Richard A. Johnson

Hey there my Ubuntu and KDE people! I am still around. I have my daughter for most of the month of August so I am currently AFK. I will be back in a couple of weeks full-time again. In the mean time if you need to get in touch with me, hit me up on Twitter @nixternal, or if you have my phone number you can call me there.

When I come back, I have a great review in the pipeline of a new ZaReason laptop that runs Kubuntu out of the box!

My daughter and I have been having a blast these past couple of weeks. We have enjoyed the weather, watched a lot of bike racing, and she got groovy with Ubuntu. She likes Kubuntu’s look better, but I hooked her up with some Ubuntu to play around with. She wasn’t down with the default look, so we found some themes, colors, and fonts, that she likes, and thus far she has been happy. I need more than an SSH backdoor, so if you have any ideas let me know. I would like to know when she logs on and gets online, but I would really like to know is her IP address automagically so I can connect and do updates and what not for her. I can probably do most of this with a little bit of scripting, but I am sure that 100% of the time she will be behind a firewall that doesn’t have ports for SSH open, so if there is something out there that you know I might be looking for, let me know. Oh, I need to figure out a way to prevent her pesky mom or grandparents from installing Windows on this machine, any ideas on that as well?

Oh, and Elizabeth, she one-upped you. She has pink braces :p

My daughter, myself, and Chris Horner from Team Radio Shack

Bluecherry, a company that specializes in Linux (Ubuntu-based) surveillance equipment and applications, is currently looking for a full-time cross-platform Qt software developer. If you are a Qt developer who lives in the United States and is looking for a job, let me tell you, this could very well be it! It is a great opportunity to design and develop a new version of their interface and you get to work along side somebody like Ben Collins. Curtis Hall is the founder and owner of Bluecherry and is a really groovy dude. If you live around Fulton, MO, you can work in the office, and if not, you can work from home.

Here is just a brief introduction to the job posting Curtis has posted on Monster:

Bluecherry is seeking a well qualified applicant for cross platform Qt user interface software development. The position will also assist with training and support. The ideal candidate should have excellent communication skills and a strong background developing software applications under Linux. The candidate should also have extensive knowledge of Ubuntu. The position is full-time and is based in our Fulton, MO office however consideration will be given to telecommuter positions within the United States.

If you are interested in the position, I highly recommend you take a look at the job posting on Monster and apply through there, or send Curtis an email with your resume or CV to jobs (AT) bluecherry (DOT) net. Curtis would also like you have the following:

Applicants should provide, a resume including past work history, a cover letter with a brief introduction, two personal and two technical references.

Applicants should have prior work history available for us to review, specifically examples of Qt design and development.

Curtis also told me the following in an email:

We are trying to fill this position ASAP, so if someone might be interested I would highly recommend they apply quickly.

The Ubuntu Chicago LoCo Team is hosting its first ever group ride this Sunday, July 18. The ride will kick off from the Geneva, IL Metra Train Station at 12PM. If you are in Chicago and would like to come out, hop on the 10:47AM train on the Union Pacific/West line out of the Ogilvie Transportation Center. The train will arrive in Geneva at around 11:50AM. Once everyone is there we will take off and cruise either south or north on the Fox River Trail for a few hours. We will make stops for some ice cream, food, or cold beverages, and the speed will be as fast as the slowest person. This is a cruising ride for the team to come together and hang out on a great summer day in the Chicagoland area. We can either ride until 4PM so people can get back to the train station to head back downtown or 6PM. We can play this by ear and see how long people want to hang out for, but I am guessing 4PM will probably be more than enough on many people’s rear ends.

If you are interested, RSVP here in the comments, on our mailing list, or hop into our IRC channel on freenode in #ubuntu-chicago. Hope to see you there!

Lucid, 10.04, was released nearly 3 months ago and still to this date the Ubuntu Chicago LoCo Team has not received our shipment. Not only has our shipment not been received but nobody seems to be answering my emails. Getting a bit tired of telling everyone, nope you can’t have any CDs because I don’t have any CDs, and not being able to have a decent gathering to promote Ubuntu because we have zero materials. Maybe this blog post will make its way to someone’s desk that can help or who possibly cares.

