The GNU/Linux User Show #26
The GNU/Linux User Show #026 (MP3 18MB - 53min)
The GNU/Linux User Show #026 (OGG 26MB - 53min)
MP3: LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE
OGG: LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE
This week’s show was supposed to be about how to Mail Merge in OpenOffice.org 2.0, but due to technical difficulties, that’s going to have to wait until next week. Instead, this week I talk about Linspire since I’ve been playing with it recently.
And look - real minutes!
Minutes:
- 00:30 - Show Intro - not Mail Merge with OOo 2 as promised.
- 01:45 - I’m now using Linspire
- 04:30 - I’m running a laptop and therefore whatever works on a desktop isn’t relevant in most cases.
- 05:30 - My package problems with Kubuntu
- 08:30 - My basic requirements to carry on with testing a distro
- 09:50 - Justin has suspend working on Ubuntu
- 11:33 - Linspire has given me no grief, but the CNR delay is kind of annoying
- 12:30 - The Click n’ Run (CNR) Warehouse. It’s not a piece of crap
- 15:00 - I found all the apps I looked for in the CNR. Even the weird ones
- 19:30 - The Linspire community
- 23:00 - Some of the CNR package descriptions show a lack of understanding about what the package is
- 25:30 - Not everyone likes the CNR
- 26:40 - Is Linspire evil or good?
- 29:00 - Primer on Free Software
- 31:45 - RMS himself encourages us to sell free software and to charge as much as we wish or can for it
- 32:05 - RMS told me, personally, on show #13, to download a GNU/Linux distro named UTUTO and sell copies of it.
- 33:00 - That’s not to say that RMS likes Linspire in any way. I think it’s safe to say that he’s disgusted with it
- 33:54 - Something about Linspire still sticks in my craw
- 34:40 - Is Linspire good?
- 35:20 - It’s all about Mass Marketing ™. People have to be able to buy GNU/Linux pre-installed
- 37:30 - Stores are not going to shelve free stuff. They need to be able to sell it
- 38:20 - Consumers want to pay for software. It gives them some weird sense of confidence in it
- 42:55 - Kelly Penguin Girl names the penguin! You are not going to believe this…
- 47:30 - Alan Clements’ email
- 50:39 - Kelly thanks everyone for the birthday wishes!
- 51:50 - Wrapup
NOTE: Yes, I know the LGPL doesn’t stand for “Lesser GNU Public License”, it’s the GNU Lesser General Public License. Slip of the tongue…
If you like the show, review us and cast a vote for us on the Podcast Pickle!
Even better, Yahoo! podcasts is up; Give us a rating over there by clicking here!
December 5th, 2005 at 11:33 pm
Hey John I heard you mentioning vidcast, I have tried it but I got 1 grief and was that it generates HUGE file size.
Thats why I like wink. I think I told you already, I have generated in 1 week near 50 video tutorials. They are incredible simple to use, the only pain is to optimize it.
About the Linspire Office build, can you tell me which guy is it. I am also on the linspire forum. I am glad the attitude you took about actually playing with the community.
About the legallity of Linspire, it was actually illegal in the past. The illegality was because they didn´t offer the source code. That means that if they don´t provide the source code they break the contract and all the benefits are suspended.
The linspsire model didn´t include the source, Linspire ignored this claims and it took some lawyers from FSF to sue them and finally they comply.
However now Linspire is great, is more affordable, it has created open source software (phonegaim, Lphoto, etc), it has fund open source development (NVU, Gaim, etc).
I like Linspire, and I like it to grow, I dont run it, and I havent payed them, however I have payed Mandrake and I am a bit concerned when you say you won´t ever payed for a linux distro. Specially because Linux distro need money, whenever is free or non-free, not just linux but anybody that has the need for some craizy issue to eat.
Linspire is pushing to the retail store with PC pre-installed, the problem is that it cost money to put it on the wall-mart. So even if developers dont eat, to see your favorite distro you still need money on the stores.
