xs4all laat linux gebruikers in de kou

Onlangs heb ik mijn internet abonnement bij Telfort opgezegd en me aangemeld bij xs4all. Ik deed dit in de veronderstelling dat xs4all de beste provider van Nederland is. Een provider die werkelijk verstand heeft van computers en een hart heeft voor de gebruikers. Xs4all heeft een reputatie hoog te houden. Je zou mogen verwachten dat linux gebruikers bij xs4all met open armen worden ontvangen en dat al hun diensten voor linux geschikt zouden zijn. Ik ben op een ruwe wijze uit mijn droom gewekt. Xs4all biedt zijn abonnees gratis mobiel internet hebt. Tenzij je linux gebruikt. Linux gebruikers zijn dus tweederangs klanten bij xs4all. Pech joh, waarom gebruik je geen windows zoals iedereen? Moet je maar niet zo moeilijk doen. Een dergelijke mentaliteit verwacht je bij goedkope internetboeren zoals Telfort of Tele2, maar niet bij xs4all. Noblesse oblige. Het is zeker niet onmogelijk om mobiel internet te leveren voor linux. Er zijn zat providers die dat doen. Ik zou zeggen xs4all doe er wat aan! Nogmaals; noblesse oblige! Ik hoop niet dat ik meer van dit soort teleurstellende ervaringen met xs4all moet doormaken. In dat geval ben ik na een jaar weer weg bij xs4all. Dan blijkt dat xs4all niets is dan een te dure internetboer.

IBM gets hip with 'cool' Ubuntu PC deal

Canonical offers Office 'alternative'
By Gavin Clarke in San Francisco → More by this author
Published Tuesday 5th August 2008 19:02 GMT
Nail down your security priorities. Ask the experts and your peers at The Register Security Debate, September 24 2008.

LinuxWorld IBM is today expected to announce expanded backing for Ubuntu in a desktop and collaboration software deal to challenge Microsoft's Windows and Office.

Canonical, Ubuntu's commercial sponsor, has agreed to re-distribute IBM's Lotus Symphony productivity suite with its public Linux repositories. More details are expected later today.

The news follows IBM's decision earlier this year to offer a version of its Open Collaboration Client Solution (OCCS) for Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is, according to the suits at IBM, "a Linux operating system that scores high marks on usability and 'the cool factor.'"

The deal is expected to be announced by IBM at the same time it announces agreements with Ubuntu, Red Hat and SuSE to work with local hardware partners to build and distribute "Microsoft-free" PCs. Systems will feature the Linux distros running IBM's OCCS and other open-source applications.

IBM said products would be tailored to vertical sectors and be branded by the local IT partners.

IBM added that shifting market forces, slow adoption of Windows Vista, and growing demand for alternatives to "costly" Windows and Office-based machines: "Offer a glimpse of the ripe market opportunity for Linux-based desktops to proliferate."

The company will also announce Novell's Linux Enterprise Server 10 as the first Linux distro to be shipped with a new line of self-managing server appliances targeting small businesses. The appliances, Linux Foundations, are designed to promote uptake of IBM's Domino email and collaboration software in SMBs.

Accompanying the news, IBM announced the Lotus Foundations ISV Developer Toolkit, which it said would simplify packaging of Domino applications for appliances.®

Wife-slaying Linux guru may have 'developmental disability'

Lawyers brand Hans Reiser 'mentally incompetent'
By Chris Williams → More by this author
Published Thursday 3rd July 2008 15:27 GMT
Nail down your security priorities. Ask the experts and your peers at The Register Security Debate, September 24 2008.

Lawyers for prominent Linux developer Hans Reiser, who was convicted of his wife's murder in April, have written to the trial judge this week to argue that their client may be mentally ill.

In the brief filing to California Superior Court, Reiser's defense attorney William DuBois wrote: "I declare under penalty of perjury that in my carefully considered opinion, defendant Hans Reiser, may be mentally incompetent as a result of mental disorder or developmental disability, defendant is unable to understand the nature of the criminal proceedings or to assist counsel in the conduct of the defense in a rational manner."

