Earlier this week our 2 LTSP gurus, BenG and Acesabe, were busy configuring and preparing a new LTSP suite comprising some donated redundant Rock Clevo T200C laptops as the thin clients. These run on 12 volts and are being made ready for a trip to the forthcoming Barncamp 2011 up in Wye valley (news passim). […]
Today the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne MP, is speaking at Google Zeitgeist 2011. As a matter of fact, he’s not just giving any old speech, but the event’s keynote address. HM Treasury has very kindly released the Chancellor’s speech in advance and it does make very interesting reading indeed. Perusing the speech, your […]
The H Open reports today that the desktop version of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS has now officially reached its end of life. From 12 May 2011 (yesterday), no new updates, including security updates and critical fixes, will be available. The server edition of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS will continue to be supported until May 2013. Users of […]
Yesterday the chief scribe was scrolling through his Twitter feed when up popped the following tweet from Mark Taylor, CEO of Sirius IT: Our newest recruit, Linda, in Admin and Finance, had never used an Open Source desktop before yesterday. She’s not noticed a difference yet. A further tweet from Mark revealed that Linda assumed […]
Two weeks ago, your correspondent made one of his regular trips to Stoke on Trent to do a routine back-up of his 79 year-old mother’s computer, which happens to be running Windows XP. The back-up went smoothly: I took a copy of her personal files to a spare hard drive of my own in a […]
Your ‘umble scribe picked his title ih haste, as it’s actually a series of teach-ins. 😉 Ubuntu Open Week is currently underway from Mon 2 May – Fri 6 May on IRC in #ubuntu-classroom and #ubuntu-classroom-chat between 14.00 and 18.00 hrs UTC. In just 7 years, Ubuntu has become one of the world’s most popular […]
Are you enthusiastic about Debian and thinking about contributing? If yes, then the Debian Women project and the OpenHatch project want to teach you the basics. They’ll be will be holding an IRC event on Saturday 7th May to help people that want to compile their first Debian package from source, and apply their first […]
Yesterday the Gnome Project announced that the GNOME 3.0 release (as used in the latest Ubuntu release, now imminent, codenamed ‘Natty Narwhal’. Ed.) has attracted far more contributions from women than any previous GNOME release. This results largely from the hard work of the first round of the Outreach Programme for Women interns, who took […]
Our friend Emma Harvey (a fine exponent of singing the ‘Free Software Song‘. Ed.) at Trinity Community Arts has sent out an email today to let people know Trinity is looking for volunteers to assist in developing its work. Amongst the types of volunteers wanted, we noticed the following: IT Assistant to help us build […]
People who know BW’s chief scribe know he’s a great fan of Twitter, the social networking and microblogging website. Over the past couple of years, he’s tried out various Linux Twitter clients, ranging from quick and dirty Python scripts for tweeting from the command line, via your conventional web browsers to dedicated social networking packages, […]
The Register reports that File Transfer Protocol (FTP) celebrates its 40th anniversary this weekend. FTP itself was initially proposed by MIT‘s Abhay Bhushan in April 1971 for transferring large files over ARPANet, the forerunner to today’s internet. However, it still has its uses, unlike some earlier protocols (gopher anyone? Ed.), and its future looks assured. […]
Bristol has become a hotbed of activity in recent times for all things related to Wikipedia and Wikimedia UK. In May 2010 Bristol opened its arms to delegates from various Wikimedia chapters from around the world (news passim). In February this year the city welcomed Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, who gave a talk at the […]
News arrives at the Lab that our friends at UWE are organising the 5th annual run of their popular Linux Boot Camp on 20th and 21st June this year. Linux Boot Camp is aimed primarily at people who’ ve done their A levels and might be going on to do something IT-related in further or […]
2011 marks the 20th birthday of Linux (or GNU/Linux if you’re a purist. Ed.) and the Linux Foundation has released the video below to mark the event. Find out more about what’s happening to celebrate 20 years of Linux and penguin-powered computing at the Linux Foundation’s dedicated 20th birthday page.
If someone asked you what you would do with Linux when the cows come home, would your answer be: “Milk them”? If so, you can go to the top of the class; and no, don’t let the proximity of April 1st lull into a sense of incredulity. Agricultural equipment manufacturer DeLaval makes a robotic milking […]
News arrives that the Free Software Foundation Europe is 10 years old this month. This is a good age to start celebrating according to our sources. Consequently, FSFE is organising a small party in Berlin this evening at C-Base, Rungestraße 20, 10179 Berlin. All free software supporters are invited and those coming along are asked […]
Today is Document Freedom Day, an annual event that aims to educate the public about the importance of free document formats and open standards in general. Here in the Bristol Wireless lab, we’ve been telling visitors about why open standards and free document formats are important, such as avoiding the pitfalls of proprietary formats and […]
It’s 8.30 on the morning of Saturday 26th March and your ‘umble scribe is standing on a sunny Stapleton Road station waiting for the train. One and a half hours later, he alights at an overcast and chillier Hereford station and goes ambling into town in search of 2 things: firstly, breakfast and secondly, All […]
Over at Computer World UK, Tony Collins currently has a most revealing report on the state of UK government IT procurement taken from a House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee session, during which it interviewed Martin Rice, CEO of software company Erudine. Besides references to cartels and an “oligarchy of government IT suppliers”, the […]
Bristol Wireless has been using wikis for years to document and plan the development of the co-operative and its work, so we were delighted to accept an invitation to attend the Bristol Wiki Academy at the weekend (news passim). To the best of our knowledge, this was the first Wiki Academy to be organised in […]