July 15-16th Bridgewater hall Bristol Wireless took its new revised LTSP suite for 2 days to the Substance Conference in Manchester. The Dell server laptop has been newly installed and the Evo T20 thin clients have been configured on the server, 7 flat screens and 3 laptops made up a suite of 10 machines: it […]
Mike Harris from Bristol Wireless was kindly invited by Craig Duffy at the University of the West of England (UWE) to give a talk on some of his past activities at this summer’s Linux Boot Camp (PDF flyer). An entertaining one-hour talk was duly provided to around 35 participants, which covered everything from initial faltering […]
Bristol Wireless has been using OpenWrt for some time now for its network infrastructure. We’re very pleased to learn from our friends at the Freifunk blog that the OpenWrt team has announced the release of its latest version, named Kamikaze 808. The release schedule is as follows: Last day in July – final release candidate: […]
The Linux Boot Camp returns to the University of the West of England (UWE) from 30 June – 2 July this year. It’s aimed at folks who’ve done their A levels who want to do practical technical computing and get in touch with their inner geek. The event will involve two and a half days […]
Mike Harris writes: Hi All, Just writing to say a GREAT BIG THANK YOU to all for coming to HacktionLab and making it a success, not only did it seem to be good fun, but it also felt very productive and useful. I do hope you all got as much as I did from it. […]
This piece, the second on Hacktionlab, was supposed to have been written on Sunday, but that didn’t happen through a combination of circumstances, so it’s being scribbled first thing on Tuesday morning following the return home of Bristol Wireless’ final site tat-down crew yesterday afternoon. My last post ended as Saturday’s lunch was arriving. Following […]
It’s summer again (allegedly) and Bristol Wireless is sitting in the countryside playing with technology. We’re providing the technical infrastructure and running some of the workshops at Hacktionlab (news passim), which is being held this weekend at Stepping Stones Housing Co-operative, Highbury Farm in the picturesque Wye Valley. We’re using the barn as a dining […]
Alastair Ball has told us the forthcoming Open Source City event being held in Liverpool as part of its programme of events as European Capital of Culture. Taking place from 20-22nd June, Open Source City is being billed as a “micro-festival of open source practice in the production of media art and music” and is […]
Our old mate Shevek is putting on a little event at the end of June at Trinity Community Arts. Full details are – taken shamelessly from his recent post to the Bristol and Bath LUG mailing list – are as follows: “Hi I am co-organising an event called “An Adventure in Technology” as a follow-up […]
Malcolm, a friendly chartered accountant who helps with our books, recently emailed our treasurer his opinions on Gnucash, the personal and small-business financial-accounting software that runs on GNU/Linux, BSD, Solaris, Mac OS X and that other unspoken OS from Redmond. His words are reproduced below: Couldn’t resist the lure of FREE* software, so downloaded it […]
Ben Green writes: We are in Debian Weekly News! We are down the bottom with: “Co-operative Breathes New Life into Old Machines with Debian” We’re in the news for the 21st April 2008 and the actual piece in question highlighted by Ben reads: Co-operative Breathes New Life into Old Machines with Debian “Bristol Wireless is […]
Another date for your diaries folks! Richard Blackburn has written to inform us of this year’s UK Embedded Masterclass – a workshop dedicated to using Linux on embedded devices. Working with an ARM processor, the workshop will combine theory and practice and give delegates an insight into the working of Linux in the embedded environment. […]
It’s just over a week to go to Document Freedom Day on 26th March and Bristol Wireless’ promotional pack – full of stickers, leaflets and a flag – has been received safely from the Free Software Foundation Europe (thanks 🙂 ). Here at Bristol Wireless, we’ve worked since our creation with open standards and are […]
An out of the ordinary email turned up on the Bristol Wireless mailing list today. Forwarded by BW volunteer Sean, it had originally been posted to the UK Riders list by our friend Laura Whitehead, who’s a freelance web designer. Laura’s been in contact with Allyson Kapin who is organising Women Who Tech Telesummit which […]
In the last few weeks, the lab has paid host to some newer versions of Toshiba’s perennial Satellite line of notebooks. Our mobile LTSP suite runs on donated Toshiba satellites that are over 12 years old! 😉 The new batch is a bit newer – they’re mere youngsters of 3 or 4 years vintage. They’ve […]
Do you work in the voluntary or community sector? Do you want to learn how free and open source software (FOSS) can meet your ICT needs and save you money? Then make a date in your diary to visit the Social Source Conference (PDF flyer here) being hosted by Bristol Wireless at St Werburghs Community […]
Germany’s Chaos Computer Club (CCC) is one of the longest established (founded 1981) and most influential organisations dealing with the security and privacy aspects of technology; and its links with Bristol are growing. Back in the autumn, Si, a good friend of Bristol Wireless and a couple of friends decided it would be worthwhile trying […]
Here at Bristol Wireless, with most of us being advocates of bah-humbuggery as well as Linux and open source, we’ve been doing our utmost to avoid too much contact with the world of midwinter celebrations (e.g. Christmas, Hannukah, solstice, etc.*). However, we did crack a bit yesterday afternoon, succumbing to mulled cider and nibbles in […]
Since its inception as a community wireless networking project, Bristol Wireless’ range of activities has expanded at a rapid rate. One of the newer lines of work – although the idea was first mooted a few years ago – is the development of our own Bristol Wireless Debian-based Linux distribution. Ben Green has today announced […]
Following on from Bristol Wireless’ sale of internet-ready Linux computers for £50, news reaches the lab that well-known supermarket chain Tesco, once described by a TV comedy programme as “the world’s first retail state”, has now commenced sales of entry level PCs with Ubuntu Linux pre-installed. Tesco’s Linux machines cost slightly more than ours do, […]