As Hull LUG are throwing an Ubuntu 9.10 'Karmic Koala' Release Party on 31st October*, I thought I'd best have a play with the Alpha release, that is currently out.  I downloaded it last Tuesday night onto my main desktop, and first impressions are really good.  Booting is incredibly fast, and from hitting the 'on switch' to downloading e-mails it takes just 56 seconds**, with is almost half a minute faster than Jaunty was booting.

In fact I was so impressed that almost immediately I upgraded my Acer Aspire One netbook.  The upgrade for the Acer took a lot longer – in fact installing the file took almost 10 hours, however it is fair to point out that it only has 8Gb of hard disc, so an awful lot of time was spent shuffling things backwards and forwards to get it in place.  Also I run the full desktop edition on my netbook, so an upgrade of Ubuntu Netbook Remix might be a bit quicker, and certainly a clean install will be quicker still.

Other than the fast boot speed the things that you immediately notice about 9.10 is the slick look of some of the menus.  The 'add/remove' option is now called the Ubuntu Software Centre, and in my opinion seems to have taken it's theme from the UNR layout.  This is no bad thing, as it is a lot more user-friendly.  However for the traditionalists – Synaptic Package Manager retains it's old look.  Other obvious changes include Empathy, which replaces Pidgin as the Instant Messenger client.  However it may be my finding it a chore to learn new ways of doing the same old thing, but I found just adding my MSN account to be such a chore that I just stuck with Pidgin.

Of course being an Alpha release, Karmic is very buggy, and things aren't quite synch-ed  up as they should be just yet.  For example the Avant Window Navigator won't work just yet, and I had a lot of trouble getting the audio editor Audacity to work properly, and it was for this reason that I've reverted my desktop back to Jaunty.  I need my compute to do what I want, when I want, and not have to mess around filing bug reports when I have things to do.

I have kept Karmic on my netbook, as it is a great OS, and I'm sure that come release day the bugs will be ironed out.

* Hull LUG's Ubuntu Release Party is being held on Saturday 31st October from 1pm until at least 5pm, at the Old Grey Mare, Cottingham Road Hull.  It's Hull LUG's regualr meeting place, and is the pub opposite Hull University Campus.

** There are many different timings that people use to measure boot speed, for example the boot to grub, which now takes a few seconds.  However my timings are taken from pwering up the computer to actually being about to do something with it.  My desktop is set up to automatically run Thunderbird on start-up, so my timing ends when the computer starts to download e-mails.

IT'S OFFICIAL!!! - Hull LUG are hosting an Ubuntu Release Party to celebrate the release of Ubuntu 9.10 'Karmic Koala'!

The first full announcement was on William Wright's Monday Night Tech Spot BBC Radio Lincolnshire, when I was interviewed live on-air about the party, Hull LUG, Linux, and a whole host of things that I wasn't expecting to be talking about!!!

Anyway the nitty-gritty is that Hull LUG are hosting what, to date is only the 2nd Ubuntu Release Party to be held in the UK outside London, and we are (rightly) very proud and

The manufacturer of certain popular operating systems would have you believe that a Linux based Operating system is difficult to maintain and to keep updated.  Lets see how hard it really is...

Click here if you can't see the embedded video

From Jono Bacon's Blog

Since I released The Art of Community, one thing has become evident: the people who are buying it are awesome. If you have bought it you are awesome. If you have not, you too can be awesome.

This got my mind thinking. We should put a face to the names of these awesome people. Credit where credit is due to those of you who are supporting a Creative Commons licensed book about building collaborative communities.

So, I have a fun little competition meme. It works like this:

1. Holding your copy of The Art of Community, have a picture taken of yourself with it. Really go for gold in the picture: extra points are awarded for outfits, hats, exciting locations and comedy faces.
2. Upload your photo to Flickr (or other fave photo sharing site) with the tag artofcommunity and if you use Twitter/identi.ca, use the #artofcommunity hashtag.

I will look over all the photos and pick a winner. The winner of the competition will get a special prize. The deadline for the competition is October 25th.

Should be a little fun.

Curses! I broke my digital camera a few months ago - lets see how we can bend the rules

Lots of geeky people are quick to criticise shops in The Dixons Stores Group (this is the group that owns shops such as Dixons, Currys and PC World), however today not only did I get good service from them, but they went further in reassuring me that they will sort out some faulty goods.

Carrie brought a netbook at Dixons Duty Free in Gatwick Airport at the end of last year,