According to Wired, prosecutor Paul Hora slammed the move, saying: "This is complete and total nonsense. All of a sudden he's incompetent a week before he gets sentenced." The insanity claim is expected to delay sentencing, which had been scheduled for 9 July.

Hans Reiser, the inventor of ReiserFS, was found guilty of first degree murder on 29 April this year. There were hints following his conviction that he would lead police to his Russian wife Nina's body, which has never been found. That now seems unlikely.

During the almost six-month trial Reiser's defense had argued that 31-year-old Nina simply returned to Russia, leaving Hans Reiser to care for their two children. The jury did not believe the story, however. Police found her car in the Oakland hills six days after she disappeared in September 2006. Hans Reiser's Honda was found waterlogged with the passenger seat missing and two books about police murder investigations inside.

There was also a sleeping bag in the Honda, stained with Nina Reiser's blood.

Defense lawyers said during the trial that the fact Reiser had removed the passenger seat and hosed down the interior of his car was a sign of Asperger's syndrome, not guilt.

The overtures to leading police to the body had been interpreted as a ploy by the defense to win a lighter sentence, but would have required negotiation cooperation from a mentally competent Hans Reiser. If psychological assessments find him to be mentally incompetent, it's likely the judge will send him to an institution rather than jail, at least until he is judged sane again. ®

Is it lift off for Linux?

I had a very interesting conversation with Mr Ubuntu, aka Mark Shuttleworth, at the end of last week and you can read the resulting news story here.

080421_shuttleworth432.jpgHis main point was that Linux, and use of Ubuntu, was on the rise. He also had lots of interesting things to say about open source more broadly, the Microsoft-Yahoo deal etc, which I thought I'd detail here as a Q&A.

Q: Will a combined Microsoft-Yahoo deal impact on the open source world?

Mark Shuttleworth: It will be very interesting for Microsoft, if the deal goes through. They will have 20,000 people (at Yahoo) who are firm free software advocates reporting to Steve Ballmer.

That is going to change Microsoft culture in a healthy way. Talking to Microsoft employees I get the sense they realise they can't transform that company into a Windows-based company without killing it.

It will be healthy for them because they will be in the same position as their customers - having to use open source software alongside proprietorial software and finding appropriate places to do each of these things.

That will make them a more normal company

Q: How is Linux innovating beyond the desktop?

Mark Shuttleworth: We are seeing a lot of innovation in the consumer electronics area - all driven by Linux.

Motorola, for example, has said that 60% of their phones will be running on Linux within three years. I expect that figure to not stop at 60%. It will power on right past that.

The majority of the new small phone manufacturers are a real hotbed of innovation in China, Taiwan, Korea and Japan and are using Linux as a platform.

It suggests that Linux enables anyone to innovate. One of the harshest criticisms I ever saw coming from the proprietorial software world of Linux was that it only copied the ideas that had already been proved in the commercial software world.

This is quite deeply offensive to anyone who has been close to the open source. If you look at all the innovation in internet itself, which is largely powered by free software, and then if you look at the innovation placed on top of that - everything from YouTube to Facebook, eBay, Amazon, Google - these extraordinarily innovative technology companies are really powered by free software.

Now increasingly we are seeing innovation happening on things that every day consumers use, like Firefox.

If you look at innovation in the web browser - Firefox faced a long walk in the desert as it reached for feature parity with Internet Explorer. But once it reached that it became an extraordinary hotbed of innovation.

Anybody who had interesting idea about how to make the browser better could build that as a Firefox extension.

Q: What impact can open source have in the commercial world?

Mark Shuttleworth: Open source is the key. The tech industry has tended towards natural monopolies, towards a single company which comes to dominate the whole platform - it's true of databases, true of operating systems, of every category of software, due to the network effect.

Open source is the very best defence we have against that underlying tendency.

Q: What are the common misconceptions of open source and Linux?

Mark Shuttleworth: One of the key things is that end users are very often not aware that a particular piece of software is open source or not - and that's a good thing.

For example, when people sit down in front of an Apple computer [they don't know that] a lot of key capabilities are produced as open source.

Folks should adopt the best software for themselves. Increasingly that's open source.

