YourWay is a commercial service by my company, born to allow customers to create their own Ubuntu based Linux distribution with just a few clicks on a web page.

After a long time freeze, we decided to change the approach to YourWay service, not just leaving the customer alone with his choices but making it a face to face service.

Why this change?
When our customers ask us to create a Linux distribution they want to have control of every small part of the process and of the result, thus we understood that a standardized approach would not work for YourWay.

So what do we have now?
A general description page of the service and a “get a free estimate” button. Clicking it will lead you to a cost-estimate request form, with some question that will help us understand your needs. After this step we’ll work face to face with the customers to take care of every little part of the project.

And what if I just need some easy tweaks?
What if a customer just needs “a standard Ubuntu plus support for his language plus a couple of applications”? This will be absolutely easy, quick and cheap, I swear :-)

And what if I’m an hardware reseller?
This is the most interesting part, we can build auto-installation Ubuntu based DVD to deploy your hardware quickly and easily!

Conclusions
Visit CreaLabs YourWay website and start building your own Ubuntu based Linux distribution!

Just in time for the feature freeze, likewise-open was uploaded to hardy’s universe repository.

likewise-open is a software which will allow users to join Active Directory domains easily, just a few click and all is set up.

I followed this new feature with great interest ’cause I’m working on an important linux-switch, thus I did some tests on the new packages (actually before it was uploaded to universe :-)).

I found a few bugs and I has some notes so I wrote everything using the likewise-open lauchpad bugs page. Please do some test if you can so we can confirm these bugs and help developers finding a solution.

1) prerequisites

First of all we’ll install the php5-dev package which contains some utilities we’ll need for the build process:

sudo apt-get install php5-dev

then you’ve to find out your ORACLE_HOME environment variable, try executing:

env | grep ORACLE_HOME=

If this command outputs something like:

ORACLE_HOME=/usr/lib/oracle/xe/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/server

then you can jump to section “2) Getting and compiling PDO_OCI” otherwise go on thru this section.

If this guide we’ll just see how to find out which is your ORACLE_HOME directory if you’ve installed the oracle-xe server package. If you’ve installed instantclient or anything else please refer to the product documentation. So you’ve an installed and configured oracle-xe instance on your machine, now type:

cat /etc/init.d/oracle-xe |grep ORACLE_HOME=

the command should print something like:

ORACLE_HOME=/usr/lib/oracle/xe/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/server

now we’ve to export this variable to the current terminal session, we’ll do that with this command:

export ORACLE_HOME=/usr/lib/oracle/xe/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/server

and the environment variable will be configured.

2) Getting and compiling PDO_OCI

Just cut and paste these simple commands to download PDO_OCI from the web and prepare it for the build phase:

cd /tmp
pecl download pdo_oci
tar xvfz PDO_OCI-1.0.tgz
cd PDO_OCI-1.0
phpize
mkdir include
ln -s /usr/include/php5/ include/php

now everything should be setup and we can build the driver and install it with:

make && make install

If everything is fine you can continue

3) Configuring PHP and Apache

if everything is fine you can go on editing your php.ini file and adding this line:

extension=pdo_oci.so

now create a phpinfo.php file under your apache’s document root, containing this line:

<?php phpinfo();

point your browser to:

http://localhost/phpinfo.php

and search for the “environment” section, it should look like the one in the next screenshot:

if you see the ORACLE_HOME line everything it’s ok, jump to the “4) Closure” section otherwise edit /etc/apache2/envvars file and add the ORACLE_HOME configuration, it will be something like this (on a single line):

export ORACLE_HOME=/usr/lib/oracle/xe/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/server

4) Closure

Restart your apache and you’re done:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Situation 1:

You go to the supermarket and buy a new PC, you’ll find that the installed copy of Windows is perfectly localized in your language by default.

Situation 2:

You go to the Apple store and buy a new MAC, you’ll find that the installed copy of MAC OS is perfectly localized in your language by default.

Situation 3:

You download a copy of Ubuntu, burn it and boot it, select your language and… find that half of the system is in English and only a few things are in your language (this happens for Italian, maybe things can be worst with other languages).

What I want to say it’s quite obvious, if Linux vendors want to penetrate the newbies market, they must provide fully localized ISO images, there are no excuses. This is my point of view.

A lot of time ago, when I entered the UCK team, I wanted to build an ISO localization team, to build and deliver a full set of Ubuntu localized images. That part of the UCK project never came to life because of some problems but I still believe in its importance. Ubuntu team seemed to be quite regardless of this problem and our solution.

We (CreaLabs) continue to build and deliver the Ubuntu Italian ISO and I know there are a few other similar projects around the world but the point is that these kind of initiatives should become more officially endorsed by Ubuntu (or any other distro, problem is the same).

I talked a few time with the Ubuntu Italian Community but in all these years no page of the site links to our ISO image. Well… I’ve to say I’m a bit sad about that ’cause this seems to mean something like “we don’t care about that”.

Now, critics apart what can/should we do? If you agree with my point of view contact your distro (many of them have localized communities) and make them read this post, we just need to talk about the problem and we’ll find how to solve it. Having a fully localized Linux delivering infrastructure can only bring more users to our beloved OS.

This is a great article:
Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy) Pragmatic Visual Presentation Critique
I hope Ubuntu and Gnome developers will read and take care about those considerations.

Source: OSNews.

sudo apt-get install virtualbox-ose virtualbox-ose-source
sudo m-a prepare
sudo m-a auto-install virtualbox-ose

Ubuntu trademark is clear, and the iloveubuntu.com website (intentionally not linked) is violating it, hope Canonical will make that great joke stop.

UPDATE: this post would be a provocation, ’cause you know I’m a bit sceptic about free software and trademarks. I also know about ie7.com and many others, same story here and there. :)

hey, my Windows is not working, can you fix it with your Ubuntu?

That sentence still makes me smile :)

People are claiming that Wubuntu brings Ubuntu into your browser, this is totally wrong! Wubuntu is just a web application that tries to emulate the graphic theme of Ubuntu, nothing to do with the real operating system behind.

I think wubuntu is a good work (also if I don’t like web desktop projects) but it should be clearly stated that Wubuntu is not related to the real Ubuntu! This could confuse users and bring bad results for Ubuntu.

I was looking at the Dell Ubuntu PC page and I was counting in my mind… there was something strange about prices, later I found this really good comparison.

Talking about the inspiron model, Ubuntu costs 80$ less than Vista Basic, but Ubuntu PC has Intel graphic while Vista PC has ATI X1400, there’s a price difference between the two cards which turn down the price difference on the whole PC to about 30-40$.

Anyway at least a big step it’s done and buyers can be sure about hardware compatibility and (personal note) the Intel graphic cards do their job the right way (and have open drivers, thank you Intel for that)!