Sexy Sexy Penguins

The following two articles were published in the past couple days.  When they were published and made known to me, I was saddened:

Report: OLPC may eventually switch from Linux to Windows XP
Nicholas Negroponte on Sugar and One Laptop Per Child

It appears, that Greg DeKoenigsberg responded (it appears) to these two articles with a great rebuttal in this article:

OLPC Developers are *not* fundamentalists

Thank you Greg, thank you for saying what I feel inside.  As an open source advocate, I see the value and benefit of free software and its power.  I feel good inside when I contribute and don’t feel anything like a fundamentalist.

Again, thank you Greg.

Cheers,

Herlo

Tags: Fedora, gregdek, negroponte, olpc, onelaptop, thank

As many of you may already know, Fedora 9 (codename: Sulphur) has been pushed back 2 weeks to May 13.  Being the organizer of the Utah Fedora/Ubuntu Linux Release Party on May 3, its kind of hard to push it back because Ubuntu’s release is still on time.

I’m glad though that the major parts of this release are feature complete and its just a few blocker bugs holding it back.  I’m also really happy to point out that because the folks at the Fedora Project are willing to push the date back, the release will be much better off in the end.

This also goes to show that while many businesses would consider releasing anyway.  Mainly because they promised something, and not releasing would cost them revenue and possible customers.  Open source people don’t follow the same mantra, and I’m proud to say that while I like meeting deadlines, if deadlines slips a little to make a better product, timelines should slip.

In the meantime, enjoy the preview release made available yesterday.  Utah will party with this preview.  Shortly after the party, an update will be made available via yum.  There are some amazing things coming out in a few weeks.  Keep your ear to the ground and enjoy the new Sulphur in your life!

Cheers,

Herlo

Tags: Fedora, release party, Releases, sulphur

Recently, I’ve been very interested in getting involved more and more with the Fedora Project.  In fact, the latest project in which I’m involved, the Getting Involved Guide (GIG).

I started with this guide because my so-called friend Jared Smith (hi Jared!), introduced me to the original creator of this document, Paul Frields at FUDCon a couple months ago.  I started the hackfest portion, not entirely clear where I’d end up, but somehow I rolled back to hang with Jared and Paul while they were working on this Contributor Guide, if I remember the name correctly.  I got involved late in the day, and either my misunderstanding, or pure genius took over and the Contributor Guide (intended mainly for developers), quickly turned into the Getting Involved Guide or GIG, which had a much broader focus.

While I am happy to be a part of this guide, and have had a hand in changing its purpose, I’m not at all familiar with much of the Fedora Community processes.  Which, for this document to be successful, I am going to have to learn, since that’s the point of this guide to begin with, helping others get started when they want to help the Fedora Project.
Think of it this way, if you are a corporate entity, an individual, or a small non-profit group (like my UTOSF group) and want to give back to the community that has helped you so much.  How do you do that?  What’s involved in getting started?  What projects are out there where we can help?  Do we need to be developers? If not, what else is there for us to do?  Well, those are all good questions, and I am sure there are many, many more we haven’t yet considered.

I guess what I am doing here is soliciting from the general communities at large, what they’d like to see in this guide.  What confused them about joining a large project.  I’d also like to hear stories about being a contributor to the Fedora Project, and why you think its a good idea.  I want to take these ideas and integrate them into the Getting Involved Guide.  I want to take these issues and make it clear for others how to get involved, why its important, and show that value.

Currently, if you are a Fedora Project member, I have a document in gobby.fedoraproject.org called GettingInvolvedGuide, which you are welcome to modify as you feel necessary.  I may also be hitting you up to answer questions regarding particular processes in your group as well.

Cheers,

Herlo

Tags: Community, Fedora, get involved, UTOS

So I’m back at work today after a very hard Sunday (fudpub was not friendly to me) at the slack^H^H^H^H^Hhackfest. However, I have to say that it was probably the best learning experience one could have at a conference. The BarCamp concept really worked well and I think it gave me some much needed information to move ahead on projects with which lately, I’d been struggling.

In addition to all of the learning, I was able to meet some really cool people there. Of course, there were my friends, Jared Smith, Evan McNabb and Derek “goozbach” Carter, and it was great to see them.

But I didn’t just come for my friends, and it was great to meet so many others.

I met Paul Frields when Jared introduced me. He quickly informed me, that Paul would be the “New Max”. After spending the last 2.25 days near or around Paul, I think he’ll be a great leader. And to be honest, it feels to me as he’ll put his own stamp on things. Not to take away from what Max has done, and will do, but I think Paul will be an awesome leader and I look forward to his friendship and leadership.

I was able to visit with Jim Whitehurst, the new Red Hat CEO. He stopped me to ask about my Eeep c and what I thought. We talked for a good 5 minutes before I realized who he was, and then I congratulated him on the job and said I expected great things :) He was quite excited to see the Eeep and it was awesome to know how passionate he was about Fedora. And to take the time out on a Saturday, that’s awesome!

