11 December 2007
DesktopBSD day 28 - Going back and forth
After working two months with desktop oriented BSD’s I have more than enough material to write about. A lot of it was written down in the two 30 day series, but -fortunately- it will also end up in some real life publications. In this period I am...
10 December 2007
DesktopBSD day 27 - Getting spiritual, sort of.
This 30 day series is nearing it’s end and basically I find myself being able to work with DesktopBSD without a lot of problems. I tend to look more at the available applications and whether they work properly or not. Two applications I keep an e...
07 December 2007
DesktopBSD day 26 - Printing
The advent of computer technology was once accompanied by the vision of the paperless office. When everything would be available digitally, there wouldn’t be any need for paper. ICT boomed, but so did paper consumption. Instead of producing less ...
06 December 2007
DesktopBSD day 25 - ee, the commandline editor
One of the running gags in the realm of Linux is “vi or emacs?”. Apparently there once was a time this question could turn a room into cinders. Now, it may be a good example of the freedom of choice open source software provides and that it...
05 December 2007
DesktopBSD day 24 - Removing software
Running into the problem of limited harddisk space made me take a closer look at the deinstall option in Package Manager. Again, it may only be a tiny feature, but when it’s made as easy as possible it does contribute to a good end-user experien...
04 December 2007
DesktopBSD day 23 - Accessing Network Shares
I know, I promised to write about America’s Army. Well, installing that didn’t work out. The only hard disk that actually agrees with *BSD is 6+ Gb and installing America’s Army on that one via ports was a bit too much. I am still loo...
03 December 2007
DesktopBSD day 22 - Setback
I wanted to write the coming articles about gaming under DesktopBSD. Of course I explored gaming under PC-BSD already, but most of those games were installed via PBI’s and not everything was succesful. This time I would have to install the softwa...
30 November 2007
DesktopBSD day 21 - Planning and Project Management (II)
Yesterday I was enchanted with GanttProject and with that experience in mind I started playing with the three other project management applications.
Planner a.k.a. Project Management
The Planner website isn’t a treasure chest of information.
P...
29 November 2007
DesktopBSD day 20 - Planning and Project Management (I)
I have been involved in project management since the early days of my working career. I love the project management method and the way it helps me to organize complex tasks. All of the projects I have been involved in were of a non-technical, non-linea...
28 November 2007
DesktopBSD day 19 - Evolution
“East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet” wrote Rudyard Kipling. Fortunately Bob Dylan also sings to us that “the times they are a-changin”, which means that divides can be crossed with the right kind of b...
27 November 2007
DesktopBSD day 18 - Exploring Kontact
On day 16 I was pleasantly surprised by KMail and it’s import options for e-mail boxes. This isn’t the first time I looked at Kontact and it’s components, but I decided to dig a little deeper and answer the question whether Kontact is...
NaNoWriMo - I made the 50.000
Another challenge of life finished. It was fun to push myself to writing 50.000 words over a period of one month. With a few days to spare I finally crossed the 50.000 words barrier today. The basic idea is that you just keep writing and not allow your...
26 November 2007
DesktopBSD day 17 - Flock and Freshports
Sometimes a program proliferates quite rapidly to all my computers. My friend Jos Herni wrote about Flock less than two weeks ago and I decided to give it try. Flock is called ‘the social webbrowser’ and makes it easy for users to participa...
23 November 2007
DesktopBSD day 16 - Setting up my personal information managers
One of the key applications for desktop users is perhaps the personal information manager. Especially in an office environment it is paramount to be able to keep track of e-mail, contacts and appointments. Today I tried to set up three personal informa...
22 November 2007
DesktopBSD day 15 - Getting the GNOME desktop
My attempts to get a working version of GNOME on my PC-BSD box were unsuccessful. GNOME 2.20 was installed, but I couldn’t get the window manager running in the time I had available. No matter how much I begin to appreciate the KDE desktop, I sti...
21 November 2007
DesktopBSD day 14 - Emulation and virtualization
I believe that in the current time frame any migration strategy to an open source desktop should also include emulation and virtualization options. At least in this way migration to an open source desktop can not be halted by one or two applications th...
20 November 2007
DesktopBSD day 13 - Installing on a real hard drive
If there is one thing I don’t fondly remember about the PC-BSD series, it is the problems I had finding a hard drive that would be accepted as ‘good enough’ by the installer. The PC-BSD installer refused to cooperate with seven harddr...
19 November 2007
DesktopBSD day 12 - What are the DesktopBSD Tools?
There are a few things the average Windows or Linux user takes for granted. Of course your system boots into a graphical interface and when you plugin your USB stick, it appears on your desktop. Both under Linux and *BSD the graphical interface is a ma...
17 November 2007
PC-BSD 1.4.1 Available
After working and playing with PC-BSD for over a month I believe it is one open source desktop to keep a close eye on. So it is good to see a new release bringing it up to version 1.4.1.
This version contains some updates and some fixes:
* Upgrades Com...
16 November 2007
Open letter to the Dutch Cartel Office: Investigate software sales practices in Education
The Dutch Cartel Office (NMa) decides annually which sectors of the economy will get extra attention. Of course, the NMa is mostly interested in those sectors where market distortions have become too big to assure fair competition and pricing for consu...
Open brief aan de NMa - Onderzoek naar de relatie van het onderwijs met de commerciële software aanbieders
De Nederlandse Mededingingsautoriteit (NMa) stelt jaarlijks vast waar haar aandacht in de komende periode naar uit zal gaan. De NMa is natuurlijk het meest geïnteresseerd in die sectoren waar de markt dermate is verstoord dat consumenten en bedrijven ...
14 November 2007
DesktopBSD Day 11 - Where to go from here?
This series isn’t progressing as easily as I want. For one, it is somewhat busy right now and that means it won’t be possible to continue with one article a day. There might be a lapse here and there. Besides this I am considering where to ...
13 November 2007
DesktopBSD day 10 - Customizing the desktop
Recently I saw a message flashing by, explaining that Microsoft had patented a method for the computer to read my mind. If that isn’t a recipe for disaster I don’t know what is. I would settle for a computer than can feel my moods and adjus...
Certified Open - new initiative to reduce vendor lock-in
One of the key issues in W2L migration in organizations is how to deal with the current vendor lock-in. This is especially important when making decisions about new investments in the server room and business applications. If a decision leads to an inc...
Fedora 8 launches with 54.000 installs
In the article “2007: The year of candy, not innovation” I mentioned how nice it would be to see Mac OS X sales statistics mirrored for Linux distributions. Ars Technica has an article about first week adoptions for Fedora 8. With 54.000 in...
