Hulu program for Linux

Interesting. The people working on Hulu have made a confusingly named, standalone client program for Linux which is just basically a container for an embedded Flash player which plays videos from Hulu, so you don’t have to open a web browser. I’m watching Always Sunny right now.

One percent woohoo!

Linux hits one percent usage on clients (as opposed to servers).

No more proprietary video driver

ATI has dropped Linux support for my graphics card because it is too old, so I won’t be using their proprietary video driver anymore. I’ll stick with the open source driver from now on. Suck it, AMD.

Why we fight

Following from my post here about the OLPC Give One Get One program (check it out at http://www.amazon.com/xo), I received this email today about a new ad that the OLPC foundation has put together:

Hello, and happy Thanksgiving from OLPC.

Help us change the world, one email at a time.

Our new commercial “Zimi” began airing on November 17th. Watch Zimi’s story to see how the life of a 7-year-old African girl can be changed by the XO:

http://tinyurl.com/zimiolpc [I've embedded the video below.]

While giving thanks this weekend for all that we have, share this story with friends and family and let them know about the opportunity to help children learn in the developing world.

And don’t forget to be part of the equation for change:

http://equation.laptop.org

Sincerely,

Nicholas Negroponte

Founder, One Laptop per Child

Consider giving the gift of knowledge.

Ubuntu Linux on Asus Eee PC

Ubuntu Eee makes me want to buy an Asus Eee PC. Beautiful.

Ubuntu Linux on Asus Eee PC

One Laptop Per Child: Give One Get One XO-1

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO-1 laptop

You might consider this Christmas season donating to the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) campaign. If you donate $400, you can get one laptop for yourself to keep, but only if you donate during the brief give one, get one period. Of course, you can always donate without asking for a laptop in return.

The goal of OLPC is to create a laptop specifically for schoolchildren in developing nations. The idea is that only with free access to information (in concert with a good education) can we ensure a better future. The laptop itself is creative and intriguingly designed, in both hardware and software. It is not perfect, and the OLPC project recently experienced a resignation by a key player because of a violation of the project’s principles, but promoting this project is still a good thing. It is intended to be an education project as opposed to a laptop project, according to the project chairman, and this mission is worth advancing.

If you have a Facebook user account, consider adding OLPC to your Causes.

Ubuntu 8.10 released today

Ubuntu is an operating system which, unlike Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X, is free (both ‘libre’ and ‘gratis’), reliable, fast, and usable to your average Joe computer user. You can download the latest version, 8.10, for free here and run it from a CD without affecting the current operating system(s) on your hard disk at all.

Read more about the philosophy behind Ubuntu here.

No doubt I will soon write a bit about why you should do as much as you can to stop the growth of Microsoft as a business power.

Come and get it

Today and only today can you download for free (usually it costs mad $$$) a copy of CodeWeavers CrossOver. This Slashdot article has a brief explanation.

I blame chaos theory for this.

What I do when I’m sad

Sometimes when I’m feeling down, I take a look at the changelog for the most recent development release of Wine. Just look at all those beautiful bug fixes and implemented features. Wine is one of the most actively developed projects around, and its cool to see real improvement going down.

Makes me remember that this is paradise.