How about that desktop?

I figured while I’m in a super-bloggy mood today I’d add this tidbit. Someone asked me a question about what might be missing from distributions like Fedora that would help it reach more users. This question isn’t new and I’ve given the subject a lot of thought over the last few years (even before being the project leader).

Red Hat and Fedora already invest a huge amount of time in desktop tech. We work upstream to make sure that ALL free software desktops are compelling, not just Fedora. When someone else has a compelling desktop in their free community distro, it means our work has been worthwhile.

Often people bring this point up in response to Fedora’s stance on software freedom. We believe strongly in software freedom, and that including proprietary software actively undermines our goals. We also have a goal of complete global freedom of reuse and redistribution, an objective with which proprietary software also often conflicts. We also believe in choice and that’s why we make it easy for third parties to provide very simple ways for people to get those technologies on their own in places where it’s free and legal.

The sound of one large gal warbling.

Everyone in the USA, regardless of personal political persuasion, should acknowledge this is a historic day. Sen. McCain just made an incredibly gracious, dignified, and honestly moving concession speech acknowledging the moment and importance of the election of our first President of color. Now I’m waiting for the victory speech of President-elect Obama. I hope now, with the elections over with, everyone can put away the petty squabbling that has characterized too much of the last year and get down to the business of fixing problems in this country.

Grab bag of goodies.

Preview Release.

First, the goodiest of the goodies: Fedora 10 Preview Release is out today. Grab a torrent and start seeding the love! (Don’t forget to add vga=0x317 or the like to your GRUB to see the hot new Plymouth feature at work.)

Update: Jeremy tells me that this is not the best way to get Plymouth hawtness. So far I’ve tried this on my Dell XPS m1330 with Intel graphics and an older desktop with an nVidia of some sort in it (no funky proprietary crap installed). I get the nice screen and no hangs, but apparently this is not recommended for everyone. Be warned!

Info released.

FUDCon hotel information is now on the wiki. You can make reservations between now and December 19th for the FUDCon that happens January 9-11, 2009 in Boston. Please remember to sign up, too, so we know you’re coming. And if you can, let us know your shirt size and whether you’d prefer vegetarian fare for the lunch we’ll hopefully be providing on Saturday.

Release the beasts.

Finally, there’s all the delightful goodies the kids picked up for Halloween. One of the funniest things that happened in last week’s paper — aside from the election coverage, between sobbing fits that is — was the section-front-page story one day on how Halloween should promote healthy snacking, followed by another section-front-page story the next day about how Halloween was all about the candy. Evie went as a devil girl, which honestly didn’t take a lot of work to pull off, although Eleya did make her a set of spangly red horns to make it more obvious to people who don’t live with her. Ethan went as Boba Fett, albeit one who wanted Devil Girl to carry his helmet around for him, presumably so he could keep an eye out for additional non-candy bounty.

We had a fun night that involved lots of glow sticks, a haunted house at a neighbor’s place up the street, and a part-time DJ two blocks over who had set up laser lights and the whole nine yards (Evie gave them a few warbling bars of “Say It Ain’t So,” which she learned from our Wii Rock Band game). Good times!

Don’t forget to vote, America, unless you’re woefully uninformed, in which case please stay home. Tomorrow let’s start countdown to Election 2010!

You’re going to need a bigger shovel.

Thanks to my friend Jesse for bringing this up last night at dinner.

In the middle of all the market mayhem here in the US, did you know that we now have a Pirate Czar? (Yarrr!) All thanks to the Pro-IP bill signed into law on Monday. Another “triumph” for the Bush administration.

Read the rest of this entry »

How I’ve missed your convoluted way of speaking.

Today I’m at the Red Hat Government Users and Developers Conference in Washington, D.C. As one would expect, the Ronald Reagan Trade Building has completely failed to deliver a working wireless connection without severely cracking the folds of my wallet. And of course I can’t live without connectivity, so here I am, $20 lighter.

I did get to say hello and have a quick conversation with Michael Tiemann before his opening keynote. But aside from that, a lot of people here today are not talking about “Should we?” or “Why?”, but rather, “How, and how fast?” The change of administration in the White House (whoever wins), coupled with uncertainty about budget futures given the current national financial crisis, are leading a lot of people to look at the “gateway drug” of open source — how does my agency spend less and achieve more with our IT dollars? And of course, Red Hat is there to show the way. Now it’s all about federal agencies having the foresight and courage to take the path out of darkness.

They try to make him go to rehab, he says no no no.

I could spend a lot of this blog talking about how incredibly insane it is for our government to be spending another $700B bailing out the greedy, the stupid, and the clueless. I could rail equally against both sides of the aisle for acting as if this wasn’t the exact outcome predicted by the last several years of credit overextensions, lack of oversight, and blind investor greed. Anyone who thinks that somehow either the Dems or the GOP have the answer to this problem, after the blithering idiocy and pandering of the last several days, needs to have their head removed, scrubbed with a Brillo, and reattached right side up. But no, I’d rather spend this blog talking about how I avoided thinking about this stuff too hard for the last few days.

