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Yeah. Go fetch the key without my help.

As I've been saying, what we need is better plausible deniability.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/148440

Then they can't go around asking everyone for their keys - because most really wouldn't have them :).

The Truecrypt proponents don't get it. Hidden container or not, you have to voluntarily install Truecrypt, so that's sufficient cause for them to target and trouble you.

... some time ago for a usable time-machine substitute for linux, but failed miserably on the gnome integration.

Unfortunately when we tried we were informed by the kind folk of the nautilus mailing list that it would be pretty difficult, as it's not feasible by using the python nautilus-extensions, and we would have to rewrite a lot of code. Gvfs was not ready yet (and mostly undocumented) so our code would be instantly deprecated, and many of the supposed options of a quick google were hopeleslly outdated / broken / unsupported / deprecated -such as the bonobo views, which I couldn't get to work at all.

Finally my personal struggles with autotools (devilish tool!) ended up burying the idea. Pity, but I'm glad that the opensolaris folk were able to do it. Their GUI rocks a lot IMHO (I tried to congratulate them on their blog but the post got lost somehow ;).

Perhaps if one of us gets enough free time in RL we'll port their patches (should be GPL I guess) to our linux implementation, in a cleaner nautilus C plugin.

BTW feel free to try the application, it should be functional (as in "won't break your hard drive down nor delete anything it should, though it might take some space in ~/.hdlorean"), though not as polished as we would have liked. We even managed to build a debian package ;), but it's python anyway. Right now the project is somewhat unmantained though, by the mentioned lack of time and some tiredness from the project.

The UAC is crap.

The fact that it annoys people enough to either turn it off permanently, or just mindlessly click "allow" should show you how bad it is.

There ARE alternatives ways to achieve better security.

What Microsoft should have done was provide much better sandboxing.

I'd personally go for sandbox templates:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/156693

After years of development (and how many billions of dollars), it's quite disgraceful that the best Microsoft can provide is the crap called UAC.

Do you have this hardware? Any chance you could narrow down the versions it works on and the versions it doesn't?

Same hardware as this guy:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/266927

System is at work... I would test except there are not any easy options for doing so there. Also, I realize that you can't be expected to fix hardware problems where you don't have the hardware... in fact I've personally seen code fail on one system and run perfectly on the exact same spec hardware sitting right next to it, with exactly the same software (ghosted).

Mostly I'm just pointing out that there are longstanding problems in linux... the original fanboy post was way over the top.

I've started using AWN at work. And although I'm not a Mac-ite - you know what? It makes sense.
Why (in Windows, KDE, etc) is there a place to start a program (Menu, QuickLaunch), and a different place to maximise it from, see where it's running? Answer me that?
When I click the Firefox icon on the AWN dock, I'm saying "I want Firefox". I don't care if it's not running, and has to start a new one, or if there's one already running it can bring up. I just want Firefox to appear in front of me. Same for Thunderbird, PSI, Last.FM, Amarok, whatever.

So yes, actually, docks make a lot of sense for apps that you only ever have 1 instance of. Like most of them. Terminals, etc - sure - that's different. And FWIW, I just have a Terminal quicklaunch set up to spawn as many as I need.

I do wonder how this will affect the AWN project https://launchpad.net/awn personally I stopped using AWN because they could never get full screen windowing to work to my satisfaction, but I would hate to see a productive and lively OSS project shut down because of Job's intellectual greed.

AWN is a similar "dock" for Linux with lots of applets and launchers. A great bit of open source that probably doesn't stand a chance against a patent like this.

I just quote the Ubuntu Launchpad:
"Sorry, but the answer to this one is "no". Intrepid will ship with 1.9.1 Mono has a little bit of a reputation when it comes to slightly... unready... releases. We apply a HUGE number of patches to our Mono packages to make them usable. Our main focus with Ubuntu is to have the best user experience possible, and since Mono is used mainly as a framework for desktop apps (F-Spot and Tomboy are installed by default), we think it's more important to ship a stable, reliable platform for those apps than to update to a new Mono release without having time to test it."

The USB parallel initialization work sounds fantastic (and thanks for replying on Slashdot - we don't see many big shot devs here)!

