Lately I’ve noticed an emerging trend of Ubuntu bashing. It seems that the Linux community has now included Ubuntu bashing as a extension of the Microsoft bashing fringe.

Some people came to Linux because they wanted freedom. Some people came because they liked the Unix way. Some people came because they were sick of Microsoft. Me, 75% of the reason I came to Linux is because it lets me run it instead of it trying to run me.

Well, I am trying to be a mystic here but it seems like there is something really changing for the good right now. First I read about Red Hat dropping the desktop and then see The BBC talking about Ubuntu in a very positive way.

Last month distro-review ran an article titled 10 ways that Linux is outgrowing the stereotype and becoming the best OS. While I agreed with all 10 points in the article something just didn’t sit right with me. I bookmarked the article and gave it a good long think. My conclusion: the facts are correct but there are problems with both the premise and the goal of the article.

In an interview with the BBC News, founder and sponsor Mark Shuttleworth says the Ubuntu Project's 8.04 release (aka "Hard Heron") this week could be its most significant ever. Cited reasons include the promise of long-term support, and the ability to install it under Windows, without risky re-partitioning procedures.

We live in the age of the spinmeister, the age when language is used more as a means to confuse than to educate, an age when obfuscation is preferred to clarification. Hence, one should not be surprised to find Jim Zemlin, the head of the Linux Foundation, referring to a face-to-face meeting of kernel developers and industry people as a "high bandwidth set of interactions."

I had a very interesting conversation with Mr Ubuntu, aka Mark Shuttleworth, at the end of last week...His main point was that Linux, and use of Ubuntu, was on the rise. He also had lots of interesting things to say about open source more broadly, the Microsoft-Yahoo deal etc, which I thought I'd detail here as a Q&A.

Using Gentoo Linux, you have to get used to things just breaking, especially in the last couple of years. Portage is probably one of the best package management systems in the open source community. I have been quite impressed with Portage 2 the last couple months. Things seem to be improving. Yesterday I woke up to check some email. Later I needed to do some web development for an NGO.