Bodhi Linux 1.0.0 Stable Release Goes Live

After two more weeks of hacking and user feedback since our final release candidate the Bodhi Team and I are proud to announce the availability of the first ever Bodhi Linux Stable release (1.0.0). This release includes a couple minor bug fixes and a few final touches polish wise. For a full change log see here. The first thing you will notice when starting the newest Bodhi disc is that our plymouth (boot splash) has a sleek new look:



In addition to the standard plymouth being reworked - a text based plymouth is now installed by default so older/virtual systems no longer display the harmless "missing library" message that had looked tacky in the previous versions.

After booting the live CD you will be greeted by the same profile and then theme selections that you where provided with previously. There is one change to the profiles however, the "Desktop" profile is now laid out in a manner that will make those coming from KDE/Linux Mint's Gnome feel at home:


Regarding the default application selection there has been a single change from what is found on the 0.1.7 release. The nautilus elementary file browser has been removed in favor of the latest version of the light weight and feature rich PCManFM file browser.

You will also notice two changes in the main menu. First there is now a Bodhi entry for quickly accessing our Quick Start Guide, Software Page, and Art website:


Second, all your system configuration tools are no longer buried like they where in previous version - they are under applications with the rest of your programs:


Current Bodhi users do not need to reinstall for these changes to take effect. Simply apt-get update && apt-get upgrade as root on your Bodhi system (or use synaptic) and you will pull down an relevant updates. New users can download the ISO via direct download from here.

This is our first ever "stable" release and we want feedback on it now more than ever! If you know of anywhere that does reviews of Linux distributions be sure to let them know about Bodhi - the more people that are using the distro the better it will become.

For those wondering about our version numbering scheme. The first number represents a major release, the center number represents a kernel update, and the third number presents a minor package update release. Bodhi 1.0.0 should be our final release until we have the 2.6.38 kernel ready to go - so expect a Bodhi 1.1.0 disc some time towards the end of May. Our major release cycle is set to go from Ubuntu LTS to LTS, so a Bodhi 2.y.z should not be expected any time before the end of the summer of 2012.

Finally, a big thank you to the entire Bodhi team and our every growing community that made this release possible!

Cheers,
~Jeff Hoogland

Many a Tux Do Not Exist

So I was reading a review of the latest Zorin OS posted over at the Dark Duck blog and the title of it is rather interesting:

"Tux Which Does Not Exist..."

The reason Dark Duck gives for his curious title is the fact that Zorin OS does not exist on what is respected by many as the one stop shop for most all information on the internet - Wikipedia. Now I am not sure as to why Zorin OS does not have a page there, but I would not be terribly surprised if it was for a similar reason Bodhi Linux still does not have a Wikipedia page.

Wikipedia moderators are inconsistent and sometimes just jerks!

A couple months after I first release Bodhi Linux into the wild, one of our many users erected a Wikipedia page about Bodhi. It was promptly taken offline due to a citing for lack of notability. At that point, this was a 100% fair assumption - our project was only a couple months old and really the only place that had mentioned it was my own blog here.

About a month ago one of our users put up a page for Bodhi again. This time we where listed on distro watch, had write ups on ghack, webup8, omgubuntu, techrepublic, and about a dozen other Linux/tech orientated websites. We are quickly attaining our goal - becoming the standard for what people think of when they look for an Enlightenment distribution. This time the page stuck - success! We had achieved a noteworthy status.

In case you didn't know, Wikipedia articles are case sensitive. The page that had stuck around for about two weeks was located at Bodhi_Linux. Another of our users (not realizing we already had one) put up another page with the title Bodhi_linux. This page was correctly flagged as a duplicate and promptly deleted - the issue? The moderator that deleted the duplicated page also took a look at previous page and this moderator decided there was not enough about the project there for the page to exist. Never mind the fact that it had already been up for two weeks and had already been approved by another moderator.

The kicker? There are at least a dozen or so other Linux distributions listed on Wikipedia that have seen far less attention than Bodhi has or have been around for just as long (or less) time. Yes I know Wikipedia is a volunteer service it is just a shame that we cannot get some consistency among the decisions those volunteers make. We will have a page eventually I am sure, but at this point I am not terribly worried about it.

