Some “Open Sourcerer” statistics
I thought readers might be interested to know a bit about themselves. I’ve been running this blog for just about 6 months now and there are some mildly interesting statistics from Counterize II – The stats gathering plugin I use.
The Most Used Browsers are:
Mozilla Firefox – 10622 – 58.82 %
Internet Explorer – 5265 – 29.15 %
Unknown – 1205 – 6.67 %
Netscape Navigator – 605 – 3.35 %
Opera – 363 – 2.01 %
When you look at the Operating system numbers below, it is very noticeable how Firefox is way ahead of IE even though the largest single platform of visitors is XP. Of course I do realise that the “ethnography” of the visitors to this site will be somewhat biased. Something that is not shown here is that the IE browser versions are almost all IE6. There are not enough IE7 visitors to get a mention on the browser-by-version statistics. The Firefox number is comprised (in descending order) of mostly 2.0.0.6, some 2.0.0.7 and almost the same 2.0.0.4.
The Most Used Operating Systems are:
Windows XP – 6666 – 40.29 %
Ubuntu Linux – 5198 – 31.42 %
Unknown – 2458 – 14.86 %
Linux – 1107 – 6.69 %
These numbers are quite interesting for two reasons:
Firstly, note the lack of Vista. It isn’t even on the radar at all. I can count on one hand the number of visitors I see running Vista. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised seeing the terrible reputation it has.
Secondly, Linux. Almost as many visitors are running Linux as are Windows XP… As I said, I do realise there are some compelling reasons why Linux users would be more attracted here then Microsoft, but even so, a very significant number of visitors have chosen NOT to use M$ on their desktop. And of those who haven’t switched, many are using an Open Source browser.
Not convinced yet? Go on… Go get Ubuntu’s brand new 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) release and give it a try. Oh yes, and do remember, it’s free.
Exchange vs. Zimbra: Even Microsoft thinks Zimbra wins…
There are a couple of very interesting articles on Matt Assay’s blog. In the first he stumbles over a Microsoft Partner document that suggests M$ view Zimbra as a serious competitor. In the second, Microsoft’s view on their competitive position is exposed. It’s not very compelling:
- Zimbra is a small company.
- Zimbra doesn’t integrate as tightly with Microsoft technology as Microsoft’s Exchange does.
- Zimbra only offers Exchange-to-Zimbra migration.
That’s it folks. (Zimbra has recently been acquired by Yahoo so they aren’t that small any more)
Microsoft come up with some good reasons to go for Zimbra themselves such as:
- The open-source-software components [used by Zimbra] are proven solutions by themselves, many with large existing user bases (MySQL, OpenLDAP, Apache, PHP, SpamAssassin).
- Its’ [sic] class of service architecture allows for simple tiered access to services.
- Searching via their Web interface is fast and robust (AJAX query builder).
- The Verity HTML converter allows for fast rendering of 200 documents to HTML.
- Zimlets, can provide a more interactive user experience compared to the Microsoft equivalent of SmartTags.
Zimbra, on the other hand, have oodles of good stuff to say about Exchange:
- Exchange subscribes to proprietary interface to retain significant control over customer experience, while creating substantial reliance on Microsoft
- Microsoft’s agenda to progress its [Windows] business has resulted in lack of compelling support for Mac and Linux based products, non-Windows mobile devices and browsers, thereby limiting end-user choice in an otherwise diverse ecosystem
- Exchange 2007 is based on Microsoft Windows platform that is plagued with security issues that UNIX-based platforms are not.Arno Edelman, Microsoft’s European business security product manager, recently said “Microsoft is not a security company. Security is important, but it’s just a little part of Microsoft.” [I feel comforted.]
And there’s lots more too.
Nice one. If you are thinking about going down the Exchange or Sharepoint route, make sure you think very carefully…
Microsoft’s IIS vs. Apache: is Apache really in decline?
After reading about the latest netcraft survey (that shows Apache undergoing serious market share decline compared to M$’s IIS), following a link from Glyn Moody’s blog and clicking further to here, we will eventually end up looking at another survey of web servers that shows a rather different result:
How strange… One shows Apache in apparent terminal decline, whilst this survey from www.securityspace.com shows something completely different. The survey above is rather more stringent about what it thinks is a valid web site and what isn’t. And as we have seen before, when large registrars are paid to switch millions of parked domains from Apache to IIS, the Netcraft survey numbers take a rather large jump in favour of the M$ product.
