Don’t Say Geek! Say Syntux!

Amman, April 9th-10th 2008 -Ubuntu Jordan LoCo Team.
As part of Ubuntu Jordan LoCo Team continuous efforts to spread awareness about GNU/Linux in the Kingdom, the team organized a public event at Pricess Sumaya University for Technology in Cooperation with The King Hussein School for Information Technology. Mr. Jad Madi & Khamis SekSik gave a two hours lecture Introducing FLOSS in the Jordanian way, as well as a brief background of FLOSS history.

In addition, the lecture included Mr.Seksik explaining some reasons to use FLOSS Jordan, as well as comparing selling service VS selling software, and comparing backward compatibility issues between FLOSS and other software.

Other issues discussed by like the ethical reasons to use FLOSS. The argument is that using proprietary software without paying for it equal theft and as such is unethical. In many ways, we highlighted title=”Ubuntu Jordan LoCo Team- March 2008 event”>again, choosing the right software is a very important decision because it affects time, effort, and money invested in this software.

Tags: continuous efforts, gnu linux, king hussein, amman, ubuntu loco, information technology , cooperation, jordan, linux

During my tech-life I had to deal with number of Web Hosting providers and truth to be said I have had extremely pleasant experience with many of them although I don’t use any but two of them now.

Truth to be said I picked them because they offered Debian based dedicated, VPS or shared, although on shared it doesn’t matter if it’s Debian or not but I’m so extreme when it comes to GNU/Linux.

LayeredTech.com: my first experience with them was when it was my task to hunt for a decent dedicated servers provider and since I was the administrator to be I picked them because they have a good reputation and they provide Debian and Ubuntu! my experience with them were so good, they are fantastic people although I don’t remember flagging any of our tickets to them as critical but their support was always fast, it’s worth mentioning that our machine with Layered Tech would have been running without the need to reboot for almost two years now but in real life we needed to reboot for kernel upgrades.

Linode.com: One of my freelance projects needed a decent hosting that is not as pricey as dedicated hosting and not as restricted as shared hosting so the decision was to go with VPS solution and again because the guys at linode.com have decent reputation I picked them and honestly never needed to contact them other than requesting upgrades and/or downgrades; our VPS account, seriously I have never had any problem with them not a single glitch.

Dreamhost.com I wonder who don’t know about Dreamhost.com, they are really good at least in the big picture of it, many of my personal small and petite projects are running on dreamhost and actually on the same account. Their accounts are highly flexible and you could use your account for various things starting from hosting your blog ending with setting up a VPN over your account or even running a personal Debian repository and again they run Debian. Although they get many glitches but they are so transparent about it and so quick in fixing them too considering the large setup they have.

One of my dreams other than studying at MIT which I cannot afford now is working in an internships with Dreamhost.com, it’s not a feasible dream, anyway.

If you have been into hosting business as in reselling or were hired as a system administrator then you would definitely value decent providers such as the mentioned above.

NOTE: Dreamhost link has a referral parameter, if you don’t like the idea just go to dreamhost.com

Tags: setting up a vpn, kernel upgrades, gnu linux, layeredtech, freelance projects, downgrades, dedicated servers, first experience, glitches, glitch, dreamhost, big picture, worth mentioning that, repository, good reputation, linux, truth, blog

Years ago I created Ubuntu Group on flickr and actually totally forgot about it just because I was away from Flickr and today I found some interesting photos in the photo pool

Ubuntu Cola?

Interesting Screenshot

A good reason to quit flickr

Ubuntu Motherhood

Linux Terrorist ? Bin Tux? LoL or maybe Pen/guin

Ubuntu mobile

you can view more by visiting Ubuntu Group on Flickr or maybe you would want to load random photos as a badge on your blog

Tags: ubuntu, flickr, photo, pool, group

Amman, March 13th 2008 -Ubuntu Jordan LoCo Team.
As part of Ubuntu Jordan LoCo Team continuous efforts to spread awareness about GNU/Linux in the Kingdom, the team organized a public event at The University of Jordan in Cooperation with IEEE Student Branch. Mr. Khamis SekSik gave a lecture Introducing FLOSS in the Jordanian way, as well as a brief background of FLOSS history.

In addition, the lecture included Mr.Seksik explaining some reasons to use FLOSS Jordan, as well as comparing selling service VS selling software, and comparing backward compatibility issues between FLOSS and other software.

Other issues discussed by Mr.Sisek were the ethical reasons to use FLOSS. The argument is that using proprietary software without paying for it equal theft and as such is unethical. In many ways, Mr.Siksek highlighted, choosing the right software is a very important decision because it affects time, effort, and money invested in this software.

Following the lecture, a number of Ubuntu Jordan LoCo helped in setting up the FIRST Ubuntu Lab in The University of Jordan.

It is worth mentioning that next week Ubuntu Jordan LoCo Team is scheduled to start giving Ubuntu Desktop Courses in cooperation with Jordan University IEEE Student Branch.

Tags: desktop courses, jordan university, university of jordan, continuous efforts, compatibility issues, backward compatibility, gnu linux, khamis, right software, selling software, floss, time effort, proprietary software, ubuntu, amman, loco, siksek, cooperation, linux, money

I witnessed all browsers wars in my life, just like many of you; and they are just like nations, they rise and fall, Netscape once dominated the market even Internet Explorer did at some point; some great browsers with great capabilities such as Opera never got the exposure that they really deserve and some good browsers like FireFox got great deal of promotion, a proper marketing team behind it I’d say.

I work as web developer and I’m so attached to Web Standards, Usability and Accessibility, I do believe in them and I do my best to stick to them whenever possible. I’m also a self-taught kind of people which means I read a lot and mostly online so I really value any piece of software or website that would make my reading experience just better.

Recently I decided to quit FireFox because it eats memory as no other application would, even GNU Image Manipulation Program or Video editors doesn’t eat as much as Firefox does, so I decided to quit it.

I tried Opera, it was good in term of using a browser but for reason or another I wasn’t satisfied and my experience with it wasn’t convenient, lots of functionalities and maze of preferences.

I tried Epiphany but I needed bit more of control on my browser preferences so I gave Galeon a try and a new love story began.

Galeon is a GNOME Web browser based on Gecko (the mozilla layout engine). It’s fast, it has a light interface, and it is fully standards-compliant. You can download it but first take a look at some screenshots and read additional documentation (installation…). Galeon requires Gnome and Mozilla.

Although reading Galeon History would give the impression that Galeon is the bad guy but after using it you would understand how over simplifying things might not work well.

Using Galeon would tell you that if you want a web browser that as promised the web and only the web then its bookmarklets and smart bookmarks would be more than enough for the best browsing experience.

I’ve been using Galeon for two weeks in row and since then never had to run Firefox, Opera or any other browser, it’s just the one I need and the one I’m willing to spend my browsing life with forever.

Tags: gnu image manipulation, gnu image manipulation program, image manipulation program, new love story, gnome web, light interface, video editors, smart bookmarks, documentation installation, internet explorer, layout engine, marketing team, bookmarklets, reading experience, functionalities, gecko, web standards, web developer, maze, usability