bobbyratliff

Creating structures that automate things people do every day.

Free software on my computer

I am intrigued by Richard Stallman’s free software philosophy, and while I would not consider myself a free software fanatic, I wanted to see how much non-free software I have on my primary computer.

My primary computer is an HP Compaq dc7900. I’m running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS as my main operating system. Right now I have the following non-free software programs on it, and I think this is a representative list for many GNU/Linux enthusiasts:

  • Graphics driver
  • A few games (Sauerbraten, Urban Terror, Assault Cube)
  • Skype
  • Flash plugin
  • Microsoft fonts

These packages can be easily found by using “Virtual RMS” (ubuntu package vrms), which basically gives advice that Richard M Stallman would give if he looked at the list of software on my computer.

Web browser extensions

Then I thought I should examine the list of web browser extensions I use regularly to see if they are open source.

Chrome

Lately Chrome has been my main browser. I like Chrome’s default feature set, and I’ve only needed to add 3 extensions to it.

  • RSS Subscription Extension (by Google). I guess this really is by Google, because all the bug links on the extension info page link to crbug.com, which redirects to the chromium google code project. This doesn’t make clear which license is used.
  • Super Full Feeds for Google Reader. This extension is simple. As soon as you visit the developer website, you can see that the code license is GNU GPL v3
  • Yet Another Google Bookmarks Extension. This developer page does not make clear what license is used.

The Social Factor

My boss’s boss at my summer internship loaned me “The Social Factor: Innovate, Ignite, and Win through Mass Collaboration and Social Networking,” by Maria Azua. (IBM Press, 2010)

The book focuses on some societal changes that are happening. The thesis of the book is that companies need to respond to these changes in order to succeed.

Ready for a history lesson? Chapter 1, “The Dawn of the Social Age,” covers some important background in communication technology. Each new communication technology (Radio, TV, Computer, Internet) had a faster adoption rate than the technology before it, and the result is a shift in how people communicate and share information. Chapter 2 discusses the implications for companies: employees are better able to share information if they can use these new technologies.

The next chapters discuss a number of social tools: blogs, wikis, tagging, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. As I read, I compared the tools the author discussed with tools that I have used. I am somewhat familiar with blogging, as I blog here and at midmncru.com. I have contributed to Wikipedia. My summer internship is at Securian, and our company uses SocialText for several internal Wikis. I have a Facebook account, but I haven’t tried Twitter or LinkedIn yet. Reading this book definitely swayed me toward trying out these services.

On the other hand, after taking my Computing Ethics class at SCSU, I am increasingly cautious about sharing information online. A recent article I found through ACM confirmed this. The Obama administration released a roadmap that discussed cyber security, saying “The public is insufficiently aware of the risk of sharing information in cyberspace — which can affect personal and national security.” Whenever you’re using the internet, your every action is tracked and cataloged somewhere, and you don’t always have control over it.

A Linux OS for my Eee PC

Two years ago I purchased an Eee PC 900 with a 16GB SSD and Windows XP. I left Windows XP on it and installed Eeebuntu 3.0. At this point I don’t remember if I installed Base or Standard. The Eeebuntu people became the Aurora OS people, and they have not released a stable OS since Eeebuntu 3.0.

Eeebuntu 3.0 is based on Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04, and support for Jaunty recently ended, so I will not be able to get security updates for it. To top it off, Google Chrome realized this, and has been complaining to me that my operating system is obsolete.

Windows XP itself is a bit old, and I don’t use it anyway. I decided to wipe out the entire hard drive and install a new operating system. I picked Xubuntu to try out first. I downloaded the Xubuntu ISO and used Ubuntu’s Startup Disk Creator tool to put it on a usb stick.

Backing up

I booted Xubuntu and used the command line to backup using an external hard drive with enough free space for a 16GB image of the entire Eee PC disk.

First, identify the name of the hard drive:

sudo fdisk -l

Then I ran the following command to backup the hard drive:

time sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=/media/ubuntu-backup/home/bobby/eeepcharddisk-20110620.dd
31522176+0 records in
31522176+0 records out
16139354112 bytes (16 GB) copied, 642.54 s, 25.1 MB/s

real    10m43.059s
user    0m40.083s
sys     5m36.741s

Installing Xubuntu

I used the shortcut on the desktop to start the installation.