Tsikbal: from my perspective

October has come, and with it Ubuntu 16.10. Codenamed Yakkety Yak, it isn't that big an update over Ubuntu 16.04 LTS though it has some interesting updates like Linux kernel 4.8, Unity 7.5 and Nautilus 3.20. In general, so far Ubuntu 16.10 has been worth the upgrade. I haven't come to any problems or serious bug. Performance on my system has been better on some aspects, while on others it has remained the same. Though I'd like to have seen an upgrade to Unity 8, the improvements that came with the 7.5 are really nice. As it has been the trend for the last couple of years, each new Ubuntu release come with improvements not revolutionary changes. That's good for most of the people that use the OS, and why I really love Ubuntu. While I can expect some changes, I can also expect that those changes won't be at the expense of braking my system. That is something really valuable for the average user, that wants her or his computer to work as expected after...

Blackberry has become a shadow fo what it was a few years ago, in large part because of Apple's iPhone and Google's Android devices. I can remember a time when the smartphone to get was a Blackberry one, now most consumers wouldn't even consider one. Personally, my first smartphone was a Nokia E63 , which I selected because at the time I was a big Nokia fan. That device really made me a fan of the QWERTY keyboard on smartphones and of the Symbian OS. When time came to replace the Nokia E63 I briefly considered the Nokia N8 , in a way to see how having a smartphone without a QWERTY keyboard would work for me. At the time, Nokia made Symbian open-source for a time before making it proprietary some time later. To be honest, I really was rooting for Nokia and Symbian to be able to make themselves strong players along Google's Android on the smartphone arena. But that didn't come to pass since Nokia went and made a deal with Microsoft, and later sell i...

This article on Linux Journal , called " The Many Paths to a Solution ", really gave an idea to explain to people who don't know much about Linux why are the so many distros out there. Many seem to believe that the main reason that there are so many reason for there being more than 50 actively maintained distros, is that Linux must not be really that good. That's not really the case, since the users of most of those distros could easily make a point for why their distro is great for them. Each distro represents a path to a solution to a problem that a group of users have to solve. That's why not every distro is a fit for every user, and also why many become disenchanted with Linux. In many of those cases, the user wasn't matched to the right distro to begin with. While in other times, the expectations weren't meet to what the distro offered. That's why its vital to match new users to the distro that better suits their needs, not to the d...

Last Monday the SAP server got busted by a virus, and all hell broke out. It took the better part of three days to set it back up, and by the fourth day it wasn't up to speed. Until this happened, nobody really gave a second thought to the fact that we all are dependent on central server to get the info we all need to do our jobs. SAP is vital for every department pass the information needed for all departments work smoothly. And while some of us use local storage to actually work some of the info in a more detailed way, our main source of information is centralized at a single server. At least in my case, and of my coworkers at my department, my work didn't come to a complete halt. Some of the info I work with, isn't dependent on SAP. As such, it means that I still could go ahead with some of my work. The same goes some of the other departments, though having access to the info on SAP sure does makes thing a lot easier. Yet, this event highlights the dangers...

Its official, Apple ditched the 3.5 mm headphone jack in favor of it's Lightning connector on the iPhone 7 . Now, Intel says that the 3.5 mm headphone jack should be replaced with a USB-C connector port. The main problem with the change, is the potential for users to get locked into an ecosystem because of compatibility issues. At this point, if you buy an iPhone 7 you'll need an adapter to use your current headphones. No doubt it the near future headphones using the Lightning connector will hit the market. The main issue here, is if Android smartphones will go with the Lighting connector or with the USB-C connector. The odds are that they go with the USB-C connector since Android already has support for it and they won't have to have to pay license fees to Apple to use it's Lightning connector. To be honest, USB-C connector is becoming ever more common. As such it has better odd of being able to replace the 3.5 mm headphone jack, and has better odds of...

Ever since OpenOffice.org became Apache OpenOffice.org , after Oracle's acquisition of  Sun Microsystems , it has been losing developers. Most of them went to fork, develop LibreOffice out of fear that OpenOffice would become an afterthought for Oracle. Even though Oracle gave contributed OpenOffice and it's source code to the Apache Software Foundation , after it indeed stop the development of the office suite, developers didn't came back to the project. As a consequence, development of OpenOffice has virtually stopped. On the other hand, LibreOffice has gained not only many new developers, but also widespread acceptance. Almost every mayor distro ships with it, and even the Italian government joining. So, learning that there is some serious consideration about shutting down the OpenOffice project all together due to lack of developers comes to the surprise of anyone. For me, its a bittersweet thing. For one, OpenOffice was the first open source offic...

One of the biggest misconceptions of free and open-source software( FOSS ) is that is free of cost. In reality, FOSS can have a monetary cost and still be fully compliant with the FOSS concept. In order to be considered free software it has to respect the following four freedoms: Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program for any purpose. Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish. Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute and make copies so you can help your neighbor. Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits. Freedoms 1 and 3 require source code to be available because studying and modifying software without its source code can range from highly impractical to nearly impossible. While some prefer keep the open-source part out, and just talk about free software, I prefer to the free and ...