Tsikbal: from my perspective

If we want a truly open and transparent government, all it's to relay on open standards and open source software. The reliance on proprietary software, and closed standards, would mean that the government would be at the mercy of a particular vendor or whoever hold the rights to the patents to the the standard. This is unacceptable, since the government shouldn't have to be subject to such limitations. What's more, every we all have the right to study the software that the government uses to see how it works and to make sure that it does what the government says it does. After all, we all have to interact with it, and need to be certain that it does what it made for in the best way possible. On the open standards, one of the main reasons to use them is the fact that all should be able to access the government's platforms without any limitation artificially imposed by a third party. By using open standards, government could make sure that all the people have...

That Apple is to open source it's Swift programming language , and that it will have support on Linux, is some good and welcome news. Swift is becoming popular fast, and it seems there are lot of good reasons for it to gain popularity. And that it's backed by a company like Apple, should give people the reassurance that it won't lack support in the long term. Even though I admit some suspicions on why Apple moved to open source Swift, I do welcome the idea to have such a tool for open source developers to use to work with. Specially because it could be a good place for beginners to learn to code, making it less intimidating to learn a skill that is becoming ever more relevant in the modern world. One of the things that Apple does well, is good software. While it's true that it has an iron grip on it, one has to admit that the quality of it is high. Many of the criticisms out there about Apple's software have more to do with the way it manages it, and t...

If you need that the open source model not only works on software, but that it can be adapted to other areas go ahead and read this article at Arstechnica . At the core of the open source model is not sharing for the sake of sharing, but collaboration among people that have a common problem that need to be solved. By allowing collaboration with other people, with whom one normally wouldn't have the chance to do so. Since the network of people working on a common platform on the same problem, the time needed to solve problems and ending with a mature design, is reduced by a wide margin. By adopting an open source model, the benefits out weight the cons that can be encountered by using it. Most importantly, you can concentrate more on differentiating your product rather than on solving the same design problems others are working on or have been already solved. With more time to work on the details that you need to work on to give your target market asks of your product, ...

After having some trouble with Ubuntu not turning off, or suspending, properly on a Gateway NEseries laptop I decided to move on to another Linux distro. The fist one I decide to give a try, was Kubuntu. I've heard great things of the distro itself, and the KDE Plasma Desktop user interface. Though I liked the distro, and KDE, I still had the same troubles I did and KDE didn't do much for me as a user. In someways, I didn't feel as comfortable with KDE as I did with Unity and just couldn't get up to speed or get KDE to my linking. So, I decided to move back to an old known distro. I jumped back to Linux Mint with Cinnamon as the user interface. I'm using 17.1 Rebeca, and I remembered why Linux Mint is, along with Ubuntu, my top pick of Linux distros. All in all, I found that Cinnamon 2.4.8 to be a lot more mature and stable. As such, I haven't had any of the bugs I used to encounter jumping at me. The best thing, is that the system as a whole so...

On my personal computer I run Ubuntu, while at work the computer I use a Windows 7 computer. As such, I get to compare the two on the daily basis and know the pros and cons of both systems. And every day, I wish that the company I work at to dish Windows in favor of a Linux distro. The main reason why the move is highly unlikely is because our operations rely on SAP, which really sucks on the user interface side. One of the aspects I loathe about Windows, is the systems updates. Most of the time, it adds about extra 5 minutes to the power down since. It's even worse if there are more than 10 updates to install. On Ubuntu, most the updates don't require to turn off the system to reboot to install and with the upcoming 4.0 Linux kernel the main reason from the reboot will be taken away. I used to like the Windows 7 user interface, but since Ubuntu moved to Unity I just can't stand it. Most importantly, I just find the Windows user interface to be just in the blin...

And yet again, this wired.com article points out the dangers of depending on proprietary software at all. While it may be true that if you use software from some established vendor you have less to worry about having to deal with this problem, the fact that no one can say it will never happen like it happen to the likes of Kodak . The fact that open source software gives you the possibility to keep the software you depend upon alive, since the users can come together to continue the work on the software from where the original company left. It puts the control of the software on the hands of the users, and its up to the user the degree of involvement on the development of the software it uses. Its okay to trust companies to develop and maintain the software we depend upon, but that's not a good reason to give them full control of said software. But, the user should always have ultimate control over the software. There is no way to understate how important that user ha...

With Ubuntu Touch finally coming to the market, and with it's possible release in Mexico soon, it all puts me in a peculiar situation. By the time I come to replace my smart phone, I might have to choose between continuing using Android or make the jump to Ubuntu. So far, I've liked Android. There has been some hiccups, there hasn't been one that I haven't been able to fix myself with a little bit of research. None of those problems has taken me more than a couple of hours to fix, so there isn't much to complain about. The user experience I've had so far, it has been quite good. The only complain, is that the device doesn't have that much memory. As such, that can't be blamed on Android; besides it has enough memory to house the apps that I like and use regularly without any problem. So, if I choose to continue with Android it would be with a device with more memory than the one I currently have. On the Ubuntu Touch side, I use Ubuntu on my ...