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... [Read more]

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 quite interested in the tracks they have signed up for and as early as now they have many questions. And there are also many... [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 have with whatever you’re installing. Whether it’s any particular Linux distribution or maybe even Windows, there’d be times that you will hit some snags. Some... [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 nifty to me. It also is said to be designed so that one could easily call other applications when needed. For example, image editing tools that will enhance... [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 I try Solang. The feature list as written by Santanu several months ago. I am thinking this would be applicable for Solang on Karmic. Paginated views for memory and speed efficiency (in git already) Icon... [Read more]