It’s been indicated to me that I never put out a report on Software Freedom Day in Sydney. Well, better late than never

Advocates of free software celebrated at the University of New South Wales on 16 September for the fourth annual Software Freedom Day. Members of SLUG, Ubuntu-AU and the general FOSS community collaborated to spread the message of free software to the general public.

Interest and buzz was generated in the days leading-up to the event through a poster campaign across the campus. At the UNSW Computer Fair, we piqued the curiosity of many computer users with our displays, screencasts and spiels. Those who were enthusiastic migrated to our room in the nearby Law Building, where we could explain and demonstrate in greater detail. Not only did we have many expressions of interest from newcomers in free software and the free software community, we also succeeded in bringing those who already use FOSS into participation in the local community.

Regrettably, I was not able to take any decent photographs of the event. If anyone has pictures, I’d be grateful if they could be sent to me.

I would like to give a big word of thanks to everyone who helped on the day:

• Andreas Fischer
• Brendan Puckeridge
• David McQuire
• James Dumay
• Jim Tsao
• John Ferlito
• Ken Wilson
• Lindsay Holmwood
• Matt Moor
• Peter Baker
• Pia Waugh
• Rodger Dean
• Silvia Pfeiffer
• Anyone else who I may have forgotten (if I have, sorry!)

In addition, I would like to thank those who provided resources in support of our efforts:

• Computer Fairs Australia (tables at the computer fair)
• David Vaile, Abi Paramaguru and Alana Maurushat at the UNSW Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre (room in the Law Building)
• John Schilit (IBM and Robocode materials)
• Solutions First (Unwired modem)
• Ubuntu Screencasts Team (screencasts and subtitles)
• Canonical (Ubuntu CDs)
• The worldwide free software community

LotD: Sign the petition for a Free Society and against Digital Restrictions Management and Treacherous Computing

iTnews rehashes the old refrain of ‘Why Linux won’t succeed on the desktop‘ articles.

These sorts of articles come out all the time, and they are always written by people who have not used Linux much and therefore don’t understand how it works and how it is developed. The article is not without merit, but it does display many misunderstandings. Most telling are the omissions — the fact that the real strengths of Linux are ignored and the deficiencies of Windows overlooked. It gives undue weight to proprietary software development and totally forgets about the free alternatives that are available for Linux. And by ‘free’, I mean the proper ‘free as in freedom’ definition, not the tired-old ‘freeware’ misconception that the author makes. As for the antique ‘too many distros’ argument, people only need to use one, and some quick reading would easily narrow the choices down to a small handful, if not one. I personally find the different ‘distros’ of Windows (including WINCE and so on) to be more confusing.

Most Linux people are very well versed in Windows, so they generally know of which they speak. My experience is that many Windows people expect everything to work exactly like Windows, and they complain whenever something is even slightly different, even if it is better. For some reason, they accept crashing, viruses and poor security as a fact of life, and so aren’t attracted to Linux. In fact, it goes further than that: to most people, Windows is computing. Anything else is just heresy.

These critical articles about Linux aren’t new, but they should not be ignored. Linux has many rough edges to smooth out, but then again so does Windows. At the end of the day, it often comes down to people being set in their ways and being afraid of the unfamiliar.

I’ve seen this happen even with Microsoft products: Windows Live Messenger, Internet Explorer 7, Office 2007 (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, but mysteriously not consistently in Outlook) and Windows Vista have been widely criticised for adopting odd and inconsistent interfaces. The first three lack a basic menu bar (each using its own weird alternative), and Vista doesn’t have a Start button (it’s a round circle with a Windows logo). It’s a tech support nightmare. Yet despite the resistance, people force themselves so that they eventually accept them. Some even grow to defend the changes. What possessed people to behave in this way? Is it the marketing, or even the cult of personality that Bill Gates has managed to build, as the article proclaims? We are now in a position where it is easier for an MS Office 2003 user to move to OpenOffice.org than to Office 2007. Why aren’t we seeing this happening more often?

Never underestimate the power of inertia and marketing.

The fact that Linux can prove to be such a great system despite its miniscule desktop market share and lack of resources compared to the proprietary world (which is much bigger than just Microsoft) shows the strength of the free and open source software (FOSS) model. One needs only to look at Mac OS X to see a desktop that is almost unquestionably superior to Windows in every way, thanks in part to its extensive use of FOSS.

Another thing to remember is that the desktop computing market is but a tiny fraction of the overall information and communications technology sector. Linux is quite prevalent, and even dominant, almost everywhere else [PDF]. In most of these markets, Microsoft isn’t represented at all.