Linspire, Mandriva, Red Hat, Novel have money and can pay this retailers to carry them.
December 5th, 2005 at 11:46 pm
CNR sounds nice enough for something you have to pay for, but have you used Synaptic? I can’t remember you ever talking about it before, but it’s a program for Debian systems that lets you install packages easily.
It’s pretty mainstream, as far as Linux software installers go, so I was wondering how you think it compares to CNR.
December 5th, 2005 at 11:50 pm
BTW, Linspire use the GizmoProject, the cool thing about the GizmoProject is that you can leave voice messages for free. So there is no need to spend money to leave you a voice mail. :D
December 6th, 2005 at 2:07 am
Hi Jza,
I don’t think we’re seriously considering a vid cast, I’m far too ugly to be seen :)
I played with Wink, but then forgot about it in favour of Xvid Cap. I’m not all that impressed with Xvid Cap, though, so thanks for reminding me about Wink. I’ll take another look at it.
Thanks for the information about the history of legality with Linspire. I don’t have much knowledge about the roots of it.
The Office build guy? I’m not sure what you’re referring to here. What did I say?
Re Paying Distros: What I meant to convey is that I wasn’t a guy who *would have* paid for a distro. I might have said the wrong thing and it may have come across as *I wouldn’t*. What I meant to say is that it’s rather fortuitous that the Linsipre people gave me a copy to try. I wouldn’t have paid for a distro before trying Linspire because I didn’t believe that the vendors added enough value to make it worth any money. After having tried Linspire, I see now that I have been wrong with respect to Linspire and possibly wrong with other pay distros as well. These events opened my eyes to the fact that there may be some value in some pay distros. It’s a good thing that happened, not a bad thing.
I agree that there’s no doubt that SOME money has to change hands in order to create a situation where there’s a profit margin which is what entices stores to carry it.
Oh, and Gizmo..yes. As soon as I’m out of Skype Out credits, I’m going to give Gizmo a try :)
December 6th, 2005 at 2:32 am
Hi Mandeep,
This is an interesting problem. I purposely don’t cover off GUI specific tools during the show because I want to be as ‘distro generic’ as possible. If I teach someone how to use apt-get then they can use that on any Debian system. If I teach them to use Synaptic, then they can only use that information on a system that has Synaptic installed (because I never taught them to use apt-get they won’t even be able to install it). The focus on command line tools is intentional.
However, there really isn’t any such beast with Linspire. Apt-get is installed, to be sure, but there are no Linspire repositories in it and there’s dire warnings everywhere that installing from the Debian repositories will bork a Linspire system. So I have to talk about the GUI tool (CNR) in Linspire because there is no other tool to install packages with. No supported tool, anyhow.
I can’t even comment on how CNR and Synaptic compare because I’ve only every used apt-get or yum at the command line. I will admit that I’ve been entertaining the idea of tackling some distro specific tools like Synaptic recently. I think we’re at the point in the evolution of the show that we have all the basics covered: using tar, installing packages, getting networking working, security, and where to find help. Therefore, it might be time to spread out a bit and talk about other more targetted topics.
Thanks for the comment and stay tuned!
December 6th, 2005 at 8:04 am
Just a note about suspend (hibernate): Ubuntu did hibernate out of the box, but it had version 1 which is included in the kernel. In order to get it to work well, I actually had to recompile my kernel with patches from http://www.suspend2.net. That works extremely well, and they’re working to get it included in the Linux Kernel, so hopefully hibernation will be standard in later versions of linux.
I also had to hack the NVidia drivers and compile them to get NVidia working with hibernation, and luckily a fellow user contributed a HOWTO on the Ubuntu forums and that worked well. The power of community.
Jon: what version of suspend does Linspire use? (I think you can tell from the grub boot line: resume is version 1 and resume2 is version 2)
December 6th, 2005 at 9:31 am
I’ll have to look, Justin. I’ll get back to you…
December 6th, 2005 at 1:44 pm
Blorio? If you were going to call the penguin Blorio, you should have thought about something that makes a little more sense, like Mario or Sid.