~Jeff Hoogland

The End of the N900 in the USA

It's been awhile since I blogged about my N900 (even with Nokia kicking FOSS out it is still a solid handset). I like the Maemo operating system, the fact that it is a real Linux based operating system on my handset (not some Java based OS) is the reason I ponied up the 500$ about a year ago for the device. I live in the United States, which means that T-Mobile is the only mobile carrier that provides anything faster than 2g speeds on the N900.

Well that is the case for now anyways.

In case you have been living with your head under a technological rock AT&T is planning on buying T-Mobile. Should the fates allow this to happen (here is to hoping antitrust acts prevent it from happening) AT&T as announced they are planning on taking down T-Mobile's 3g/4g/HSPA+/WhateverYouCall it network due to "upkeep" costs. Never mind the fact that T-Mobile's network blows LTE out of the water - the fact that this network will be going offline means the N900's mobiles speeds will be rendered relatively useless in the Unite States (AT&T's network only gets about 15kb/sec with the N900's radio). Not to mention even if the N900 did get decent speeds on AT&T's network their mobile internet plans are horridly restricted (and priced even worse)!

Now not just the N900 will loose its mobile internet snappyness if this merger happens - all TMO handsets will. AT&T's solution? Get everyone phone upgrades (They factored this cost into their merger). Its a shame that this leaves all of us that purchased our handsets outright (such as the N900) out in the cold, reminds me of the many reasons I left AT&T some time ago. Honestly though, even if they where going to offer everyone a free handset - nothing on the market currently can really measure up to what Maemo does. I had been hoping to get a few good years out of my N900 as it does everything I could ask from a handset and I just recently purchased a second N900 for my girlfriend to use, guess I should have waited on that decision.

If the merger does go through the best I can hope for is a decent handset from the Samsung Linux Platform some time in the next year to replace Nokia before my mobile internet drys up. Anyone else hoping this merger falls through?

~Jeff Hoogland

Tiny Core Fraud on Source Forge

If you watch new projects that are added to source forge then two weeks ago you might have noticed that Tiny Core Linux was added to their projects.

I thought this was a little bit odd as I knew Tiny Core had been around for a couple of years now. Typically if a FOSS project is going to use source forge for hosting they do so from the start. Still, I let the thought drop and went on with my day.

This evening it was brought to my attention that the Tiny Core page on source forge was not added by anyone from the Tiny Core project itself - but simply by someone trying to solicit donations from themselves with someone else's work! Roberts, the founder of Tiny Core, tried to contact source forge, but did not receive any good news from them:

"When I contacted Sourceforge with a take down notice, I was told that if it is copyrighted material that I need to contact legal and prove it"

Check his post here for his full scoop on the matter. In short - the md5 sums on the source forge page match the md5 sums on the Tiny Core main downloads site - it is the exact same disc. I think it is horrible that source forge is refusing to take down this obvious fraud without first being called into legal action.

This is a slippery slope and I think if this issue is not resolved swiftly and properly we are going to see more of these copied projects appearing on source forge trying to solicit donations for greedy people. If there anyone out there with some legal background that can lend a hand - please get into contact with the Tiny Core folks and help them get this resolved!

For those that are not familiar with Tiny Core it is a super minimalistic Linux distro that runs on the 2.6 kernel and weighs in at 10megs. It uses Busybox, Tiny X, and Fltk. Check it out if you haven't already.

~Jeff Hoogland

Holding on to KDE 3.5.x and Gnome 2.x in 2011

Something I have brought up on a number of occasions when talking about software is that people are very much resistant to change. This is true of both people that use closed source software and open source software.

There are many different kinds of desktop environments Linux users have to choose from, but there is no doubting that currently the two most popular of all of these are the KDE and Gnome desktops. Just over three years ago (wow, where has the time gone?) KDE released the fourth major revision of their desktop. The team behind Gnome is on the verge of releasing their third major revision.

Personally I think the release of Gnome 3.0 will be very similar to the release of KDE 4.0 Both of these versions bring with them drastic changes to their respective desktops. Are the changes they bring necessary? I am not one to make that decision - one thing that is clear however is that they changes they bring (brought) with them (will) upset a good deal of people.

Next, enter one of the many beauties of FOSS - the ability for fork a project. The previous stable versions of both KDE and Gnome will live on in two new projects.

