notes from the mousepad

Dear Yahoo!
Welcome to Ubuntu! As a regular contributor to the Ubuntu project, I think it’s great that you are partnering with Canonical.  Because of the agreement you signed, Canonical will be able to hire more people to work on Free software.  Also, your contributions will help Ubuntu continue offering their OS at no cost to [...]

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I recently posted a couple of ‘dents onto identi.ca regarding UbuntuOne, but wanted to follow-up with some more complete thoughts.
In thinking about UbuntuOne, there are a number of factors involved; it involves the need to build a sustainable business, trademark issues, and the level of one’s own comfort with using non-free software. To me, there [...]

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Hot off of the presses comes a release announcement marking the final release of Xfce 4.6!
from          Stephan Arts <stephan@xfce.org>
date    Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 6:30 PM
subject    Xfce 4.6.0 Released!!!
After more than two years of development, Xfce 4.6.0 has just been released.
Xfce 4.6 features a new configuration backend, a new settings manager,
a brand new session [...]

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With the successful Beta release of Xubuntu 8.04, I got to thinking of some of the qualities that have always drawn me back to using Xubuntu.  I know that people have spirited feelings about their desktops of choice in the Linux world, but I thought I’d present a few reasons (8.04 reasons, to be exact) [...]

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The Xubuntu documentation for 8.04 is done, and the doc-centered folks are now working on updating the wiki.  There are still quite a few holes in it for now, but we’re working fairly quickly.  I like the new menu bar.  It makes it easy to get around.
Also, I know it’s not much notice, but tomorrow [...]

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Tonight I went to a couple of Linux-related events after work, and I’m glad I made it out. I first went to an initial set-up meeting for a Chicago Gnome user group. We had some informal discussions about Gnome, and what a Gnome user group might be and do in the city.
Kevin is [...]

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How about replicating an installed package list this way:
dpkg –get-selections | grep ‘[[:space:]]install$’ | awk ‘{print $1}’ > packagelist.txt on the old machine,
then:
sudo apt-get -u install `cat packagelist.txt` on new machine,
That should work. Only disadvantage is that you’d have to download the installed packages from the ‘net onto the new machine, rather than having [...]

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Apt on CD looks pretty awesome for For x/k/ed/ubuntu and debian users . . . There’s got to be a way to back up all of your installed .debs without the gui, but this will be useful for most desktop users. And I like how it allows you to share the packages [...]

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From this wikipedia article:
Much like Windows XP Starter Edition, [Windows Vista Starter] will be limited to emerging markets such as Brazil, Colombia, India, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines, mainly to offer a legal alternative to using unauthorized copies. It will not be available in the United States, Canada, Europe, or Australia.[4] It will have many [...]

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I went to the organizational meeting for Free Geek Chicago last Wednesday night, and got pretty inspired about what the group doing.
Free Geek Chicago is kind of like Habitat for Humanity, but for computers. Basically, people can work at the facility for 20 hours (over several weeks), and then earn a free computer. People can [...]

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