In the meantime, many of you (well maybe 1 or 2, not many I am sure) might have noticed I haven’t been online for over a week. I totally forgot about my home refinishing project that I was supposed to do this week, and the moving of my office space. When I am done working I try to get in a bike ride, and after that it is shower and sleep. Hit me up on my cell phone if you need me, as my computers are being moved around and no power is in the office area yet.

This way here, Harald won’t be able to add to his count. Anyways, I am giving a presentation next week for Ubuntu Opportunistic Developer Week, it is on Friday, March 5^th, 2010 at 17:00 UTC. The topic I will be presenting is “Creating a PyKDE App.” I am slotted for one hour to attempt and teach everyone who shows up, how to create an application using KDE’s Python API. Seems easy enough right? It is, but I was thinking I would like to start some sort of application that has future potential, that hopefully an opportunistiK developer or two can take on, and maybe make something great in the future.

So what does this have to do with you? Easy, what would be a perfect application to start and present for this topic? I don’t want to create just a shell for something, I would like to at least have a little bit of functionality to it. Thus far, I have received one idea from @harriseldon on Identi.ca. Feel free to leave comments on this blog, or follow @nixternal on Identi.ca or @nixternal on Twitter and shoot me a message. Thanks everyone!

Yes, as many of you have read recently, Canonical has created a deal with Yahoo! to provide the default search for Firefox in the Lucid release. I decided that I would sit back and parse not only the information that Canonical has put out, but also the information I am reading on the web, Twitter, Identi.ca, and mailing lists. To be honest, I was actually surprised that a large scale attack or a FUD campaign never started over this, and I feel there just might be a turning point in all of this. Before I go on, let me throw a bit of a disclaimer in here as to hopefully not provide a lash back against either Canonical or Ubuntu.

Disclaimer

1. I am not an employee of Canonical, I receive zero money from them for anything I do.
2. I am not a speaker on behalf of the Ubuntu project nor the Ubuntu community.
3. I speak for myself and nobody else.

OK, I think I covered the grounds. I know this post has the potential to either be popular or very unpopular. I am not here for a popularity contest, so if it sinks or swims, I do not care. I just want to provide my opinion of the deal and the atmosphere I have experienced since I first got involved in Linux some 17 years ago.

I personally think this deal between Canonical and Yahoo! is a good one, and to be honest, I wouldn’t mind seeing more of these deals. I wouldn’t mind seeing a deal with Google, Ask, Bing, or whatever else there is out there. The reason I like this deal is that it brings the potential of hiring more developers for the Ubuntu project. Seeing as I am a Kubuntu user and developer, I would love to see some of the money make its way into Kubuntu. Wait a second, did you just say Bing? Isn’t that the search engine, or rather the decision engine, ran by that big evil empire known as Microsoft? Oh boy, how many of you just went, “WTF IS WRONG WITH THIS IDIOT?” I am sure some of you did, and that was to be expected. I mean, Canonical did strike a deal with Yahoo!, and for some reason, many of you feel that Yahoo! is now Microsoft, or at least powered by Microsoft. If you read more than a couple of blog posts here and there, and dive into the news by not only Yahoo! and Microsoft, but read the stuff by the WSJ, NYT, and more. You will see for one, this deal has yet to be approved by the powers to be, and who knows if it will. Saying that Yahoo! is powered by Microsoft is not only incorrect, but it can be construed as either trolling or FUD at best.

You see, I have been around this Linux community for the better part of 17 years. There were good years and plenty of bad years. There were two things that always stood out during these years.

1. Free is on one side of the fence and open source on the other side, in other words a split camp with common goals.
2. Microsoft is a big and evil empire

