Holidailies 2005

My favorite coffee shop in Austin is undergoing a change, and change makes me nervous. Trianon the Coffee Place has three locations around town. The Bee Caves Road location is where they do their roasting. The Far West Blvd. location is a short drive from my house. Then there is the Braker Lane location, conveniently located near Austin's hitech ghetto.

They sell both beans and drinks. I buy my coffee beans there. Years ago I used to special order beans from a roaster in San Francisco's North Beach. Thanks to places like Trianon and Anderson's Coffee Company, you can get good beans locally.

If you are a Texan, you probably can't forget the dueling ad campaigns between the phone companies and cable companies during the last legislative session. In the end, a telecom reform bill was passed (during the special session that was supposed to be for school finance) that pretty much gave the phone companies what they wanted.

Whups! It irritates me when people portray the issue as cable versus phone companies, and I just did it myself. Although they were the ones throwing money into TV commercials, there was a surprinsing range of grass roots and industry groups interested in this legislation—all opposed. Nobody supported it but the phone companies and the "think tanks" they fund. But it passed. Grass roots groups are unhappy. Municipalities are suing. It was a very bad, widely reviled bill.

I'm pleased to report that Blogger has finally figured out how to say, "Ooops!"

When you request a web page from a server and the web server cannot provide that page, it is supposed to return an error. And by error, I don't just mean serving up a web page that says, "Whups! So sorry!" When the user requests a document that does not exist, the server is supposed to respond with a specific protocol handshake called a 404 error.

How would you like an Internet where you try to go to Google, but you end up at Yahoo instead? Or an Internet that provides you multiple legal sources for video-on-demand, but you have to use the expensive one offered by your local cable company because all of the others have choppy playback? It sounds absurd, but we may be on our way there.

Traditionally, Internet providers have opted for "common carrier" status, where they just provide the plumbing and aren't responsible for what goes through the pipes. This is good, this has allowed the Internet to remain an open platform, where new technologies and services can develop.

For the past few days, I've been writing about my experience planning and running a Linux installfest at the recent Austin Free-Net computer sale. The Linux installfest idea has been around for years. It's one of the key ways that Linux has spread among computer enthusiasts. We didn't invent it, but we did take the installfest concept and try to make it work for non-technical users, and I think that's novel. For the past week I've been talking about installfast mechanics. Maybe it's time we discussed the users.

The world may not be fully ready for a Linux-based desktop, but we are going in that direction. Wal-Mart will sell you a Linux computer from their web site. That's clearly a sign of movement into the mainstream.

For the past few days, I've been writing about my experience planning and running a Linux installfest at the recent Austin Free-Net computer sale. I discussed the evaluation that led to the decision to select Ubuntu Linux as the sole platform to support. I also described some of the rough edges in the mostly fantastic Ubuntu installer. I've also given a report on the event. Today, I wrap up with a discussion of the procedure we developed to deliver a Ubuntu desktop to (non-technical) end users.

I previously noted that Ubuntu wants to be installed from media: network not supported. Network install would have been essential if we were going to be doing a large number of systems, but we weren't. (I planned for up to 12, but we only did two.) So, CD it is. That's fine; that saves the hassle of setting up a network. Issue one solved.

Last Saturday, the Austin Free-Net held a fundraising computer garage sale. I helped run the "Linux installfest" table. I've already written about how we selected Ubuntu Linux as the Linux distribution and how the event went. Today, I'd like to talk about what's so good and what's not so good about the Ubuntu Linux load process.

The awesomeness of Ubuntu Linux lies in its packaging, so no surprise that its installer is tip top. Every time I've used the Ubuntu installer it has been rock solid reliable. The install has always run to completion without difficulty, and has always resulted in a successful install. That's been my experience on systems ranging from an old Pentium II victim machine to my spiffy Dell Inspiron 600m laptop.

Yesterday, the Austin Free-Net held a fundraising computer garage sale. I helped run the "Linux installfest" table. Yesterday, I wrote about how we selected Ubuntu Linux as the Linux distribution we'd provide, and why we selected just a single distribution. I had planned to talk about the Ubuntu load process today, but I think I'll do that tomorrow. Instead, I'll tell you how the event went.

We built and delivered two Linux systems to two happy recipients. To deliver those two systems I invested three days of research, got up at 6am on a Saturday morning, and sat in a Methodist church rec hall for six hours. Some people might question whether the payoff was worth the work, but they are not the kind of people we call "Linux enthusiasts."

The Austin Free-Net is having a fundraising tech garage sale today. They have been collecting used computer and electronic equipment, and today it all will be sold off. I'll be there with some local volunteers running a "Linux installfest" table. If anybody wants to try Linux, we will load it onto their computer.

Over the next few days I'll be discussing my research and preparation for the installfest. Today, I'll explain our choice of Linux distribution.

This year, we began accepting paid advertising on the Holidailies web site. Jette and I went into this with some trepidation. Would there be a community backlash? Would it make the site look crummy? And, most importantly, would we get anything out of it? It's only been a few days, but so far it seems to be working well.

The goal of this article is not to sell advertising, but rather to share my experience with other people looking for models to support community web sites. Nevertheless, we do have a few sponsorships available at this time, so if this sounds interesting, please do feel free to become a Holidailies sponsor.