Where is Ploum?

Suite à ses récents succès en Allemagne, où il pourrait devenir la troisième force politique nationale, le Parti Pirate fait beaucoup parler de lui.

Mais comment considérer sérieusement un parti qui est né sur le désir de télécharger de la musique et qui, à première vue, n'est qu'un parti de défense des droits des internautes ?

En fait, réduire le parti Pirate au téléchargement reviendrait à considérer que les partis écologistes ne cherchent qu'à protéger les pandas d'Asie. Caricaturer le Parti Pirate en un groupuscule de geeks barbus est également mensonger: j'en connais deux qui se rasent.

Last week, I had the chance to have a nice chat with Jonathan Riddell, Canonical employee and Kubuntu maintainer.

For years, Jonathan was paid to maintain Kubuntu. In a recent move, Canonical announced that Kubuntu will become a community-only project. As a way to start the conversation, I poked him about that:
— What happened? Is Canonical dropping KDE support?
— Well, we are doing with KDE exactly what we did with GNOME.
— Indeed. But what is the reason?
— Canonical seems to think that none of them managed to reach a non-geek audience.

And, sadly, I had to agree with that.

End of last year, I've quit Ubuntu, after more than 7 years, to find out what was the best GNOME 3 Linux distribution. I've selected three major distributions: Ubuntu 11.10, Opensuse 12.1 and Fedora 16. I spent more than a month with each. Here's what I've found and learned.

What I'm expecting from a distribution

Before asking yourself what is your distribution of choice, maybe you should start by clarifying what you really expect from a distribution. In fact, the list is quite short for me:

1. I expect a good GNOME 3 experience, as close as possible from upstream.
2. I want an easy way to install/manage software.
3. I want all the software easily available and upgradable. This includes proprietary codecs, flash plugin, games, etc.
4. I want the latest versions of those software and quickly after they are released.
5. Be easily installable.
6. Good default: the less I've to do when reinstalling, the better.
7. Other than that, stay out of my way. No specific configuration tool. GNOME should handle that.

But that's not all. Being a Linux evangelist, I install Linux for a lot of people. Which add completely different requirements.

1. There should be a stable version with a long support time so I upgrade those people as rarely as possible.
2. The stable version should be stable and as trouble free as possible. This include incremental upgrade and they should be prevented to make a complete distribution upgrade (because it is never trouble free).
3. The stable version should be smart enough to update important things like hardware drivers, major versions of Firefox, etc.
4. The installation should come with a selection of pretty wallpaper, good default, most needed software. (the less I've to do when installing, the less I forget something which may block them as soon as I leave the room).
5. Installation process have to look sweet and requires the minimal input from me. I will be installing it when drinking tea with them.

Traduction francophone disponible

Dear politician,

If you have been pointed to this text, it is because you tried to justify your position or your actions by the fact that "it saves jobs".

Sorry, you have reached the infamous "Backyard Digging Point". Your argument is invalid. Don't worry, you are not the first nor the last one. Let's see together why this argument is invalid and, even more, why it is very dangerous to rely on it.