eager, they’ll accept any helpful looking guide online that proports to do what they want. Even guides that are obviously not meant for normal users or in this case, Ubuntu users.

• Netbook launcher – no longer supported and doesn’t work any more – solution, program a new one.
• Login Screen – I use the gnome2 gdm as the backend for my logon screen. Ubuntu not uses the rather inflexible lightgm. solution – replace lightgm with GDM for gnome3 and update code.
• User Management – I currently use nfs/rsync method which is why I’ve been banned by the Geneva convention. The ideal option would be to use LDAP, but it’s so excruciatingly hard to setup that my 19 attempts have all failed. Solution – create a set of juju charms and interfaces for openldap, kerberos, the user management setups that EVERYONE uses.
• Printers – I need to continue to use cups, but need quota management. solution – Add PyKota to manage quotas, package it up as it’s unpackaged and make it a charm with ldap interface.
• Lab Sessions – Update lab session manager to use LDAP, improve it’s reconfigurability and add the printer and nfs quota to the information shown

This is by no means the end of the list, but already I have my work cut out to make sure that this stuff works and that it’s available for other people to use. And all this needs to happen before I can touch one computer with the 12.04 CD. If anyone would like to help, I’d be grateful. After all this, I see no reason to beat about the bush and I might as well release labuntu or some such for internet cafes, libraries, and other public access computer systems.

Ideas?

Audacious Video

You can test this out for yourself with Ubuntu 12.04 (Beta) using the following:

sudo apt-get install gir1.2-gtk-3.0 gir1.2-clutter-1.0 gir1.2-gtkclutter-1.0 gir1.2-gconf-2.0
bzr branch lp:csslavie
cd csslavie
./netbook-launcher.py

Note: default clutter/cogl has a bug which prevents the background’s opacity setting, so you won’t get as cool an effect. But a fixed version of those libraries should be available eventually.

Please comment below what you think.

The Free Software debate is a long one. There is a principle amongst both developers who want to serve users honestly and users who have been treated badly in the past, that we needed a way of identifying the rights and privileges that any user of software ort to have as a matter of the normal set of freedoms we each have in any other area of life.

Because of computers and software are new to humanity, it’s taken us forty years to go from anarchistic freedom to over-controlled monopolies to a more open market with legal frameworks. Free Software (and the FSF) were critical is finding out what was needed and filling in all the legal and philosophical foundations which would move us, not backwards towards anarchism, but forwards towards freedom with fairness.

Linux and many other software projects owe the FSF, and the philosophies, a great deal. These projects require the structures and foundations laid down by the ideas and principles of people who didn’t think it was good enough to be just practical for ones own benefit.

We’ve been doing a delicate dance for many years trying to move the established order over to this new system; trying to make exceptions, bend the rules and fitting the pieces of the puzzle together by hook and crook. Trying to make sure that Free Software is Free, useful and economical. This we hope, will bring more interest, more developers and more stability.

New users misunderstand why we would put non-free pieces into our systems. Some think that practicality is the only function and that social responsibility is simply not needed. I think differently. We keep track of all the non-free pieces that we need for functionality, but work hard to replace them all the time. This is not fundamentalism, it’s simply that this software is disrespectful. It isn’t a civil member of the software world and despite having to use it to make computers work, we don’t invite it round for tea and support it’s campaign to be elected as the normal method of software production.

But once in, it’s hard to remember why we should spend any time replacing it or even if any work needs doing at all. Projects like Trisquel honour the Ubuntu community by showing us directly what work we need to still do in order to civilize the last few savage packages and drivers. They are our brother who’s uncompromising ideology and courageous functional sacrifice is helpful to our own progression. Even if we, ourselves need to balance both the need for Freedom and functionality.

And surprisingly to some, conversely it’s important to note how important a practical Ubuntu is to the FSF and projects like Trisquel. It’s just too easy to exclude users with difficult hardware or complex needs reducing the size of the user community as it is to thoughtlessly add proprietary components into the system. We offer the FSF a perspective on overcoming user centric problems and a push towards inviting ever more practical people into becoming just a little more concerned with Free Software without having to throw their computer away first.

The very difficult path is not between two hard choices, but between two easy ones.

It depicts Ubuntu with Unity using multi-monitors. Hopefully a feature that will be polished and ready to go by April. Keep up the good work community!

http://paste.ubuntu.com/872138/

This is mainly a problem because the documentation for Gtk with gi.repository is so poor and not clearly described that it makes it impossible to use without great force of will.

Hopefully this script can make the job easier for others, feel free to adapt it and post your remixes.

See Video Here

If you’re using a similar setup, I’d love to know how you manage your content library and do remote access. If you’re interested in my fall-over easy python modules for accessing the XBMC library database you can find the code on launchpad and the librarian code too.

But why should I feel so good about tests? Isn’t writing the tests just like writing the code? except for the second time?

Well the logic of tests may mean that you have to do all the same kinds of logic, but it’s not really the same logic. You’re telling the computer what you expect to happen, not what happens. Take the analogy given in the title: If you were to carve/sculpt a masterpiece, you could be expected to gain some great notoriety for being a genius artist; alas much like code without tests it’s a one shot deal. As soon as you try and change the work, change it’s material and reproduce it for more customers you suddenly find yourself with lots of work making, remaking, fixing and refixing.

Any hired programmer will recognize the situation. Conversely software with complete testing (of all three kinds) will be much more like a mold, given any language with enough consistent code you could fill the mold many times to arrive at the same quality as before. The tests aren’t the same as the original sculpting, they’re much more like the framework that shows how to reproduce the work with ever tighter testing resulting in ever more accurate reproduction.

This assumes of course you imagine programming cycles as if they were mass production units.

Enough waffle! what do you think?