Y Safle

The latest version of Ubuntu Linux has now been released. Feisty Fawn can be downloaded from the Ubuntu Site. You can also download Edubuntu’s Feisty Fawn release. This version of Ubuntu is loaded up with open source educational software and has a clean looking but appealing interface to it. If you want to set up a system for the kids, this is the version to use.

Ubuntu has rightly become one of the most popular Linux distributions, and here (in my opinion) is why:

• Everything is free. (Well this is true of all Linux distros more or less - although some hide the freeness a bit, but it is such a good reason to use Linux over old fashioned Operating Systems, it is worth mentioning)
• Sane Package management using APT. Installing new packages is really child’s play.
• Debian based (which is why the package management is so good)
• Free CDs are available
• Supported by a benevolent billionaire - this distro is not going to vanish like some have done
• Desktop neutral. Gnome or KDE? You choose. Kubuntu is released alongside Ubuntu.
• Focus on education with the edubuntu distro
• Well designed
• Things just work. (Well perhaps not quite as well as Apple systems just work - yet… but moreso than any other Linux I have used. This is the distro you can give to a novice user and know they will do better than with a Microsoft offering)
• Multilingual. This is an international project, and the internationalisation work shows through
• No viruses, bsods, annoying warnings etc. Just the security and stability of a Unix core. A lesson that Steve Jobs took to Apple with OS X’s Darwin core

So if you didn’t quite get any of the above, don’t worry. Just go and get Ubuntu. get the live CD and try it out. Install it on the old computer in the kid’s “office”. One way or another, give it a test drive… it’s not scary!

Copyright developed in the age of the printing press, and was designed to fit with the system of centralized copying imposed by the printing press. But the copyright system does not fit well with computer networks, and only draconian punishments can enforce it.

The global corporations that profit from copyright are lobbying for draconian punishments, and to increase their copyright powers, while suppressing public access to technology. But if we seriously hope to serve the only legitimate purpose of copyright–to promote progress, for the benefit of the public–then we must make changes in the other direction.

Richard Stallman

Rishab Aiyer Ghosh of MERIT has prepared an excellent report on the Economic Impact of Open Source in the European Union. The report inidicates (despite Microsoft FUD and sponsored “research” to the contrary) that companies nearly always derive substantial benefits from Open Source software.

On the other hand, that is too simplistic a conclusion, but the report is definitely worth reading. I’ll write again on it once I have digested the broader messages therein.