Tag: Open Source

I want to buy my kid a laptop… by ZDNet‘s Christopher Dawson — I hear this more and more from high school parents. It wasn’t that long ago that college kids were lucky to get a laptop for a high school graduation gift. The number of freshman and sophomores in high school now toting around laptops, even in a very middle class rural mill town like […]

I outsmarted myself this morning in attempting to download and install the Debian client for SecondLife my package manager got “smoked”. Oh, well it was time for a rebuild and that’s what’s going on right now. That’s the beauty of Ubuntu. Continue reading “Rebuild”

I’ve spent the last two days learning about VMWare ESX. I’m attending a 4 day training session where I’m learning how to virtualize servers of all flavors. I’m grateful for the opportunity to learn new skills. My Linux background has been a help. Continue reading “Virtual machines”

I’ve been engaging in a really spirited and stimulating debate with a number of colleagues about word processing and whether Open Office or Microsoft Office or any other office suite is more or less suited to preparing today’s students for the world of work. Continue reading “Thoughts on writing, publishing and word processing”

In early June I bought a Dell Inspiron 6400 from Dell’s Outlet store. It came with Microsoft’s Vista Home Basic which I promptly deleted and reinstalled Ubuntu 7.04. I have a Vista license and the Dell recovery disk for reinstalling the OS. I have installed Automatix and as part of that install I’ve got Innotek’s Virtual Box installed. Tonight I reinstalled Vista Home Basic as a virtual machine with Virtual Box.

I’ve been toying with the idea of running Ubuntu as a host with a Vista guest OS that would allow me to run some Windows application that I rely on. I want to experiment with VMWare as well. I recently attended a VMWare User Group at the University of Rochester and I came away impressed with the power of virtualization and VMWare in particular. I have had better success virtualizing the wireless Ethernet connection on my notebook with VMWare than I’ve had with Virtual Box. These experiences have provided me with a unique vista from which to explore virtual computing.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to the importance or relative unimportance of word processors. I learned how to process words with a pencil. Nowadays word processing has come to mean more than writing, but is it? Continue reading “Word processors”

I’ve been engaging in an ongoing and rich conversation with fellow educators who value the contribution of open source. This citation came from a link on Bob Sutor’s Open blog

Making “hamburger of Microsoft’s cash cow” by ZDNet‘s Christopher Dawson — Ars technica featured an article last week (Microsoft funds questionable study attacking open source in education“) focusing on a European study of user satisfaction with, and adoption of open source software versus Microsoft products in educational systems. Not surprisingly, the Microsoft-funded study concluded that Microsoft products were not only long-term money-savers, but were also […]

I’ve been using Ubuntu on the desktop or laptop for a little over a year now and I have to say that it continues to get better with each release. One of the feeds that I read nearly everyday is SolidOffice. Continue reading “Sea change”