Firefox 303

When I installed the Alpha version of Intrepid on my laptop, I noticed that Firefox 3.02 came installed with it. It was nice to see that it was included as my Ubuntu desktop still had vr 3.01 on it and no official updates were available.
Today I find that Ubuntu has several updates available, and Firefox is one of them. However, I find that they have upgraded Firefox again, which brings it up to version 3.03. That's two updates in a short time.
It turns out that this update fixes a bug that was present in version 3.02, where "users were unable to retrieve saved passwords or save new passwords".

There has been a bit of controversy within the Ubuntu community lately about the Firefox user agreement and upcoming Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex due for release next month.
Mozilla has added a Firefox 3.0.2 end user license agreement (EULA) to its upcoming release, which has caused an uproar among many open source supporters.
Mark Shuttleworth explained the reasoning for this where users had started a bug entry for this EULA license "bug"

He writes:

Mozilla Corp asked that this be added in order for us to continue to call the browser Firefox. Since Firefox is their trademark, which we intend to respect, we have the choice of working with Mozilla to meet their requirements, or switching to an unbranded browser.

It's strongly our preference, and that of most of our users, to have Firefox as the browser in Ubuntu.

I think it's perfectly reasonable for Mozilla to have requirements and guidelines for the use of their trademark - we have the same for Ubuntu, and many other free software projects do the same. I would in fact consider it a best practice to have a good brand on a free software project, which means having trademark guidelines.

That said, I would not consider an EULA as a best practice. It's unfortunate that Mozilla feels this is absolutely necessary, but they do, and none of us are in a position to be experts about the legal constraints which Mozilla feels apply to them. We had extensive conversations with Mozilla in order to find the best possible way of meeting their requirements while preserving the flow of use of the system for our users.

I am somewhat frightened that Mozilla would require a EULA which is so
waffly and contains so little substance. I also fail to see how not
carrying Firefox branding breaks "the flow of use of the system". Recall
that much of the world uses Internet Explorer, and doesn't know of the
Firefox brand in the first place.

This EULA also says strange things - that other packages might have
other licenses, for example. Why is it saying that? No other package
states that. Does it perhaps refer to the Firefox installer that we've
never used and never will? The agreement also states that portions of
the source code are available - if it is in main it must all be
available. Many parts of this EULA seem irrelevant and unnecessarily
frightening.

I'm not sure how this will end, but I don't think that this will change the way that people use Ubuntu. Firefox with or without a EULA agreement will still be the browser of choice for many users. It may be rebranded with a new name, but people will still choose it over the other alternatives that are currently available.

Alpha testing: Ubuntu Intrepid

This past Monday was Ubuntu Testing Day, and Ubuntu users were asked to download and test any one of the flavours of Intrepid that is currently in Alpha 6 testing.
I finally decided to try the amd64 version of Ubuntu on my laptop, which I have been meaning to try since I purchased it (Compaq Presario V2310).
I downloaded and burned the iso and proceeded to install the Ubuntu Intrepid alpha 6 image to my laptop. I have participated in many, many beta testing versions of various softwares over the years, but this is the first time that I have installed an alpha test version for testing purposes.
I decided that since this was an alpha test, I would completely erase my laptop hard drive and devote the entire machine to the testing process in case any serious problems wiped out my data.
I registered with the testing site and installed the Ubuntu DVD amd64 version of Intrepid.
I noted that there were many bugs listed for the various versions of Ubuntu, but I found that my install went flawlessly and I was up in running in no time after my hard drive was formated and partitioned.
The only glitch I encountered was entirely expected on my Compaq Presario V2310.
This laptop has wifi issues that I've found can only be rectified by applying the Fiesty No Fluff broadcom fix. Not a serious problem and not what I'd call a bug, but it would have been nice to have the software work right 'out of the box'.
I've been trying this version out the last few days and have not encountered any significant issues to report. I'm now planning on trying out one of the other alpha versions of Intrepid. I notice that the both desktop versions of the alpha have multiple bugs reported, so I think I'd like to try help iron out some bugs with those installations.
The beta version will be released on October 2nd, the RC on October 23 and the final release will be on October 30th.
Those that want to try out the next final version of Intrepid don't have long to wait, otherwise jump in now and try out the alpha. Just don't forget to backup your important data first.

Do the Samba

I often edit and open files from Gnome Nautilus file manager for simplicity sake. I usually open it via the terminal window. However, just typing in 'nautilus' has always given me this message just before it would open:

** (nautilus:18315): WARNING **: Unable to add monitor: Operation not supported
Nautilus-Share-Message: Called "net usershare info" but it failed: 'net usershare' returned error 255: net usershare: cannot open usershare directory /var/lib/samba/usershares. Error No such file or directory
Please ask your system administrator to enable user sharing.

There is a simple fix to removing this prompt and allowing nautilus to open even faster. At least it does for me.

sudo apt-get install samba smbfs

Head over to the Samba documentation page for more info on what Samba can do for you.

Samba can be used to:

• Act as a server for Windows (or Samba) clients: share folders and printers, including PDF pseudo-printers so all the computers in your network may write PDF files
• Act as a domain controller in a Windows network (authenticating users, etc.)
• Do some more complex things, such as using a Windows domain controller to authenticate the users of a Linux/UNIX machine