So, it is without further ado that I introduce my next victim guest. Silver Fox is generally a quiet member of the Ubuntu Beginners Team, but does good work within said team which goes – largely – unnoticed. I thought it would be appropriate to try and bring these to light for others to see.

1. Tell as much as you’re willing about your “real life” like name, age, gender, location, family, religion, profession, education, hobbies, etc.

I am a professional web developer and database administrator living and working in the UK.   I don’t really have much family but I do have a good number of friends.  My hobbies include running, badminton and just lately photography.  I also keep a blog where I post pretty much anything on my mind.

2. When and how did you become interested in computers? in Linux? in Ubuntu?

The earliest computer I remember “playing” with was an acorn electron.  I got fascinated by how what you typed somehow made sense to the computer (certainly didn’t to me). I got it into my head to try and work out how this all works.  After much time and effort I had to give up, I just didn’t “get it”.

I can’t remember what I was doing after that but I picked up the computer interest sometime around windows 3.1.  Again I was drawn to the programming side ,  with fond memories of writing applications in qbasic.  This time I seemed to get on better with it and stuck the course.  Years later I found myself with a BSc (Hons).

Linux was a bit of a background noise initially to me,  I had heard people mention it but I was not sure what to make of it at all.  I finally took a jump after some serious problems with Microsoft Vista.  A colleague suggested I try Ubuntu (I believe I caught the end of 7.10).  Since then I have tried many distros but a firm favourite would have to be Ubuntu (and those based on it).

3. When did you become involved in the forums (or the Ubuntu community)? What’s your role there?

I joined Ubuntu Forums in June 2008,  though I lurked for a period before hand. Here is a link to my profile.   I try to help anyone I can, even if its pointing them to a howto.   I especially try to help those who post in Absolute Beginners Talk.  These are the people I can relate to most,  totally stuck and feeling lost.  I consider myself a beginner at best but I would like to think I must have learnt something by now about Ubuntu

4. Are you an Ubuntu member? If so, how do you contribute? If not, do you plan on becoming one?

I am an Ubuntu Member. Here is a link to my wiki page.  My main involvements are with the Ubuntu Beginners Team.  I am in my second term of leading the IRC focus group. This group aims to provide real time support to those who require help.   I have other activities listed on my wiki page for those who would like an in depth breakdown.

5. What distros do you regularly use? What software? What’s your favorite application? Your least favorite?

Currently I am mainly using Ubuntu and #! Crunchbang Linux at home.  From time to time I boot into Fedora and Zenix.

My favourite application would probably be Firefox.   Its usually one of the first application I run when I turn on my computer

6. What’s your fondest memory from the forums, or from Ubuntu overall? What’s your worst?

My fondest memories on the forum are two little words, Thank You.  I get great pleasure from knowing that I helped someone.

7. What luck have you had introducing new computer users to Ubuntu?

I have had some success in introducing people to Ubuntu. A few of my friends are now happily running the operating system with me serving as immediate source to help if it goes wrong (very little has )

8. What would you like to see happen with Linux in the future? with Ubuntu?

I would like to see awareness of Linux increase to the point where I can talk to “Joe Public” about Linux and to not get a blank look back.

9. If there was one thing you could tell all new Ubuntu users, what would it be?

Hello and welcome   The community is fantastic.  Never feel like you are alone when tackling a problem.

Anyway, enough of my reminiscing! As ubuntu-geek posted earlier in the week, there’s a new LoCo Administrator on the forums. I know this is basically a repost, but I felt I should actually post it myself.

Many thanks first of all, to the Forum Council who agreed to give me the position in record time after I fleetingly suggested that I’d be interested if there was no other volunteers!! Secondly, to any LoCo teams, as Ryan said, don’t hesitate to get in touch if you need something sorting out with your forum, or need one creating. (I’ve even gone so far as updating my contact details on my wiki page!).

Fact is, I procrastinate…a lot…and it’s all too easy for me. So I’ve decided that when it comes to University work, I’ll actually try and do it instead of sitting idling on IRC, browsing the forums, or going on Facebook. I mean…obviously I’ll still be doing those, but it should be in between doing work. Not doing work in between doing those things.

I think this partly means I have to use Ubuntu more (yay!). Because I can never be bothered to fiddle with it all that much, but the main piece of work I have for Uni right now is to write a unix shell, so the 2 go hand in hand So that’s my plan, and I’m sincerely hoping I stick to it.

Either way, there’s now public evidence of me saying it, so we’ll find out soon enough!!

So Ubuntu 8.10 was released to day – as always, downloads were slow, websites went down, torrents were seeded, the usual (yes the forums went down too – in fact they’ve just come back online ).

I’ve in the middle of installing Intrepid on my laptop as I write this, so far it looks nice, not to different visually from Hardy when you first boot the live CD, but there are some differences that I think are noticeable when you finally get around to using them.

Anyway, I’ve got stuff to be doing and /home directories to be restoring, so I’ll post back in a few days when I’ve been running Intrepid properly!!

A few links you may find useful:

http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/8.10/
http://www.ubuntu.com/
http://ubuntuforums.org

Unfortunately, I can’t try it out on Ubuntu just yet, as there’s no Linux builds, and trying to build it from source won’t work, many have tried. People were hopeful that it would run in wine…No dice. So we’ll just have to wait. Until then, I can continue merging and moving threads about on the forums. Which have been literally inundated with threads regarding the browser, so there is now a “Google Chrome MegaThread” :p

I have to say, I actually quite like it…now that the EULA has been revised that is. And it renders very quickly (Yes – faster than Safari, which according to Apple is “the fastest, easiest-to-use web browser in the world” – perhaps they should rethink that statement?).

As this blog seems to be getting a lot of hits still concerning Acid3, I tried Google Chrome from the same acid test website. And it gets….78/100! I think that’s pretty respectable, though it fails the LinkTest (screenshot supplied below).

Anyway – more on this later, possibly when there’s major improvements or a Linux version

Update: I forgot to add the screenshot of the Acid test, here it is!

Acid3 Test Results

Basically it’s like Twitter but it’s Open-Source, and has a large following from the Ubuntu community, a lot of the members from the Forums are on there too As well as being open-source, it supports OpenID which means you can use 1 login across multiple websites (read the link for more info).

In all I actually prefer it to Twitter (I deleted my Twitter account). You can find me at http://identi.ca/Joeb454

It’s really good, I’d recommend it to anybody for a good backup solution. I’ve backed up my entire home folder to it (but not onto the samba share ) I thought about that one!!

I’m now looking for another mini project, SVN was considered, but I guess it’s a little overkill. Still, I need something to do!

Also the other week I decided to go for Ubuntu Membership, and the meeting was last night (I thought it was the Friday night…I decided to go through the Americas board, to guarantee that I would be home, and lets just say that the timezone’s got the better of me

I got accepted as a member, which means some of you may well be reading this blog post from http://planet.ubuntu.com (o hai!!1!) So you’ll occasionally see some stuff from me there.

I think that’s all I have to say

I noticed last night that the Xbox Live issues everybody has been experiencing over the Christmas season still haven’t gone completely, which is annoying…and there’s still no news on that free arcade game.

Also there’s been a lot of people on the Ubuntu Forums posting in “Internet Speak” e.g. lyk this n its hard 2 read sumtimes LoL!!1!  I’ll be honest, and I’m sure I speak for most…it’s annoying…don’t do it I’ve been doing my bit to help all the newcomers that we’ve had over Christmas, so try to help us, and make the posts’ readable