I'm willing to bet the majority of people in the UK are running Linux in the home if they have a set top box or digital photo frame, or wireless access point.

The vast majority of those devices are powered by Linux. And the economics of them only possible because of open source.

Q: What do you make of Microsoft's assertion that Linux infringes many of the firm's patents?

Mark Shuttleworth: Microsoft has said there might be patent infringements but haven't said which patents Linux/Ubuntu might infringe.

Anybody who works in the Linux industry is very confident that if Microsoft were able to say which patent issue needs to be addressed then Linux folks would either invalidate that patent or find a way to implement Linux without trampling on that intellectual property.

There's no culture of piracy in the Linux community. It does everyone a bit of a disservice when Microsoft characterises the open source community as being cavalier with intellectual property.

In fact, the open source community is extremely respectful of intellectual property rules.

It's disingenuous of Microsoft to say there are patent issues and then refuse to say what they are. It looks to me like they are trying to create an element of uncertainty.

Q: Will you be returning to space in the future?

Mark Shuttleworth: I'd really like to. I expect to. It's a great privilege and not something I'd want to squander.

I feel I have to do some other things on earth that justify me taking up a precious seat.

I stay in fairly close contact with folks who run the Nasa and Russian projects so if the right opportunity comes up...

Ubuntu 'reaping Linux dividend'

By Darren Waters
Technology editor, BBC News website



The public perception of open source software is changing fast, said Mark Shuttleworth, who leads distribution of the Ubuntu operating system (OS).

A new version of Ubuntu, a version of the Linux OS, is released on Thursday.

Mr Shuttleworth said the success of the Asus Eee PC and the work of the One Laptop Per Child programme had driven awareness of open source.

"There has been a sea change in the way people think of Linux, which is very healthy," he said.

"We have seen a real shift in the last six months from folks seeing open source as either a super-specialist thing for people who run data centres or as an enthusiast thing, to something which is energising a lot of the straight commercial PC industry," said Mr Shuttleworth.

Platform development

He manages Canonical software, which is the primary sponsor of distribution for Ubuntu, and a key element in the platform's development.

He is also well-known for being the second-ever, self-funded space tourist, travelling to the International Space Station aboard the Soyuz spacecraft in 2002.


If people think of their daily experience as a sit down on the web, we know that people can have very compelling experience on Linux
Mark Shuttleworth

Mr Shuttleworth said ordinary consumers were beginning to turn to Ubuntu, and to Linux more generally, to improve their daily computing experience.

"If people think of computing as going to a PC, sitting down and starting Word, then the traditional view, of using Windows and Office, will persist.

"But if people think of their daily experience as a sit down on the web, we know that people can have a very compelling experience on Linux.

"In fact, we know it is a better web experience because they can do it without spyware, without viruses."

Mr Shuttleworth said he believed there were about eight to nine million users of Ubuntu worldwide.

"Most of the growth in users is from people buying a device that comes with Ubuntu shipped or wanting something for a second or older computer and are looking to tech-savvy friends for guidance," he said.

'Most significant'

He described the latest version of Ubuntu, dubbed Hardy Heron, as "perhaps our most significant ever".

The version will have three years of "long term support" from Canonical, which Mr Shuttleworth believes will make it more attractive for large-scale roll-outs of machines powered by the operating system.




He said the French police force was currently deploying 50,000 Ubuntu-powered machines, while Spanish education authorities were rolling out 500,000 desktops with the OS.

Hardy Heron also has improved support for multimedia, including photo editing, music sharing and video playback, he said.

The version has also been designed to make installation simpler and give users the chance to try the OS without making radical alterations to their current computer set-up.

"This is the first version that you can install under Windows.

"Instead of re-partitioning your hard drive and taking some fairly risky steps, effectively you can now install under Windows without modifying your system."

Ubuntu can be installed on PC and Mac machines and is one of a number of versions of Linux.

Mr Shuttleworth said: "It's a favourite version of Linux both for specialists and one that specialists would recommend to a cousin, aunt or uncle who want to have a stable desktop internet experience.

"There are other versions of Linux that are better for a particular purpose - but Ubuntu strives to be a general platform that is secure and self-maintained."