Confused about iPads in Education

It's been nearly two years since I got my first Asus convertible tablet/netbook, loaded it up with Linux and started kicking it around with my every day to classes. In general I have found it to be an extremely useful tool.

I need to type notes or prepare a presentation? Not a problem - it is a netbook after all and can perform all the same functions as a laptop. I need to take hand written notes? I don't have to keep track of notebook paper that I always inevitably lose. I simply fire up Xournal and can use any stylus (or even a pen with a cap over the tip) to take notes on the computer just as if I was writing on a notebook. 

My netbook convertible does what any good piece of technology should - it makes my life easier.

You want to know what doesn't seem to make anyone's life easier during class? Those iPad's I've seen piles of people caring around campus with them this last year. In fact, I've never once seen an iPad used productively to take notes in a classroom. You can't type notes effectively on the dang thing - at least I've yet to find anyone that can match my 90+ WPM using a touch screen keyboard. You also can't take hand written notes effectively due to the poor quality of basically every capacitive stylus in existence.

One useful thing the iPad can do is function as a calculator. Another thing I've heard proposed is replacing text books with ebooks on the iPad. You know what else has all the functions of a calculator and can read ebooks and pdfs? You guessed it - my netbook.

The biggest joke at the end of all of it? Even the "16GB" version of the iPad costs more than the highest end Asus T101MT.

Maybe I'm just not "hip" enough to see the need for them, but it seems to me if we want to revolutionize how our students learn using technology they would be better served if that technology came in the form of something other than an "iPad" or capacitive tablet of any sort. Whats your take on it?

~Jeff Hoogland

Jeff's List of his favorite FOSS Applications

People like stuff that is free. People like lists of things. Today I am going to put these two things together with the following list of my favourite FOSS (free open source software) applications.

Web Browser: Firefox

Platforms: Linux, Windows and OSX

I know Chrome/Chromium have gained a lot of popularity in the past year, but I still like Firefox most as my primary web browser. My two pmain reasons for this are the fact that it generally renders text "nicer" than most webkit-based browsers and the fact that it integrates with most Linux desktops more fully than Chromium does.

IRC Client: Xchat

Platforms: Linux and Windows

Xchat is a fairly straight forward GTK IRC client. It supports a variety of features, but also is clean enough to simply let me get right into the chat room I want without much configuration.

Instant Messenger: Pidgin

Platform: Linux, Windows and OSX

When it was first created it was known as "gaim", but today many know the popular GTK instant messenger client as "Pidgin". Supporting a number of messenger types including AIM, Yahoo, Google Talk, MSN and many others - Pidgin is a very versatile messaging client.

Torrent Client: Transmission

Platforms: Linux and OSX

Transmission is fairly light bit torrent client that has both GTK and QT interfaces. It is stable and fairly feature rich while staying out of the user's way. It supports many commonly used torrent features such as setting download/upload speed limits and prioritising downloads.

FTP Client: Filezilla

Platforms: Linux, Windows and OSX

The swiss army knife of FTP clients Filezilla supports many common transfer protocols including FTP, SFTP, FTPS, and FTPES.

PDF Viewer: ePDFViewer

Platform: Linux

ePDFViewer is a very simple and light weight PDF viewer that utilises the GTK and poppler libraries.

Office Suite:  Libre Office

Platforms: Linux, Windows and OSX

Libre Office is a full featured office suite that provides a word processor, spreadsheet editor, presentation creator and much more. It is written in C++/Java and was forked from OpenOffice.org a little over a year ago.

Video Editor: Openshot

Platform: Linux

Easily one of the best open source projects to be started in the last couple of years. Openshot is a non-linear video editor that is written in mostly in python and GTK. The interface is clean and generally makes finding whatever function you are looking for fairly easy.

Video Ripping: Handbrake

Platforms: Linux, Windows and OSX

Ever have a video DVD you purchased and wanted to backup in case you lose or scratch the disc? Handbrake is the perfect tool for this task. It will simultaneously rip and encode a variety of media formats to a variety of other different media formats.

Disc Burning: XFBurn
 
Platform: Linux

Part of the XFCE software collection XFBurn is a to the point disc burning software based on libburnia. In case you hadn't noticed by now I am a fan of "simple and clean" software and XFBurn is no exception to this rule.

Media Player: VLC

Platforms: Linux, Windows and OSX

VLC is a multi-media player that is written in QT. It's most valuable asset is the fact that all of it's many multi-media codecs are self contained - meaning it can play nearly any media format right after installation without the need for installing system wide codecs packages.

Now, take note that I mention these are my favorite applications - not that they are always the best application for every possible task. Odds are there are others that are just as good (or better) in some situations than the ones I listed. One of the best things about FOSS is the ability to choose what you want to use. So try lots of different software and find which applications work best for you.

~Jeff Hoogland

Introducing E17's Notification Module

The Enlightenment developers are busily hacking away as always. There are so many SVN commits to the E repository that it is easy to over look new features if you aren't looking for them. A nifty little module recently made its way into the core of Enlightenment though - its called "Notification". Notification is a native E alternative to other notification daemons such as notify osd.

If you have a recent Enlightenment build you will find Notification under the core E modules:

Simply loading the module is enough for it to start working. However as is the case with most of the E17 desktop, the Notification module is fairly configurable:

The notifications themselves are sleek, simple and stay out of your way:

The Notification module should work with all applications that work with other notification daemons such as notify osd.

~Jeff Hoogland

On the Topics of Software, Average Users and User Friendliness

The term "average user" is something you hear thrown around a lot with regards to software. Pro-Linux, on the desktop, people often make claims on why it Linux ready for this "average user" (shoot even I've done it on occasion). There are also those who feel Linux should be pigeon-holed into a server room and on to mobile devices, they will make the exact opposite claim. They say Linux on the desktop isn't ready for this "average user".

