Back in November of 2007, we wrote an article about the popularity of Ubuntu. At the time, it appeared that Ubuntu was the most popular Linux distribution according to many different web metrics. Of course, there’s no way to say for sure which distro is the most popular and to know exactly how many people use Ubuntu. That being said,…
Recently, I wanted to learn how to make Facebook applications using Ruby on Rails. For my first project, I decided to build a small application to let people find, share, install and promote Ubuntu software right from within Facebook. Determining which software we use can be a very social experience, often we’ll ask our friends what they recommend, so why…
One of my absolute favorite online services of the past year is Dropbox. It’s a very easy to use service that integrates with your Linux, Mac and Windows desktops and allows you to sync files across computers (among other things). Think of it as a big USB flash drive in the sky. Not only is it useful for storing daily…
I’ve started putting together a list of pre-installed Linux notebooks and netbooks that are currently available for sale in the US. Please check out the page and let me know if there is anything I’m missing.
Pre-installed Linux Notebooks
Ever wonder what your website looks like in different browsers? Even though most of us would prefer that people didn’t use browsers like Internet Explorer 6, these old browsers are still widely used. If you want to make sure that your site is not completely broken in these old browsers, try Browsershots.org. Browsershots generates screenshots of your site in up…
I wanted to learn some about YAML so I could use it in one of my current Ruby on Rails projects. A quick google search turned up a lot of information, but nothing quite as useful as the Yaml Cookbook for Ruby. The cookbook is full of examples of YAML and the corresponding Ruby code. If you learn well by…
Update:See newer statistics here. There is no doubt that Ubuntu’s popularity has grown dramatically over the past few years, but just how popular is Ubuntu? How many people have ever heard of Ubuntu? How many people visit the Ubuntu site each month? How many people have tried Ubuntu, and more importantly, how many people are actually using it? According to…
About 2 years ago, I stopped using Windows on my main computers at work and home. I switched to a Mac Mini, then to a Macbook, for all of my daily work, web design, programming, photo organizing, etc. We also have a large install base of Ubuntu Linux machines and a few Windows 2000 boxes at work, so I didn’t…
When Nokia first shipped the N800, a popular linux based internet tablet, it cost $399. It also shipped with an incomplete set of applications and with limited 3rd party software availability. Today, there is more software available than ever for the N800 and Amazon has dropped the price to $299.99 $257.99! Less than a year after its initial introduction, not…
After two weeks of using the new Dell Inspiron 1420N with Ubuntu, I decided it’s time to write down some of my thoughts about this new Linux offering from Dell. I have quite a lot of experience with Ubuntu and with Linux in general. I administer several Ubuntu servers including an Edubuntu terminal server setup in a computer lab. I’ve…
