inside the open source confessional

‘Dear Father - It is 6 weeks since my last confession. Since then I have…’

• Installed Thunderbird 3 which handles all my work email. This upgrade went smoothly enough although there were some minor glitches with server authentication and message filters. Thunderbird 3 adds tabs, UI enhancements, IMAP synchronisation, much needed improvements to the address book in addition to faster searching.

• Upgraded my desktop PC to Linux Mint 8. Again, this went smoothly enough, mainly because I did a full blown install while carefully preserving my user data. Until Linux upgrades are ‘rolling’ and as easy as applying a Windows Service Pack, Linux will never succeed in the mainstream.

• Installed Google Chrome on Mint 8. This was probably the only software I missed from Windows and God, I had forgotten how much faster Chrome is than Firefox. Chrome is blindingly fast on Linux, staggeringly fast, unbelievably fast.

  Playing around with DokuWiki to replace Diigo and Google Notebook in an effort to use more open source software and get more of my data under my control.

• Installed Laconica 0.8.2 so Billy has his very own sandpit to play with spammers in.

• Upgraded this blog to the latest bleeding edge of Habari (0.7 alpha) and was relieved to see it still worked.

‘Go in peace, my son. Admirable efforts but my sources tell me you are flagrantly continuing to use freedom hating, Microsoft TrueType Fonts to enhance your browsing experience on Linux, so please say three Hail Mary’s and an Our Father as penance. Go in peace to love and serve RMS.’