28 August 2008

Fedora Weekly Webcomic: Advertising

To be honest, initially I wanted another to cover another subject, something with a positive turn after the intrusion (as I think the infrastructure guys deserve a lot of praises) but I wasn't able to come with something clever/insightful about that, so went to the plan B.

[fedora webcomic]

26 August 2008

De-virusing

Advice: when shoving down the throat of your Linux using co-worker/sysadmin your virus-laden Windows home computer expect him not to care and nuke from the orbit anything looking remotely suspect in the result of a virus scan, no matter if/how legit is it: keygens, password recoverers. keyloggers, Y!M spying tools...

21 August 2008

Fedora Weekly Webcomic: Stats and samples

A few days ago when the number of pre-registration for the Brno FUDCon reached 100 people (now there are a very few more), it was very inviting to make statistics based on it, even if the sample is not representative and the results wrong... or aren't they?

[fedora weekly webcomic: stats and samples]

18 August 2008

Woeees

After a couple of days with it, I think my main woe with the Eee and Fedora (bigger than the wireless) is Inkscape on small screens and this is a problem I knew before the purchase (testing Inkscape on my desktop on 800x600) and a problem which is not directly related to Eee, it can be found on any small display:

[inkscape + fedora + eee]


The small problem is the lack of vertical space, the main toolbar has fixed height and is too high, you can't access the color swatch at the bottom or the useful tools in the status bar. The bigger problem is that the maximized window do not fill (horizontally) the screen. You have to unmaximize it and resize manually. And do this each time you start the application, as it does not remember the window geometry.

15 August 2008

Eee...

Here is my brand new Eee PC 1000h running a [pretty much] standard Fedora 10 Alpha install (only the graphics are changed: Echo icons and a Gears wallpaper):

[eee fedora] [eee fedora]


After a quick testing of F9 and F10 Alpha I settled on F10, it ia a bit friendly with the hardware (no need to modprobe uvcvideo and at least the wired network card works).

14 August 2008

Fedora Weekly Webcomic: Wallpapers

In the last week I talked a lot about wallpapers so is quite obvious that today's webcomic is about wallpapers, I am so predictable...

[fedora weekly webcomic: wallpapers]

13 August 2008

Build and they will come - the wallpaper gallery

It may be a bit early for that, but our Fedora Extras Wallpaper Gallery is starting to look like a success story. And not necessarily because in a few days we gathered an important number of images or because that some of those are not bad at all, the most important part is, I think, that we provide a new and easy way to contribute.

Some people may want to contribute somehow, but they are not coders so can't involve in development, are not good English writers to contribute to documentation, have no large experience with graphic software and are afraid to contribute to Art and so on, or just maybe not enough free time.

This is why contributing wallpapers is important: a very low barrier to entry for occasional contributors, you need only a Fedora account. And as it shows, it really works, you have only to build the infrastructure and the contributors will come: we had a number of new contributors showing.

Of course, there is a second part, which is harder: grow the contributors so they feel comfortable and do more and more (unlike now, when we look like in a small impasse in the Art team, with everybody, me included, shy about the second round).
If they will see their work used will grow in confidence, will become in time more familiar with the tools and the community and will do more.

11 August 2008

Worshipping Satan

This story (link in Romanian) is so absurd that I had to read it (and the following replies) a couple of times and I am still not 100% sure it not a joke.

For those who can't read Romanian (which is the large majority of my readers) here is a short synopsis: this guy is asked by his boss to install a Linux and a web server on a computer received by some church. HE goes into the place and find a guy hopelessly struggling with a Windows webserver.

Our guy asks the person who called him again for confirmation and then proceed to install Linux (not sure which distro, probably Slack or Debian). Shortly after that, the police came: they were called because someone is supposedly performing Satanist rituals. Ready to beat some punks and not seeing any the officers ask and the windows guy points to our guy: look at the computer, only numbers and incantations!

Everyone is invited at the police station where they find, at least, someone with a bit of brain who understand the situation and send everyone home.

08 August 2008

A wallpaper gallery

Do you felt a need for more wallpapers (colorful, vivid, photographic) for your Fedora desktop? Or maybe you wanted to contribute yourself a self made beautiful photo which is suitable as a wallpaper and share it with the rest of the community?

Well, we thought it is an useful thing to have, so Martin took the initiative and create a simple extra wallpaper gallery inside the wiki, with the main purpose of being a place from where is easy to hand pick the best images for a package but also as a gallery open for everyone and quickly me and Vara uploaded a few photos, to get the ball rolling.

I am a bit unsure about how loudly advertise it, the wiki is not the best place to keep a photo gallery and we have some promises for a better solution from our infrastructure friends... we may pursue the momentum or wait a bit more for a better solution - Gallery2 or such (in general I am not a big fan of "waiting").

07 August 2008

Fedora Weekly Webcomic: Summer time

It looks like all my webcomic's characters are geeky enough so no one has vacation dreams about sitting on a beach with some fancy drink (with umbrella!) in one hand and surrounded by bikinis.
...Ops! It seems like I did it again, this time I am driving young males away from Linux...

[fedora webcomic: summer time]