Don Watkins

At the same I learned about another very interesting free site that is open to educators and interestingly enought it runs on Drupal. It’s called Epals School Blog and you can set up a free account for you and your classroom. Here is a link to the site that we were using yesterday and it is representative of the kind of site you can set up for your students. This is yet one more demonstration of how open source software is transforming education.

Yesterday I attended a 21st Century Educational Leadership conference at the Western New York Regional Information Center. I learned many new things and was exposed to some new technology applications. The conference began with this video which I think speaks volumes about where we are as a society and culture.

With the price of fuel sky-rocketing world wide there is a sudden up tick in people concerned about energy footprint and how to reduce it. I’ve seen some articles written about Linux and green PCs.

LessWatts is about creating a community around saving power on Linux, bringing developers, users, and sysadmins together to share software, optimizations, and tips and tricks.

I’ve given some thought to my own energy footprint and to the workplace. Here’s an aspect to energy conservation that hasn’t garnered as much attention in any of the articles I’ve read. Other than file servers most Windows desktops need to be powered on for considerable periods of each day just receive their operating system updates and their anti-virus updates. Windows PCs frequently cannot be updated without a reboot which is an interruption in service that cannot be tolerated by users during the work day. Most Linux updates due to the nature of Linux do not require a reboot. All Windows PCs whether desktops, notebooks or file servers need daily updates to anti-virus programs. That means that your computer must be turned on and consume power while those updates are being broadcast.

In our own network that usually happens around 3 AM. Four hundred PCs turned on consuming thousands of watts per year just to maintain anti-virus and operating system updates. Linux PC’s don’t really require anti-virus updates and if you choose to use anti-virus those updates can occur only when the PC is turned on. Likewise operating system updates other than kernel updates do not require a reboot which means that when you go home at night its possible to turn the Linux desktop or notebook off and lessen the energy footprint in your home, your business or your corporation.

Linux really is the energy conscious operating system. Can you afford not to use it?

Reading Twitter and LinkedIn. I just added John Moriarty.

While there are many different manufactuers of anti-virus software available on on market, many require a subsciption or license fee. It is true that there are some choices for free software, but my favorite is the AVG free edition.

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Los Alamos Computers have been selling pre-configured and factory installed desktop, laptops and servers for some time. Dell has been selling Ubuntu desktops for nearly a year and has probably gotten more press in trade journals because Dell is more a household word than Los Alamos Computers GNU/Linux machines. I first became aware of Los Alamos perhaps four years ago. Many of us have been rebuilding Dell and other desktops and notebooks but we’ve been paying the Microsoft tax. If you don’t want to give anything to Redmond I’d recommend Los Alamos. Click here for more information. They are also donating a portion of their sales to the Free Software Foundation.

Ubuntu 8.04 was released last month with highly-anticipated features like PulseAudio, GNOME 2.22, and Wubi. Although this release is a strong incremental improvement over its predecessor, we found some serious bugs that detract from the overall user experience. Ars takes a close look to find out if Hardy Heron raises the bar.

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OpenOffice.org 3.0 integrates ODF 1.2 support, Microsoft Office 2007 Import Filters, charting enhancements, improved note capabilities in Writer, new icons, enhanced pdf export, multi-monitor support for impress, and a start center. For Mac OS X users, OpenOffice.org 3.0 will now run without the need for X11 to be installed.

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This article came by way of the Groklaw RSS feed that I’m accustomed to reading everyday. I think the author, who is certainly not a Linux fanboy has made some very good points and it appears that he has had an epiphany with Ubuntu Linux. Read more here.

Once again the power of open source and the open source concept liberates innovative thinking. Engineers are building inexpensive, tabletop, touch-screen displays and sharing the instructions online.

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