I don’t give a shit if everybody want to use alternative software. I’ve been trying it long time ago, without success.

Update 13/05/2011@11:35: thinking that GTalk is a better solution than Skype, is simply bullshit

Instead of reinstalling I just update with preupgrade. So far so good. Apart for a crash in the kernel during the boot, some errors in the configuration of the Xorg, kernel panic and random problem here and there, hammering, I finally managed to make it works.

Gnome 3 looks good.

I will write something about it soon.

Although I think in software development there are no strict rules, Joel had very good points to support his article.

Before talking about the conference, I would like to talk a bit about the story of this event. Since I had the first contact and we got introduced to the possibility to have an active participation there, I was convinced on the importance of it. As Italian ambassadors we had to consider it as a key event.

Everything was possible thanks to Emanuele, friend and university mate, involved in some NPO of the area: LUGMan, Protezione civile, ARCO, etc. During MemoByte 2009, he introduced us to this fair and propose a huge Fedora participation.
I attended the Summer edition on August with Davide to have a look at the area and a better idea of the place. I was really impressed about it. Basically, the exposition area is divided into two parts: the exposition and the conference room with spots for 250 people.

The initial proposal and idea was to fill the conference room with talks during all the fair; I could say my best wish was to have Chitlesh Goorah speaking about Fedora FEL.

Unfortunately (and sadly) the Italian community didn’t answer very well (when I proposed it I got as answer only complains about the distance, the place, this and that…and so on…), so we (me and Emanuele) decided to do something lighter, less heavy (even for who organized) and with less resources required: a booth in the exposition area.

The (dream) team was composed by 5 people: Me, Alexjan, Marina, Davide and Lorenzo. The plans was to get there on Friday evening (I arrived on Saturday morning), stay there until Sunday evening. Due the impossibility to came back every night I arranged to sleep in an hostel near Cerea.

The exposition was really good, basically full of electronic, used stuff, radio amateurs, and various mixed booths. Indeed it was full of people; the organizations estimate around 10000 ~25000 people attended the event. We got also a really nice position, we were placed near the entrance, where all the people passed by after entering in the area.
A lot of people stop by and try the computers, ask questions and talk with us; statistically speaking most of them were above 40 years old, but I saw also some young people (not so many anyway).
The most common question people asked us were: “why not Ubuntu?” and “what are the differences?”; someone asked also “What is Linux?”. Next time I’ll bring a “fedora starter kit” with the most Frequently Asked Questions.

I really like the way we handle this event. My organization was a bit confused at the beginning because 1000Km distance are not handy but the team did and excellent job. In fact I cannot to say thanks to Stefano, who didn’t join us but did a fundamental job by helping me, like my right hand.
On my side, there are a lot of stuff that have to be improved, we manage successfully to get some CDs and DVDs (thanks to fedora) but due to some problems I couldn’t print the latest 4 foundation banner, we used the old Freedom, Voice and Infinity one.
Next time I want to design and try a new gadget concept. Instead of having CDs and DVDs I want to prepare and give a transparent plastic CD cover without a CD/DVD inside, but just information about:
• what is fedora
• how download and burn it
• how to join

Why this? Because, in Italy at least, most of the people who ask for CD/DVD don’t really need it, they need only the cover and the information printed on it.

Last but not least, this, for now, will be the last even I’ll organize in Italy. I’m now busy on FAmSCo stuffs and I still have to getting in and being more productive. Moreover the distance doesn’t help me, and I would like to see if the Italian community can walk without me.

I also decided to give my Ambassador polo, which is really big for me (I’ll get a new one two size less) to Alexjan. Like Max give to me for my involvement in Fedora, I’ll give to him because he is really doing good stuff for Fedora.
I have to congratulate with him and with all of the team, for the passion, the care and the effort they put on this event: I have to give my welcome to Marina, who will join our ambassador community.

In conclusion, this event was double worthy. Looking the relation with the outside world, we spot in a prolific (linux speaking) area and will give us opportunities to have at least two/three events per year. Looking internally we enhance our team, our relations, I believe having a face-to-face speaking was 10000 better than talking only via email and fortified your relation for present and future.

You can find additional photos from the event here.

Symbolic 1.3.0 has three key features:

• Cloud computing support (virtual machines management over Cluster)
• Machines provisioning with cobbler
• XEN console connection through VNC protocol.

you can see it in action on videos published weeks ago:

As usually, any suggestion and/or proposal is welcome!

The good news is that we will be a 2.24.5 release on February 25th, the bad (or sad, as you prefer) news is that Novell team will be reduced (about an half).

This is not encouraging me to continue to use it because the quality may be reduced without so many full-time developers. I’ll stay tuned and you too.

Da diverso tempo esiste un servizio molto carino (e molto web 2.0): meebo.com. Meebo è un’interfaccia web in ajax che emula un programma di IM, usando il browser (provare per credere).

Perchè risulta così utile? Quando si usano computer aziendali o su una rete “pubblica” (tipo in università), spesso quello che succede è che ogni connessione deve passare per un entità, chiamata “proxy”.

Il proxy permette di filtrare le connessioni a livello applicativo (maggiori info qui), cioè esegue un controllo anche sui contenuti che passano (per se stesso, stiamo parlando delle connessioni che passano dalla rete  all’esterno e viceversa) e blocca quelli non permessi (se cercate dei pronz, sicuramente verrete bloccati ogni volta).

Questa foto, molto molto semplice spiega come sono posizionate le cose in genere (ovvio che ci sono milioni di configurazioni diverse tra cui un 90% di troiate ). L’utente sta nella rete di sinistra (intranet).

Se è presente un proxy, non tutte le applicazioni possono accedere ad internet, nella maggior parte dei casi il browser riesce. Dipende sempre dalla configurazione del proxy e dalle varie applicazioni. Alcune applicazioni di IM supportano l’uso del proxy, altre no. Dipende sempre.

Meebo permette di utilizzare la chat IM anche in presenza di proxy, semplicemente usando il browser. Inoltre se si usano divesi protocolli, si può creare un unico profilo e, utilizzando una sola coppia userid/password, si viene loggati e collegati automaticamente a tutti i protocolli configurati.

Attualmente supporta solo quattro protocolli: MSN, Jabber, ICQ e AIM.

Esiste anche (da ieri) un’estensione per firefox in modo da rendere piu semplice e comodo l’utilizzo di meebo che, con tutti quei javascript, diventa pesante su computer un po’ vecchiotti.

L’estensione non l’ho ancora provata (anche perchè a me da problemi ad installarsi), se qualcuno l’ha fatto, commentate e dite il vostro parere.

 Update 18/02/08@11:02 Ho appena scoperto che funziona anche su HTTPS…supermegapro!!