Joe Blog's » university

Back To Ubuntu

Joe — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 14:59:33 +0000

I recently started my final year at university, after spending a year out on an 'Industrial Placement' at PepsiCo. The year taught me a lot, which I shan't bore you with, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The one thing I didn't like about the year was that I never managed to quite work out a good balance between work and spending time doing things I enjoy, such as participating in the Ubuntu community things...even if that 'thing' was just spending an hour being logged into IRC.

After finishing in September, and starting back at university in October, I've had to adjust to a totally different schedule (no university is ever 9-5, Mon-Fri...is it?), which has freed time on different days at different times. Thankfully, I've used this time to get back into the things I missed in Ubuntu, slowly but steadily. I still can't contribute as much as I'd like, because I know if I did I'd end up impacting my university work, but I'm content with what I'm doing now. Luckily, a lot of my lecturers are happy to support/discuss open-source, which obviously makes things easier at university...especially when one lecturer alone made it so Ubuntu was installed on every PC in the Comp-Sci department It also means I was able to remotely participate in UDS fairly easily, something I haven't been able to do very well in the past.

One thing I'm looking at getting back into now that I have the time (and now I realised how bad I've been at keeping going), is the Ubuntu Community Interviews that I conducted. I already have a couple of people in line, so hopefully I'll get some more of those up soon, and I look forward to being able to participate more than I have been

Another Win For Ubuntu

Joe — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 03:12:28 +0000

So a little background - I'm in my 2nd year at University, studying Computer Science/Software Engineering. This year we have a "Systems Programming" module, which is basically learning low level things (inodes/filesystems etc). The computer labs for the module are Ubuntu labs with full root access, as requested by the lecturer. Needless to say these are separate from the rest of the network!!

So I was talking to my lecturer about Ubuntu in general (he's a fellow user) and I found out that hopefully, by the start of the next academic year at the University (Sept/Oct 09) the entire University should be in a dual boot situation with Windows, and all linked up to the network. However I'm expecting this to apply to only the Windows labs, and not the Mac labs

Either way I thought it was great that they'll be putting Linux on the desktops. I know that they run Linux servers, as I'm often connected to it via screen & ssh (coincidentally a fantastic combination), however to run it on the desktop is a big push forward. I have seen quite a few students running Linux this year though. For example the other day I saw somebody running Ubuntu on his eee, but I didn't stop to ask more

I'll post back when if I find out any more, or when I finally get to play with an one of the proper Ubuntu installs.

Still Alive!

Joe — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:33:57 +0000

I know I've been neglecting anybody that reads this blog a lot recently, for which I apologize.

I have 3 pieces of coursework for University due in around 2 weeks, I'm currently writing part of a magazine article for Linux Identity in the US (deadline is also 2 weeks!).

But don't worry, as soon as I get time, I'll be back and blogging properly like normal