Using Ubuntu

Ubuntu to be more beautiful than Mac OS X?

Jon — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 16:18:48 +0000

A couple of weeks ago it was OSCON 2008, or the O’Reilly Open Source Convention. The conference website has details of the presentations and keynote speeches including one given by Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical Ltd and the Ubuntu OS.

During the conference Shuttleworth gave the Ubuntu development community the challenge to make the Ubuntu desktop more beautiful than Mac OS X. There is certainly no reason why an Open Source OS couldn’t meet this challenge, however Apple has always had the advantage of a closed platform which has made it much easier for them to support a consistent experience. As any user of Linux knows, making devices such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth work hasn’t been easy in the past, and will be a problem to challenge Apple in user experience because of the vast number of devices a PC based OS needs to support.

Watch Shuttleworth’s key note speech below on software innovation and open source development in particular.

What happened to Ubuntu Home Server?

Jon — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 15:54:02 +0000

I have to apologise for rather neglecting this blog, after the release of my humble little book, Using Ubuntu, I went on to be the technical editor of Pro Windows Powershell, I know, nothing to do with Linux at all! This took quite a bit of my time and I rather neglected Ubuntu. Never mind, I’m back in an Ubuntu mood and was wondering what had happened to Ubuntu Home Server? It’s been well over 12 months since it was first announced in issue #2 of the Ubuntu Full Circle magazine. Well it seems that the development is still ongoing and you can check out the discussions at the Ubuntu Home Server development forum. Let’s hope we see it soon.

November issue of the Full Circle Magazine

Jon — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 23:15:50 +0000

As regular as clockwork, the November issue of the Full Circle Magazine came out a couple of days ago. In this, the 7th issue of the Full Circle Magazine:

Ubuntu news
A review of Ubuntu Studio 7.10
How to setup OpenSSH
Converting to Ubuntu from Windows
Scribus tutorial continues
Review of the Wubi installer
Interview of Amy De Groff, Head of IT for Howard County Library that switched it’s public PCs from Windows to Ubuntu
News of the Full Circle podcast
Top 5 audio and video apps
Letters, Q&A, My Desktop and more….

Download issue 7

Using Ubuntu Linux book now in stock

Jon — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 20:46:14 +0000

Just a quick note to say that my book Using Ubuntu Linux is finally in stock at Amazon UK, click the link to take a look or order. Let me know what you think.

Tesco Direct selling Ubuntu PCs

Jon — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 15:23:30 +0000

In this months issue of the Full Circle Magazine, they report that Tescos (a leading UK supermarket chain) have started selling low budget PCs preloaded with Ubuntu 6.06. Prices start from just £139.93 for an eSys ePC base unit.