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June: Home And Linuxtag Review Well, unfortunately I am back home. I had a blast in Berlin at Linuxtag and Linuxnacht and met so many interesting people at projects. As someone said on Twitter "So many incredible projects and conversations - the Open Source community rocks!" I had a nice discussion with the Communtu guys about their project. Really interesting things they are doing, although I think they are some way behind OpenSuse Studio. The keynote from Mark Shuttleworth was excellent! Lots of really inspiring stuff coming from Canonical. I do plan on implementing some of the technologies I saw at the keynote in Obsidian. I have a rough version of Obsidian on a USB key right now, using lots of the technologies from the keynote. Expect Betas soon. As I said before, I loved Ivanka Majic's talk about usability, and I'd love it if any non technical users would be interested in doing some usability tests for me. Send an e-mail to SimplicityLinux@gmail.com if you're interested. I also got a lot out of Dimitri Popov's talk about Tonido, and I am gutted I didn't win the TonidoPlug! Larry Augustin's talk about Open Source business model's went really well with other stuff I learned in a talk about Open Source business models by a speaker who's name escapes me. The VLC talk was great, and I got a lot out of that, even though someone was asking really dumb questions at the front. The other talk I got a lot out of was the Pardus talk. It certainly gave me a lot to think about... But for me one of the highlights of the event was the vandalisation of the Microsoft cafe. It started with Ubuntu logo stickers in the Os of Microsoft, and ended up with an A4 poster of Bill Gates promoting Ubuntu, flyers for The Pirate Party, Firefox stickers, Google stickers, an ink stamp from The University Of Berlin, and I think a Germany Privacy Group sticker. There were also a couple of large decals for Ubuntu meant for laptops across Microsoft's logo. And fair play to the Microsoft rep, he didn't clean them off, and he did attend Linuxnacht... Ahhh...Linuxnacht 2010. That is a party I am going to remember fondly for a LONG time. It started out on a massive artificial beach, and then to a BBQ. Now, I am going to make ONE complaint and only one about Linuxnacht 2010. And I am going to be complaining to Linuxtag and Box At The Beach. The invite to the party said food, drink and the club were complimentary all night. Sorry, but as a whisky drinker, beer isn't "complimentary drinks" especially when a grumpy barman barks at me that whisky and coke isn't free, just beer or fake champagne. I mean, I had a good time, and it got very messy towards the end. But the fact that I had started drinking free vodka and cranberry juice, moved onto free whisky and coke and then got yelled at that long drinks weren't free seemed off to me. I did have a great time. Especially at the end when we ended up headbanging for about an hour to classic rock from the 80s and 90s. Nothing like being with 35-40 geeks with fingers pointing in the air as we collectively yell "Oi! Oi! Oi! Oi!" or scream "Wooohooo!" whilst leaping into the air like maniacs and getting glared at by security. Oh, and props to Taxifunk Berlin for finding us, after we gave them very vague directions to where we were. Their English speaking guy was friendly and very patient. Ok, so that was Linuxtag 2010 10th June: Linuxtag and Linuxnacht So, we are just back from Linuxnacht. My newly appointed UI designer is currently out for the count in bed after MANY beers. And I think I will be a little the grumpy in the morning when I wake up. Hangovers do not agree with my temprement. But so far at Linuxtag I have learned so much. I always do. It's why I stress to my bosses at work that this week is the most important week to give me off. What I learn here affects so much of Simplicity Linux. Take for example Tonido. An open source project I had no idea even existed until yesterday. And I now have a dialogue with the creator purely because of Linuxtag. Then there was the UI talk by Canonical, given by Ivanka Majic, which our UI developer really enjoyed and I got a lot out of too. The key thing about our new UI developer is that he isn't a geek. In fact, until recently, he's never used a computer. Which is what Simplicity Linux needs for it's Netbook interface and Windows interface. Someone who isn't a geek and isn't famililar with computers, but wants to be. Reminds me, must get onto her about Usability Studies. But what I got most out of today was the Open Source business models talk. It bored my UI guy rigid, but he was happy to play with Facebook for an hour. It really opened my eyes to some revenue streams I had been missing, but can easily implement without being overbearing to the end user (sorry Ivanka). Tomorrow is another day of talks. Full of talks infact. I have promised to offset hours of boring lectures with a 3 and a half hour tour of Berlin for UI developer. He's way more into World War 2 and history than computing or even Linux, so I think the promise of a tour should appease him somewhat! And there is reason behind mentioning the new UI developer at Simplicity Linux so much in this post. He's unpaid, but passionate and gives almost too honest feedback. Who can't love that in someone I work with? 27th April 2010: We're Back! Ok, so I finally got onto Tech Support for the site, and after a rather vague, yet informative e-mail about where my default passwords were, I've got control of the site again and reset the password for Simplicitylinux.org.uk. As you can see, all the ISOs are there and ready to be downloaded from our new faster mirrors. In other news, we have joined with The Open Invention Network, an organisation we first found out about last year at LinuxTag (we're going again this year as visitors, not exhibitors) and we're really pleased to be aligned with them. Whilst we're not 100% in favour of Software Patents, we'd much rather they were in hands of The Open Invention Network than someone like Microsoft or a company with their own interests and agenda. 