Saturday we had a lovely Software Freedom Day 2008 celebration in beautiful downtown Fredericksburg, complete with balloons, freebies, and of course lots of free software for everyone. We had many, many people stop by — I was shocked at the turnout for a small town. Many of the attendees wanted to talk about their horrible experiences with specific proprietary software companies, which made it very difficult to keep the conversation positive, but we did our best. We gave out copies of the Open Disc, minus the USA-illegal bits, and lots of Ubuntu and Fedora discs (the latter preferred by most of the attendees). A respectable number of attendees followed up with memberships to our LUG and its mailing list.

Sunday I went to the National Rehabilitation Hospital to visit my friend, ace guitarist Arch Alcantara. A few weeks ago, Arch had a subarachnoid hemmorhage — a ruptured aneurysm in his brain. He survived not only the event, the subsequent cracking of his head when he fell over on his face, the coiling surgery to make the bleeding clot, and the risk of vasospasm the week afterward, but also the medical staff who weren’t used to someone with such an advanced case of biting sarcasm in the ICU, nor his tendency to burst into song. (There’s something to be said for a guy who sings “Head Like a Hole” the day after being extubated.)

Arch looked, as I told him, pretty fantastic for a guy whose head basically exploded three weeks ago. My friend Rich and I hung out for about an hour or so with him and Christina, basically just being happy that Arch was doing so well. We went out with him to the garden and sat for a bit to just soak up some fresh air, and commiserated on the hospital’s showing of 27 Dresses and the unlikelihood that it would be followed up by a Tarantino double feature. Arch has weeks of physical therapy in front of him, but I’m sure he’ll be able to conquer that with only occasional added grumpiness. On the way home, I appreciated relative good health and hoped that, in the same shoes, people would visit me to bring good cheer. A well spent day away from the computer, all told.

Commonalities.

I think Joe Brockmeier and I tend to have a lot in common on the subject of comporting oneself, as his recent ZDNet blog entry shows. In that entry, Joe looks at this subject from the practical point of view: How will an employer view your flamefests? But the larger question is not just about the employer’s ability to see the talent behind the sharp tongue — it’s about how that job interview reflects the general acceptance level for specific behaviors. I recently wrote this as part of a note to a small group, asking for some moderation in their tone, to curb harsh and unproductive flaming. Notice the similarities:

I firmly believe that when people disagree, we can do it with civility and courtesy. Interaction by computer isn’t an excuse to act in ways that, if we did them face to face, would shame us or those who know us. The Internet has a vast and unforgiving memory — when we act out badly, the results take on an extended shelf life.

Should have kept that title in reserve.

YouTube is starting come in really handy for local politics these days. Here’s a doozy from my neck of the woods. Apparently the fact that our county has the #1 business growth rate in Virginia must have nothing to do with the fact that this is one of the only counties in the state that has no BPOL (Business/Professional Occupational License) tax. So along comes Stafford’s own BPOL tax to solve that problem — and it’s a tax on gross receipts, not net!

That’s OK, I guess we’d rather encourage everybody to simply get their cars onto I-95 to work up north in D.C. After all, what does more local small business get us anyway? They simply take up space where we could put more MegaMarts, create tax revenue, and enliven the community. I sincerely doubt that the four imbeciles on the Board of Supervisors who approved this insanity will retain their seats in the next election.

Rake’s progress.

Phase Four (modified) of the Big House Reboot is now complete.

Today we went and got a little desk for the little ones (and Eleya) to use up on the main floor, an unfinished real wood piece that we are going to stain to something resembling rosewood. Please wish us luck.

We also found a perfect baker’s rack to replace our worn-out, apartment-era microwave cart, which includes plenty of shelf and hanging space, and a wine rack underneath. Not originally in the plan, but hey, we’re flexible.

We also found some decent speaker stands to accommodate the surround speakers for the home theate. I’d prefer to mount them on the wall, but unfortunately I hadn’t the foresight to have the great room wired when we had the basement finished a few years back.

Thanks to Eleya’s superpowers of assembly, and a quick return to the store to pick up the missing “Carton 1 of 2″ (always read the side of the box), we soon had a beautiful addition to our kitchen with the new baker’s rack. Meanwhile, I put my superpowers of disassembly to work on the big desk downstairs. (A good marriage definitely means shoring up each other’s skill sets.)

Tomorrow will conclude the lion’s share of the work when I move the home theater downstairs and figure out what to do with the wall mounts that are up there. Leaving them in won’t be pretty, but I don’t know if I can face drywall work tomorrow. I think we’ll try and tackle that a few weeks out.

Finally, I wish everyone out there still reading my drivel the happiest of New Years, including all you Planet Fedora readers. I hope 2008 brings you comfort, peace, joy, and love.

The size of the pie or the size of the lie?

Chris, I was struck by the fact that federal spending went up by a factor of 20, while general inflation rose by only a factor of about 6.4.* Social Security and Medicare spending went up by a factor of close to 50!

Defense spending went up by a factor of about 10, and keeping in mind that this spending includes war funding, that seems like a relatively stable number. If that war is ever to conclude — wait, stop laughing — given its record thus far, under this administration you would probably still not see those expenditures shrink.

Anyone who thinks that business as usual doesn’t doom the US to a financial collapse ought to have his head examined. Maybe we should move to Norway, where at least they’re up front about their socialism, yet generally thrifty at least as far as government spending goes.