I know which Web Server I depend on. And it isn’t Microsoft’s….
Microsoft finally gets Open Source?
The OSI, the body which unilaterally maintains the list of “approved Open Source Licenses”, has approved the application from Microsoft for 2 of theirs to be deemed officially Open Source.
Acting on the advice of the License Approval Chair, the OSI Board today approved the Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL) and the Microsoft Reciprocal License (Ms-RL). The decision to approve was informed by the overwhelming (though not unanimous) consensus from the open source community that these licenses satisfied the 10 criteria of the Open Source definition, and should therefore be approved.
On a personal note I am somewhat disappointed at the news, and rather more sceptical about Microsoft’s intentions behind this than some others. It seems clear however from the commentary around the blogosphere that this was fair, un-biased and the licences are indeed valid. So hey-ho, let’s give them a chance to prove me wrong.
I really, sincerely hope that they do “get” Open Source and start to work with the community in a more helpful and conciliatory manner than thus far.
After Steve Balmer’s recent comments about Red Hat though, I can’t be absolutely sure. Can you?
This feels just a bit like Red Riding Hood sitting down to have a nice chat and cup of tea with granny…
OpenOffice.org’s Market Share at 20%!
Here’s a great post I picked up via the one of the OpenOffice.org mailing lists. It looks as though the 95% market share numbers for M$ Office are way off the mark! In reality, it could be more like 20% of the Office application market is actually OpenOffice.org’s and M$’s position could actually be going backwards!
Wharton’s analysis reveals the fallacy that 95% of users (PC users or office software users, pick one market) use Microsoft Office. Instead, the oft-quoted number simply measures that 95% of the revenue collected for the sale of office suites goes to MS (according to International Data Corp.). Thus, free products including OpenOffice.org and Google Docs are not measured by this statistic at all!
If you measure market share as the number of computers with the software installed, as a percentage of all computers, then Microsoft has far less than 95% and OOo has a good slice: Microsoft claims to have about 400 million MSO users, and some estimates place OOo users at 100 million. With these simple numbers, MS has 80% market share and OpenOffice has 20% (obviously excluding other players and overlap; these numbers could be refined).
Nice one Benjamin. I can’t wait for it to reach 50% – and I believe it will too.
Untangle, Asterisk PBX and File Server; All-in-One. Part 6
If you’ve been following the story so far you’ll now where I am. If you haven’t, please go back to Part 1 and read from there. Alternatively if you do a search for Untangle in the little search box top-left then you should get all of the posts so far.
I have stalled on Untangle due to kernel issues already well documented on here before. The good news is the guys from Untangle are in contact with me and are working on a new kernel for the upcoming 5.1 release. I am hoping to get something to play with in the next few weeks. And it will most likely be based on a 2.6.22 release which is excellent news as that has direct support for my hardware.
So in the meantime I have been installing Samba – which is fairly straightforward – and Asterisk which is a bit more involved.
As you will know, I am using the Linux From Scratch (LFS) project for this server’s operating system. From the same stable, comes the Beyond Linux From Scratch (BLFS) book that contains many (i.e. hundreds) excellent resources and instructions for installing various applications; including Samba. So I will not go into detail about how to build Samba here. The configuration of Samba for my home network is another subject and I will discuss this further once I’m happy with the set up.
Asterisk, the Open Source PBX, is another ballgame entirely. To build asterisk itself from source is not too hard. From an LFS core, there were no dependencies to satisfy first. If you are on a major distro however, you will certainly need to add quite a few -dev packages to your system first. With Ubuntu they have a meta package called build-essentials which will certainly help. Here is a good starting point for information: http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/index.php?page=Asterisk+installation+tips.