By the way, the ‘year of the Linux desktop’ thing is not taken seriously by more established Linux users. The phrase is used mainly by journalists looking for attention, or by more recent Linux users. For everyone else, it’s become more of a running joke, much like Linus Torvalds’ faux ambition of ‘world domination‘.

Update:  Yet more reasons for why Linux is supposedly unsuitable for the desktop.

Update 2:  Here’s another rebuttal to these articles. 

LotD:  I failed basic chemistry 

Are you receiving syntax errors when running a shell script on Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft)? If so, you might want to check what shell you are using. While testing scripts for the LCA A/V Team a few months ago, I discovered that the Ubuntu developers decided to symlink /bin/sh to dash, for faster and less memory-intensive script execution. For POSIX-compliant scripts, this isn’t a problem at all. However, there are many third-party scripts which call /bin/sh but use shell-specific (typically bash) syntax. They can be fixed by altering their first line to call the most appropriate shell, for example:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

env makes it possible to call bash, wherever it may lie. While my Ubuntu and Gentoo systems have a /bin/bash, there are other distributions which have /usr/bin/bash or /usr/local/bin.bash.

While you can and should fix your own scripts to operate in this way, constantly mending others’ mistakes can become tiresome. You can return your /bin/sh to point to bash with the following command:

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure dash

When asked if you wish to install dash as /bin/sh, tell it to go to hell

Note that bash does use more memory, but on a modern desktop machine the difference is negligible. This change will not affect the default login shell, since that is already bash.

LotD:  Obese Aussies get big ambulances

I have been completely floored by Ubuntu’s new Migration Assistant. It’s certainly something that we have needed in the FLOSS world for a long time. Anything we can do to reduce migratory hurdles is by all means welcome.

To play devil’s advocate, however, I’d like to point out a deficiency of such migration tools. To take an established example, witness Mozilla Firefox on Windows. When you first start it, you are greeted with a friendly wizard to port settings and bookmarks from Internet Explorer. If, like most people, you allow it to proceed, it will replace the carefully-selected default Firefox bookmarks (not to mention the awesome BBC Headlines live bookmark) with those from IE. The result can be a cluttered, advertising-laden (Windows Marketplace, anyone?) monstrocity that has lost the simplicity and original intent of the product being loaded.

The Ubuntu Migration Assistant potentially raises this application-level misdemeanour to an OS-level atrocity. As this review of the utility demonstrates, even the Teletubbies wallpaper of Windows XP can be migrated with ease, not to mention the aforementioned bookmarks. This can ruin the intended look and feel of the OS, thus preventing the user from experiencing the OS in a clean, ‘pristine’ state.

Is this a good or a bad thing? I’m not sure, but what I do know is that the designers of this tool should be careful to select default settings which do not unnecessarily alter the user experience. Tread carefully.
 

LotD: Linux Genuine Advantage

I wrote this back in October, and for some silly reason I forgot to post it. Better late than never, I say.

It seems that every couple of weeks I’m at some kind of FLOSS-related event. You just can’t keep me away from them! They may require a lot of work, but it certainly feels rewarding to get the word out. This is especially so in regards to the educational sector. Children are our future, and they are generally more willing than your average adult to learn new and different things. It is an educator’s job to impart knowledge, and it is the duty of any respectable educational institution to facilitate a free and open flow of knowledge. What better way to achieve this than with free software?

This concept was not lost on the eduactors, parents and students at the Sydney Education Expo in June, and I’m proud to say that we managed to replicate that success at the Sydney Moodle Conference on October 14-15 (Saturday and Sunday). Once again, I manned the Linux Australia/SLUG stand, joining Pia Waugh, Lindsay Holmwood and Andreas Fischer. The SLUG Committee stopped by for a while, too.

Whereas most people at the Education Expo were unfamiliar with FLOSS, many of the attendees of the Moodle Conference had some idea about it. Moodle itself is available under the terms of the GPL, and many companies and schools have become part of its user/development/support community. All we had to do was to remind them that we represent the underlying FLOSS concepts that have made Moodle so great, and that Moodle functions in concert with other FLOSS projects such as Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP.

The response was overwhelming. We were prepared to hand out a truckload of Ubuntu CDs, only to discover that most attendees had already been supplied with one as part of their official conference kit. That didn’t stop us from distributing many more, though. We had one fellow so excited about FLOSS on Saturday that he brought along his laptop the next day for an impromptu Ubuntu installfest. We demonstrated a range of technologies, including Compiz and Inkscape. Visitors were impressed with the ease of the Ubuntu LiveCD installer, and with how Moodle can be installed (complete with dependencies) in only a few clicks via Synaptic.

