Posts Tagged free
FreeGeek Vancouver is Computer Heaven
Posted by pbg in General, User Groups on September 17th, 2009
Freegeek Vancouver is technology heaven and I can prove it. I took photos. It is thriving. It is a beehive of activity. FreeGeek is a ‘non-profit computer re-use and recycling centre’ that only opened in Vancouver a couple of years ago as a branch of the original operation in Portland, Oregon. They have expanded their facilities at least a couple times that I know of just to keep up with the community need to properly recycle computers. If you want to learn about technology, if you want to work in technology, if you want to learn about Free Open Source Software, FreeGeek Vancouver is the place to be. It is computer heaven, because that is where computers go to die and are reborn again.
What you can do at FreeGeek:
- Donate hardware, books.
- Recycle.
- Take short courses in hardware and software, or teach them if you have the background.
- Mentor someone.
- Volunteer for 24 hours and take away your own computer.
- Shop the computer thrift shop, for super affordable computers and peripheral devices.
- Learn to hack computers and technology, everything an engineer learns how to do.
- Learn about Ubuntu Linux, and attend the Vancouver Ubuntu User Group meetings.
- Take part in cleaning up the environmental problems generated by e-waste.
- Receive a grant of computer hardware as a non-profit community organisation.
- Donate money or materials for the FreeGeek wish list.
- Apply for a paid position, or join it as a board member.
Video on FreeGeek:
Find out lots more about FreeGeek at http://freegeekvancouver.org/ .
RMS Explains the Four Freedoms of Free Software
Posted by pbg in Conferences, GNU Linux, General on February 16th, 2009
Short excerpt from Richard Stallman’s lecture at UBC on 7 February 2009,
Sponsored by the Vancouver Institute and the UBC Faculty of Law
Dr Stallman is founder of the Free Software Foundation and progenitor of much of he Gnu/Linux operating system: http://www.gnu.org/
UPDATE: FULL audio lecture from the UBC talk in OGG vorbis format link
Richard Stallman Sings The Free Software Song
Posted by pbg in Conferences, GNU Linux, General on February 13th, 2009
KDE4 Killing the Linux Desktop
KDE is a desktop system, used on a few flavors of linux such as in SUSE and Ubuntu, especially the kde4 flavored release of Ubuntu, known as Kubuntu for the new release, 8.10, Intrepid Ibex. I was just stunned at its lack of services and I dont understand the choices they are making in developing this. I think somebody has really jumped the gun in releasing this software way before its time. I was loving kde 3.5 it had all I needed. But KDE4 is a clusterFxxk. Its the Vista of Linux Desktop now. But I am just left wondering why they ever would have done this to all the loyal Linux Desktop fans out there.
- Dolphin file manager sucks, has fewer features than Konqueror, and has a wierd click and select to open default which is just mysterious.
- Simple problems copying files in from a thumb drive or even from one directory or another
- no screen savers
- no desktop backgrounds supplied bas
- cant have separate backgrounds for desktops
- no intuitive way to place application icons on the application bar
- no way to tweak terminal or not very much
- plasma widgets act weird
- kde4 claims to be a bit more efficent on memory, but maybe its because there are fewer features. Actually, it runs pretty leaky.
- advanced effects killed my display pretty quickly
- makes my nvidia card driver flicker ever 10 seconds – envyNG fixed that…
Its just a real shame to take a community of the most loyal software users out there and kick them in head.
from a quick web search, there are lots of folks who are really frustrated and not a lot that are wow about it. Im going back to GNOME. At least it had features. And ah aint goin’ back until its got stuff I use. Like moving files from one folder to another successfully the first time.
If we are going to be your beta testers, then tell us ahead of time, please guys?
























