Episode 43 - Who cares about free stuff...

Running Time: 50:10

1) Introduction

     Co-Host Brian Wagner, Jason DiDonato and Joe Leuzzi

2) News

    Are you using Open Source LIcenses properly?

    Have you ever wondered what a root kit is?

    What's the next big Trend in software development?

    Yahoo is going to Open Source some more Non-Core Technologies

3) Conclusion

    Recommendations for People to interview

    E-Mail us at podcast@linuxinstall.net

    Go to the WebSite to call us via Google Voice

    Facebook Fan Page

    Follow us on Twitter and Identica as @linuxinstall (Thanks to the 500+ people following us)

    Look for us and comment on iTunes, odeo

Red Hat and Ubuntu pushing buttons in the community....

Both Red Hat and Ubuntu have been in the press a lot lately because of changes they are making in their distribution.  What everyone seems to forget with both companies are just that companies not communities.  While they do a great job of being great community members, people will always complain about them.  Here is what we gleaned from the posts I read:

For Red Hat the change is just how the distribute the kernel itself.  They are now shipping just a completely patched Kernel.  This is instead of shipping a patch set for each and every bug release that was available.   Who does it affect?  The folks that want to look in the kernel.  As far as we can tell that's it.  We at Linuxinstall.net don't think that this is an issue for them and more just a reason for people to complain and wish things were better the old way.

For Ubuntu the problem is more one of a lack of change.  They want to push some enhancements into the upstream Gnome package that are being rejected:

Here are the details as described in a ZDNet article:

"The technical problem behind the dispute is that GNOME rejected theUbuntu Ayatana system status indicators. These indicators, and their messaging application programming interfaces (APIs) would be used on the Linux desktop to convey such information as “Whether you are connected, what the time is, whether you are online, whether your battery will last long enough for you to finish your work, whether you have messages,” etc."

Again it seem like something that shouldn't be that big an argument.  When you are poring your heart and sole into a project though it's not always that easy.  We can't always make a reasonable counter offer when we feel like we are being attacked.

Hopefully everyone will soon see that these aren't bad choices just ones that we all may not agree with.  We as a community need these companies need to survive and thrive.  If they don't protect their future and go under then we all loose.  Both companies are spending a lot of time and money on Linux and it's desktop.  It would be a very different Linux world. 

Ubuntu designer proposes getting rid of quit from app menus....

Matthew Paul Thomas over at the Connanical blog seems to be saying that he wants to phase out the quit option from Linux App Menus.  It's kind of confusing becuase the topic is.  As a replacement or enhancement for quit he proposes changing the Close functionality of all programs to quit the application when the user closes the last window in it's set of windows.  The thought behind this is that with today's processing power and larger installed memory the need to quit applications isn't needed.  The problem is the model he is trying to compare to is that of Android and iOS.  These aren't really fair comparisons since I can't really have more than one or two screens on my Original Droid.  So you can't run into the problem of having 30 seperate windows within a single application.  I use quit/exit most often to get out of the office fast at the end of the day.  I don't want to have to jump through all my open windows to close them all.  I want to click File->Quit(Exit) a few times and go home.  

At least they aren't banning the quit menu option.  As always Connanical is pushing the UI bounds and trying to achieve new things.  It's an interesting idea but it will take a lot more convincing to get me to be a convert.  It's a long but interesting read so check it out.

Episode 41 - Vegas and the News...

Running Time:  0:44:00

1) Introduction

    Thanks for reading the article and listening to the interview with Luke from Puppet Labs

    Brian’s going to be speaking at the IBM Impact Conference about WebSphere Automation

    Has Nokia lost their mind and abandon the Open Source Community

2) News

    IBM’s Watson Rules the Jeopardy Board

    One Application Installer to Rule them All

    DNS Security?

3) Conclusion

    Recommendations for People to interview

    E-Mail us at podcast@linuxinstall.net

    Go to the WebSite to call us via Google Voice

    Facebook Fan Page

    Follow us on Twitter and Identica as @linuxinstall

    Look for us and comment on iTunes, odeo

Fedora and OpenSuse drop dev efforts on Unity....

Thanks to the folks over at ostastic.com for pointing me to the posts from the developers working on Unity on Fedora and OpenSuse.  Both site problems with the upstream developers and seem to be suffering from burn-out.  If you know anyone interested in picking the projects up they both seem willing to turn it over.  The current decision though puts Ubuntu out on their own in adopting Unity.  If you want to test it out you seem to have to use Ubuntu for now.