A slightly breathless new post over at omgubuntu proudly boasts that the market share of Linux on the desktop jumped “from 0.96% in January 2011 to 1.41% by the year’s end.” (That could equally be be written as a close to 50% rise in Linux’ popularity). No doubt this will scare the pants off Steve …
Category: free software
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/01/30/tomorrow-the-world/
Jan 22 2012
moxie’s proxy
Moxie Marlinspike, a security researcher probably best known for his SSL proxy tool, likes google even less than I do. His googlesharing website says: “Google thrives where privacy does not. If you’re like most internet users, Google knows more about you than you might be comfortable with. Whether you were logged in to a Google …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/01/22/moxies-proxy/
Jan 12 2012
tails in a spin
When I first tested running a tails mirror on one of my VMs, the traffic level reported by vnstat ran at around 20-30 GiB per day. I figured I could live with that because it meant that my total monthly traffic would be unlikely to exceed my monthly 1TB allowance. However, when I checked the …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/01/12/tails-in-a-spin/
Dec 19 2011
tunnelling X over ssh
OK, yes, I know there are probably already a gazillion web pages on the ‘net explaining exactly how to do this, but I got caught out by a silly gotcha when I tried to do this a couple of days ago, so I thought I’d post a note. Firstly, X is not exactly a secure …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/12/19/tunnelling-x-over-ssh/
Nov 09 2011
ubuntu de-throned
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/11/09/ubuntu-de-throned/
Nov 09 2011
dis-unity
The reaction to Ubuntu’s move to Unity seems to be getting wider coverage. Over at LWN, Bruce Byfield blogged recently about the rift between the Ubuntu developers and its users. In particular he highlights Tal Liron’s entry to the Ubuntu launchpad bug wiki under bug number 882274. In that entry, entitled “Community engagement is broken” …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/11/09/dis-unity/
Nov 06 2011
fully minted
After exploring the alternatives to Ubuntu, I finally settled on Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) running Xfce as the desktop. I am now Ubuntu free and have a desktop that looks the way /I/ want it to look rather than the way some design nut wants it to look. I am also hopeful that the …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/11/06/fully-minted/
Oct 19 2011
time to ditch ubuntu?
I’ve used Ubuntu on my desktops/laptops and netbook for some time now. I think my first installation was 6.06 (the version 6.04 which was late by two months) and my desktops currently all run 10.04 LTS. I got over the minor irritation of the move of the window control buttons from the top right to …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/10/19/time-to-ditch-ubuntu/
Jan 04 2011
critical security update to wordpress
This blog comes to you courtesy of those excellent free open source authors who have contributed to wordpress. Unfortunately, in common with all software, wordpress inevitably has some bugs. Worse, some of the those bugs can occasionally be sufficiently bad as to make the software vulnerable to remote exploitation by ne’er do wells and other …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/01/04/critical-security-update-to-wordpress/
Sep 12 2010
a graphical web of trust
I recently stumbled upon sig2dot, a gpg/pgp keyring graph generator. In fact this seems to have been around for some time, but I’d never come across it before. It can be used to generate a graph of all of the signature relationships in a GPG/PGP keyring, and, like other visualisation tools, this graphical image producing …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/09/12/a-graphical-web-of-trust/
May 02 2010
ubuntu 10.04 – minor, and some not so minor, irritations
If and when the teething problems in 10.04 are fixed and the distro looks stable enough to supplant my current preferred version, I will be faced with one or two usability issues. In this version, canonical have taken some design decisions which seem to have some of the fanbois frothing at the mouth. The most …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/05/02/ubuntu-10-04-minor-and-some-not-so-minor-irritations/
May 02 2010
ubuntu 10.04 problems
The lastest LTS version of ubuntu (10.04, or lucid lynx according to your naming preferences) was released to an eagerly waiting public on 29 April. Long term support (LTS) versions are supported for three years on the desktop and five years on the server instead of the usual 18 months for the normal releases. My …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/05/02/ubuntu-10-04-problems/
Mar 21 2010
psp video revisited
I last posted about ripping DVDs to PSP format back in November 2007. Since then I have used a variety of different mechanisms to transcode my DVDs to the MP4 format preferred by my PSP. A couple of years ago I experimented with both winff and a command line front end to ffmpeg called handbrake. …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/03/21/psp-video-revisited/
Jan 23 2010
life is too short to use horde
I own a bunch of different domains and run a mail service on all of them. In the past I have used a variety of different ways of providing mail, from simple pop/imap using dovecot and postfix, through to using the database driven mail service in egroupware. Recently I have consolidated mail for several of …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/01/23/life-is-too-short-to-use-horde/
Jan 22 2010
tor server compromise
According to this post by Roger Dingledine, two tor directory servers were compromised recently. In that post Dingledine said: In early January we discovered that two of the seven directory authorities were compromised (moria1 and gabelmoo), along with metrics.torproject.org, a new server we’d recently set up to serve metrics data and graphs. The three servers …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/01/22/tor-server-compromise/
Nov 11 2009
OSS shouldn’t frighten the horses
Since I first read that Nokia were adding much needed telephony capability to their N8x0 range of internet tablets I have been watching the development of the new Nokia N900 with much interest. It looks to be potentially the sort of device I would buy. Despite all the hype around the iPhone, I really dislike …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2009/11/11/oss-shouldnt-frighten-the-horses/
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with thanks to Dr Fun
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