Ubuntu Hour, Dublin, July 2011

So an Ubuntu Hour was called to coincide with Laura Czajkowski been back in Dublin.

A good turn out in the Trinity Hotel chosen for their free wifi which always helps.  Also a nice quiet location so you can hear yourself think.  And there was no need for a tv-b gone though it was nice to see somebody came equipped. :-)

Will be interesting to see if people manage to get ubuntu into their work places to replace windows.  Even one or two systems adds to the overall linux presence and another foothold.  I've found that it is hard to remove linux once it has gained a foothold.  Which is why I encourage it everywhere!

And I loved to see the mobile technology that people use and android has really captured the geeky market.  I don't remember seeing anything other than android in use.  And thanks to Julie for her qr code business cards which were fun for a few minutes to see how the various devices handled virtual business cards with varying success.

If you have any pics of the event add a link in the comments and I'll make sure they get added to the Ubuntu IE pix.ie account.

Come on the OLPC project

I have an OLPC.  It is my favourite laptop.  By a very comfortable margin.  And no manufacturer has learned anything from it.  It's now 2 years old and nobody other than the OLPC project have created hardware that is remotely as useful.

What they got right:

• Battery life.  If i'm out and about I can turn off the colour screen and wifi and easily get 10 hours of use.
• The screen!  Oh the screen.  If you haven't had the pleasure of using an OLPC get your hands on one and see the screen.  Indoors it is fine and dandy but comes into it's own if you bring it outside into sunlight.  The black and white mode of the screen is perfectly usable outdoors were most modern laptops fail.  You can sit outside and work in the sunshine and not have to worry about brightness or screen glare.  Mostly when I am indoors I use the black and white mode as I find it very easy on my eyes.
• The handle.  It may seem small but I believe that laptops should have a handle.  The early ones did but somewhere along the line these were considered unnecessary or ugly when in fact they are useful and reduce the risk of your laptop been damaged while been moved.  A small thing but suggests it was designed by somebody who knew it was going to be used as a portable device.
• Dimpled plastic surface.  Unlike most electronics it has a rough dimpled surface.  This means that it's easy to grip in your hand and it creates friction when on fabric.  A laptop that won't slide off your lap.  Inspired!
• The robustness of the device.  Most mobile technology is made smaller and smaller sacrificing toughness for prettiness.  The OLPC was designed by somebody who knew it was going to be knocked, banged and dropped.  It feels robust.  It is robust.  I wish more manufacturers would follow their example.  When closed it has no exposed ports or parts sticking out.  It forms a complete secure shell.  The usb and audio ports only appear when you open the ears that lock the keyboard shut and double up as wifi aerials.

What they got wrong:

• Distribution.  That you couldn't walk into a shop and buy one. Even buying online wasn't easy. Mine came courtesy of a german friend who took amazons refusal to ship to ireland as a personal challenge. In the end it had to be shipped to the uk before been hand delivered to ireland. Maybe if they had joined forces with a worldwide charity like the red cross, oxfam or the like. A central location per country would allow these charities to meet folk wanting these unique devices and who are interested in supporting this worthwhile project. Some of these people are the types that charities would be looking for.  Even without that these devices would be useful to these charities in the field due to their durability and ruggedness.
• Software.  I like the sugaros that the OLPC is shipped with but it was lacking when it was released.  The most obvious omission when I got mine was the lack of a spreadsheet.  For a device meant for school kids the lack of a spreadsheet was unforgivable.
• Not targetting schools in rich counties. I'm reading everyday about schools giving ipads to school kids. This is atrocius as it teaches kids to be passive consumers depending on a company with a proven track record for lockin and requiring itunes which is not available for all operating systems. Also you can type faster on the OLPC than you can on a touch screen.  It would be better to expose these kids to a computer rather than an unprogramable media device.
• The keyboard.  It seems that the keyboard is susceptible to kids picking at them.  The soft rubber membrane can be easily damaged by kids.  Hopefully the next version will have a tougher keyboard.

Where now from here.
There are new versions of the OLPC been planned.  I'm interested in both the moderate update to the existing hardware with faster processor, more memory while still managing better battery life.  Even the tablet version looks interesting.  Of course it will come down to distribution as to wether I'll be able to get one.

Does meego have a future?

Well nokia has turned their back on meego.  But does this mean the end of the mobile open source operating system?

Without nokia i reckon it might stand a better chance of succeeding.  Nokia has changed direction so many times in the past 3 years that there was the chance that they would destroy or cripple meego before it took off.  They had symbian as their top priority.  They created maemo.  They open sourced symbian.  They merged maemo with moblin and created meego.  They dropped meego and symbian and are now going with windows phone 7.  Headless chickens have better direction.

• Meego may survive as a distro especially for low powered hardware. It is considerably more open than android and not encumbered by java or the patent wars that seem to haunt android.
• Meego may survive as a embedded systems os.  There is talk of it as an in car computer system.  A niche market but one that resists change.
• Meego may survive if it can be put in place of android os on any of the tablets that come out and be shown to be superior on the same hardware.  It was designed with tablets in mind so it wouldn't need much in the way of alterations.  If enough hackers adopt it on cheap android hardware it may gain a community independent of hardware manufacturers.
• Meego may survive if instead of android it gains traction in the chinese cheap mobile market.

That's 4 ifs to start with.  It would only take one of them to come to pass to ensure the survival of the os.  Open source software has a habit of sticking around as long as there is a use for it.  It's not dependent on a single company to keep it alive.  If it can survive it can thrive.