As for pciehp, you can't disable then enable the wireless card and expect ath5k not to lose its marbles unless you boot with pciehp_force=1.

With regard to initrd, I assume having support for it configured into the kernel doesn't slow down the boot. Rather it's the actual use of it that does right?

I'll be interested to see just how close to 1 second for the kernel this system gets with devices enabled (as mentioned its currently at 5). Just for reference here's a big snippet of its dmesg:

[ 0.000999] Memory: 1026236k/1039872k available (2576k kernel code, 12968k re
served, 927k data, 236k init, 130568k highmem)
[ 0.000999] virtual kernel memory layout:
[ 0.000999] fixmap : 0xfffac000 - 0xfffff000 ( 332 kB)
[ 0.000999] pkmap : 0xff800000 - 0xffc00000 (4096 kB)
[ 0.000999] vmalloc : 0xf7ffe000 - 0xff7fe000 ( 120 MB)
[ 0.000999] lowmem : 0xc0000000 - 0xf77fe000 ( 887 MB)
[ 0.000999] .init : 0xc046e000 - 0xc04a9000 ( 236 kB)
[ 0.000999] .data : 0xc0384150 - 0xc046bdd0 ( 927 kB)
[ 0.000999] .text : 0xc0100000 - 0xc0384150 (2576 kB)
[ 0.000999] Checking if this processor honours the WP bit even in supervisor mode...Ok.
[ 0.000999] SLUB: Genslabs=12, HWalign=64, Order=0-3, MinObjects=0, CPUs=1, Nodes=1
[ 0.001016] Calibrating delay loop (skipped), value calculated using timer frequency.. 1800.21 BogoMIPS (lpj=900106)
[ 0.001043] Security Framework initialized
[ 0.001063] Mount-cache hash table entries: 512
[ 0.001318] CPU: L1 I cache: 32K, L1 D cache: 32K
[ 0.001324] CPU: L2 cache: 512K
[ 0.001330] Intel machine check architecture supported.
[ 0.001338] Intel machine check reporting enabled on CPU#0.
[ 0.001350] CPU: Intel(R) Celeron(R) M processor 900MHz stepping 08
[ 0.001361] Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
[ 0.005636] Freeing SMP alternatives: 0k freed
[ 0.005640] ACPI: Core revision 20080609
[ 0.021353] ..TIMER: vector=0x30 apic1=0 pin1=2 apic2=-1 pin2=-1
[ 0.031995] net_namespace: 288 bytes
[ 0.031995] NET: Registered protocol family 16
[ 0.031995] No dock devices found.
[ 0.031995] ACPI: bus type pci registered
[ 0.031995] PCI: MCFG configuration 0: base e0000000 segment 0 buses 0 - 255
[ 0.031995] PCI: Not using MMCONFIG.
[ 0.032002] PCI: PCI BIOS revision 3.00 entry at 0xf0031, last bus=5
[ 0.032006] PCI: Using configuration type 1 for base access
[ 0.035375] ACPI: EC: Look up EC in DSDT
[ 0.047947] ACPI: Interpreter enabled
[ 0.047956] ACPI: (supports S0 S1 S3 S5)
[ 0.047980] ACPI: Using IOAPIC for interrupt routing
[ 0.048105] PCI: MCFG configuration 0: base e0000000 segment 0 buses 0 - 255
[ 0.051277] PCI: MCFG area at e0000000 reserved in ACPI motherboard resources
[ 0.051282] PCI: Using MMCONFIG for extended config space
[ 0.062285] ACPI: EC: GPE = 0x18, I/O: command/status = 0x66, data = 0x62
[ 0.062291] ACPI: EC: driver started in poll mode
[ 0.062512] ACPI: PCI Root Bridge [PCI0] (0000:00)
[ 0.062669] PCI: 0000:00:02.0 reg 10 32bit mmio: [f7f7fffff7f00000, f7070580f70704e8]
[ 0.062678] PCI: 0000:00:02.0 reg 14 io port: [ec070000ec00, f707059cf70704e8]
[ 0.062686] PCI: 0000:00:02.0 reg 18 32bit mmio: [dfffffffd0000000, f70705b8f70704e8]
[ 0.062694] PCI: 0000:00:02.0 reg 1c 32bit mmio: [f7effffff7ec0000, f70705d4f70704e8]
[ 0.062731] PCI: 0000:00:02.1 reg 10 32bit mmio: [f7fffffff7f80000, f7070980f70708e8]
[ 0.062825] PCI: 0000:00:1b.0 reg 10 64bit mmio: [f7ebbffff7eb8000, f7070ce8f7005948]
[ 0.062870] pci 0000:00:1b.0: PME# supported from D0 D3hot D3cold
[ 0.062877] pci 0000:00:1