A few more people I met who were awesome and friendly: Michael DeHaan, Karsten Wade, Seth Vidal, Russell Harrison,Toshio Kuratomi and another who’s name escapes me (who I helped get lost somewhere near Cary and Apex) and so many more names I cannot recall, though I’ll not forget your faces. Thank you for your valuable time and helping me get acclimated to this awesome community. I’d like to thank everyone who spent time helping us naive souls learn the way of the Fedora.

In the future, I plan to take much of what I learned and start working with it in my spare time. I’ve also started the process of joining the documentation project and look forward to helping them. My ambassador duties are simple enough that I can continue doing that as well, so this year should be a good year.

Thanks again to my company Guru Labs, for helping me arrange my schedule around FUDCon and hopefully they’ll be as accommodating for Scale next month.

Cheers,

Herlo

Tags: , Fedora, fudcon, Guru

So for those of you who follow this blog, its not the first time I’ve done shameless self-promotion. However, in this case, its only after the fact that someone else thought I was important.

I want to say thank you to the CodeAway and their organizers (Matthew Reinbold, and others, I’m sure) for putting me on this list. I hope to prove them right and kick some tail in Utah Open Source and around the tech community this year. I’m also glad to see at least a couple of faces I recognize, which means I need to meet the others on this list and get them involved in UTOSF and the UTOSC for sure.

Here’s the article: http://voxpopdesign.com/wordpress/?p=104

Cheers,

Herlo

Tags: famous, UTOS, UTOSC

The charter of the Utah Open Source Foundation is to help Open Source grow in Utah. As part of this charter, we focus on the local community and especially the User Groups.

Because of this goal, we’ve been working hard to come up with some simple, yet effective ideas to help the User Groups overall. Just recently, myself and Will Smith (undertakingyou) were discussing the LugBin. The idea is simply just a big plastic bin with good stuff that User Groups might need or want. In fact, we think it might be a good idea to get others involved so we’re asking for help.

If you would take a few minutes after you read this to visit our wiki page for the LugBin and give suggestions for what would be useful inside. Keep in mind that User Groups may be about operating systems, programming languages, business organizations, or anybody that just wants to get together and talk about any Free/Libre Open Source (F/LOSS) software.

Thank you for your input. We really appreciate every comment/suggestion.

Cheers,

Herlo

As some of you may know, I am the founder of the Utah Open Source Foundation.  On November 10, we’ll be holding the Multi-Distro Release Party, and I planned on sharing Fedora (of course), OpenSUSE and Ubuntu.  Its the only Multi-Distro Release Party going on that I know of, but I could be wrong.  If you live in Utah, you should come, it’ll be a blast!

The point of this post is to ask a simple question, however.  During the promotion of this event, I’ve received suggestions beyond the three big versions of Linux that are being released close to one month from each other.  For example, OpenBSD will be release soon, and Apple released Leopard for Mac OSX, among others.  And while every operating system is welcome to participate in the MDRP, I can’t help but wonder about certain definitions.

My question is what counts as a distro?.  I mean how do you classify yourself as a distro?  Is it a Linux only thing?  Or, is it just Open Source OSes?  Maybe its nothing, and I’m just bringing this up for no good reason.

Your comments are appreciated and encouraged.

Cheers,

Herlo

Tags: 10.3, Fedora, gutsy, linux, multi-distro release party, opensuse, release party, Ubuntu, werewolf

Okay, okay, I didn’t get in, but it was sure fun to take a train trip down to the World Series to see the vibe. I’ve never been quite so close to a World Series game. The closest thing for me was when I got to go to watch the Utah Jazz get beaten by the Bulls in 1997 and 1998 in Salt Lake City. The World Series is much better to me since I’m a huge baseball fan.

For your entertainment, I took some interesting, pics:

I also took some pretty pictures of fall in New England. Not being from here, its amazing how beautiful the leaves can be.

Cheers,

Herlo

One of the coolest new things coming out for Fedora 8, the Gnome Online Desktop! Its an amazing device, provides a simple interface for working with the new web world in which we live.

It reminds me a bit of spotlight for Mac, but this thing has much more. With all of the web integration it has, including google docs, calendar, last.fm, digg and more, you can’t pass up the opportunity to try out this amazing desktop.

I’ve attached an ogg/vorbis screencast of some of my interaction with it in Fedora 8 Test 3. Although it claims to be just a demo, it sure looks good!

onlinedesktop-screencast - 23MB (could take a while)

Cheers,

Herlo

Want a whole bunch of free stickers with software you love to use!?

I thought this was the neatest thing in a long time. Created by obvious lovers of Open Source and art fanatics. Javier A. Albusac Jiménez holds the copyright (MIT license) so you can share these stickers, make more, etc. It sure is fun to play with these stickers!

Check them out here.  The site has instructions on how to print them and cut them out so they look professional.

http://raro.oreto.inf-cr.uclm.es/apps/stickers/

Also, you can download the book directly if you prefer:

http://wiki.opengarden.org/@api/deki/files/604

I am going to my local office depot very soon!

Cheers,

Herlo