Trinity Desktop:
The Trinity Desktop is a project dedicated to keeping the sleek, fast, power of the KDE 3.5.x desktop alive. From their about page:

"This project aims to keep the KDE3.5 computing style alive, as well as polish off any rough edges that were present as of KDE 3.5.10. Along the way, new useful features will be added to keep the environment up-to-date."

Their current stable release is 3.5.12 and as you can see it looks very much like the classic KDE 3.5.x desktop:


Personally I am glad to see someone is keeping the old KDE 3.5.x desktop alive. It was the last time I seriously ran KDE as my main desktop. KDE 4.x just feels to bloated and clunky for my liking.

EXDE Project:
Not currently an "official" project at this point as Gnome 3.0 has not made it's stable debut as of yet. The EXDE project will aim to do essentially the same thing for Gnome 2.x that Trinity has done for KDE 3.5.x While there still has yet to be anything of substance in terms of code from the newly announced EXDE project they do have a nicely laid out road map, a clearly stated project vision, and a very informative FAQ.

As with most things only time will tell what will come of the EXDE (pronounced "X-D" by the way) desktop, but hopefully it will keep the Gnome 2.x desktop alive for those that plan to continue using it.

Do you use the Gnome or KDE desktops? If you use the KDE desktop, was it rough to change over when version 4.0 released? Do you still find yourself wanting 3.5.x back and might give Trinity a try? If you use Gnome, do you plan to start using Gnome shell when it releases or will you seek out something else?

Cheers,
~Jeff Hoogland

Lazy Linux Distro Reviews

It's been some time since I've written a a review about a Linux distribution, in fact the last one I wrote was back in September. The reason I have taken a step back from writing these is because with my status as head of Bodhi Linux I feel I am no longer an impartial source for these reviews. That being said, since I am so involved in the Bodhi project I've been reading more reviews of the late and I've been astonished how many "reviewers" don't really even look at the distro they are reviewing!

Whenever I took the time to write a distribution review, I always made it a point to actually install the distribution on my system and use it as my main operating system for a minimum of a few days. Sure this takes a little bit more effort, but it is necessary if you are going to write an informed article. I amazes me how many people that write reviews simply boot a distribution in virtual box (some don't even install it!) take a few screen shots and then call it a day. Some don't even load any of the default applications or even look at the project's website. Sure it is OK to load the distribution as a virtual machine, but this should not be the only method of testing it for the purposes of a review.

I believe that if you are going to do something then it is worth doing right. I've been approached by distributions before to write reviews and if I didn't have time to write something of substance I just wouldn't write anything at all.

~Jeff Hoogland

No FAFSA for FOSS Users

I'm a student in my last semester of undergraduate school currently. I've written twice now about various pieces of online software that restrict your freedom to use the operating system of your choice to access them. My girlfriend is also a student and as many of you may know - college is expensive. This weekend she went to fill out her FAFSA application online, for those of you unfamiliar "FAFSA" stands for "free application for federal student aide", and was annoyed when she found out she couldn't!

You might share in my shock when I found out that this free application cannot be filled out from a free operating system. When clicking the "start here" button on the FAFSA main page from a Linux based operating system you are kindly redirected to the incompatible browsers page. Just like with blackboard "supported browsers" really means "supported browsers and operating systems". The FAFSA website supports:

• Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8
• Firefox 3.5 and 3.6
  
• Google Chrome 6 and 7
• Opera 10.x

Now even though three of these browsers are cross platform, the only operating systems you are able to use with these browsers are Windows and OSX. The kicker at the end of all this? At the very bottom of the page there is a citing of standards compliance as the reason for certain browsers being redirected:

"For the past few years, every major Web browser released has been built around a set of open standards designated by the World Wide Web Consortium, a non-profit organization charged with overseeing the continuing development of the Web. What this means is that one piece of code now looks the same on every modern browser, whether it be Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera, or others. The majority of our users are using these modern browsers, so we can present content which is optimized for them. "

While that is all fine and dandy, last I checked browsers on Linux where not any less standards compliant than those on Windows or OSX. At the end of the day I guess this is just another example of a large organization ignoring the FOSS ecosystem. I wonder how much longer it is going to be that Linux users are going to have to deal with this sort of ignorance.

~Jeff Hoogland