Most interesting for me was the Live Online Event, which was a panel discussion on-stage in front of about 150 people. Pia was slated to represent the LA/OSIA point of view, but was forced to bow out due to other commitments. Much to my surprise, she asked me to fill in for her. So there I was, on-stage, in front of well over 100 people, fielding questions while being recorded and streamed live over the Internet. I had never done anything like that before, but I think I went reasonably well. Public speaking and general spoken communication are certainly skills that I would like to further exercise in the future. Thanks for your support, Pia!

The topic which dominated the panel discussion, and one which I had been previously unaware of, concerned how far software patents had intruded into the realm of educational software. Moodle-competitor Blackboard has been issued an appalling patent "for technology used for internet-based education support systems and methods." I was somewhat relieved to see that Martin Dougiamas, Moodle’s founder and project leader, was not concerned at all by this event, at least as far as Moodle was concerned. Nevertheless, the spectre of software patents has been looming over FLOSS for some time now, and it is still very unclear if/how the situation will ever be resolved.

It’s a wonderful feeling when you receive recognition - no matter how small - from people whom you respect and admire. That’s why I was stoked to be accepted as an official Ubuntu member. To be eligible, one has to be able to prove that they have contributed substantially to the Ubuntu community. I know serveral good people who were turned down on their first application, so I was nervously biting my fingernails in the leadup to my approval.

Being present at the IRC meeting was a whole task unto itself. I had to wait until one was scheduled at a time which I could attend. When I discovered that one had been announced for 10PM (in my timezone), I pounced and added myself to the agenda. The discussion was fascinating, but the meeting itself blew out far beyond its scheduled time frame. They only got to me at around 1:30AM. I am very grateful to the Ubuntu-Au members who stayed on until then to cheer me on. Isn’t community a wonderful thing?

Within ten minutes, I had approval from the Community Council members who were present, but I had to wait for the votes of the absent members. The following evening, I received a nice e-mail from Ubuntu Launchpad:

Subject: Launchpad: Your membership status on team Ubuntu Members was changed
Date: Wednesday 18 October 2006 21:03
From: Launchpad Team Membership Notifier

Hello, The status of your membership on team "ubuntumembers" (Ubuntu Members) was changed from Proposed to Approved.

The comment for it was:

approved 18/10/06 by sabdfl, elmo, jono, for superb contribution to en_GB and related effort

Once again, thanks to everyone who provided support, both moral and actual.

Microsoft have announced their Zune music/video player to take on Apple’s iPod. Like Apple, they consider colour to be an important differentiator in the marketplace. With white having been co-opted by Apple, and black being the generic (and hence indistinctive) hue, what does that leave Microsoft?

Apparently, it is brown.

Once again, Ubuntu is vindicated! What’s next, naked people?

Are you aware of the condition known as Service Support Termination Trauma (SSTT)? View this Novell Public Service Announcement to find out more.

Gentoo’s system for maintaining packages, Portage, has had a significant speed boost with version 2.1. Synchronising the tree (the equivalent of Debian’s ‘apt-get update’) feels several times faster. I don’t mind compiling my own apps (I leave it going overnight), but I do mind if I have to wait for ages before I can start the compilation in the first place. Anybody who has been scared away from Gentoo in the past because of Portage should give it another go.

Note that this does not affect compilation times. It does, however, hasten the package management both before and after compilation.

Linux Australia was very well represented at the Sydney Education Expo (24-25 June) this year. Pia wrote excellent summaries of the event, and I won’t duplicate what was already said.

This was only my second trade show, after CeBIT, and I must say that I enjoyed this one better. CeBIT was full of business-oriented people, and on the whole the event felt quite dry and corporate. Visitors to the Education Expo were mostly parents, teachers and children. I felt like I was making more of a difference with this group, helping to improve the education and development of children. To me, this is what free software is all about: helping communities and ordinary people.

Pia and Sara Kaan did a fantastic job or preparing and co-ordinating the stand. Craige drew in the kids (and kept them there) with the Linux Challenge. This proved to be a wonderful way to show how appropriate Linux is for education. Steve drove all the way from Canberra and brought some vital supplies. We were clearly the busiest stand there. On the Sunday I was talking to people non-stop for the whole six hours without so much as a toilet break, and I loved it.

There was one major letdown, however. We had made the assumption that the Edubuntu CDs we were handing out were based on the Ubuntu Dapper installable liveCD. I went to great lengths to explain to people how easy it is to install Edubuntu since it is a liveCD. Unfortunately and unbeknownst to us, Edubuntu is based on the Dapper Alt CD, which includes the Debian installer and is not a liveCD at all. We only discovered this the week after, and we have no means of knowing what the fallout of that was

This was, I felt, the only blemish we had. We are assured of success next year if we base our strategy on this winning formula.