NOTE: This is not a “real” and “researched” news and is a collection of random thoughts and impressions after using Ubuntu 10.10. I’ve been copping some flack for this article, but ultimately this was not meant to offend anyone and was written with some humour intended.

With the recent launch of Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat, I can’t help noticing a bunch of new commercial features “embedded” into this Linux OS. In this release, Ubuntu brought with it the Ubuntu music store which allows users to buy music and the AppCenter store that allows the users to purchase applications. Previously on 9.04, they introduced UbuntuOne which is a commercial cloud based storage service allowing you to sync your files with some complimentary free space.

Next natural step is Ads! Here’s why and how…

Read more »

Seems like open source software isn’t the solution to piracy of commercial software after all. These days with open source going main stream and more software and services becoming free to use, they are either funded by sponsored ads or paid versions of premium services. This is leading to a new form of piracy, where by people are claiming credits for source code they have not written and generating ad revenue or receiving donation from it.

Recently I had the dubious honor of having someone repackage a Firefox addon that I wrote and released on a Mozilla Public license. Although it was open sourced, this person stripped my credits from the source code (violating the licence it was released in) and releasing it as his own without even bothering to even change the name of the plugin.

Read more »

One of the grievances of upgrading to Ubuntu Gutsy was the breaking of VMware. Apparently there isn’t a vmware-server package in Ubuntu Gutsy as opposed to Feisty. A quick download and compile of vmware-server 1.04 from VMware.com and VMware-server was back in a breeze. On the other hand, booting into my disk partition was an absolute pain in the ass.

Read more »