‘puters

ubunutu follow-up, explanations and links

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.

do you ubuntu?

Posted on 08May0705Apr19 by jessamyn

Check me out, I made a little video with me in it and I’m putting it here.

I installed Ubuntu on two of the donated PCs at my library yesterday. It took less than an hour. In fact, if I hadn’t been making the little movie at the same time [with my laptop and my little Canon digital Elph; I don’t have a video camera] it would have taken me even less time. Ubuntu comes bundled with a lot of the popular Open Source software titles like OpenOffice, Gimp and Firefox. The Calef Library has two Windows PCs already so if people need specific software that doesn’t run on Ubuntu, they can use those. I’d like to get them a Mac as well and then they can be the only library (to my knowledge) that is triple platform in the entire state of Vermont.

Note: I have not connected these machines to the Internet or the printer yet, so I’m sure there may be pitfalls waiting for me along the way, but I think that would be true no matter what platform I was using. Ubuntu is free. My install process went like this: download and burn the Ubuntu disk image to a CD. Turn on the computer with the Ubuntu CD in the CD drive. The computer boots Ubuntu from the CD. You have the option to run it this way or install it to the hard drive. You have the option to install it on a partition (and keep Windows also) or just erase the drive and install Ubuntu as the only operating system. You restart the machine and it runs Ubuntu and it Just Works. For the Ubuntu curious (I just like saying ubuntu over and over ubuntu ubuntu ubuntu…) you might enjoy this website How to install ANYTHING in Ubuntu. If you’re just Linux curious, you might enjoy this article on how Howard County migrated more than 200 PCs to Linux, and this was in 2004. Hope you like the little movie. Please drop a note in the comments if you’re using Ubuntu at your library.

You do not even have to go to Thailand, as we have collected for you all porn xxx cams with trance on this tab! – watch webcam the sex free

Our camera versions are open-minded favorable and adventurous when it comes to sex – once you see how these women behave before their porn chats, you be very impressed! Discover countless free live porn chat rooms, interact with hot camera versions, enjoy their hot webcam porn shows and don’t be afraid to turn on the heat in a personal chat in which a version of your choice acts only for you.

Erotic chat online offers

Horny Shemales and Ladyboys are prepared to talk with boys! Come in and Revel in the collection of Transsexual Cam Models here in BongaCams! Free Sex Chat permits you to combine these folks and spend some time on the internet, talking about sensual delights, flirting and appreciating with their Live performance before a webcam.

Watching solo or striptease play is fine. You can feel the true link and this is what turns us when we have sex that is real. You can ask what you would like and no one will be surprised or telephone you pervert or disgusting. You know women like to perform the things that is hot when nobody alls these sluts. So adult webcams are all win-win situation cams online.

Private room is where most of the dreams come true in virtually no time.

You are welcome at our free erotic porn sex video chat!

For example there is an accessibility rule – that the entry only to people that are at least 18 decades of age.

Google Answerers, a tally

Posted on 02May0703May07 by jessamyn

Now that Google Answers is no longer an active project it’s easy to use Google itself to do some tabulating of who was actually doing what there. Using a pretty simple query the folks over at Web Owls have compiled a list of roughly how many questions each Google Answer Person answered. You can see me way down the list at 24. What’s interesting, to me, is how few people worked for such a high profile project, and how few people answered the bulk of all the questions to Google Answers. Interestingly, almost 40 of them are working over at Uclue which seems to have almost the same structure externally speaking as GA did.

Firefox, pimped

Posted on 20Apr07 by jessamyn

Now that I’ve don’t the little talk, I’m curious as to what libraries are actually using with their Firefox installs. I took my best guesses and included some stuff that I use, but what do you use? SkaGirlie starts it off with her list.

viewer mail: gaming in libraries & deepfreeze

Posted on 10Apr07 by jessamyn

I got this from a reader. I know when I am out of my league but I bet some readers here will have good insight and/or advice. If you can help out my librarian friend here, please leave a note in the comments.

Do you have any thoughts/comments re: on line gaming in the public library? You know, I thought we were all set with installing Deep Freeze on the machines–sure, let the anyone download anything, restart the computer and “poof” it’s all back to it’s original state.

But then the YAs started playing “Gunz” and our new Dell is flipping out –multiple windows opening, can’t even type in a web address, cannot get Deep Freeze to “thaw”.

I feel frustrated–I really don’t want to be this negative librarian posting “no gaming” signs, albeit in a positive manner.

Any experiences along this line? Whaddya think about allowing anything to be downloaded? I really am questioning Deep Free’s strength at this moment.