Little optimistic notes
The idea of change (in the computing world) doesn’t “cut it” where I spend my days. Open Source, Open Office, Open Minds (I made up the third one); all are actively discouraged. My own efforts to extend the reach of Firefox and Thunderbird and Gimp and a few others don’t seem to wet much pavement, although MySQL did sneak in through a back door. If these products were harder to use, or less dependable, I could accept it. The truth is stranger than fiction.
As a test, I “fired up” two live CDs this evening; Ubuntu 6.06 and Kubuntu 7.10 and then asked son #3 to test the waters. Truth be told, after about one minute the environment was sufficiently familiar that he simply said OK and carried on. Next, the spouse. She took about the same time, although her interest focus was somewhat different; presentation software as opposed to games. They both are experienced users and it showed. One minute; about the same as we spend “learning” how to use a rented car.
Last evening I downloaded and installed Firefox 3 beta 1. I am impressed. Much smaller memory footprint, no need to fix my bookmarks or saved passwords or anything else from a basic profile. This version actually passes the “Acid Test“, which says something about standards being respected. Some of my plugins are not yet ready for prime time, but this is beta. My own guess is that there are going to be a lot of very happy people when this version goes gold. Thanks to a buddy for the “head’s up” on the availability.
We’re discussing the “One Laptop Per Child” idea around the table. We don’t really need another machine right now, but I do have some solar panels to test. The real idea would be to have a machine to show others, in the hope that the idea will catch on. The give one, get one offer is in place for another few weeks, and today I talked to a confrère from another school board that has already placed an order. Perhaps as a Christmas gift, even if it won’t arrive until the new year.