My question to you all is:

Who is this "Average User"?

I've often been told I am not one of these "average users" because I create and distribute software. Who is then? Is my brother the level designer an "average user"? Is my fiancée the accountant an "average user"? Is my mother the tutor an "average user"? What exactly is the criteria to be in the group of people so many seem to be trying so desperately to make software for?


Often hand-in-hand with this idea of an "average user" is the concept of "user friendliness". In fact a drive to make our user interfaces even more "user friendly" is what has caused the radical changes in the Gnome desktop (and of course the creation of Unity).

What is "User Friendly"?

From what I can gather, something is only "user friendly" if an "average user" can sit down in front of it and do exactly what they want with zero direction.

Where on earth did this idea come from?

When you first learned algebra - was it expected to be something you could just "figure out" with no guidance? How about learning a language? Science? History?

Why is the standard different for learning software?

Actually, I take that last question back. There are lots of classes for learning about software. I've seen classes for learning how to use Windows, Photoshop, Microsoft Office... the list goes on! Are these pieces of software considered "user friendly" and ready for the "average user" even though we offer classes to learn how to use them? Yep.

Why is the standard different for Linux then?

Some food of thought. Please give me some input on any/all of my questions by dropping a comment below.

~Jeff Hoogland

Bloathi Linux

Bodhi Linux is mainly built around two things - the Enlightenment desktop and a minimalistic approach to software. Even with these goals stated we still have users (and review writers) that complain about the lack of pre-installed software Bodhi comes with by default.

With this in mind one of the Bodhi forum members, Timmy, has put together a remaster of the latest Bodhi ISO image that he has cleverly called

"Bloathi Linux" 

Bloathi is simply the latest Bodhi release with a slew of pre-installed software setup on it. By default it comes with:

Envision
GEdit (Replaces Leafpad)
Jockey-GTK (Maybe better known as "Hardware Drivers")
LXKeyMap (Keyboard Layout Switcher)
LXRandr (Monitor Settings)
XScreensaver
Sun Java 6 (JRE and plugin)
Gnome System Monitor
Gnome System Manager
Qalculate
Inkscape
LibreOffice
Pinta
Simple Scan
Firefox
Pidgin
Thunderbird
Transmission
DeaDBeeF
VLC
Xfburn
Adobe Acrobat Reader
ubuntu-restricted-extras
adobe-flashplugin
bodhi-filesharing
bodhi-printing

You can find the ISO (and md5sum) for the disc hosted on source forge here. If you'd like to make suggestions for Timmy, you can find a forum thread he has posted here.

~Jeff Hoogland

Bodhi Linux ARM Beta Release for Genesi Smartbook

Much to my fiancée's dismay my little Genesi Smartbook has been occupying much of my time of the late. In fact, just six days ago I posted about how to get an early build of a Bodhi ARM file system for the Smartbook.

Today I am happy to announce a more functional release for the Genesi. Audio now works and permissions have been sorted out so the normal user can shutdown the system. Beyond these bug fixes this release (and future releases) are coming in an easier install media. We will now be providing two different .img files for the Smartbook, you can find them for download here.

One of the images is a live image. Use this one if you want to simply run Bodhi from your SD card. The second is an installer image. Simply boot it up, follow the on screen prompts and Bodhi will be installed to the internal SSD of the Smartbook. IMG files allow for simply loading these images onto an SD card with a single command:

sudo dd if=myfile.img of=/path/to/sdcard bs=1M

You can also load the image onto your card via a GUI if you are into that sort of thing. Please note this command may take five minutes or longer to complete. Once you get the system online the user name is "bodhi" with password of "bodhi". Sudo is setup for this user by default.

Next on my ARM todo list is to get our App Center working and putting together a formal tutorial for getting Bodhi running on the HP Touchpad.

Finally, if you run into any issues please let us know in the Genesi section of our forums.

~Jeff Hoogland

People in Closed Source Houses Shouldn't Throw Stones

I wrote a post late last year when all the news first started being posted (pretty much everywhere) about the Windows 8 "secure boot" support. Well folks, the open source news media is at it again - Microsoft has announced they are doing exactly what we thought they would - they are implementing secure boot on Windows 8 ARM devices. There have been various blogs and even decent open source websites posting foolish notions such as:

Microsoft ready to war with Linux

or

Did Microsoft Just Kill Ubuntu Tablets?

I say these notions are foolish because they imply that Microsoft is doing something that isn't already being done.

Do these people have any idea how many Linux based ARM devices don't allow dual booting? Do they have any idea how many Linux based ARM devices exist, were even if you can dual boot them they lack hardware functionality in alternative operating systems due to closed source drivers?

Before you tar and feather me for not jumping on the Microsoft bashing bandwagon - please stop and count the number of ARM devices you've tried to install an alternative operating system (such as Debian) on. Personally, the number of different pieces of hardware I've worked with is into the double digits now. Do you know how many devices I've managed to get full functionality out of?  

Exactly one. 

Thats right, until I'd recently started working with the Genesi Smartbook alternative operating systems were always crippled on the various ARM devices I owned. If you can prove me wrong here - really, please do! I would love to have more ARM devices that I can run Linux on fully.

So maybe, just maybe, the open source news media needs to stop and take a deep breath and realise that the ARM platform as a whole is a giant mess with regards to software freedom. Microsoft isn't doing anything new here - they are simply following in the footsteps of companies everywhere of creating locked down mobile devices. So please, if you are going to continue calling out Microsoft as the ARM anti-christ please be sure to include all those other companies involved with ARM that also hate software freedom.

~Jeff Hoogland