Ubuntu Security Notice another win for Linux.

What is that I say, a win for Linux? Look now that all the nay-sayers, pundits, and critics  have had a chance to chime in lets look at the big picture. The openssh vulnerability is not something to take lightly and I’m not it’s just I think allot of noise was made for something I think was handled much better than any Microsoft vulnerability ever has. Notifications were sent from multiple sources, Canonical made sure Launchpad was protected, and the forums (Ubuntu, Mint, Debian) went into over drive letting everyone know what to do. If it was a Debian based distribution it was made perfectly clear you needed to install the security updates. Friends, family, and colleagues let me know, my local Ubuntu LoCo, and other LUG’s were all over it too. Once it was known, the openssh vulnerability was  was fixed. I’ve never seen Microsoft handle anything they way this was. This issue did not make me think Linux was less of a system on the contrary I now know the decision to move to Linux was the right thing to do. Again it’s the community that really makes Linux shine, we care about each other, or at the very least Linuix users really do believe in if you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours. Yep, I’d call that a win.

Is Splashtop the future of computing?

So just what is Splashtop? It’s an embedded version of Linux that can be contained on a flash-based chip somewhere on the motherboard or on a special partition on your hard-drive.  The  goal is to have you up and doing things seconds after you push your power button.

Sounds like a great idea and it looks like ASUS is starting to ship motherboards with this technology today.

I sure wish they had a Live CD or something so we could play around with it. It really is a great idea, another one of those why didn’t I think of that products.

Microsoft creates a device that bypasses windows security.

I just love when companies do this kind of thing under the umbrella  of  public safety or the law. I wonder how many computers have had this device used on them with out proper warrants (cause that never happens). So tell me again why people use Windows or trust Microsoft?

It’s a Hardy Party in New Mexico! So you green or Red

We have two kinds of chili (peppers)  in New Mexico and you can tell allot about a person on if they like green or red chili. If you hear someone say Christmas they like both.

All the details

April 25th,2008 Ubuntu 8.4 Release Party
Ubuntu 8.04 Release Party That’s right, our second release party, and our first as an official Ubuntu LoCo!
Where: Flying Star — Acequia De Corrales, at 10700 Corrales Road
When: Friday 4/25/08 at 6:30pm until 9:00pm click here for directions.
Check out the location here
This year we are doing it in style and have a room reserved.

Linux on the desktop, your time has come.

Yesterday, as if you didn’t know was the release date of Hardy Heron Ubuntu 8.04, and once the servers cooled down and the torrents where seeded it was pretty easy to get a copy. My son who is 10 was chomping at the bit to upgrade his computer, a trusty old Inspiron 5100. So I decided to let him install without any help from good ol’ dad. Not only did he install it no problems at all, the one glitch he did have was handle with out a hitch as well. To use our wireless network he has an old linksys usb wireless adapter which had never been supported by Ubuntu and to the displeasure of by son 8.04 is no exception. In a move that made this dad as proud as if he ran in the winning touchdown in the championship game, he pulled out the windows driver disk and installed Ndiswrapper and got his beloved computer on the network.

Next my son installed wine, just because he loves scratch it’s a great little programing language but no Linux version (come on MIT you know better than that). It took him all of 25 minutes to go from nothing to programing, all of this without asking me one question.

It sure looks like Linux is ready for the masses, none of this talk about a learning curve, none of this talk about not being able to run applications. It’s ready and it really is up to us to make it happen.

OOXML I told ya so!

Wow, read this and you will start to see why the ISO is meaningless.

LPI Linux Certification Exams 101 & 102

I’m currently studying for the LPI Linux certification, anyone have any hints or tips that might help? How do you stay focused while dealing with work, family, and all the daily life interruptions? Do you write things down use flash cards? Anyone out there have this certification and if so how did it help you or did it help you?

4 corners Linux Conference we need one.

I want to start a 4 Corners Linux Conference! So what do you say New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. Durango, Colorado is very close to the 4 corners and they have a convention center, hotels, and atractions….just a thought, but I sure like the idea.

I pledge to never whine about drivers for Linux again.

I’m a big reader of anything Linux, I read Linux publications, I’m very loyal to all the Linux blogs, and seek out all the Linux news I can get my hands on. In almost all cases inevitably someone will bring up how Linux doesn’t have the driver for this piece of hardware or that piece of hardware. I can tell you that I’m just as guilty, oh how many times I’ve whined about my video card.

The fact is most of us have hardware that came with the Windows operating system so the hardware worked just fine. When we purchased new hardware it came with that nice little windows compatible sticker and “most” of the time it would work just fine too.

What I’m trying to get at is this, Linux has come a long way and for the most part a simple search will tell you what distributions work with what hardware to do just about anything you can think of. So stop with all these hardware woes. So much hardware is out there right now that works with Linux i can’t think of one thing that can’t be accomplished using Linux and in some cases you can accomplish even more than with windows.

Yes it would be great if all my old windows legacy hardware worked with my Linux computers, but the fact is that old hardware was never designed to work with anything but windows. I have an easy solution for all my future hardware purchases I research and review everything I buy, if it’s Linux compatible then that’s the hardware I purchase. So hardware vendors as the Linux ranks grow you better take heed, we are in the millions and we have money. As for us end users we have to change our mind set from “this old web cam will not work” to “time to go buy a Linux compatible web cam. Once I made that change in how I thought it was no more crying over my Video card, and ATI missed a sale.

Is Ubuntu becoming the generic Linux distro?

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes ask the question “Has anyone else noticed an increasing number of Linux newbies who seem to think that Ubuntu is Linux and Linux is Ubuntu?” Read the story here.