Submitted by There’s an interesting article over at FreeSoftwareMagazine.com about what you can do with the free time the coming holidays will likely present you with. This being an article at the Free Software Magazine, it focusses mainly on – you guessed it – Free software. The suggestions are interesting, but we have a few of our own to add.
Let’s start with something I’m going to try to make time for during the coming weeks: try out the latest OpenSolaris release. Reviews have been very positive, and my last Solaris experience being with Solaris 9 on my UltraSPARC machine, this seems like a good time to get re-acquainted with this heavyweight operating system. OpenSolaris is surely an interesting addition to the Free software landscape, and it deserves a chance.
Another Free software related thing which might be good to try is the latest KDE 4.2 beta. As some of you might remember, I personally wasn’t particularly impressed with KDE 4.0, and 4.1 didn’t exactly blow my socks off either – despite the massive improvements made between 4.0 and 4.1. KDE 4.2 is on its way, and a few days ago the second beta was released, and if there’s an empty timeslot somewhere, I’ll be sure to give KDE 4.2 a go, to see if it has reached a state where I might consider using it as one of my desktops. If you’ve personally been bitten by KDE 4.0 too, KDE 4.2 presents a good opportunity to see if they made any progress.
Moving on to non-Free software, something high on my list has been to move “full-time” to using Windows 7, build 6956; this build is very close to the actual beta, and has all the fancy stuff enabled (contrary to the build handed out at PDC, which was build 6801). I already have it installed alongside Windows Vista, and I have been using it as my primary desktop for a few days already. There certainly are some niggles here and there, and there are rough edges, but you really need a magnifying glass in order to find them. There are a few bigger problems, too; for instance, Windows 7 doesn’t come with a mail client, referring you to the rather dreadful Live Mail application instead.
All in all, this is absolutely nothing like the early Vista releases, which were practically unusable until they hit RC stage – and even after that it wasn’t exactly all pink ponies and rainbows. In any case, using the current Windows 7 builds fills me with confidence that 7 might actually be a good product, a feeling I haven’t had in a long time when it comes to Windows.
I’m sure you can come up with some more suggestions, so fire away.
take the about ten or so old computers I’ve
collected from various friends and work-places
over the years that I got scattered all over
the place and put them together and set up a
nice little computer park running various
Linux distributions. Just for fun 🙂
There’s so many things I’ve been about to do for some time now. But, alas, I always get over-ambitious and get nothing done in the end.
Should have upgraded from Fedora 8 to Fedora 10 some time ago, but at least it’s nice that the Fedora people postponed Fedora 8’s end of life from 25.Dec 2008 to 7.Jan 2009. [1]
Always wanted to try LinuxFromScratch, but it’s just too big a project to get completed in a meaningful way in the short time available. So I guess I’ll stay with Fedora for some time still.
I’ve also tried to learn OpenOffice.org’s Basic variant – could have been useful in the past, had I learnt it before. When I think of this plan, however, I’m always reminded that I really wanted to try LaTeX. Oh well.
I guess it will be best for me to have a go at the author’s last suggestion: “Switch off your computer” 😉
[1] http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=205835
Fedora 10 is definitely worth the upgrade. They haven’t done much flashy stuff on the surface (maybe the init process, very well done), but a lot of improvements under the hood are really good. A great release.
As a LaTeX fan I can tell you that it’s one of the best “investments” you can get in software. Besides learning to code yourself, of course. LaTeX (or LyX, very easy to work with) is one of those programs that once you get along with you wonder what on earth everybody’s doing with the WYSIWYG stuff, and that’s not even foor l33tish or ideological considerations. It just looks so much better in print, and it’s just so much easier and faster to use.
(Doesn’t mean LaTeX is better for every purpose)
Very wise. As I’m typing this, I haven’t made it that far yet. Many plans though.
Quote…
Should have upgraded from Fedora 8 to Fedora 10 some time ago, but at least it’s nice that the Fedora people postponed Fedora 8’s end of life from 25.Dec 2008 to 7.Jan 2009.
Fedora 10 is definitely worth the upgrade. They haven’t done much flashy stuff on the surface (maybe the init process, very well done), but a lot of improvements under the hood are really good. A great release.
I’ve also tried to learn OpenOffice.org’s Basic variant – could have been useful in the past, had I learnt it before. When I think of this plan, however, I’m always reminded that I really wanted to try LaTeX.
As a LaTeX fan I can tell you that it’s one of the best “investments” you can get in software. Besides learning to code yourself, of course. LaTeX (or LyX, very easy to work with) is one of those programs that once you get along with you wonder what on earth everybody’s doing with the WYSIWYG stuff, and that’s not even foor l33tish or ideological considerations. It just looks so much better in print, and it’s just so much easier and faster to use.
(Doesn’t mean LaTeX is better for every purpose)
I guess it will be best for me to have a go at the author’s last suggestion: “Switch off your computer” 😉
I have installed Fedora 10 on my Dell XPS M1530 and it is a lot nicer than Fedora 9/8.
Fedora 10 has a lot faster bootup and a lot of the tweaks that they made and enhancements are really worth it. Plus, hard disk encryption is nice…
You can add vga=0x318 to your grub.conf stanza to have your info scrolling when you boot up (remove quiet also)…
I am waiting on RHEL6 to come out next year all of the underpinning changes being made, along with upstart to be implemented and new kernel. I can’t wait I will be installing Centos6 on my Dell XPS wiping out Fedora 10 and installing it on my workstation/laptop for work as well.
AND I am installing Zmanda for work, the front end to amanda makes configuration 100 times simpler than the config file for amanda.
I already have it running, plus loading new Centos 5.3 Servers.
Lots to do!
OpenSolaris is a good suggestion. I’m running it (as the only OS) on one of my computers for a few months now and have already prepared migration path for others (linux-based atm). It’s very impressive system and the improvement rate is truly awesome!
It is yule after all, so time is obviously spent with family. So what would be better than solve my mother´s need for a combined spam-marking email/calendar solution by installing Thunderbird with Lightning?
Besides that, the only thing to do right now is to “hygge”.
Forgetting all the technical whatnot, I used to play games a lot as a kid. It was grand. For sure with all the spare time this holiday, I’ll be doing a bit of LAN gaming with my buddies. Star Craft was always one of our favorites.
You’ve got to feel like a kid again once in a while. Albeit a kid who actually knows how to set up a network game.
Coming back to the technical stuff, it’d be nice to set up a file/print server made from an old HP dc5000 SFF for the printers in the study. Whether running XP or the latest Ubuntu has to offer, I’ve yet to decide. Perhaps I may try venturing to another open source OS, though I’m still relatively new to open source and haven’t much time to work with unfamiliar systems.
Edited 2008-12-20 01:09 UTC
I’ll give OS X another try (ducks after having maligned it over most of this year). When you also get that ‘life’s too short’ thing over Windows too, well, maybe time to swallow my sin of pride.
Definitely get all the stuff I have hauled out of skips/dumpsters over the last 12 months or rescued from friends who have no more use for it to good homes, or recycled responsibly. Time to feel virtuous as well.
Then I will switch off my computer, and do a bit of painting round the house.