I needed to send a friend an SMS back home (Australia) the other day, and my phone had run out of batteries, again, though I did forget to charge it the night before.  That was when I remembered Web2Msg.com, which allows you to send free SMS messages to any Australian mobile phone (or cell, if you roll like that).  The best thing is, there’s no signups required, no annoying popups, and no forced advertising in the sent messages.

So, if you’re a bum, and you can’t afford a mobile phone battery, or credit for your prepaid phone, give it a go!  And best of all, it’s a feat of .NET programming.

As laid back, easy going and carefree that I am (most of the time, I’m realising more and more that I really like routine.  I like looking forward to an event in the future when I know the exact day in which it will occur.  Like Christmas, or a Birthday, I know exactly when it will occur, but I don’t always know what to expect at the date in which that event occurs.  And much like getting socks when you were hoping for tickets to the Superbowl (err, no), the ritual release of Ubuntu can bring both joy and/or dissapointment.

But unlike a Birthday, Ubuntu’s release cycle is biannual, so it’s twice the fun, if of course that’s the kind of thing that floats your boat.

Wind back 6 months to my previous posts on the last release, Gutsy Gibbon, I can remember being especially excited about the new release due to the hype surrounding the major release at the time, and I was by no means dissapointed.  It was incredibly nice to use a system in which everything just worked, no stuffing around with device drivers or compiling kernel hacks to get hardware working.  It really impressed.

Hardy Heron should be no different, though admittedly I haven’t heard near as much hype about its release which is surprising seeing as it’s an LTS (Long Term Support) release, in which a major release (once every 18 months) has long term support from the developers, three years on the desktop and five for the server release.  When Gutsy Gibbon (7.10) was released it included a lot of features which had been added, such as 3d/Compiz Desktop features, adding something significant to the user experience.

With the next release however (8.04), efforts have been made to make the system itself as solid as possible, obviously to make the job of supporting it easier over the next 3-5 years.  There does seem to be some changes to look forward to however:

• A new theme (yes, Human is finally getting a face-lift)
• Better support for compiz desktop effects
• A complete redesign/refactor of the restricted drivers profile
• Far better support/integration for dual monitors

My excitement got the better of me though, and I jumped the gun and updated my installation to the pre-release beta, and I felt like I’d taken a full step back. About 1 or 2 years back, that is.  Unfortunately my wireless card was unrecognised and I couldn’t even boot into GDM as my display settings (which worked only minutes before) didn’t work at all.  It took the better part of an hour to get things back to normal, but oh well thats what I get for installing pre-release software.  The new theme is far easier on the eye though, thank goodness.

Look out for this release!

“Gutsy” the Gibbon

People pondered about issues with the release of Ubuntu 7.10 - Gutsy Gibbon, it’s been going on for months now. Some said they’d gone against the cause of Ubuntu and tried to cram too much, too quickly into this release, and that this move could be a disaster, creating bugs, and instability and put a stamp of disapproval on it’s name.

Some were wrong…

I’m a manual man, manual transmissions (yes, I’ve had mostly Auto’s, this doesn’t matter), manual labour (err), manual sex, manual manual, etc. I’m a manual, get your hands dirty kind of guy when it comes to linux too. I’m well seasoned with the fact that there’s a bunch of stuff that hasn’t worked automatically in the past, and chances are won’t be perfect in the future.

The fight… No more

Upon installing the latest instalment of Ubuntu, I completely expected to have to:

• Spend an hour installing, configuring and automating wpasupplicant and my wireless drivers, so that the wireless would just work, when and where I needed it.
• Trawl through countless google pages and config settings to setup dual monitors just perfectly.
• Stuff around with different video card drivers until I found one which compiz (the flavor of 6 months ago, with effects similar & better than Vista’s Aero or MacOSX’s visuals) would function correctly, then spend more time setting up and getting compiz right.
• and so on…

That’s the way its been for me for at least the last few years, and I was prepared for the worst. To my surprise, Everything just worked, no more manual configuration on Wireless, its finally up to a level of Windows XP or there abouts where you select the network you’d like to connect to, supply a password and bam, your on, all the time. No problems.

A simple task, but being missing/broken for so long

In fact, since installing it three hours ago, in which the whole process took at most 30 minutes, I’ve been sitting here ever since twiddling my thumbs wondering what I can break just so there is actually something for me to do.

At this rate, I might actually get stuck into some of this work I have to do….

As I said in my previous post, this version is a keeper, when I installed Feisty, nothing really jumped out on me, it was up to date, and had a few more features, but still had the same problems as the last few years where not everything worked, quite as well as it should. This is definitely proof of a move in the right direction, stabilty, integration and ease of use and install are paramount in allowing non-savvy users to be able to use and enjoy it if they so please.

Now, if only I still had access to a Gentoo Box…

Those Spanish?! have far too much time on their hands!

This will probably not interest a lot of people, so I won’t keep you for long, but the guys at Canonical have almost completed the next installment of Ubuntu ver 7.10 (yes, that’s October ‘07), codenamed Gutsy Gibbon. This follows on from the previous (and equally odd named) releases that were Feisty Fawn, Edgy Eft, and more. What this means for those who don’t know, don’t care, is that the world renowned Ubuntu Linux distribution has just reached its next major release point, an LTS (Long Term Support) release, with a full support schedule for desktop (< 18 months), and server (<2 years), I think anyway. Who’s going to be using the same peice of hardware in 2 years that they’re using now, you may ask, and I have no answer. It baffles me too, however, like that old Telemarketing ad on Late night TV (No, not Timothy Tony Robbins), just “Set it, and forget it”, remember that old gem? In some way the same logic can be used here, in that you can set up a system like a file/web/mail server, or a home theatre PC, and with occasional maintenance, it should work as is until support stops, and a new version comes out to start the process over again.

Of course, the crucial difference is, we’re talking about a computer, not a rack of lamb, but seriously, its the same thing. Think of it as a really slow cooked lamb, that cooks away nicely after you’ve forgotten about it for 18 months, and then without a thought, dissapears, and a whole new lamb takes its place… Mmmm.. Slow roast lamb.

After 120 minutes, the sheep was looking nice, not so after 24 hours. Unrecognisable after a year.

However, jokes (yes, for a split second I thought it was funny, no I could not find a picture of a burnt sheep) aside for any linux/Ubuntu users out there, this release should be a good one to get your mits on, due to release of new Gnome/KDE and better integrated Aero/MacOS style graphics bliss, that being Compiz/Fusion, as well as large improvements (once again) in hardware support in the kernel itself.

Exciting stuff, for some at least.

I just remembered this weird joke I used to find hilarious as a kid:

A teacher asked her class to write an essay for homework on the topic of Agnostic Apathy, to her surprise a student came back with one line stating: “I don’t know, and I don’t care”.

What the hell?? Was I a tree hugging hippy? I’ll admit its amusing, clever at best, but no where near the comic genius I once gave it credit for.

Times change Shannon, times change.