Hello everyone. (It’s been a long time since I posted anything in this english weblog.)

Anyways, I’ve just accepted and agreed with the good people of FSFE/Creative Commons Sweden and Wikimedia Sweden that we (Free software in schools Norway/FRISK) will hold a Skolelinux workshop at the FSCONS October 24th – 26th at Chalmers IT-University in Gothenburg/Sweden.

The workshop will comprise of an short introduction to what Skolelinux is, some elite diskless thin-client booting and of course a lot of hands-on play by the session attendees. I’m really looking forward to getting that act up and running. It’s been a whole year since my last workshop at NKUL 2007 at NTNU in Trondheim/Norway, (too "#&1&%&=!! long ago if you ask me) and it’ll be nice to get some "playtime" with fresh users of our beloved distro!

In other, totally un-related news: I’m on my honeymoon, the big one, currently in Spain, setting sail for Italy in two days time aboard RCCL’s Voyager of the Seas. mm.

So, hear me out. Microsoft might be proclaimed as the nemesis of Free Software and all that, but that doesn’t make Bill Gates as a person a bad guy. He has the foundation, he helps people around the world.. and; He obviously has a great sense of humor about his own semi-retirementplan from his until now fulltime job at Microsoft.

This video is an outcut from his CES 2008 keynote showing how "he and some friends" picture the days running up to his semi-retirement. What a watch 🙂
Thank you for making me burst in tears of laughter Bill!

(28 MB!)

..now, were did I put that x-bill-highscore screenshot?

Today the Free software in schools Norway (Fri programvare i skolen, FRISK) organisation had it’s general assembly at the Skolelinux-project gathering at Sinsen school in Oslo. The election comitee signed off for a board comprising of the following people:

 Anders Kringstad (me, Leader)
 Morten Werner Forsbring (deputy leader, developer contact)
 Jørgen Grønlund (head of echonomy)
 Andreas Bach (board secretary)
 Lars Risan (head of web)
 
Three people were elected as substitute members of the board:
 Ronny Aasen
 Frode Jemtland
 Alf Tony Bätz

I greatly look forward to working with the new board. It’s exciting to be able to join forces with such able and knowledged people.

So, without any more fuzz, let’s roll up the sleeves and start working on getting FRISK in shape for a new great year of free software in the educational sector!

Dear weblog readers,

There is now a mere five days until I’m getting married. Married. Let’s taste that one a little longer. A fine dictionary I offen use says this about marriage:

married: united in wedlock; the union of two people; interconnected or joined; wedded
marriage: the social institution under which a man and woman establish their decision to live as husband and wife by legal commitments; a relationship in which two people have pledged themselves to each
other in the manner of a husband and wife, without legal sanction

These definitions of course go on with explaining the various different legal, ceremonical, religious and inter human relation sides of being married. Today I have a bunch of tasks to complete. There is calls being made to both the museum (Sverresborg) and the restaurant (Bagle) at wich the dinner will be held. In addition I’m finalizing work on getting someone to play a guitar at the ceremony, getting songs readied for printing, buying a big white umbrella for Jorunn (just to make sure *it* *will* *not* *rain* (#@$curses$$¡£!)

With the five days to go it’ll be a rollercoaster ride week and just to make things more complicated Visma is moving to the new office building tomorrow, with me and Andreas going to share a new corner top-floor office with two other colleagues.

(PRESS RELEASE – remember kids, you saw it here first)
Debian-Edu: Skolelinux 3.0 "Terra" available for free download!

* Oslo – July 22., 2007
Skolelinux 3.0 is ready. This is an community release with comprehensive support from regional and national projects in Germany, Spain, France, Greece and Norway. The Skolelinux project is now a part of Debian under the name Debian-Edu. Several other projects have made additional functionality to Skolelinux tailored for national needs. Skolelinux now supports more than 50 countries.

This weekend developers from the Debian-edu project Skolelinux gathered
in Trondheim, Norway for a push towards the new 3.0 release of
Skolelinux. The release codenamed "Terra" should not be too far off
into the future following useful debuging, 

So, after months of speculation, hard tinkering among the free software camp-people and alot of public press — Dell went public with its offering of Ubuntu Linux pre-installed on computers from their ‘DellDirect’-webpages. Dell will not provide software-support. That goes to Cannonical – the company thats business is based on the success of Ubuntu.