So, how will they respond to a bug report on fixing the screensaver configuration?

Case in point. Read down a bit to here.

If some programmers are not receptive, they probably just need a bit of prodding (you explaining why your approach is better), or they are right not to try (if it is clearly not going to work well this way).

Remember that developers might like coding new stuff better than fixing old stuff. In my opinion, filing bug reports for enhancements might work better if you are on the same wavelength as the developer.

So, how will they respond to a bug report on fixing the screensaver configuration?

Case in point. Read down a bit to here.

If some programmers are not receptive, they probably just need a bit of prodding (you explaining why your approach is better), or they are right not to try (if it is clearly not going to work well this way).

Remember that developers might like coding new stuff better than fixing old stuff. In my opinion, filing bug reports for enhancements might work better if you are on the same wavelength as the developer.

So, how will they respond to a bug report on fixing the screensaver configuration?

Case in point. Read down a bit to here.

If some programmers are not receptive, they probably just need a bit of prodding (you explaining why your approach is better), or they are right not to try (if it is clearly not going to work well this way).

Remember that developers might like coding new stuff better than fixing old stuff. In my opinion, filing bug reports for enhancements might work better if you are on the same wavelength as the developer.

So, how will they respond to a bug report on fixing the screensaver configuration?

Probably not well.

Don't get me wrong, I like Gnome and use it every day, but this answer "file a bug report" just doesn't wash all the time, particularly when upstream developers have this attitude of 'won't fix' something as simple as this.

It isn't just gnome developers who do this, I recall something similar with KDE4, where the lead developers refused to even talk about what they were doing much less respond to the users.

find the appropriate developer and send a detailed (and nice) bug report

doesn't work when the appropriate developer is being precious about the code.

That said though, this looks like a pretty good maintenance release with a few nice little features added in. It has no immediate benefit for me, but I can see how it can all be built upon, which is great.

Now when can I expect this in my Intrepid Ibex repositories, mmm?

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/intrepid/+source/gnome-utils/2.24.0-0ubuntu1 the day before yesterday.

I now know literally no-one I consider technically knowledgable who uses Windows as their primary machine.

Holy fuck, you're surrounded by fanboys. MS has succeeded against all odds from FUD pumping lunatics such as you and your fanboy buddies.

MS dominates the desktop. MS Dominates corporate servers. Dominates data centers. IIS is poised to overtake Apache on the webserver side.. Shit your brain must be about to melt. Can you handle all that? I guess you can console yourself that it runs on your router or or that it runs on supercomputers (LOL, brilliant rationale to use it on the desktop). Maybe in a couple of years you'll overtake Win2k in market share. Or maybe the iphone will overtake Linux. Hilarious !

OTOH, Linux is too easy to break. Like this bug which was recently found... System crash on inserting SD card

Put in a SD Card. BOOM ! INSTANT CRASH. A Two year old could crash linux.

intel wireless chipsets are NICE.

No they aren't. My laptop came with an ipw2100. If in the presence of more than a few APs the card will hang and the driver will restart it, hanging everything for a second or two. This is a bug that has been known about for years and still isn't fixed. I gave up waiting for them a while ago and replaced the piece of crap with an Atheros card. No more hangs.

so what configuration should you put in smb.conf? Cool, now email your reply to Canonical and see if someone will add it to the 'add smb networking' code.

I think it's in the comments of the smb.conf...

I think Canonical has 'blueprints' for such additions (ie 'lightweight feature requests)

I think I saw the blueprints once, but I think they've existed for quite a while...

Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.
A lot of customization requires the usage of super-user privileges to install software (Like AWN). And how do you suppose malicious use of this will be prevented?
Supply the user with a popup asking for permission? How will you inform the clueless user that the lookandfeel.laf file is trying to 'apt-get install software; make backdoor"?

No, sure, everything will be fine.

so what configuration should you put in smb.conf? Cool, now email your reply to Canonical and see if someone will add it to the 'add smb networking' code.

I think Canonical has 'blueprints' for such additions (ie 'lightweight feature requests)

because it is nearly impossible to hit this bug and it is not of any real serious problem

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-meta/+bug/116803

and how to avoid it:

mkreiserfs -h tea /dev/hdc1

This will make a ReiserFS-formatted file system on the device /dev/hdc1 (first partition on the first drive on the second IDE channel). The -h command specifies the hash name to use (you can select between tea and rupasov). The rupasov hash (the default) is the fastest, especially for extremely large directories with sequentially named files, but the drawback is that it has a higher probability of hash collisions. A hash collision means that the system will suddenly refuse to create a file with a certain name even if there is enough free space on the disk. The tea hash is a cryptographic hash, but it is slower and has a lower probability of a hash collision. Since data retention should be of primary importance, I suggest using the tea hash, even if you do suffer a small performance hit for using it. If you need to, you can also specify the block size after the device, but if you omit it, mkreiserfs will determine the best block size to use.

I thought this project looked very promising : https://launchpad.net/mysql-sandbox Instantly run one or many SQL Servers as a back end, will even do clustering for you if you want. YMMV

Oh, forgot to add, how can distro companies expect to make money then? Same way they did way back when: commercial paid support to answer the immediate need of any company that requires it, though of course this can easily be done by any development team and should in no way be tied to a specific Linux software bundle because it should have nothing to do with it (companies being tied to specific Linux software bundles really are unnecessary), AND last but most importantly and mainly, should be behind specific Linux software projects, either closed source or open source, in which they can help promote, like MySQL or any and all of the rest of them do. IMO these software projects should be the main focus of these companies, for instance Canonical and various projects on Launchpad which they specifically support.

So, like I said, some Linux distro companies may need to redefine themselves, because profiting off the fragmentation of Linux isn't something that the Linux community will let happen.

For the love of god do not use tortureforge.

There are plenty of alternatives, use one that doesn't make your devs and users scream in agony every time they have to use it.
Sourceforge is so bad, it's not remotely funny. Not only are the "Forums" and "Bugtrackers" utterly unusable and useless. Even supposedly trivial (read: baseline!) stuff like downloading a release tarball is a sea of pain, requiring 2-3 clicks through useless spoiler-pages (more ad impressions, eh?). God forbid someone just wants to quickly wget a release to give it a shot, OSDN might not profit!

Generally avoid any provider that carries "forge" in its name. Most of them took the abysmal tortureforge interface and somehow managed to make it worse.
Also beware of tortureforge in disguise! Some, like berlios, copied everything except the name. Same poison, different bottle.

So, here are some sane choices (randomly picked, there are more):

• LaunchPad
• BitBucket
• GitHub

And if you are serious and have a bare minimum of linux-skills then you can always set up your own instance of RedMine (not trac, mind you) along with a SVN, Git, bzr or whatever server. It's not rocket science. I'm sure there are even hosters that sell it prebundled for a few bucks a month.

It puzzles me that some people still pick TortureForge for their projects in this day and age. But normally that's at least a surefire sign that the project is not worth the diskspace it occupies... (for *new* projects that is, not counting legacy projects here that started on sourceforge years ago and are just too lazy to move).

This is a known problem and workaround exist (Installing libflashsupport package). You may want to check this bug report... https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/239757

Many others are experiencing issues. This is one of many threads like this on the Ubuntu forums where people are having serious issue with flash (especially compared to earlier versions (before 9.048). Version 9.112 and beyond (and even Beta) still are really slow, consume a crapload of cpu cycles and are in general unusable.