To build asterisk for testing purposes, build and install as root*. As I have an x100p analogue FXO card I need to install the zaptel driver first like this (after extracting the source tarball and cd‘ing into it):
./configure --prefix=/usr &&
make menuselect &&
make &&
make install &&
make config
Both this and the Asterisk build expect your kernel source tree (the headers) to be in /usr/src/linux-`uname -r` by default. The make menuselect command will enable you to select which hardware drivers you need and to disable the building of those you do not. make config will install a rc.d script for init so the card is properly initialised during boot-up. Although I had to hack this a bit to work with the LFS/BLFS boot scripts. Even if you do not have any analogue cards, you are recommended to install the zaptel drivers as they can provide timing a source for Inter-Asterisk Trunks (IAX) and conferencing via the ztdummy module.
Once the zaptel modules are installed, repeat a similar process for the Asterisk source:
./configure --prefix=/usr &&
make menuselect &&
make &&
make install
This should build and install the Asterisk server into the /usr hierarchy with the configuration files in /etc/asterisk and the runtime information and sound files under /var. When you run make menuselect pay attention, you can choose whether to install various language files, codecs, add-on sounds (I installed the extra sound files) and other goodies. Here’s a page that should help you get going once again: http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/index.php?page=Asterisk+Compile.
You can elect to install sample configuration files, by typing make samples. This will basically give you a working PBX out of the box for testing purposes. This is sort-of-useful but the files are very complicated and hard to follow, although they are well commented so they make a good reference. I quickly removed the whole /etc/asterisk directory to somewhere else (to keep for reference) and started from scratch with a clean directory.
Learning how to setup asterisk is time consuming. Then comes that moment when, after reading for hours and looking into lots of text files and learning about channels, priorities, applications and contexts, suddenly the penny drops! It will become clear. But don’t rush it and I would strongly recommend NOT going for one of the packaged appliance builds that come with a GUI front end to start with. Why? Because you will never learn what’s under the hood and you will be limited by the GUI designer’s ideas of what you need to configure. Once you ‘get it’, by all means use a GUI, but not before…
For testing you will need a phone 
I know. Obvious but it had to be said. There are plenty of SIP phones on the market that are inexpensive, and there are several “soft phones” that you can run on your PC and use a headset, or mic & speakers. I chose to go the soft phone route for now and tried the following three soft phones for Linux.
- Ekiga: Formerly Gnome Meeting. Initially I thought this was great but I have had several weird issues with DTMF and sound quality, so this is on the back-burner for now.
- Wengo Phone: Looks nice, seems to work O.K. but I preferred the User Interface and overall experience of the final one in my list.
- Twinkle: This just works. Has a simple and easy to use interface and is a cinch to setup. My personal favourite of the three (apart from the name, that is.)
These soft phones I used purely for SIP connectivity on my local LAN to the Asterisk server. There are others that can connect to Asterisk using IAX or H.323 but I didn’t try those, nor see a need to.
Here are a couple of resources I found very helpful along the way:
- The voip-info.org wiki for Asterisk
- This excellent short slide presentation (They say a picture paints a thousand words don’t they…)
- This e-book: The “TFOT” Book (If this site is down, google for it. It’s available from lots of other sources)
- And google. There is loads of information out there if you are prepared to look for it.
Along with my business partner who has installed Asterisk on his similarly small and low-powered server, we now have fully networked digital PBX functionality (IAX trunking between our servers), Voicemail (with email notification and forwarding), and Dial-in & Dial-out via the PSTN (through the x100p card on my box). Next is to try conferencing and call parking.
With this little server (shown here with the x100p card installed), I now have Samba, providing a home network file server for all the family, Asterisk running happily and providing advanced digital telephony throughout the house. And all using free and Open Source software. Once I’d bought the hardware, the software costs were zero, and will be zero. How much is Windows Home Server? And more to the point, why do you need it? Oh yes, does it also have a fully fledged enterprise grade digital PBX? And is it secure? (Just like the rest of Windows… lol)
Once I’ve nailed the configuration down and got asterisk running securely*, I’ll post some more on this including configuration details.
* The usual way to install Asterisk from source is by, and as, root. For a test-bed that’s no problem but for a production environment with direct internet connectivity (as this device will have) this is not a good idea. I will spend a little time developing an installation procedure that will install it as a non-root user and with limited privilages. The suggested mechanisms I have found on-line are not quite as I would like them. I try and keep to the FHS where possible and maintain a “tight” ship. This process I will also document once it’s nailed…
