One thing that old and new Linux users might sometimes forget is the community. For newbies, it’s the fear of the unknown territory that might make it feel like something so difficult. That or they feel it’s an adventure they could take. All by themselves, that is. But if you think about it, venturing into the unknown world of Linux and the free and open source software movement is much better with like-minded people who want to experience these things. It could be one heck of an adventure or one long boring ride into the uncharted regions another planet.

Reaching out to ask for help could be intimidating because it might make you feel a bit insignificant. But what is life without other people being with you to experience things? As cliche as it may sound, no man is an island. For that matter, maybe you don’t necessarily have to be the type to broadcast to the entire world that you are a new Linux user. But just one or a few people with you in this makes the experience fun as you learn new commands. And who knows? The terminal might feel like a better place to deal with commands. Feeling like a wizard chanting a spell? Maybe that’s the thrill of the command line for some people. Others might be more of the type to find good things in new shiny packages — new applications that are useful, something more than they imagined.

Old Linux users might not feel as enthusiastic about the community before. Why? Because there are those who keep on conducting flame wars in community mailing lists. That or they’ve come to hate the “RTFM”/”RTM”-like replies to newbies. Or maybe they’ve gotten tired of reading newbie emails. Well, it might sound like those questions are being popped over and over and over again so I guess it’s hard to blame them for losing interest in those community mailing lists and forums. Oh and there’s also the problem with sexist remarks. Women sometimes have difficulties dealing with those issues. But there are times that it does turn women off from the community.

However, it is interesting to note that despite such issues that might be around not so new Linux users, there are friendships that do form among them. And it goes beyond the mailing list or forums. And sometimes those friendships lead to collaborations online and offline. There’s still discussions that do happen as time goes by. Which isn’t a bad thing and it could help as they continue to grow in terms of their personal development and their skills in using Linux and free and open source software.

I do hope that in the coming years, I’d see richer interactions among people in the community. I mean, I might not be as active in the local Linux community but I still have those friendships that I have developed over the years and it still keeps me interested in the technologies and the projects that are happening here. It’s just that I can’t help but hope for more so that the community will keep on growing.

Asia Source 3 gathers people to have 5 days of camp fun dealing with free and open source software. There are 4 tracks in this year’s Asia Source camp.

Managing your information
Migration
Broadcasting your information
Community building

Participants shall be joining in a track to interact with fellow participants in order to learn something new from each other. Whatever they learn from this camp will hopefully be very helpful for them when they go back to work in their respective organizations.
I was able to talk with some of the participants here and they have different backgrounds and needs. But they are …read more

I’m currently out of town and just reading about Ubuntu Karmic experiences left and right. Some are pretty comprehensive compared to others. Steve Rosenberg of http://www.indiesocal.com who wrote about the Ubuntu 9.10 upgrade. There were snags in the upgrade especially when it came to X.org but he was able to fix it too. There’s also this thing on the Register about how terrible Ubuntu 9.10 is. But I guess it all boils down to one thing when it comes to any operating system: YMMV. Your mileage may vary.
It’s the combination of the hardware you …read more

If you’re looking for a photo collection tool that is highly focused on helping you manage your photos then Phraymd could be thing that will help you. F-spot covers a whole lot more when it comes to managing photo collections with all those features such as editing your photos so that they could rotated, etc. But Phraymd seems to be more focused on your metadata.
The design philosophy of Phraymd includes the following:

The user interface must not be a blocker.
It keeps the metadata in the images.
There is a database that keeps track of data for faster searching.

It looks really …read more

Are you looking for a photo manager? Then Solang might be an alternative you’d like to check out. Not everyone’s happy about F-spot even if it is full of features. We all have our preferences and it’s not an essentially bad thing to search for options.
Solang seems to have a problem with Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope so those who want to use it already might be better off with upgrading to Karmic Koala first. There’s a PPA for Solang but those who are not familiar with it might be turned off. I personally plan to upgrade before …read more

Ever heard about the Linux Kongress? It’s a venue for Linux kernel
developers to talk about the things that they research on and work on.
It is an annual event, organized by the German Unix Users Group. This
year it was held in Dresden, Germany from October 27-30. Ted T’so,
Felix von Leitner and Andi Kleen were all in this year’s Linux
Kongress. They highlighted some of the key things in kernel
development. Talks included topics like the GNU Compiler Collection
(GCC) as well as how multi-core systems are powerful.
Not everyone might be able to appreciate these things especially new
Linux users but reading …read more

It’s too late when I realized that I didn’t have my netbook’s charger and so I can’t really upgrade my netbook this weekend. It’s not good. Argh. And just when I had plenty of time to upgrade and fix something if ever something gets broken.
So yeah, everybody seems to have Ubuntu 9.10 or Karmic Koala already. Well, except for me. Tsk. Next time I will check my things before leaving a building, just to be sure this doesn’t happen again.
Back to business.
And everyone but me has Karmic Koala. By this time it’s more …read more

Looking out for something tasty? Patries would be an awesome treat
indeed. Especially you love cream puffs and eclairs like I do. I
suppose Google’s development team for Android want to tempt us with
something sweet and tasty just like eclairs, hence the name for
Android 2.0 ; )
What’s in store for us in ‘Eclair’ or Android 2.0?
Those who work in companies whose emails are managed by Microsoft
Exchange servers will be happy to note that Eclair is said to ship
with support for MS Exchange. Probably a good enough reason for some
to consider getting a new Android 2.0 powered smartphone.
Some …read more

Want better video playback on Linux? Can you code? There will be a hackfest this November in Barcelona from November 19-22, 2009. If you can go and join the hackfest because this is something you are personally hacking on, then I think it’s just right that you contact those who are organizing it. Check out this email for more details on how to participate in this particular hackfest. This is all about making X, Cairo and GStreamer work better to give everyone a better user experience when it comes to videos on Linux. Here’s …read more

I’ve heard about MPD as a music player. It is a music player I’ve never really felt like checking out in the past because I was afraid that the config file might be overwhelming. Anyhow, I recently saw a guide to using Sonata and MPD as a music player.
So why the heck do I need two things to play music?
Let me say this: MPD is basically a daemon that runs in the background to make sure that you could play music. Sonata is the graphical way for you to control it. I’ve read so many raves …read more