I've been researching this issue (mainly to get Hulu.com videos playable in fullscreen on a Mythbuntu setup) and have found no recourse other than playing the video at normal size, but using Firefox's zoom or turning on Compiz and using the fullscreen zoom to enlarge the video. Even so the video gets choppy occasionally and of course, is kind of a pain.

Right now full screen videos (using Flash's full screen option) use 90% CPU (out of 2 CPUs on an Athlon 64x2 4800+) and beat to death the poor Sempron 2800 I have on my Mythbuntu setup. Funny enough, the puny Sempron can play HD videos at 1080p with little or no issue.

After following countless threads (and the official bug report on Adobe's website), trying every 9 version and 10 beta, and so on I've pretty much given up on getting Flash to behave for now. Don't get me wrong, I believe you when you say it's playing fine for you, but either the issue is genuinely not affecting your system, or you haven't paid attention to cpu usage while playing flash. As always YMMV.

BTW, any hints not covered in the forums greatly appreciated. Getting fullscreen flash working is the last step in getting a web video based MythTV setup working.

The original poster of this article is experiencing bugs with his or her distribution, *not* merely with Flash. There are several issues at work here.

a) Flash 10 RC is the first version to support "windowless mode" flash content that several sites use. Unfortunately, there is a bug in Firefox that causes "windowless mode" content to crash. It is not a bug caused by Adobe Flash; un fact, the newest version of swfdec (which also added support for "windowless mode" content) also causes Firefox to crash. This fix is due for release in Firefox 3.0.2 and a workaround is available for older releases already. See: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/239182

b) Ubuntu Hardy was the first release to integrate PulseAudio, but its default configuration can cause a lot of trouble for users. PulseAudio provides ALSA plugins that enable plain ALSA applications to work correctly with PulseAudio; these plugins are supposed to be enabled by default. Some (buggy) applications do not work correctly using these plugins, including Flash 9 and Audacity. Hardy was released without these plugin enabled, causing many audio mixing problems for users. See: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/198453

c) It appears the original poster is using the libflashsupport library, which is a workaround to enable PulseAudio support in Flash without the need for the ALSA plugins mentioned in point (b) to be enabled. There is a bug in Flash when using the libflashsupport API; closing and opening new flash streams will result in a crash (such as navigating from one Youtube page to another). See: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/192888

d) Flash 10 has fixed its ALSA implementation, allowing it to work correctly with the PulseAudio ALSA plugins as mentioned in point (b) - this means that the (buggy) libflashsupport library is now redundant.

Note that all the above bugs contain links to the upstream issues when applicable. For those too lazy to follow the individual bugs, I have posted a guide to configure PulseAudio (and Flash 10) correctly for Ubuntu users, complete with testing packages. See: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=789578

The original poster of this article is experiencing bugs with his or her distribution, *not* merely with Flash. There are several issues at work here.

a) Flash 10 RC is the first version to support "windowless mode" flash content that several sites use. Unfortunately, there is a bug in Firefox that causes "windowless mode" content to crash. It is not a bug caused by Adobe Flash; un fact, the newest version of swfdec (which also added support for "windowless mode" content) also causes Firefox to crash. This fix is due for release in Firefox 3.0.2 and a workaround is available for older releases already. See: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/239182

b) Ubuntu Hardy was the first release to integrate PulseAudio, but its default configuration can cause a lot of trouble for users. PulseAudio provides ALSA plugins that enable plain ALSA applications to work correctly with PulseAudio; these plugins are supposed to be enabled by default. Some (buggy) applications do not work correctly using these plugins, including Flash 9 and Audacity. Hardy was released without these plugin enabled, causing many audio mixing problems for users. See: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/198453

c) It appears the original poster is using the libflashsupport library, which is a workaround to enable PulseAudio support in Flash without the need for the ALSA plugins mentioned in point (b) to be enabled. There is a bug in Flash when using the libflashsupport API; closing and opening new flash streams will result in a crash (such as navigating from one Youtube page to another). See: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/192888

d) Flash 10 has fixed its ALSA implementation, allowing it to work correctly with the PulseAudio ALSA plugins as mentioned in point (b) - this means that the (buggy) libflashsupport library is now redundant.

