Web design & FOSS

I very graciously let a friend use my hallowed & fusty old Ubuntu-fuelled ThinkPad X60s to check her Hotmail account using Firefox. It all went without hitch, except for the snide comments about “PCs” in general (she’s a MacFan) and the inevitable first-time fumbling with the Trackpoint.

After a while I reclaimed the laptop and booted up a Windows XP virtual machine (using VirtualBox), so that I could run the Windows MYOB accounting software that my accountant uses. I set the machine to Fullscreen Mode to truly ensconce me in the Microsoft Experience®. Shortly afterwards, my friend resumed possession, booted up Firefox and continued her Hotmail habit. She didn’t even know it was a different operating system: Firefox was her interface.

I took a trip to my old stomping grounds of Bristol, over in the Mild, Mild West, had my teeth mended and caught up with some old friends. I also managed some Remote Working on the train, on my crusty ThinkPad X60s.

On the way back to London, I had my first taste of Remote Waiting – the 21:46 wasn't, particularly by the time it arrived crawling at 5mph into Paddington station. I missed the last tube home, so had to cycle back 8 miles on my rusty Brompton. This was my first taste of Remote Weighting. The X60s isn't a big machine by any stretch of the imagination (1.6kg without the CD drive). But I felt the weight of it on that cycle ride at 1 in the morning…

Which is why I've decided to buy an Asus Eee 901, as it's two-thirds the weight and fits into my Man Bag. And, of course, I'll be installing Eeebuntu, a variant of Ubuntu for the Eee. Next blog entry, For sale, Thinkpad X60s ;)

I was about to post a blog following up on my Ubuntu Hardy Heron installation, bemoaning the fact that all of a sudden my audio stopped working. I had played with all the settings in System->Preferences->Sound, plus adjusted everything I could think of in the Volume Control. Nothing, nada, not a squeak.

Naively I thought it must something to with the installation. And then I remembered the physical mute button on the laptop itself. Whoops.

I was chatting to a chap at The Ministry the other day, saying that he could use the Ubuntu Linux testing machine for checking webmail. He had never heard of Ubuntu. Or Linux. Or Free Open Source Software. And there I am, in my little bubble, assuming the whole world knows about these things. Nope. People don’t know, which is why I keep banging on and on and on about it. And on.

A few days ago I gave a Brown Bag Seminar on OpenDisc, a collection of Free Software for Windows. Somebody thought I’d said “Free Open Sore Software”. That was rather unfortunate.

The session did help promote WinSCP, an FTP client (alas, The Ministry has just splashed out on half a dozen licenses for commercial FTP software). And I also managed to promote 7-zip, a Free alternative to WinZip. And I dished out half a dozen OpenDisc CD-ROMs and asked people to spread the word, in good proselytizing fashion.

I resintalled Ubuntu 8.04 Desktop Edition yesterday, because I need to set up a LAMP web server to be able to work on web sites on my ThinkPad X60S laptop.

It only occurred to me this morning that I didn’t have to do any configuration. And that includes the wireless connectivity! For me, zero config is an acid test of software and particularly operating systems. For me, GNU/Linux has come of age!

Of course, YMMV ;)