A few months have passed since the last time I used Ubuntu and started using Windows XP. Sounds like a confession, right? Why I did that? Because imediately after I upgraded to Ubuntu 8.10 I got myself a brand new version of the popular distribution and as a bonus I got a low resolution, of 800×600, which really loves to be here, on my computer. It can’t be changed. I went through all the known methods and it’s still there. I manually edited xorg.conf, ran the already famous “sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg” command and still got nothing.

I admit it, I’m not as good as many other Linuxists but this thing made me use XP for a few months because I didn’t want to change my resolution from the NVidia Xserver Settings application every time I logged in. I asked on Ubuntuforums.org but I got the usual answers. And the problem is that this thing is happening to some other persons too.

If you have any idea on how to fix this, please leave a comment. I really need to get back on Ubuntu.

Today the Free Software Foundation (FSF) has announced that it has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Cisco. It seems that Cisco violated the licenses of GCC, binutils, and the GNU C Library through its Linksys brand. All of them are released under GPL and LGPL, so basically everyone had the right to modify and share Cisco’s stuff but the company denied this right to the users.

“Our licenses are designed to ensure that everyone who uses the software can change it,” said Richard Stallman, president and founder of the FSF. “In order to exercise that right, people need the source code, and that’s why our licenses require distributors to provide it. We are enforcing our licenses to protect the rights that everyone should have with all software: to use it, share it, and modify it as they see fit.”

These are parts from a press release I got today, with a few modifications.  I’m wondering what will be Cisco’s next move. Will they open up their stuff according to the General Public License and LGPL or will they try to prove they’re “innocent”?

Two days after the official launch of Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex, I took the decision to upgrade my 8.04 to 8.10. Everything went fine until it gave a message telling me something like there’s no supported driver for my video card. I stopped the upgrade because the last time I got a message like that I had a hard time editing files from the command line.

Although Ubuntu 8.04 is an LTS distribution, sites and software developers that provide .deb packages are slowly stopping the offering of packages for Hardy Heron. I don’t think this is a clever move, because there are still many users who preffer Hardy Heron and will not upgrade to 8.10 Intrepid Ibex pretty soon. By doing this, the users who want to have the latest versions of their favorite apps will have to compile them from source which might create some problems in time if the process doesn’t go the right way.

These are my 2 cents on the “forced” upgrade issue. Keep in mind that this is just my opinion, maybe I’m paranoid, maybe I’m right… You decide:).

I was looking for some nice GTK2 themes on gnome-look.org, and during a couple of weeks I noticed the fact that originality is starting to make place to plagiarism and building upon others’ work. I admit the fact that I made a theme in June or July, using some elements from other themes, but at this moment the number of low quality wallpapers/GTK themes/icon themes is drastically increasing.

From my point of view, Kim Kahns is one of the best theme designers. I was always waiting for him to bring some new theme, with all the great details he put into his work. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have too much time anymore for this kind of thing. So, my dear Linuxists… where’s the art and where’s the creativity? I would like to see more persons like Kim, persons who can inspire and can create beautiful works. Things that are original. Things that don’t copy Vista or Mac (although I like its style:D) and can bring a new meaning to the looks of Linux distributions and especially to Ubuntu.

I am going to start creating a new theme pretty soon, hopefully something from scratch. Will you do the same thing?

I think that the whole attitude behind the “my operating system is better” idea is pretty childish. Everyone remembers the days in our childhood when we had some toys and argued with other kids that we have better toys. Most of the times, we got into a fight and not the guy with better toys won, but the most powerful.

Moving to present days, I think that the most powerful guy is the one with better marketing. For example, Microsoft gives s**t if there are good or bad news about them. There are only news from their point of view. Their visibility keeps increasing and the same thing is true about Apple.

These two companies don’t use the meritocratic system that’s being used by Linux (or GNU/Linux, depending on how you prefer to call it). Although they are not sharing their knowledge, they seem to have a bigger market share than the more “shareaholic” open source communities. Now, I was wondering if there’s a way to mix meritocracy with good marketing strategies. Any ideas?

I changed my job a couple of weeks ago and now I’m working on a Mac. As I previously had a PC with Ubuntu 8.04 installed, I always thought that the Mac guys were snobs, who tend to avoid other persons and make their own clique. This is not true as I recently found out. Actually, I can say that the GNOME guys should’ve thought better when they copied some parts from OS X and called them innovative works.

For example, you know the small bar that’s present in Nautilus when you go to the trash can, right? The same bar is there on Mac too. Still talking about the visual side, we can find the mac-ish progress bar/status style in GNOME too.

I really hate the following way of thinking: “It’s BAD when Apple and Microsoft take stuff from open source project, but it’s GOOD when we take from them!” Open up your eyes guys and try to make something original if you want to compete with these two giants! And I’m looking especially at you Mark Shuttleworth!