Note that all the above bugs contain links to the upstream issues when applicable. For those too lazy to follow the individual bugs, I have posted a guide to configure PulseAudio (and Flash 10) correctly for Ubuntu users, complete with testing packages. See: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=789578

The original poster of this article is experiencing bugs with his or her distribution, *not* merely with Flash. There are several issues at work here.

a) Flash 10 RC is the first version to support "windowless mode" flash content that several sites use. Unfortunately, there is a bug in Firefox that causes "windowless mode" content to crash. It is not a bug caused by Adobe Flash; un fact, the newest version of swfdec (which also added support for "windowless mode" content) also causes Firefox to crash. This fix is due for release in Firefox 3.0.2 and a workaround is available for older releases already. See: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/239182

b) Ubuntu Hardy was the first release to integrate PulseAudio, but its default configuration can cause a lot of trouble for users. PulseAudio provides ALSA plugins that enable plain ALSA applications to work correctly with PulseAudio; these plugins are supposed to be enabled by default. Some (buggy) applications do not work correctly using these plugins, including Flash 9 and Audacity. Hardy was released without these plugin enabled, causing many audio mixing problems for users. See: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/198453

c) It appears the original poster is using the libflashsupport library, which is a workaround to enable PulseAudio support in Flash without the need for the ALSA plugins mentioned in point (b) to be enabled. There is a bug in Flash when using the libflashsupport API; closing and opening new flash streams will result in a crash (such as navigating from one Youtube page to another). See: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/192888

d) Flash 10 has fixed its ALSA implementation, allowing it to work correctly with the PulseAudio ALSA plugins as mentioned in point (b) - this means that the (buggy) libflashsupport library is now redundant.

Note that all the above bugs contain links to the upstream issues when applicable. For those too lazy to follow the individual bugs, I have posted a guide to configure PulseAudio (and Flash 10) correctly for Ubuntu users, complete with testing packages. See: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=789578

i.e, remove libflashsupport, use the latest flash 10 beta and create a /etc/asound.conf as described in bug 198453

I've not had any browser crashes since doing this, so cross fingers. This is probably a very common problem..

i.e, remove libflashsupport, use the latest flash 10 beta and create a /etc/asound.conf as described in bug 198453

I've not had any browser crashes since doing this, so cross fingers. This is probably a very common problem..

For a moment there I thought somebody had fixed Ubuntu bug one.

openSUSE offers a 1-click installer. Sabayon includes them by default. Heck, Mint (a nicer fork of Ubuntu) includes them by default. I followed the instructions on Ubuntu's wiki, yet they never worked. I asked for help and was repeatedly attacked for attempting to use ATI. Mind you, on the exact same laptop (my wife's old laptop) I ran Gentoo with the ATI drivers (custom kernel, -viper release), Sabayon with the ATI drivers, and openSUSE 10.1 with the ATI drivers. The only distro I had problems with was Ubuntu.

When was this? I have a machine with ATI drivers, Ubuntu installed them by default and alerted me that it had done it.

Then you probably have a desktop with a post 9600 ATI. I have three laptops with ATIs in them. They work with Fiesty but will not work with Gutsy or Hardy due to ATI dropping support in the binary. It is true however that Sabayon ships a nicer KDE and configures graphics cards properly that Ubuntu will not, I usually run a partition of both on each machine (my two favourite distros) and I have seen this many times.

If you need ATI binary support on Ubuntu and don't want to do any of that stuff manually, may I suggest EnvyNG? (Homepage is here.)

I've proposed this:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/156693

3rd party code should say what it is and what sandbox template it requires to run.

If the requested sandbox is in line with what the code claims to be, and "what it is" is what the user wants, then the user can decide to allow it.

The O/S then sandboxes the code according to those privileges.

Expecting users or software to identify good code from bad code is similar to expecting them to solve the "Halting Problem".

With my suggestion, it is a lot easier to train users to understand that a "Paris Hilton Video" which requires "Full System Privileges" is likely to be malware.

