Wow, so that was a crazy 36 hours or so. I posted that video, went to bed and woke up to find I was a minor media sensation. The video has been seen almost 14,000 times. Cory Doctorow called me an “Internet folk-hero” (which cracks me up). I wrote a bit more about that on my personal website. When people ask about social software and what it’s good for, I can now safely say that it’s good for having someone ship you a few boxes of your favorite open source OS on CD (you can get some too!), a few random marriage proposals from guys with hotmail addresses, and leveraging whatever your position is so that more people can know about it. More knowledge is good. The biggest piece of overall feedback I got was that my little video made installing an operating system look “fun” and when was the last time you had fun installing an operating system?
I do need to come clean and say that I haven’t even gone back to the library to see how the desktops are working out yet. I’m there for 90 min or so every week or every other week. I still haven’t tackled stickier issues like Internet and printer drivers. I have to change the root password now that everyone has seen it. I have installed Ubuntu a grand total of four times, once with an awful lot of help. Both my PC and my Mac laptops run Ubuntu but while it’s my OS of choice on the PC, I like the Mac OS better on the MacBook and I apologize for not being a True Believer. Here are some good Ubuntu links that people sent me either over email or in the comments. If you’re Ubuntu-curious, they will help you.
- The perfect desktop in Ubuntu – nice laundry list of all the apps you need
- How to install anything in Ubuntu – very good howto
- Groovix is an operating system based on Ubuntu that Howard County MD uses on their 300 computers, they have an online FAQ spelling out how it works for patrons. They also presented at code4lib.
- Wikipedia on Ubuntu
- The Easy Ubuntu Linux site has step by step instructions for doing your own install.
- An ogg version (free format) of my video
- The Open Source Software Institute has a mission to “promote the development and implementation of open-source software solutions within U.S. federal, state and municipal government agencies and academic entities.” Is this you? Look them up. Yes that is me on their blog.
- If you’re just never ever going to part with Windows, consider using free and open source software on those machines anyhow. Here are two places to get ready to use CDs chock full of open source goodness: TTCS OSSWIN CD and The Open CD.
Enjoyable video, gave me a good laugh :)
Dear Jessamyn:
Let me contribute with some links you might find useful related to your nice video of the other day.
As I told you in a comment to your video post, there is a superb Free Software option to manage libraries called KOHA at http://www.koha.org
Here you have a list of some libraries with public accesible catalogs you can check:
http://www.koha.org/showcase/opacs.html
This is a step further in adopting FLOSS for your library and one more complex than installing Ubuntu, but maybe you can propose the software to be adopted as project for improvement for a group of libraries of your environement (maybe at a council level?, were you planning to upgrade from an older system sometime soon, this might save quite a lot of money)
Another area where you can benefit from FLOSS is in the website of your library: you can set up a dynamic site like Drupal, Joomla, Xoops (or even WordPress), etc so it is much easier to update your website, post news, activities, notices, etc related to your library.
Hosting service for these websites are really cheap nowadays (150$ for two years or so), you can test demos of any of these systems at
http://www.opensourcecms.com
Another compilation of Free Software for Windows can be found at:
http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/apps/en/index.html
There is an educational variation of Ubuntu, called Edubuntu that you might find of interest if you get young readers to use your library’s computers, it includes part of KDE edutainment suite (although it runs gnome), I think it is worth checking (maybe you could suggest the idea to your local school, so they do the same as you in case the get donated PCs or set up a computer lab):
http://www.edubuntu.org/UsingEdubuntu
http://edu.kde.org
To end with my coment: I saw a troll or microsoft drone commenting on your video post: expect some of them coming now you have become a popular example to follow: this is whattthey fear and they must figh against, but don´t worry: you have all the support of hundreds of thousands of happy Linux users around the world!!!
Again, sincere congratulations and best regards.
David B. Spain.
Your video was linked on Ubuntuforums (http://www.ubuntuforums.org/) and now it’s also on Groklaw (http://www.groklaw.net/). Very nice! If you haven’t yet accepted any of those marriage proposals, you’ll find me at Ubuntuforums. ;-)
Your video is really cute and cool. It’s really made it way over to many internet sites and forums(even ones from Singapore)!
I appreciate you helping to bring so much attention to the existence of good accordion music.
Hi
Enjoyable little video. I am wondering how the clients are enjoying Ubuntu.
Well deserved praise and fame for a brilliant video :)
Congratulations and thanks for posting the video up in the first place.
Here in the UK we love ya!
Mor e Ubuntus (can Ubuntu be plural? Ubuntii maybe) in libraries we say.
Consider yourself rss’d.