MOTU

This is probably an odd concept. Maybe I'm alone. I really hope not.

I've found that online it seems many people announce themselves as Agnostic or Athiest. I used to be in that group. After meeting my girlfirend (soon to be wife) over four years ago, I started to attend church. Although I had very little religion in me, I chose to attend with an open mind.

With my mind open, I learned a great many things that opened my mind even further. Most noteably, I learned how to better manage my life. I also learned how those management techniques can help me get better with technology.

Every six months these articles become popular. I've been using Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) for a few months now and I thought I'd share what I thought.

For most users

Step 1:
Install Ubuntu 10.10

Step 2:
Install the little extras you might want, such as Thunderbird, Galeon, etc.

Step 3:
Enjoy!

For cli users

Step 3:

apt-get install aptitude
aptitude purge vim-tiny
aptitude install vim

Step 4:
Enjoy!

For psychotic users like me

Step 1:
Grab Alternate CD

"Jack of all trades, master of none" is a figure of speech used in reference to a generalist: a person that is competent with many skills but is not outstanding in any particular one. (Wikipedia)

What is Et cetera?...

Merriam-Webster:
Main Entry: et·cet·era
Pronunciation: \et-ˈse-tə-rə, -ˈse-trə also it-, ÷ek-, ÷ik-\
Function: noun
Date: 1597

1 : a number of unspecified additional persons or things
2 plural : unspecified additional items : odds and ends

Let's think about that. /etc/ is full of random junk. It's pretty much the configuration for your whole system. Where do you configure defaults for the xxxx app? Did you check in /etc/? It's probably there.

I only get to do this one time so I'm definitely going to make a big deal out of it.

I'm engaged!

I went out for a walk with Kim. It started getting cold so we sat together under the gazebo where we first kissed. We talked and held each other for a while. When it got too cold we started to head back. I said "Hey, Kimi?" and she turned around and asked me what's up. I was already getting down on one knee. She dropped what she was holding when she realized there was a ring in the box. I asked her if she'd marry me and she said yes. (You probably guessed that last part already.)

== Begin Opening ==

I ventured onto the gnu.org website wanting to read what their licenses actually were. In the process I decided that I should figure out what GNU actually is. Aside from discovering that the FSF seems to be just a source of income for GNU, I was quite disturbed.

I want to make very clear that I went into this with no bias in one way or the other. It is only after all my research that I developed a very strong opinion. I also want to say that a majority of my research was done by reading pro-GNU information. I also asked about this in the #gnu channel on Freenode. Below I'm giving my opinion on two specific documents that bothered me in particular. Their text is cited verbatim as well as links to the original.

# Documents are below the conclusion.

== Begin Conclusion ==

Instead of placing my conclusion at the very bottom it's going here.

If you don't want to read the whole thing, it boils down to GNU feeling they thought of it first so their the originators of the Linux project and all work belongs to them. However, I encourage you to actually read it for yourself. Just follow the links, you don't need my opinions for this.

After everything below I have no doubt that what we call "Linux" should be "Linux" and NOT "GNU/Linux." I'm actually very certain that GNU doesn't belong in the name of any operating system at this point. If they can ever finish their own OS, then perhaps they can call that system "GNU." Until then, they should realize their failures as developers and as free software idealists. They should realize that they can make a "GNU Linux" system that is stripped of anything they don't like and realize that this is what theire "GNU system" is.

They claim we can't exist without them but that's wrong. Linux distributions exist without any GNU software in them. They really need to remove themselves from their communist beliefs and take a jump into the real world.

00:00 GNU: No! I use "Linux" and I will never use "GNU/Linux." FOSS belongs to everyone. Stop trying to claim the work of so many others as your own.

As a preliminary note: DO NOT follow anything in this and proceed to ask for help. If you follow this than consider yourself void of ANY support. Especially from the -kernel channel. They support and develop stock kernels, not your personal modifications.

Now.. In my quest for a fast boot time into a fully functional system that is very light weight, I tried out Gentoo. After using Gentoo I discovered that they're not that "ricer" community everyone claims they are. In many way's they're the exact opposite. Sure some of them fall into the ricer category but they're not very common.

Many of us know of and have met MootBot. The authors describe MootBot as:

Mootbot is an eggdrop script that is used by the Ubuntu Scribes team to log meetings. It logs messages that begin with certain keywords in an attempt to make it easier to summarise the meeting and introduce a defined structure.

If you've been in #ubuntu-meeting then you've definitely seen it work. It's a very efficient tool for managing Meetings.

I think Linux users can safely agree that Flash and Java make web usage into a battle ground. Many of us choose to blame the issue on the distribution we use. When we favor our distribution too much we'll point fingers at Sun or Adobe. If we use the FOSS versions we'll point fingers at the respective maintainers.

The sad truth is that I'm writing this not really knowing where the blame lies. However, I'm not sure that it even matters. I don't care whose fault it is, I just want it to work.

By now we've all heard about the Bazaar (bzr) version control system. If you're a coder then you're well aware of what a version control system is and why it's helpful. If you code on Launchpad you're equally aware how incredibly awesome this system is.

Rather than discuss how incredible bazaar is, I'd like to explain how to set up a production level deployment for a bzr server. If you're curious what makes bazaar great, just try it out. You can use https://staging.launchpad.net/ to create branches for playing around.