I have been thinking abit about this, and first off I can’t help think ‘Why now?, why Ubuntu?’

It would be clear that Dell have recieved a lot of response to their request for response about what people would like to see happen with their offerings. Ubuntu was the single most requested ‘feature’ most consumers asked for. That would explain ‘why Ubuntu’, mostly. Seccondly this shows the push behind Cannonical, the financial backing company of the Ubuntu distribution. Mark Shuttleworth and his team of sales, marketing and support have really gotten it right.

The Ubuntu slogan ‘Linux for human beings’ seems fitting for the outline of this deal. This is for sure an explosive bundle: Dell have for years had some problems with it’s business reputation among ‘professionals’ for being ‘low-end’. With one of the Ubuntu-people on the image of the latest edition of the Ubuntu-webpage proudly wearing a Dell jumper that has for sure changed at the Cannonical/Ubuntu camp. The planet is buzzing with ideas, embracement and acceptance right now. I think Dell will see a surge in direct shopping of Linux-ready(!) computers from it’s webpages.

I for my part have ran Ubuntu on my Dell PowerEdge-servers for years. I think I have about 60 of them in production right now, and others at work have about 20 Windows-based servers. My laptop is a Dell – Inspiron 9400 (yes people I *have* a permit for moving it around!). It has never seen anything else than the Edgy Eft and the Feisty Fawn. Clearly the hardware and the Linux-kernel is working well. Old differences in terms of hardware-based RAID-controllers, missing drivers for hardware, etc are now a story of the past. Both servers and laptops works great with Linux.

I guess you have it there. Ubuntu was just ‘right’ for Dell. It’s been the single most successful Linux-distribution the past year in numbers of downloads and hits (distrowatch says so). Dell wanted to get a shot of the free software fun and Linux-business before their peers took it all home. I can’t say that I’m either surprised or pessimistic right now. This will for sure mean alot more press, a lot more people atleast reviewing Linux as a choice and option and ofcourse – support for Linux-based solutions will grow among the hardware-makers as they rush to get some of the droppings Dell leave behind.

Way to go Cannonical – Dude, you’re getting Ubuntu.

Yesterdays release of Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (7.04) marks yet another great improvement for users of free and open source operatingsystems. The Ubuntu delveopers have laid down a great deal of work into making Feisty a stable, polished and very well-working release. The improvements are probably best aknowledged by the fact that they are mostly subtile to newcomers and might not be seen because you just expect such things to work in a polite manner. The new ‘upstart’ that loads Ubuntu within 30 seconds on most computers represent one feature I believe many users will tend to forget after getting used to fast bootups, until they try to boot either another Linux-distro or go back to Windows. Another such feature is the new and greatly improved ‘Network Manager’ that incorporates wireless, wired and VPN-connectivity within a single application. It’s also very usable and adds another simple layer of helping hands on the wheel for users.

Summarized I think we’re off to a great new year for free- and open source software. The release of Ubuntu 7.04 is certainly one of the dotted markings on the timeline so far this year.
Thank you!

OK, so here’s the story:
Last season I spent about 2359 km on my bike, bikeriding with the wonderful geeks of wheelz.biz. That distance was laid down on a Hardrocx Cross Machine 2005 bike (please notice the fine "Jan Ullrich"-style grin). It’s not a bad bike, but keeping up with machines like Magnus’ Bianchi 928 Carbon Ultegra Mix 10, not to mention Asbjørn’s Giant TCR Composite can be a real PITA. My new bike ain’t much of a contender to the Bianchi or the Giant, but it’s a start, a good one. It’s a Merida 07 Road Racing, complete with Shimano Ultegra 20 gearing, Tiagra 105 brakes and Merida RHS Single Carbon frame and Carbon Lite fork.

Today Tollef, to many known as tfheen or Mithrandir on IRC was featured on /. with the announcement of the software freeze of Ubuntu Feisty Fawn. The /.-post spawns from an article at ZD Net Australia. The article over at ZD Net Australia outlines among other things the road beyond Feisty with 3D (berryl/compiz) and includes Mark Shuttleworths weblog post about proprietary drivers a while ago. The freeze have not been featured on Planet Ubuntu yet so we might see a big splash of posts soon.

Feisty Fawn is due in April 2007.