Yet Another Linux Blog

There’s a new project out there called EasyUbuntu. This is the sort of thing that people need to know about right after they install Ubuntu.

Ubuntu uses only Free Formats by default. There’s a page on Restricted Formats, but installing those things is a bit of a hassle. I’ve always wondered why someone couldn’t just write a small script that would install all those things for you. Then I found out about Automatix but it only works for Breezy, and is a bit crude. EasyUbuntu is a good replacement for Automatix and makes use of a more stable repository: The Penguin Liberation Front.

That’s Yet Another Unpatched IE Exploit.

This sort of thing is the perfect example of the advantage of Free Software. A piece of software turns out to have an very important flaw and no one except the vendor can fix it! In the Free Software world, anyone can fix it, and the results are immediately available to everyone. People often argue “why do I care, I’m not a programmer, I wouldn’t be able to fix it myself anyway.” That’s a valid point, but a workaround exists. If the code is available and Free, you can offer to pay a programmer to fix it. This is not even an option with something like IE. You can only hope and wait that MS releases a patch.

People have come up with “unofficial patches” as sort of a workaround: e.g. this Slashdot comment, but what they’ve done might actually be illegal!

• http://30boxes.com/
• http://planzo.com/
• http://upcoming.org/

• Basecamp project manager
• Writely word processor
• Spongecell calendar
• iJot notepad
• celtx collaborative script writing
• Kiko calendar

And of course, things like Gmail, Google Reader, Google Maps, Google everything.

Got any others?