Ubuntu vs. Kubuntu

First off, I should say that it took me a long time to use Ubuntu, I was already running couple of Debian servers and was quite happy with my OpenSUSE and Fedora Core development boxes. Why would I want to run another Debian based distro? The answer is clear now as Ubuntu has become so popular, there are a lot more people running it which means that there are a lot more people putting time into developing apps and libraries for it. Also there is a lot less "dependancy hell" going on these days, as package manager developers (in my opinion) have been pushed into making sure that most packages are installed with all of their dependencies without having to spend half an hour tracking down different libraries. I think that that software developers have begun treating the typical new linux user with kid gloves so as not to deter them from giving up and going back to Windows or whatever operating system they were using before. Although none of the above is Ubuntu specific it just seems that the Ubuntu developers have got it right.

For a long time I was a Gnome fan, I disliked KDE's silly little dragon and overstuffed application tree. These days though both of the desktop environments applications work to play relatively nicely with each other. But I thought I would have a look at Kubuntu just to see how KDE would go instead of Gnome. I had initially thought that it would be a little slower but I was quite surprised to find that the KDE desktop loaded a lot quicker than Gnome.

After going through the usual pains setting up my nvidia card for dual screen display, I have an older 17 inch monitor that only works properly when the driver is set for the same model but using the 15 inch driver (Philips 107s is actually my monitor, but using the 105s driver). I wanted to see if I could set up X without editing the xorg.conf file manually and I was surprised that I was able to do it without a hitch. It did need a bit of editing but that was just me being pedantic and could have been used perfectly without me fiddling with it.

The second thing that I noticed is that dolphin is the default file manager, what??? I was a little disgruntled by this but I thought that I would persevere with it to see how it went. It took a bit of getting used to and I went through a lot of, "Why they did the do that for?" and "Where the hell is ....". But after my initial "It's different, I don't like it" phase I settled down to customise it and I'm quite happy with it. However I still wish it had a terminal integrated into it somehow.

I started installing a few apps via a terminal and then I though I should really try out adept and see how that goes. It looked pretty decent and functioned well, was easy to use and hard to stuff anything up, but i still prefer to work in a terminal and wasn't in the mood to search around a gui when sudo apt-get install is so much easier especially because of tab completion at the command line. The good thing is that adept is simple and easy to use, so newcomers to linux shoudn't feel too much discomfort poking around and having a look at what software is available. It is no better nor worse than synaptic in my opinion.

And so, After installing all of my usual apps and development libraries I've come to the conclusion that as far as usability goes, for me they are both at the same level now. I have started to pay a lot more interest in KDE now, I'm looking forward to the final release of KDE 4. All of that aside i'm still most productive using fluxbox and vim or jed.

Social Networking

I originally joined facebook because I was concerned about the public availability of personal information. It is a bit disconcerting to see your name up there for everybody to see and find out personal information with just a few mouse clicks. How far does this information travel and who looks at it?
A couple of weeks ago I decided to bite the bullet and see who uses facebook, and what information people were willing to put out about themselves. At this point in time I should explain that I am studying in information security and my intentions were to see how social networking sites such as facebook dealt with the mass of personal information stored about its users. Unfortunately my research was put to an halt when I started having a look around at a few of the profiles, people I know, people I used to know, and sadly people I had neglected to continue to know. People do tend to drift apart and communication wanes after a time I guess but it good to see what they are doing with themselves after all of these years.
But anyway back on topic.... ID thieves and spammers can have a field day on facebook, well actually they probably have been ever since it's release. When one considers what an ID fraudster requires to build character profile on a potential victim, for example your full name, date of birth, phone numbers, email addresses and photos. Everything they need or could ask for is right there in front of them in your profile. Add all of that together along with the fact that you can let people know what your physical movements are (travel, attending events, meeting places with friends etc.) and what you actually look like..... well I'll leave that up to your level of paranoia.
Fortunately facebook is particularly good when it comes to protecting private information but unfortunately it is up to the user to enable a few of the features and to be aware of what personal information they are posting. Common sense will hardly prevail here as you view your friends profiles and feel obliged to enter as much information about yourself as you can. What makes it harder is the fact that the friend search feature encourages you to search for old school friends, people from the same hometown as you and so on. Not that there should be anything wrong with revealing this information it's just there are people (scammers, spammers, ID thieves) searching through social network sites for easily obtainable information to harvest.
Stay safe and think about what information you choose to make public, if you wouldn't walk up to a stranger on the street and tell them something about yourself then don't post it on the internet.

…in this brave new world where tons of people are looking to mine our information and monetize whatever they can get their hands on, we stand to become nothing more than “contact information” rather than good business connections or friends.

-Tish Grier http://spap-oop.blogspot.com/2007/09/perils-of-social-networking-pt-2.html