Yet Another Linux Blog

Has the mission of OLPC changed so much? I say it has. No longer are the five core principals initially employed when the project started valid. The original Five Core Principles were:

1. Child Ownership
2. Low Ages
3. Saturation
4. Connection
5. Free and Open Source

It's important to quote what is under #5 above:

The child with an XO is not just a passive consumer of knowledge,
but an active participant in a learning community. As the children grow and pursue new ideas, the software, content, resources, and tools should be able to grow with them. The very global nature of OLPC demands that growth be driven locally, in large part by the children themselves. Each child with an XO can leverage the learning of every other child. They teach each other, share ideas, and through the social nature of the interface, support each other's intellectual growth. Children are learners and teachers.

There is no inherent external dependency in being able to localize software into their language, fix the software to remove bugs, and repurpose the software to fit their needs. Nor is there any restriction in regard to redistribution; OLPC cannot know and should not control how the tools we create will be re-purposed in the future.

A world of great software and content is necessary to make this project succeed, both open and proprietary. Children need to be able to choose from all of it. In our context of learning where knowledge must be appropriated in order to be used, it is most appropriate for knowledge to be free. Further, every child has something to contribute; we need a free and open framework that supports and encourages the very
basic human need to express.

Give me a free and open environment and I will learn and teach with joy.

No longer is it about empowering a generation of children from poorer nations and letting them learn with the ability to help improve the platform they operate on...what it's now about:

"'The OLPC mission is a great endeavor, but the mission is to get the technology in the hands of as many children as possible. Whether that technology is from one operating system or another, one piece of hardware or another, or supplied or supported by one consulting company or another doesn't matter. It's about getting it into kids' hands. Anything that is contrary to that objective, and limits that objective, is against what the program stands for.'"

...just like a fun toy right? <sarcasm>Let's drop Nintendo DS gaming systems into their hands...laptops, laptops, laptops...that's what it is about...because we're all about getting the technology to the kids. </sarcasm> We're not about empowering them to learn about computers, networks, and software. We're not about them learning on a system where there are no limits. As RMS states, "Teaching children to use a proprietary (non-free) system such as Windows does not make the world a better place, because it
puts them under the power of the system's developer." That developer is Microsoft.

Congratulations go to Microsoft for bringing proprietary lockin to millions of kids worldwide who will no longer be able to take pride in their own contributions the the core OS, who will no longer feel community ownership, and who will no longer be the sole operator of their own open source software based XO.

Our children our the future and what we aren't teaching them with closed source software is just as important as what we ARE teaching them.

In February, I asked for submissions for you favorite linux websites and offered up a link from Yet Another Linux Blog as incentive for those submissions. I've selected a few blogs to include not only as a link here, but also as a feature Linux site for inclusion in the Linux Expert Guide at BlogBridge.com.

How it Works

Someone downloads Blogbridge. During installation, it asks them what they are interested in. If they say Linux, the BlogBridge expert guide feedlist is given to the person. This is quite a nice thing for an up and coming blog or even an established one. Congratulations to those selected:

Why another package manger? Isn't there already too many of these out there? Why use Conary when I can apt-get? Apt-get is soooo much better. Dpkg gives you sooooo much more than anything could possibly give you. Conary is still beta quality...rpm and deb are much more developed mature.

If the person(s) asking the questions above actually understood what Conary is and CAN do...they would see this is a very limited view of Conary. Not only is conary a package management system vis-a-vis a system that manages EVERY single package of software on your system...it is also a powerful version control system for software packages and packaging. It's an enabling mechanism for packaging software quickly and easily.

I'd like to go over some of the things I think are great about Conary...clear up some of the "why is this needed" speak by showing how Conary actually gets things right and the common problems experienced by other package managers that it solves.

Is that Foresight Linux running a pre-pre-pre-alpha-alpha-alpha build of KDE 3.5.9 I see?

Those of you interested in helping us develop, package, or use KDE are welcome to join us in IRC #foresight-kde freenode.  Plans are to build a 3.5.9 Stable version and wait until 4.1 is released to push out a 4.1 version.  Of course, we'll have 4.0.X builds available for testing and fun all the while :)  Please, lend us a hand and file those bug reports!

I saw that Lightning .8, a calendar extension for thunderbird, had been released and my heart jumped.  Had they fixed the memory leak that forced me to abandon it in version .7?

I used to use Lightning for my google calendar in versions before .7...

When .7 came out, it caused Thunderbird to rocket memory usage above 80% which brought my computer to a screeching halt.  I figured I'd not use it until next version (and submitted a bug report as well).

Today I downloaded .8 in hopes it would work better.  It doesn't.  Memory usage still skyrockets when attempting use the google calendar (provider addon) and the remember mismatched domains add on with it (otherwise you're unable to connect or get a popup every time you view).

Is it one of these plugins causing it?  Is it Lightning?  I'm leaning toward the latter...even when uninstalling the extensions, I still get memory usage skyrocketing.  Either way, syncing your google calendar with Lightning isn't a very smooth thing to do if it causes your Linux desktop to screech to a halt.

I guess there is always evolution with built in google calendar support.  Anyone else getting these problems?

At work, we use Zimbra for emailing.  I use Thunderbird with IMAP as my desktop client.  I've also seen that as of Zimbra 5.0 RC2, they will have the ability to sync with Lightning.  Good news!  Now if Lightning would stop leaking!