Tuesday, January 26, 2010
As announced today Ubuntu Lucid will be changing Firefox to use Yahoo! search (powered by Bing) as the default search engine due to a revenue sharing deal. This financial deal will be good for Canonical to pay for developers and resources for Ubuntu. That’s all well and good.
The issue that I have is that the current default of Google is actually my preferred search engine. It works for me and is part of my work flow. According to Popey’s post about the topic because I use the current Ubuntu default of Google when I upgrade to Lucid my default will change to Yahoo(Bing) search.
I’m wondering why the change is being forced. Why can there not be a pop up when launching Firefox the first time after the upgrade to Lucid? Something simple that prompts with two buttons and asks ‘Would you like to change your default search engine to Yahoo! (powered by Bing) and support Canonical and the developers of Ubuntu or continue with your previous search engine?’ The buttons can read ‘Support Ubuntu’ and ‘Keep Current Selection’. You will probably get a better than even selection of ‘Support Ubuntu’ choices.
The other issue I see with this deal is that it is with Yahoo search powered by Bing. For those unaware Bing is the search engine owned by Microsoft. Microsoft is the company mentioned in bug #1 which is still open. While not dealing with Microsoft directly, we are relying on their search engine for the default searches of the Ubuntu user base which chooses Yahoo search powered by Bing to support the Ubuntu developers. And we all know that when companies deal with Microsoft it is always a fair deal (he says thinking of patents, Novell and all the other positive things Microsoft has done for FOSS).
So even eliminating the particular choice of default search engine that is not my main issue (Microsoft software and products are, after all, another choice). The main concern is changing the existing user’s choice of search. Yes, it is just a couple clicks to change it back. I have to wonder though how many people will switch to a different search engine after an upgrade just due to the change being implemented by default rather than being asked.
As Popey suggested in his post there will likely be many people who say ‘you broke my internet/browser’ with the upgrade. What about site deployments, small or large, that upgrade? The admins and help desk techs of the network will have to spend time and effort customizing the browser package or deal with their users calling asking ‘Where did my Google go?’
That’ll be a sad thing to deal with when all that has to be offered is a choice.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Don’t forget to join the Ubuntu Maryland Loco team in Finksburg, MD this Saturday December 5th from 9:30am-11:30am.
I’ll be giving a talk at 10am on what Ubuntu is and how it can benefit you!
Check out the event page for more information!
Monday, November 16, 2009
This is an idea that’s been coming together in my head for a while.
What we are going to do is about once a month go to an area in Maryland and talk about Ubuntu, Linux and Free Software. We will take requests on areas to visit. With some luck we can find a volunteer to help us prepare there. The volunteer(s) will be asked to recommend a place for us to meet in the area. Post a few flyers or some other promotion that makes sense there.
To start this project off I’ve reserved a room at the Finksburg Library on December 5th from 9:30-11:30.
More details are to come. Be sure to keep an eye on our wiki page for the latest information.
Also keep in mind that this Thursday November 19th is our regular team meeting at the Howard County Central Library at 7pm.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Hi everyone! Ubuntu Maryland Team member and University of Maryland Lug (my first LUG way back when) President Craig Younkins has started a new project. Let’s Help FOSS.
This is an online event Saturday night from 8-10pm. From his original email:
Let’s….
– Contribute code to your favorite FOSS project
– Confirm, triage, and gather more information for Launchpad bugs
– Improve the community documentation on the Ubuntu Wiki or another FOSS project
– If you’re not very technical, your ideas can still be very valuable over at the Ubuntu Brainstorm
– Talk about the latest in tech and FOSS while doing it!
Hop on OFTC IRC Server and our SIP conference room to chat about
everything tech, linux, and geeky! Let’s have a good time while doing it.
IRC: #umbclinux on irc.oftc.net
SIP room: sip:5018622@ekiga.net
See how to use IRC and how to use Ekiga to join us. I’ll be there, and I hope to see you too!
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
The Columbia Area Linux Users group will be meeting Wednesday November 11th. We will be having a presentation by Phil Shapiro on Inkscape.
This meeting will be starting a bit early, 6:30pm, so that we can enjoy some pizza provided by Praxis Engineering, a local growing consulting firm.