So, Microsoft is big and evil, and don’t think I could disagree with that statement, and they haven’t proved themselves worthy of us removing this title, or whatever we want to call it. How many of you actually feel that striking this deal with Yahoo! is striking a deal with Microsoft? Don’t be shy, I have seen you on Twitter and Identi.ca stating the same, and on the Ubuntu Developers Mailing list as well, oh and on IRC. How many of you use Dell equipment? HP? IBM? Intel? I could keep going, but I wanted to kind of use companies that Canonical has worked with that Microsoft has worked with as well. How many you out there love your new Intel i7? Why? Don’t you remember the late 90′s when Microsoft was driving Intel to only do things a certain way that would benefit Microsoft only? How many of you are driving a Ford? Shoot, how many of you own a car? How many deals do they have with Microsoft? What about that bicycle, as I know there are a few of us nuts who prefer to ride instead of drive? Your TV? Cable? Shop at Best Buy? Oh man, I could keep going. How many of you just went, “WTF DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH THE PRICE OF TEA IN <nsert county so I don’t offend anyone>?” It has a lot to do actually, and yes it is probably beating yet another dead horse. The reasoning I see a lot of with dealing with $X who in-turn has a deal with Microsoft, in this case Yahoo!, in many cases can be seen as hypocritical. Imagine a life if you only dealt with companies or people that didn’t have a deal with Microsoft. For those of you against this and use Google, not to long ago Google made a deal with Twitter who already had a deal with Microsoft in terms of searching. Did you just switch your default search engine because of that? How about Microsoft and Facebook? Strategic alliance between Microsoft and O’Reilly? Gonna stop reading O’Reilly books now? Sugar CRM? Xen Source? And the list goes on.

Let me cover those of you who are using System 76 or Zareason, or some other Linux only manufacturer, that want to keep the attack going possibly on the deal. Ever consider the hardware that is used in those systems? I know System 76 uses, or was using, MSI equipment. Guess what, big Microsoft deal there. I don’t care what it is, there is a damn good chance you are using something right now that has struck a deal with Microsoft.

Is this the year of the Linux desktop?

or…

Is Linux ready for the mainstream?

Two of the most sickening questions I have seen for over a decade. The answer will always be “NO!” until we realize we need to step from underneath this rock we, yes we, have put ourselves. We have this great product, but if we continue being split on whether the Free Software side or the Open Source side is the correct side, or we shouldn’t be doing these types of deals, let’s just keep our mouths shut and enjoy this lovely rock canopy we have created for ourselves. Oh, here comes a big bomb, Novell. I am not about to rip on Novell, sorry Boycott Novell. I do not agree with their merger whatsoever, but I am a first hand witness of the good that has actually come out of the deal. Guess what Novell is doing that we aren’t right now? They are showing large companies, Fortune 500 and then some, that there is a choice out there, there is more than just Microsoft for your infrastructure. I went to their IT In Action tour here in Chicago last year. Granted I didn’t appreciate it when they said, “Microsoft is now the largest provider of Linux service,” nor did I like when one of their speakers decided to take off his jacket and reveal this nasty Detroit Red Wings hockey jersey (/me points at the Ubuntu Michigan people with a grin). What I did like, and I was wicked impressed with, were these people who were almost to the point of bashing Linux before the event started, to being super stoked over the Linux platform and the tools that Novell had when it was all over. Here I was an Ubuntu guy, and they knew that and welcomed me with open arms, who came in defending Linux and left helping some of these companies switch to, or look at the possibilities of switching to Linux. So thanks Novell for helping me get a few consulting gigs out of the tour.

I feel we, the Linux community, need to unite more so than we have. Not a fan of President Obama, but last night during his State of the Union address, he talked about reaching over those party lines. I think we need to do the same thing. Hey, if Microsoft is evil and they won’t reach their hand out, then why shouldn’t we try? OK, no more politics, OK maybe one more. Let’s tear down this wall! OK, that was lame, but I had to do it because it made me chuckle a little. I am not saying lets sell out to Microsoft, because that is definitely the last thing I want. You see us Linux people look at the big guy and concentrate on trying to make them look bad. In my eyes, we aren’t winning that battle, and while we keep carrying it forward, there is this person in the middle who is seemingly getting bigger and bigger every time they announce an iSomething. So instead of spending membership money to stand out in front of some silly event with a sign, lets think of better ways to use it. There are so many people out there who see people with signs picketing something, and a majority of the time these people go unnoticed, except for that one rogue honk, which believe it or not wasn’t supporting your campaign.

OK, that should be it. I am sure it is all confusing, so please feel free to respond anyway you feel is right in the comments. Thank you, and I apologize for causing you to spend this time possibly reading absolutely nothing.