Whereas a "Cute Game" that requires "Guest Game Privileges" should be OK and since the O/S sandboxes it, there's little the "Cute Game" can do - it should not even be able to access the user's Documents (which unfortunately is possible in most Desktop O/Ses today - almost anything the user launches can access the user's documents, microphone, webcam etc).

"Canonical, which sells subscription support for Ubuntu, a Linux operating system that scores high marks on usability and 'the cool factor,' will re-distribute Lotus Symphony via their repositories. Symphony 1.1 will be available through the Ubuntu repositories by the end of August."

However, the distro states that (http://www.ubuntu.com/community/ubuntustory/philosophy):

At the core of the Ubuntu Philosophy are these core philosophical ideals: 1. Every computer user should have the freedom to download, run, copy, distribute, study, share, change and improve their software for any purpose, without paying licensing fees. (...) 3. Every computer user should be given every opportunity to use software, even if they work under a disability.

also:

For Ubuntu, the 'free' in 'free software' is used primarily in reference to freedom, and not to price - although we are committed to not charging for Ubuntu. The most important thing about Ubuntu is that it confers rights of software freedom on the people who install and use it.

More (http://www.ubuntu.com/):

The Ubuntu promise: Ubuntu CDs contain only free software applications; we encourage you to use free and open source software, improve it and pass it on.

And also (https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1):

Non-free software is holding back innovation in the IT industry, restricting access to IT to a small part of the world's population and limiting the ability of software developers to reach their full potential, globally. This bug is widely evident in the PC industry. A majority of the PCs for sale should include only free software like Ubuntu.

--Mark Shuttleworth

One doesn't have to look far to find small but serious usability issues in open source software.

For example, did you hear about Fitt's Law and "mile high menu bar"/ "infinite size widget" effect?

For detailed description, see e.g. this Ubuntu bug.

It turns out that while the Windows and Mac software got this right (at least with respect to scrollbars), massive amounts of OpenSource software (even high profile projects for Gtk/Gnome and Qt/KDE, like Gnumeric, Gnucash, OpenOffice, Konqueror or Kword) add an idiotic small border to their document area that seems to serve only one purpose - prevent this usability effect and make all users' lifes harder.

BTW, I highly recommend Joel Spolsky's "User interface design for programmers" - that's the very least a coder could do to educate himself in the area of usability. The book is very interesting, easy to read and quite short.

The main problem is, I think, unsolvable

This would be true if FOSS were solely developed by volunteers, only interested in their own preferences, but there are two other groups to take into consideration:

1. power users who like the idea of FOSS, whom use it and want it to work for their friends and family;
2. companies that market and sell support for FOSS desktops;

We haven't seen good usability in FOSS products due to the reason you mentioned: the software developers have been the only stake-holders in the process. That situation is changing. For example: the person who wrote the article, works for Canonical. It is in Canonical's interests to get as many users on Ubuntu as possible, this is all part of fixing bug #1!. Canonical can afford to pay usability experts to improve FOSS, and as average users try things out, they -- or their power user friends -- will raise bugs when usability issues arise.

Great progress is being made, if you check out Matthew's previous blog post on usability issues, from when he first started working for Canonical, you'll see most of the problems shown there have been fixed.

The only thing I see standing in the way, are developer egos. I personally hope these can be worked around!

I admin for someone with a Dell that has a Foxconn GM33 variant in it (and I believe this BIOS fix is related to the GM33). It has worked fine in Ubuntu until upgrading to Hardy. With Hardy the kernel issues SATA errors and fails to boot completely.

There's a workaround involving either tweaking a BIOS setting or adding kernel options, but this is utterly lame from a user-centered point of view -- which is what both Ubuntu's and Dell's strength is supposed to be.

If Grandma upgrades from Gutsy to Hardy her PC shouldn't fail to boot. And I shouldn't have to tell Grandma over the phone to hit Delete quickly enough to get into the BIOS, and then try to guide her through screens that are gibberish to her. I can't believe this bug was foisted on users and then not rapidly nailed.

I should note that this particular model is *not* one that Dell offers with an Ubuntu pre-install -- in other words, Dell hasn't given any promises that it should work with Linux. But if this BIOS update does fix the problem, I hope Dell steps up and offers it officially.