PS: GO PENS!
December 6th, 2005 at 2:14 pm
Yeah, well…you know who to take it up with :)
December 6th, 2005 at 3:06 pm
I wouldn’t say Arch is for people that know what they’re doing. I was ‘converted’ to Arch about 6 months after my first Linux install[November 2004] and 3 months after my move from Windows. It’s more like jumping of the deep end of a pool. You have a 50/50 chance of success. However, if you succeed you learn lots of things really fast. In fact I learned more things using Arch for a week than I did using Fedora for 6 months.
December 6th, 2005 at 3:29 pm
Hi Eric,
Laff..I’ll bet you learned a lot really quickly!
I wish I had a test machine, I could afford to spend more time mucking around with things if I did.
Ah well…life goes on :)
December 7th, 2005 at 1:48 am
OMG ArchLinux… how can you drop a good old Canadian distro? :P
Actually, been there, done that, went back to Slackware. Many things in Arch irked me. If Eric (above) visits the ArchLinux IRC channel, chances are he’s seen me there (*shame*).
Out of curiosity Jon, I was wondering if you had thoughts on Slackware, and if you had tried it at all?
I’d love to see a show on slack, the grand-daddy of all modern distros :P
December 7th, 2005 at 1:55 am
ArchLinux is Canadian? Wow…I missed that entirely :)
I’ve never tried Slackware. I’m interested in it, but every time I see the 2.4 kernel I run away screaming. I have enough problems with my laptop running the 2.6 kernel :)
December 7th, 2005 at 2:01 am
ArchLinux was made by Judd Vinet, out of Vancouver or Victoria or something (can someone confirm?) :P
With slack, if you get cds 1 and 2, when you get to the kernel selection screen, you can get 2.6.13 (I run it)…
Had to install some packages proper to 2.6.13 from testing/ on CD2, such as the basic kernel modules, alsa drivers, kernel source, etc.
You can even do a 2.4 install, and install the 2.6 kernel from testing/ on CD2. I know testing sounds bad, but it works fine for many people on the slackware IRC channel.
December 7th, 2005 at 2:15 am
Ahh..I see the ‘testing directory’ thing now. I always go the Slack site and stop reading as soon as I see 2.4.31 :)
Still…since I don’t have a testing machine, it’s not likely that I’ll be getting to Slack any time soon.
December 7th, 2005 at 2:22 am
So no show about slackware anytime soon??? *DANG* I’ll sit and wait then :P
December 7th, 2005 at 3:51 am
I’ve just recently moved from Kanotix to ArchLinux and am extreamly impressed with it. So much easier to maintain, faster, more stable.
It’s not for everyone, as it’s a very hands-on kind of OS. But the benefits I’ve gained from it far out weight the time it takes to learn the “Arch way”. It’s bleeding edge, like Kanotix and Debian SID, but these days SID just seems too unstable for me.
Pacman is the most easiest package manager I’ve ever tried. And it’s great to be able to install things from source, making your own Arch packages of the applications you like to use (which don’t yet exist in the Arch repositories).
I’ve also tried Underground Desktop, and it’s a very easy way to install an Arch system (running KDE) for those people still scared of a command prompt. It’s still in development, but if the development release is this good, I see great things for UD in the future.
Best of all, Arch and Underground Desktop is screaming fast on my plunky old PII 400Mhz PC. Great to see something of that age running bleeding edge KDE 3.5 so effectively.
December 7th, 2005 at 3:57 am
Hi Judland,
I’ve been following your move to ArchLinux on your blog. It was you and Pat that twigged me into giving it a whirl. It sounds like people are generally pretty happy with it.
December 7th, 2005 at 3:58 am
Dadexter:
Well, you never know. Every now and again I go downstairs and putter with all the hardware that’s been donated. Maybe one day I’ll put together in that magical way and it will all come to life.
