Episode 114: Home Alone II
News:
- Gimp 2.8 Released (ArsTechnica)
- Linux.com chooses Mint 12 as the best Desktop Linux distro (Linux.com)
- What is going on at Barnes & Noble? (Endgadget)
- …and (Techdirt)
- Google vs Oracle (ITWorld)
- …and (Groklaw)
- …and (Techdirt)
- Motorola wins injunction against Microsoft in Germany (CNet)
- Ubuntu 12.04 vs Windows 7 Sandy/Ivy Bridge benchmarks (Phoronix)
- Fedora 18 to be code named Spherical Cow (H-Online)
- The Document Foundation has announced a certification program for LibreOffice (Muktware)
The Main Topic:
- News
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Hosts:: James, Rob, Scott, HarrisonLive Stream (Mondays at 8:00 p.m. Eastern): mintcast.org
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Interestingly, on the Libre Office vs Open Office discussion, I was talking to my friend the other day (this friend is pretty technically astute, and he was talking about how he was annoyed with MS Office and having to pay so much to get MS publisher. He said that he was going to try Open Office because he was so fed up (I don’t think he realised that open office doesn’t have a great publisher replacement, I’d use scribus instead). I see a lot of this mentality – people see open office as the open office (as in open source office suite) alternative. I’ve had similar conversations with people a lot during the last few months. Most of them had never heard of Libre Office. So Libre Office still has a lot of work to do to get to people who just want an open source office suite and don’t really care about Libre Office because they’re pretty happy with Open Office.
I love using Scribus. I first used it to create a virtual “catalog” for some t-shirts I sold in SecondLife and ever since then it’s been my go-to for publishing when I need it. I agree with you about the OOo/LO debate. I’m actually sorry to see OOo resume development because so many users won’t realize it’s not the most up to date packages available.
Scott, You did a great job as a one man band for this episode. You brought up some great stuff about Microsoft wanting to run all the other browsers out of business. I just read about it somewhere else also. I like how they put so many resources recently in Linux development only screw everyone over after probably learning more of the inner working of Linux just to put up more co@# blocks. Linux doesn’t need their kind of help.
Scott,I just wanted to say what a great job you did hosting this episode by yourself. I think the other two should do a episode by themselves also.
Scott!
Well, done, Sir! Doing a podcast on your lonesome is hard… but lots of good information. Thanks for putting it out there.
The thing that struck me hardest as I was listening to you talk about the on-going conflicts between Google and Oracle, or Microsoft and Barnes & Noble, was that if you care about a quality product, you can’t give the vendor complete control over that product. I’m talking DRM. First in music, then in movies, now in books.
I usually go through O’Reilly, Baen Books, and the Google book-store before turning to Barnes & Noble for an e-book. Sometimes it works out very well (O’Reilly offers discounts if you’ve already bought the printed book, and updates to the new editions are free) but sometimes there’s a hold-out for the old model (the first four books of Game of Thrones was $19.99 a few months back on bn.com- had to snag it).
Hopefully, it won’t take too long for the book-people to learn the lessons of the music industry; offer a good product at a reasonable price and consumers will buy it. Lock a product down or tie it to a specific device, and Napster-clones pop-up like weeds in the lawn…
http://oreilly.com/
http://www.baen.com/library/
Excellent job there, Scott! Doing a one-man show is tough. I used to do it for radio and I don’t think I’d ever want to do it for a podcast. Now we need to get James and Harrison to do solo shows. Speaking of Harrison, what would his location nick be? I don’t recall where he is.
BN’s deal with the devil in Redmond just makes me want to not give them any business anymore. It’s going to be hard enough finding a ‘Droid phone that doesn’t give licensing to MS, the mere fact that one of the best defenders of open source software dives in bed with them makes me wonder if before long we’ll end up with no options left to get appliances from companies that support and stand up for the rights of open source users.
In the name of Home Along II, I made a donation. Besides, I’ll probably spend it on stuff that will rot my teeth and mind.
It will be interesting on how all the patents law suits finally play out. In the end it will be the consumer paying.
Richard
Hi there, excellent work on the episode Scott, now all that’s left is a solo episode from JamesTX – have I got that name right? We don’t do the abbreviated county/state names on this side of the pond!
I wanted to reply to the various comments that have been raised regarding a post I made following episode 111. The post was regarding the change of default search provider in Mint 13. I saw James’ comment that the Mint team are trying to make money from the search queries, and I think this is a sensible revenue stream for the team to aim for. However subsequent discussions on the difficulties of changing search provider sort of strayed off the point – I have, and will continue to, change my provider to Google without much trouble. The point I was trying to make is that I seem to remember great fanfare when the default provider was to be changed to Duck Duck Go partly because of the new business model, but mainly because it contributes to open source and doesn’t track you. The point I was trying to make is whether the same can be said for Yahoo? And if not doesn’t this seem like they’ve changed solely for the money? I understand that a distro with the quality of Mint requires money to make so I see the need for this revenue stream, but if they sold Duck Duck Go on its ethical credentials I don’t see how Yahoo can be an acceptable substitute.
The below text is lifted from the Mint 12 release blurb – http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_lisa_whatsnew.php
“The new default search engine is Duck Duck Go. It doesn’t show different results depending on who’s making the search, it doesn’t track or record user information, it provides you with optmized results and it’s built on and contributes to Open Source.”
Hi Scott
Well done! Thanks for a most interesting show. Perhaps it does us good to get it from just one person, occasionally, but a bit exhausting for you!
Yes, I get Linux Format every month. I thought the response of Barnes and Noble a bit OTT, but as they are now in the pocket of MS, it shouldn’t surprise me.
I tried showing off Gimp to a friend. He ended up buying a cut-down Photoshop app. I wonder, if sometimes, folk feel the need to pay something as anything free can’t be any good.
The legal stuff leaves me feeling helpless. Us little guys are ones to lose. I believe in competition. A universe dominated by Microsoft or any other multinational corporation is not the answer.