26th April 2010: Work Begins! I've begun work on Simplicity Linux 10.7. And I am actually writing this on what will eventually be the base platform for 10.7. It doesn't have a lot pre-installed, which is something I am going to be moving towards. I know there is still a little resistance towards Cloud Applications, but I think they are getting a little more acceptance. We already started this a little by replacing Spotify with Grooveshark, and we're planning on extending that to more and more applications. Netbook Edition may even have purely Cloud applications. And Obsidian will take this even further, I'm not planning to have any applications installed on Obsidian. Just a browser and a start page. There are also a lot of technical things which I am planning on making to Puppy Linux, the underlying Linux architecture behind Simplicity Linux. We're planning on further changing the interface, storage mechanisms, and maybe even the way you find and buy music for your desktop. The first Alphas will be released at the end of May. 25th April 2010: No Rest So, no rest for Linux maintainers! I'm throwing myself headlong into the development of 10.7. So far I have assembled a few packages I want to include. The rest I will get from Synaptic. Yes, that's right, Synaptic. I found a stripped down Ubuntu which I think will serve me well. I also found a nice little remastering tool for Ubuntu. To be honest, I have a lot of surprises planned for Simplicity 10.7. The whole philosophy has changed a little. Not too dramaticly, but enough. For example, we're planning on using a much more advanced kernel. And despite it being Ubuntu based, we're going to keep the Boot From RAM system. There will also be other goodies included like (hopefully) incredibly fast boot times. We're aiming for a 10 second boot from Hard Disk and 5 second boot from SSD. Ambitious? Oh, you bet. 24th April 2010: One Day Late Ok, so not overly happy that the release is a day late. However, I do have good reasons! I went to upload the ISOs to Simplicitylinux.org.uk yesterday evening to find I was refused access. Tried to get access to the hosting panel and something similar happened. So I tried to find the e-mails with the passwords, only to find them gone. And since my hosting company (who I have no argument with) aren't open at the weekend for support, I've created this site. I'll port it over to the other site when/if I regain access. But for now the ISOs are being stored at Media Fire and are very secure there (password made of gibberish with a one time pad generator). So, what is new with Simplicity Linux 10.4? Well, Firefox has gone and has been replaced with Opera. I've been using it for a month and find it far less buggy than Firefox. Also, Spotify has gone. Why? I find Grooveshark to be a far better application, and it doesn't have registration and seems to just work well. I'm actually using it right now as I write this. I've also added new podcasts to Aqualung and fixed a bug which caused it to crash if it was run on a machine with low memory. But I think the biggest change is that Netbook Edition has Touchscreen capabilities now. I can't promise they will work on all touchscreens, but that is an area we really want to focus on. And what of Simplicity Linux 10.7? Well, yesterday was our quarterly meeting where we discuss stuff we would like to have in the next version. It's possibly the most creative time for us, because nothing is ridiculous and everything which is mentioned in the meeting is attempted and researched. We do have a few technologies we are hoping to include in 10.7 which aren't in other distros. Maybe for good reason, maybe not. We've certainly had fun playing with the 3D stuff we want to include in 10.7. Probably the biggest change will be the underlying platform. Puppy has been great, but sometimes it's limitations can be frustrating. For those rabid Puppy fans, we're not knocking it. Puppy was actually my first distro, and it will always hold a soft spot in my heart. But where small size is paramount, things do get sacrificed. Such as Bluetooth support and decent Mobile Internet support. These are areas we want to move into. At the moment we are playing with Slax and that looks promising. We are also going to look at Arch. Arch may win out because we do want to tinker with stuff under the hood a little for 10.7. But we will not be abandoning users of older hardware. In fact, this was raised in the meeting, that Simplicity 10.7 should run better than ever before on older hardware. And our ancient eee 701 will be our test for that! 10.7 will be our most ambitious release to date. We have a big list of features we want, and we honestly think we can pull them off. And one of our major aims is to finally unveil Obsidian to the world. Obsidian is a pet project which we have been playing with for a long time now. 10.7 will be it's first release, although we are also considering releasing part way through our release schedule. Which is another thing we need to talk about. In the past we've had a patchy release schedule. We release every 3 months, and try to improve, even if only in small ways on the previous release. Starting with 10.7 we're changing things a bit. We plan to adhere to the "Release Early, Release Often" scheme of things. So, a month from now, you will be able to download the Alpha release of 10.7. In June you will be able to download the Beta. By the middle of July we hope to have the Release Candidate out. And at the end of August, you will be able to download Simplicity Linux 10.7 in all it's glory. |
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Releases Simplicity Netbook 10.4 Size:154mb MD5: e6849ff4b91e44318123deb74674c823 SHA1: d5422b0664c31aa9393be3197d244fd2c62f9233 Simplicity Desktop 10.4 Size:190mb MD5: 2515f45a664e6a640c18009f71809e52 SHA1: c29fa9c01b998fe9dec23089b042da94972d541a Simplicity Windows Refugee 10.4 Size: 224mb MD5: 7abb772f6dfdd502947410ff4e946be7 SHA1:827911edd7e3bc649d1975d25d8cd6d0426191d1 Latest Releases There are currently no unstable releases Buy Simplicity Linux CDs direct from us from £2 4gb USB Key with Simplicity Linux Preinstalled - £15 Chat with us on Twitter Chat with us on Identi.ca Join us on Facebook Join us on Linkedin Contact us by e-mail Send us a telegram Call us on Skype: |