opensource photos on Flickr

Over the holiday (fifteen glorious days off) I found myself on a TAADD (Technology assisted attention deficit disorder) binge. It started with one PC that I wanted to format and gift to a less fortunate family, it then moved to gathering and setting up four more, this led to Open Source software experimentation. I am now sitting in bed with my trusty hound at my feet, writing in OpenOffice Writer in place of MS Word. I am not even sure why, perhaps I was infected with an OpenSource virus or something.

In setting up the gift PC's I decided that I should give Ubuntu a shot. I had read here and there that it was a well built interface that was a good crossover for Linux noobs. Wow, I am impressed. This isn't a first timers reaction either. As an IT provisional I do my yearly(ish) visit to OpenSource land to check out the growth and try to assess it's place in my world. I guess it has been too long.

The installation

The two machines that I set up were old HP Pavilion's running inadequate RAM and tired 1.3 GHZ Celeron processors. They were machines that have been shelved for about 5 years and were slated for the recycling center. I downloaded the latest ISO (8.10) from ubuntu.com and burned it to a CD. I popped it in and the installer took me through a few painless steps before launching into a long unattended process. The most difficult part for a beginner or non-nerd would be making the right choices in the partition module. For these installs it was an easy choice to delete all and carry out a clean installation. After about forty minutes, I was asked to reboot and the system was ready for some action.

The Interface

I found Ubuntu to be intuitive, stylish and surprisingly quick given the crap hardware that it was running on. For an avid windows user there were two notable distractions. The first was the taskbar being located across the top. This was easily corrected (or ruined depending on your perspective) by clicking-dragging it to the bottom of the screen. The second distraction was the single-click execution with the mouse. Users who have never experienced Mac or Linux desktops might be a bit confused about this. I knew about it from previous experiences and still found myself double-clicking everything. I am sure that in time this would become a learned adjustment.

The Software

This was one part that I was sincerely impressed with. When I traversed the options in the applications menu I found the OpenOffice 2.4 suite (all comparable with MS Office), Firefox, Evolution Email, a slick note taking / cataloging tool called TomBoy, F-Stop and Gimp for the digital photography buff, and RythymBox for digital media. This was all right out of the default install. Because I was set up in the “batcave” where I only have wireless access, I was not able to really kick the tires on the web software (no wifi card available).

Conclusion

All in all, this OS has got to be the best OpenSource solution that I have seen. It's out of the box functionality and intuitive interface make it a great choice for use on recycled or re-purposed hardware. I have been planning on adding a lunch-room PC at work for our warehouse staff, I think that I will be using Ubuntu to see what kinds of “average user” reactions I get.

openLab3 : 30 birds singing in a tree, Paul Webb by Paul Prudence

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Detail of the computational part of an installation by Paul Webb. Check this picture out for the physical part.

All Things Open 2014 - Day 2 - (62) by AllThings Open

Daniel Abadie

CTO for Buenos Aires City Government

Open Gov/Data

Buenos Aires: Open by Default

Rockville Pond - Shot in fullspectrum with 85A filter by trophygeek

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Identica mode for Emacs - Update status by Gabriel Saldana

This is a screenshot of how to update a status with identica-mode for Emacs

OSVehicle Illustrations by Open Motors

Sign language interpreter Shoshanne Cleary by Catalyst Open Source

All three official languages of Aotearoa New Zealand are spoken at the NZOSA gala dinner: Te reo Māori, English, New Zealand Sign Language

The New Zealand Open Source Awards gala dinner 2018 took place in Te Papa in Wellington on 23 October 2018.

nzosa.org.nz

All Things Open 2014 - Day 2 - (63) by AllThings Open

Daniel Abadie

CTO for Buenos Aires City Government

Open Gov/Data

Buenos Aires: Open by Default

Browser by Bia Kunze

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A segunda coisa que mais amei no Motorola A1200i: o browser. Pudera, é o Opera...

Pena que o aparelho não tem EDGE.

James R. Herman Cruise Terminal at Pier 27 San Francisco by trophygeek

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Shot in Golden IR

Promo Blender Intro by Open Curso

Imagenes de Nuestro Primer Curso de Blender Intro, la mayoria son del primer dia.

From the OpenSource Boyfriends photoshoot by Sputniko.com

CD Heaven

OSVehicle Illustrations by Open Motors

Indians at the OCC by Raghu Nayyar

All Things Open 2014 - Day 2 - (169) by AllThings Open

Ross Mason

Founder & VP Product Strategy Mulesoft

MidDay Keynote

The Second Digital Revolution is Here. Are You Ready for Hyperconnectivity?

Open-course/Open-source 2009 : Lauren Grusenmeyer, Yi Jiang & Ludivine Loiseau by Marc Wathieu

Open-course/Open-source is a free software one-day event which took place on march 31st 2009 at Erg (Ecole de Recherche Graphique) in Brussels.

Invited artists and lecturers were Lionel Maes, Sébastien Denooz, Femke Snelting, Pierre Huyghebaert, Harrisson, Yi Jiang, Ludivine Loiseau et Lauren Grusenmeyer.

Lecturers from Erg were teachers Stéphane Noël and Marc Wathieu.

More (in french) here :

www.multimedialab.be/blog/?p=1208

And here :

www.multimedialab.be/blog/?p=1204

That's me by Raghu Nayyar