The Open Source Advocate

Introduction This past week I installed a pre-release of the next version of Ubuntu. This alpha version is called "Herd 4" and should NOT be installed on a production machine. Please wait until the final release of Ubuntu 7.04 which should be in April, 2007. With that disclaimer behind us, let me tell you that this next release is going to rock! In addition to many other improvements such as automatically installing multimedia codecs, Ubuntu 7.04 will now allow you to painlessly connect to secure wireless networks. I have been waiting a long-time for Linux to automatically connect to WPA -secured wireless networks. WPA is the minimum security for a modern wireless network to be considered "secure". (Even WPA can still be hacked if you use a small pre-shared key.) In past versions of Ubuntu, you had to manually install software ( xsupplicant ) and configure it if you wanted to connect to a WPA network. Now you can connect in two simple steps. First, click on t...

Introduction Most of us visit a lot of websites, and we have a need to login to many of these sites. We know that it would be a bad idea to use the same password for all online accounts, so we create unique passwords for each site. However, it is impossible for us to remember all of these passwords so we tell Firefox to remember them for us. This provides great convenience, but it also creates a huge security risk. Anyone who sits down at your computer can view your passwords! If you don't believe me, try this in Firefox: "Edit" > "Preferences" > "Security" > "Show Passwords". Fortunately, the smart people at Mozilla have created an improved way to store your passwords. This method requires creating a "Master Password" which is used to encrypt your online passwords. You can do this in Firefox by clicking on "Edit" > "Preferences" > "Security" and clicking on the button labeled ...

Introduction I have been hearing a lot of negative opinions about the Ubuntu/Linspire deal that was recently announced . Why is this? Will this deal really have a negative impact on Ubuntu and open source? What advantages and opportunities does this deal represent? Although the results of this deal will not be known for many months, I will do my best to answer these questions now. What are the details of this deal? There are two main points to this deal. First, the Linspire distribution is going to move from a Debian base to an Ubuntu base. This is an interesting trend to watch. Historically, there were dozens of different distributions that were derived from Debian . These include a variety of popular distros including Knoppix , Morphix , Linspire , Mepis , Xandros , and of course Ubuntu . Here is a visual collage of logos that are based on Debian. Now we are starting to see some of these distros start basing their distro on Ubuntu. Mepis moved to Ubuntu last year, and Lin...

There is a new version of VirtualBox out (1.3.4) that includes over 800 improvements. I have upgraded to this new version on Ubuntu 6.10, but I had to perform a few steps that I will document in this post. When I tried to install the new deb package, I got a dependency error for "libc-dev". That package is not even in the Ubuntu universe! Here is the ticket that was created to report this problem. If you follow these steps, you too can upgrade to VirtualBox 1.3.4 on Ubuntu 6.10: 1. Install packages "libc6-dev" and "linux-libc-dev" 2. Remove the VirtualBox 1.3.2 package by using Synaptic. Choose "remove package". 3. Download and install the VirtualBox version 1.3.4 package for Ubuntu 6.10. You will need to view the details of the install so that you can accept the license by typing "yes". I have filed this ticket so that they will improve this in the next version. Let me know if you run into any problems, or you can also po...

1. Use an open source alternative instead When someone asks me if they can run "Windows Application X" on Linux, the first thing I tell them is to look for an open source alternative. For most Windows applications, there will be a high-quality open source alternative that can meet their needs. The biggest hurdle for non-Linux people is simply knowing that these alternative exist and how to find them. The best place I have found to search for these applications is at www.osalt.com . On that site, you can enter the name of the Windows application and it will list the open source alternatives that provide similar functionality. Be sure to check it out. 2. Buy a commercial product that was designed for Linux If you cannot find an open source alternative, and you have not already purchased a Windows application, then you should consider purchasing a commercial product that was designed for Linux. Here is a story of a civil engineer who wanted to find an open source replacemen...