And if you’re looking for Karmic CDs we’ll have them for you, hot off the presses!
All this will be happening at the offices of Tenable Network Security in Columbia, MD from 6:30pm-9pm. (Tenable is also growing)
Greetings All!
The Ubuntu Maryland team will be celebrating the release of the Karmic Koala this Saturday the 31st of October at Fuddruckers in Columbia, MD. We’ll be gathering from noonish til 2ish. We’re going to try to be in the back of the restaurant to make it easy to find us.
As with previous release parties we will have a limited number of burned CDs available for free of the 32bit Ubuntu and Kubuntu desktop versions. If you want another flavor or wish to place an order for one of the desktop versions please email karmic@ubuntu-maryland.org with your request and we’ll try to have it for you. Once the shipit order arrives I’ll let everyone know for those who want a quantity of Cannonical provided disks.
Another thing we’ll have is my Dell Mini to make Live USB discs with available images. If you supply the 1GB or larger USB drive we’ll turn it into a bootable Karmic disc, time and battery power permitting. If you want to place an order for a USB disk early check out the wiki for details!
If you are planning to attend please sign up on the wiki so we can have a rough head count to arrange tables as needed. If you don’t feel comfortable editing the wiki email karmic@ubuntu-maryland.org with the number attending and we’ll add you to the count.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Software Freedom Day is coming up quick. Here in Maryland the Ubuntu Loco team will be presenting a series of talks to educate the public on Free software. We will be at the Miller branch of the Howard County Library on September 19th from 10-30-3:30pm.
Please join us for a day of great talks and discussion about Free software. Come out and discover how Free software can benefit you on a daily basis.
Software Freedom Day 2009 planning is getting into full swing!
As the Ubuntu Maryland team did last year, we are planning a day of talks and discussions about Open Source Software and its benefits. While there may be a bias towards the Linux platform in general and the Ubuntu distribution in particular we are open to talks on Open Source projects for any OS platform. In addition we are hoping to have some talks on open formats and standards.
The important aspect to remember about these talks are they should be geared toward end users. They should have a tone regarding ‘how can FLOSS benefit the person sitting before me and learning this subject for the first time?’
There are two types of talks we will be looking at providing. One is a longer format consisting of talks 25-45 minutes in length. These will be projects and concepts that include more content and demos. The other talks will be ranging from 10-15 minutes to briefly go over a subject or project.
We are currently looking for speakers who have topics they would like to present on. Also we are looking for topics that the you, the attendee would like to hear about. If you have suggestions or questions please email us at sfd09 <at> ubuntu-maryland.org and we’ll see about getting you set up!
Greetings all!
The Ubuntu Maryland team will be having a meeting this week at the Central Branch of the Howard County Library. Among the topics to be discussed will be our plans for SFD09!
Tentative plans for the day include talks as we did last year. These talks were on Open Source projects and ways that people implemented F/OSS in their daily lives and workplaces. The topics were scheduled to run about 20-30 minutes each along with a lightning talk period of 5-10 minute presentations. So if you have a talk you would like to present or hear about please feel free to email sfd09 at ubuntu-maryland.org and we’ll find a spot for you on the schedule.
Barring any unforseen issues I will be in attendance this time:)
I’ve been keeping myself pretty busy lately with several things going on.
The Ubuntu Maryland Local Community Team will be starting plans for Software Freedom Day on September 19th soon. The tentative thoughts are to have a similar event to what we did last year with a day of tutorials and discussion on Free and Open Source software. This event will be targeted at end users and cover as many topics as we can. Please feel free to email sfd09 at ubuntu-maryland.org if you have any thoughts or ideas for this year’s event!
Unfortunately due to a scheduling issue and my only being able to be in one place at one time I’ll be unable to attend this week’s Ubuntu MD team meeting. It will be at the Howard County Library Central branch from 7-9pm. For those that attend let me know how things go!
Peg introduced (putting it nicely;)) me to a walking group called American Volkssport Association. Its a group that has various events both manned and unmanned throughout the US. We went to our first meeting of the local group last week and Saturday we did our longest walk via the organization at 6k. So if you’re into walking and want to find some walks in your area check to see if you can find a group near you. They give out patches for various themed walks!