Mark Shuttleworth’s notes on the GNOME Usability Hackfest with some interesting mockups.
Linux
How to improve Free Software usability
Matthew Paul Thomas is back with an article about why Free Software has poor usability, with concrete suggestions for how to solve the problems. Thomas is an interaction designer who works for Canonical. You might remember his list of 69 usability problems in Ubuntu 5.04.
Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop Edition Released
The latest release of Ubuntu Linux has hit the download servers. One of the more exciting aspects of this release is that it contains a new installer that allows Windows users to install inside their Windows hard drive partition without repartitioning, so you can try it out with no risk to your existing system. Christer Edwards has some nice upgrade instructions.
Ubuntu Brainstorm
Ubuntu has launched Brainstorm, a Dell Ideastorm-like site where you can post Ubuntu feature requests and vote them up and down.
Open Source SimCity
A Linux port of the original SimCity source code is being open sourced for use on the One Laptop Per Child. There are already a couple of open source clones of SimCity for Linux, Lincity and LinCity-NG, but it’s nice to see the original game freed.
Google’s Phone Plans
It strikes me that the problem with Google’s open phone plans is that the carriers all still suck and are the opposite of open. Google should just buy one of the carriers and run it in a reasonable manner. If it turns out that you can’t make money running a high-quality, neutral network and being nice to your customers then they would still make up the difference by driving lots of traffic to their web apps.
Wanted: Unsupported Linux Devices
Greg Kroah-Hartman’s Linux Driver Project is an effort to connect a group of more than 300 volunteer Linux driver developers with hardware companies that need drivers written. Their problem: they can’t find enough unsupported devices to keep them busy. I’m pretty sure I have a few wireless cards at home that don’t work, so I’ll give those a try.
Jessamyn Installs Ubuntu
Jessamyn West installed Ubuntu on some library computers and made this cute video of it.
Dell Joins Microsoft and Novell Deal
Wow. Dell has managed to go from earning my undying loyalty one week, to making me question whether I should ever do business with them again the next. I made a Dell IdeaStorm idea for this, so go vote it up.