Just make sure that you're not using an insecure Jabber client like Pidgin over Tor!

Pidgin doesn't do certificate checks so it is trivial for Tor exit nodes to do man in the middle attacks. This is a serious security flaw that has been around for years that no one wants to treat as such for some reason.

Here's some documentation:
here
here

Also, if anyone here has the ability to get the developers of Pidgin to actually be interested in fixing this security vulnerability, that would be great.... Hell, I'd settle for someone at least treating this as a security issue instead of just a feature request.

Sorry for the bitterness... I have just been waiting for a fix for this vulnerability for a long time.

put deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/compiz/ubuntu hardy main and deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/compiz/ubuntu hardy main in your sources list (sudo kate /etc/apt/sources.list) and update...this will install compiz 0.7.6 (look at the cube deformation and reflection plugin ;o)- awesome!) and fix all the bugs that came with the default compiz in K/Ubuntu 8.04

put deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/compiz/ubuntu hardy main and deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/compiz/ubuntu hardy main in your sources list (sudo kate /etc/apt/sources.list) and update...this will install compiz 0.7.6 (look at the cube deformation and reflection plugin ;o)- awesome!) and fix all the bugs that came with the default compiz in K/Ubuntu 8.04

A workaround for this is to run Flash inside nspluginwrapper, even if you're on a 32-bit system.

This way, when Flash crashes, it won't bring down the whole browser with it, and all you have to do it reload the page.

This bug is on Ubuntu's bugtracker.

They know the source. It's a known bug in the kernel: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/189185 Newer kernel versions fix it but the fix hasn't been backported to 8.04.1. They say they will fix it; if so I'll give Linux another try, assuming the Windows bug hasn't happened first. Yes, the openness is helpful - I can't read the code, because I'm not a developer, but I can at least report a bug and see what's going on. As against that, when Windows crashes it blue screens and restarts, normally without blowing up my data. Linux tends to just hang and force a cold reboot; last time, I lost my (Wubi-based) partition.

I don't know if this will help you but there is a fix suggested there that resolved the issue for me.

Iran's missile keeps me up at night more than my Ubuntu's package manager.

That depends on whether you live next door to one launchpad or the the other.

WRT DFSG, the portions in question appear to be III.1 and III.2.

See also https://launchpad.net/truecrypt-installer/trunk

I followed this back to the Ubuntu bug report 148440 and see that a comment has been added https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/148440/comments/4 that I think says it all.

Get a clue.

Does Joe Sixpack's computer come with Truecrypt? Does it come with a truecrypt container preinstalled?

The answer is NO.

So if the wrong people find Truecrypt on your computer guess what happens to you. If you say "Nothing" well: "Wrong answer!". They may give up after a few days of giving you the treatment, but it still means you get the treatment.

Whereas if everybody had truecrypt AND an encrypted partition, they could a) try to waterboard everyone, b) wait till they have more evidence.

And that is why I reported this bug/feature request: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/148440

Encryption must appear to be in _use_ by default by all users, then you get safety in numbers. When even your grandma using Ubuntu has a crypto partition, things are better for the people actually using it.

Sandboxing could help.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/156693

Hopefully. I'm sure it will put pressure on them to do so ... if they do the right thing or not is up to them. I personally think in this specific space it has been easy for open source companies to keep this software closed. Now that one of the bigger FLOSS companies decided enough was enough it would be great to see some competition with other FLOSS software.

Though honestly I don't think it will make Canonical release a FLOSS version of Landscape, at least not any time soon. Take a look at https://bugs.launchpad.net/launchpad/+bug/50699. While I think launchpad is one of the best bug/code/etc.. systems out there, it's not FLOSS. The reasons for that seems to be:

1. Mark doesn't have a revenue model for launchpad and this open sourcing the code would put his developers out of work (at least that is what it seems he is saying).
2. It's a 'hosted solution' so it doesn't need to be open source.

My assumption is that the same views would be extended to Landscape and other hosted applications.

I think that the point that you make is very important. I've filed a bug at Ubuntu on the subject of collaborating the different package managers:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apt/+bug/240770

Please add your thoughts as a developer to the bug. Thanks.