The Joys of Open Source Software

You know, I've been using open source software for some time now and occasionally I forget all that I walked away from when I left the closed source world. In addition to the power, freedom, flexibility, I've grown used to in the world of Open Source Software I sometimes forget one other benefit FOSS comes with... I was walking through the store with my girlfriend the other day when I came across something on the shelf I just had to take a picture of with my N900:


and before I finished laughing I noticed on the shelf below it:


I sometimes forget in addition to Windows itself being costly, most people get conned into spending further money on "protection" software.

While open source software is not free, it is very much free of monetary cost. I just have to step back and remember to count my lucky charms at the end of the day that so many devoted developers are committed to the world of Open Source software. It has easily saved me thousands of dollars in closed source software across the piles of computers I have laying around my house.

I'd just like to say thank you to all the developers out there that spend their time hacking away at code for everyone to use and share. Many are grateful for your time and dedication.

Cheers,
~Jeff Hoogland

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Bodhi Linux Final Release Candidate Goes Live

The Bodhi Linux team and I are proud to announce the release of our third and final release candidate. This release includes several important bug fixes including several that increase boot time. For a full change log please see the forum post here.

The first thing you will notice is that we now have a new background image for the LiveCD menu and your grub menu:


Bodhi pride's itself on being minimalistic so it doesn't come with much in the way of default applications. We also highly value user input and after conducting a poll we came to the conclusion that Fiefox 4.0 was no longer the best default browser. After having almost a three way split between Firefox 3.6, Firefox 4.0, and Chromium for favorite browser, the team and I made the choice of going with something that was light and wouldn't take up much disc space on the default install.

The winner ended up being Midori. Midori is a fast, GTK based, webkit browser that has an install foot print of only a few megabytes. After working with the Midori developers the browser now also supports the AptURL protocol necessary for it to function with our online software center.


Speaking of default software - you will notice one new tool in the default install of Bodhi. The light weight graphical text editor Leafpad is now packaged by default. Don't worry, this is the last added application you will see in Bodhi.


After installing you will notice that our login screen no longer has excessively large "login" text on it:


After logging in you will notice we have a new theme in our default selection - Brown on Bodhi:


If you are using Bodhi on a tablet computer you should be happy to know we are now using the developmental (but stable and sleek) ELFE launcher by default in our tablet profile:


ELFE video preview:



The team at Bodhi has also been steadily growing. We have four translators working on our team now and you will find our quick start guide (default local home page on the disc) is now available in five languages.

This is our last release candidate before our "stable" release at the end of this month. We are fairly certain most of the kinks are worked out at this point, but if you do find any bugs please be sure to let us know about them!

You can get Bodhi in 32bit flavor via direct download here or torrent download here.

Cheers,
~Jeff Hoogland

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Twenty Sleek GTK Themes for your Linux Desktop

Last month I posted about twenty two different icon sets you could use to class up your Linux desktop. Today I would like to share with you twenty of my favorite GTK themes that look fairly sleek. A picture is worth a 1,000 words as they say - so how about we just stick to a screen shot overview:

23oz

Ashes

Azenis Green

Black Diamond

Blue Joy

Cole

Country Oak

Darklooks

Dust

Khali

Kiwi

Moomex

Murrina Chrome

Murrina Cream

Raptor

Silent Night

Tan

Taqua

Wii Black

WoW Elementary

Do you have a favorite GTK theme I haven't listed here? If so drop a comment below letting me know what it is!

Cheers,
~Jeff Hoogland

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The Quality of FOSS Blogs

You may or may not be aware that I am the current project leader for Bodhi Linux. As such, in addition to developing the distribution I've also done my best to contact various websites that do write ups about Linux related things to do write ups about Bodhi. After all, what is the use of developing something if no one is going to use it? Up until now most everything that folks had written about Bodhi had been, fair, decently objective, and at least a small bit researched.

This evening I read an article that struck a bit of a nerve with me. I had contacted the author of Dedoimedo a couple months back to see if he would be willing to take a look at Bodhi. He said he was interested and then sent me an email back letting me know:

"Just an early FYI, I started testing the distro. It's got lots of issues,

I'm gonna release that in the review, but I wanted you to know up ahead, it's only fair"

Great, I love constructive user feedback. Find an issue? Let us know and we will get it fixed - we are still in a "release candidate" stage with the Bodhi project so we know issues are bound to occur.

I had been wondering exactly what "lots of issues" he had encountered, we have a decent user base now and no one else had reported anything more than a few minor things. Earlier this week he finally posted his thoughts about Bodhi - I was a bit turned off that he had completely missed the point of the project. We are not trying to be Pinguy OS or Zorin. We do not think it is necessary to install "everything and the kitchen sink" for all users. In fact quite the opposite, we pride ourselves on the exact opposite - user choice by allowing them to easily customize their own system.

