Version 7.0ish. Digital Humanities. Running. Pedagogy. Linux.

• Linux Magazine interviewed Mark Shuttleworth recently about Ubuntu, South Africa, and education issues.
• A thirty three year old Unix bug was fixed a few weeks ago.
• I have been using a usb wireless stick while in Ubuntu on my laptop because the Broadcom wireless card inside is not compatible with Ubuntu.  Auto-NDISwrapper is supposed to disable Broadcom cards and download whatever drivers are needed.  I have tried NDISwrapper before without a lot of success.  When 8.10 comes out I will give it a try.

Over the past few months I have been trying out a bunch of different browsers in Ubuntu. I liked how simple Epiphany is and Galeon seems to be basically Firefox with a toolbar of Google links. The main browsers I enjoyed, and still use, are, speaking of, Firefox, Opera, and Flock.

A quick overview:

Firefox 3.0 is a pretty massive upgrade from the previous versions. It is quicker, doesn’t crash as much, and uses a lot less memory in both Ubuntu and Windows. This is my day to day browser in both environments.

The newest version of Opera is very impressive. It is quicker than Firefox, arguably, and, according to Security Now, has a lot of new security features to keep up with scammers and criminals. The one main thing that keeps me on Firefox is the lack of plugins in Opera. Opera does offer widgets, but browsing with without the plugins I use in Firefox becomes tedious and annoying quickly.

Flock was a pleasant surprise. I have been hearing a lot of people discussing it positively and I think it is a nice “social” browser. Bringing all of my social networks and web based applications together in one interface is an interesting idea. I try to use almost everything via RSS, but it is still interesting to play with from time to time.

Other Ubuntu and Linux news:

• Gnome 3.0 was recently announced. Read more about it on Ars Technica.

• Ubuntu Tutorials has a good tutorial on removing programs from the main menu. I like keeping my menu tidy and this will make it really easy.

Last week Apple announced that the newest version of their browser, Safari, was going to also be available for Windows. I’m not much of an Apple user. I used one as a kid, but these days the computers in my room either run on XP or Ubuntu Linux. After hearing about Safari being available for Windows, I became curious enough to download it. So did over one million other people.

I played with Safari for a few hours and I have to say it is very fast. That is, however, about the only thing it offers that stands out. Tabbed browsing is nothing new anymore. RSS integration is nice, but I read my feeds via Thunderbird. I’ve never found a web or browser integration I really enjoyed. The lack of plugins, like Firefox, or widgets, like Opera, really turned me off as well. My Firefox browser is deeply customized, and my Opera browser, via their speed dial feature, opens everything I use in it with a mouse click.

Safari also has some serious security issues. TechCrunch reports that there is a variety of known problems already. Wired goes as far as to ask who in their right mind would run Safari on Windows?

I uninstalled Safari the morning after I downloaded it. There isn’t any reason for me to use it; with good options like Firefox, Opera, and the new, admittedly nostalgia ridden download of, Netscape out there, Safari offer nothing that would compel me to use it.