I promise that if/when that happens that the first distro I try will be Slackware :)
December 7th, 2005 at 4:52 am
Ah… my poor blog. Been kind of neglecting it these past several weeks. Got to get back into it. Perhaps, now that I’m only a few days away from an extended X-Mas holiday, I will.
At least you gave it a try, Joh, and that’s great. As I said, and what the ArchLinux website mentions, Arch isn’t for everyone. And that’s okay and is what Linux and open source is all about… choice!
Six months ago, I wouldn’t have been ready for Arch myself. But I’m certainly glad I took the time to read about it and learn what it’s capable of.
There’s also a Live CD version of Arch. It’s called Archie and there’s a link to it on the ArchLinux site.
December 7th, 2005 at 4:56 am
Bloreo is a perfectly logical name for a penguin with a blue head.
A BLue OREO, get it? Clearly Kelly is smarter than most of us to come up with a name that not only makes sense, but was fated to be picked in a random selection. Or something.
December 7th, 2005 at 5:55 am
sounds good!
December 7th, 2005 at 11:08 am
Sorry I meant vidcap not vidcast :) and yeah Xvidcap is the one that I experience a video way to big to be browse friendly, meaning is to heavy to just put on the web as a stream.
The office guy was meant to be the Linspire guy in the forums that was triying to get it working with the Linspire system. It would be nice to know his nickname in the Linspire forums. I hang out there every once in a while but would like to meet him.
December 7th, 2005 at 3:02 pm
I enjoyed the show on Linspire, it possibly being the most user friendly distro of Linux. Considering what you’ve found out about it, I don’t think it needs to apoligize for charging its customers nor straying away from more mainstream distros. Although many users may have chosen the Linux operating system for more techy reasons, I would bet a larger number of computer users aren’t interested in such matters. Most just want to be able to run their applications and read their email. The operating system is more or less transparent. If Linspire can make using Linux easy to use, and at the same time, benefit from a more secure and stable environment, then it may well be worth $50.00. That’s about half what Windows costs. I’m glad to have the choice.
What the heck is a Blorio?
December 7th, 2005 at 3:20 pm
Hi Jeff,
Glad you enjoyed it. I’m always a little nervous about what the community is going to do to me when I say things like “I like Linspire” :)
You’re right about the OS. Linux won’t ‘win’ until people stop buying operating systems and start buying computers.
I have no damned idea what a Bloreo is, but I think Mandeep knows :)
December 7th, 2005 at 6:39 pm
I seem to recall green/red oreos that were put out a few years back. I also remember the vanilla oreos. Those sure were nasty. I think Nabisco bought most of them back. Anyways it’s too cold here[-4F/-20C]. Time for Linux! I’m going to post my comments and questions about linspire to the forum[if I don’t get busy with some other project]. It’s quite a long post.
December 8th, 2005 at 12:24 am
Brrr…-20. We’re about the same out here in not-so-sunny Calgary. Yuk….
December 8th, 2005 at 4:56 am
Here it’s 22°F (I’m too lazy to convert it).
Snow’s blowing everywhere here… it’s crazy.
December 8th, 2005 at 4:57 am
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&rls=GGGL%2CGGGL%3A2005-09%2CGGGL%3Aen&q=22+fahrenheit+in+celsius&btnG=Search
-5 degrees…YUK!
Merry Xmas everyone :)
December 9th, 2005 at 8:00 am
OMG -5 degrees celsius!!! how do you survive????
I’ll just go outside at -20 degrees celsius… it’s a long walk to my igloo :(
December 11th, 2005 at 10:43 am
Wallpapers or MP3 Player?
As I’m sitting here waiting for my 1 GIG DVD iso image of SuSE to finish downloading, I’m surfing around looking at various packages that I can use as drop in replacements to my Windows apps. One of these is an MP3 media player. Because o…