He spent most all of what he wrote complaining about the lack of pre-installed applications found in the minimalistic distribution. This is like purchasing a fork and then complaining that it is difficult to eat soup with said utensil - just utter non-sense.

He then goes on to complain about a few configurable features of Enlightenment, including how it handles window focus and the behavior of maximized applications and your shelves. Towards the end he also says:

"Getting the extra stuff requires a liberal use of the package manager, turning minimalistic into a saga of hard work"

Which further proves how little he actually looked into the project itself because installing software from our online software center is about as easy as it gets.

At the end of the day he did come across one actual bug with the distro - the fact that the default home page in Firefox was a "restore last session" message, a small oversight before building the disc image. This has been corrected in our latest release and we extend our apologies to all those out there than had to click the restore button before going on with their webrowsing on Bodhi 0.1.5

Odds are you have heard the statement "Linux is not Windows" before. This isn't a bad thing, in fact different is good - it is however a fair warning that if you try to use Linux thinking it is going to look and feel the same as Windows you are going to be sorely disappointed. In the same respect - Bodhi is not Ultimate Edition or Pinguy OS and we are not trying to be. We advertise what we are, so the user (should) know what they are getting before they download our latest release.

I guess all in all I am just a little disappointed that some where as popular as dedoimedo gave such a biased post with obviously little research into what the project was about. I guess in the end it is a healthy reminder that you need to take everything you read on the internet with a (sometimes huge) grain of salt. Why am I posting this rebuttal here? Because Dedoimedo is kind enough to have any form of commenting disabled on his website (I could guess a few reasons why). At the end of the day I guess "any advertising is good advertising" - Right?

What do you think? Was dedoimedo objective in his post and I am just overacting because I am personally involved in Bodhi or am I right in my annoyance with his post?

~Jeff Hoogland

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Open Source Software is not Free

When you have been suggesting free open source software to people as longs as I have you are bound to run into at least a few people believe FOSS is only for "cheap" people (I've found typically these people have Microsoft Certifications). They accuse you of only using free software because it comes at no cost to you. Even if this was the first reason you gravitated towards FOSS, odds are if you are still here after some months there is now more to it than just "free of cost".

One of my favorite quotes is:

Nothing is ever free.

I believe this statement to be true for a number of reasons. The important thing to recognize is that I believe the "free" in this quote and the "free" in FOSS are two different types of "free". In the quote the "free" refers to a monetary value. Even if you pay no monetary value for software - that software cost someone, somewhere, something. Whether that something is a paycheck for the software developer coming from a company backing the project or it is simply a dedicated individual hacking at code during his spare moments - that "free" software comes at a cost to someone.

Now - what do I believe the "free" in FOSS means? Freedom of course! The code is open - you are allowed to change and redistribute it as you wish. Add features, fix bugs, or fork a project all together. You are not tied down in messy, restrictive EULAs - your computer is truly your own. You are not "renting" your software. Because this software is free of cost to the end user you also have the freedom to change at any time. Don't like KDE? Try Enlightenment. Don't like Fedora? Try OpenSUSE. Don't like OpenOffice.org? Try LibreOffice. (This list never really stops)

I've found that the longer most people use FOSS the more likely they are to contribute back to the projects they enjoy. We can all help in different ways - if you can spare a few dollars for your favorite project I'm sure they won't say no - if you cannot there are plenty of other ways to help - code, support, art... If you haven't already drop a message to your favorite open source project and do so to find out how you can help! Without community backing the world of FOSS would not be the thriving ecosystem it is today.

~Jeff Hoogland

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22 Linux Icon Sets that are Great

Once of the best things about FOSS is the amount of customization it allows for! So why leave your Linux desktop bland with the default icon set that comes with your distribution? There are many good icon sets out there, the following are the names and screen shots of the best ones I've collected from around the web over the years (if you use Bodhi Linux you can easily install any of these icon sets via our art page):

042

Awoken

Azenis

Buuf Deuce

Candy

Clarity

Darkfire

Elementary

Faenza

Fast Forward (FFW)

Gartoon Redux

GMetalik

Jungle

LagaDesk

Last Amazing Grays

Lynx Black

Mac

MaXo ReMix

Nuovext2

Oxygen Refit

Ubo

Wood

Forgive me for not providing a link to the last icon set - I can not seem to locate where I had downloaded it from some time ago.

Do you have a favorite icon set on your Linux desktop that I did not list here? If so let me know - always looking for new things to play with on my desktops!

~Jeff Hoogland

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