Halleluya

The Inquirer has broken the news that the UK Government, helped by BECTA, has finally approved at least two companies to be official suppliers of Open Source Software into our Education sector.

OPEN SOURCE companies have been granted official permission to supply software to the UK public sector for the first time in British history.

At least two Open Source software suppliers have been awarded places on the £80 million Software for Educational Institutions Framework, making them official suppliers to UK schools and scoring a victory in what has been a long and frustrating battle against favouritism shown to conventional commercial software companies in UK politics and procurement.

One of the suppliers is Sirius IT run by Mark Taylor.

Mark, here’s many congratulations from us at The Open Learning Centre. You have been a fantastic advocate for OSS for many years and this award to supply is thoroughly deserved. We wish your company every success.

Novell are apparently another “named” party to the supplier framework and having been long-time sponsors of the OSS eco-system also deserve congratulations. Now, if only they’d drop the deal-with-the-devil…

Novell didn’t make it; Becta have just announced and released the list of the 12 suppliers. And as Glyn Moody also considers, the “pact with the Devil” in which Novell sold its identity to Microsoft probably means that it isn’t such a bad thing in reality. By way of support, the article I wrote just 6 weeks ago “How to remove Mono from Ubuntu…” was, and remains, the most read piece on the whole blog. And almost all of the 50+ comments are in support of the objective. Clearly there isn’t much appetite for tainited code in FLOSS from the enlightened…

Tell Someone Else!

I received an email the other day from a self-acclaimed apprentice. Rather than trying to comment or analyse Ben’s learnings to date, I’ll leave Ben to speak for himself and you to make up your own minds…

Greetings!  And thank you for a most entertaining and informative site.

I am rambling towards a serious point.  Children’s computing and affordable online security using Linux.  A  grandchild called Gabriel features,  with his ‘new’ sixth birthday ruggedised laptop.  More of this later on.

I cannot claim the title of sourcerer -  one day, maybe.

But even apprentices can get lucky, especially if they persevere.  This apprentice is an old Unix enthusiast from 1981, constrained to use MS in the name of conformity by employers and clients alike.  Retired now!

I even paid good money for the Mark Williams Company’s “Coherent” clone of UNIX, way back when.  Excellent, great fun, but it had to go when the then employer wanted their Compaq  back.  Then time rolled by, and the opportunity passed.  <sigh>

But….
……. for the last couple of years we have been free, yes, free I say!

It started with an AMD desktop  box with SuSE 10 that smoked XP when running X-Plane (we used this as a CAD tool for aircraft design verification).  35% faster on the same box.   Wow!  Meant we could save the money for a new box for another year, maybe two. That was a significant saving.

OK, it was ‘fun’ getting the drivers sorted for OpenGL, but we had help. That was one of the great revelations - the amazing amount of help one can find - often faster and better informed than mainstream OS support.

Then we discovered that far from needing to keep  SuSE 10 offline in order to protect our main earning tool from online nasties, it was more than capable of protecting itself, and updated itself smoothly and effectively when connected. No more Norton! No more AdAware!   It just works!  Wow.

By pure apprentice-style experimentation - we had found out that we could telnet into our cheapo  Actiontec ADSL WiFi router, and that once logged in this way we had a prompt that read:    root#_

Our router/firewall was a Linux engine running Busybox.  About the size of a pack of cigarillos, and not much more costly.  Amazing. The impact this had on me was immediate. Curiosity was ON.

After some careful study the vanilla SuSE 10 installation defences turned out to be even  harder than our firewall box!
This is obvious to many, but it was a big happy surprise for us. If there is one thing I hate it is the drudge of updating and running malware scanners and such.  Too cheap to go for the paid option, and had some nasty surprises from the big name vendors too.

A quick trawl around had me downloading ISOs and burning CDs and trying out live distros and then installing them pretty much at random.  Ubuntu really appealed - and Xubuntu was installed on the old Tosh laptop, still running today.  Fabulous forums.

I have got used to Evolution, and swear by Bogofilter - works better on our industrial quantities of spam than SpamAssassin.

My wife enjoys computer games - but guess what? after raiding the Ubuntu repositories and making sure that OpenGL was good to go, the variety and quality of the sort of games that she prefers was judged hugely superior to that on Windows. By her.

So she won the Toshiba, and we put Ubuntu 7.10 on her desktop too. She says repeatedly that the Linux desktop is far more user friendly because :  “…. it is easier to go back, and not get stuck”

So far, so ordinary.  Family discovers free software. Yawn. But there must be many parents faced with what follows….

More distant family members had a problem - young Gabriel had been increasingly monopolising his family computer for over a year, and he was approaching his sixth birthday.  Not a lot of money around, so choice was limited.  Given the size of his room a laptop was ideal, but the price? Laptops can be delicate, too.

A few keyboards had already been ‘disabled’ on his family desktop, and cheaply replaced, but laptop keyboards can be hard to obtain as well as pricey.  Good hardware was critical to a good result.

A used Itronix GoBook was the answer, found on eBay at around 55 quid depending on spec, fully ruggedised, water resistant keys, solid alloy case, and tough as old boots. We  bought a couple.

They work OK, and run surprisingly long on the ancient batteries, over 3 hours with light use.  Not bad for 2001 hardware.

The OS supplied was Windows 2000, a variant of Windows NT and the CPU fitted to these was panting under Norton 07;   AVG not a lot better.  So Windows web access was disabled, and
Xubuntu 8.04 installed in another partition.

Xubuntu’s  significantly lighter weight  XFCE desktop was just light enough for the Pentium III running 700 MHz (divided by 2 remember, that’s 350 MHz in real money), but it was still
a bit slow loading - well the HDD is slow, so fair enough. We can live with that.

Once tweaked up, we had Batman wallpaper and sound theme, with the compositor in XFCE giving a good imitation of Aeroglass ™ on less cpu than my Palm.  Amazing.  Gabriel was suitably stunned, and even his computer-savvy older brother was impressed.

More to the point he had a proven OS that is more immune to nasties than the best maintained Windows machine we have seen, and since all the software is from the Ubuntu repositories, no fiddly admin intervention is required to update weekly.

His mother need never worry about updating a raft of nagware; Firefox is as well-blocked against unsuitable sites as anything else available - and all in free software!  The total cost of ownership of this laptop is what we paid for it.  No annual Symantec tax, no long hours (add it up annually) updating things to protect Windows from its own inadequacies.

For a single mum, that time is priceless, not to mention the money.

With Gcompris and stacks of Linux  educational software on board, Gabriel has a machine that is (hopefully) good for the rest of his time at first school. He can learn/use Windows 2K if he wants to, but without the risk of connecting Windows to the internet.  The Win drivers have
been ‘got at’ .

And thanks to the Batman wallpaper/sounds, it has ultimate cred with his school-friends.  No problems there, then.  A rugged OS that has street cred, educational value and is hardened against attack at no ongoing cost in time or money - all at the popular price.

The last word should be Gabriel’s - whilst staring at the BSOD on a Win system he said with the gnomic aplomb of the young:-

“Mine doesn’t do that…. this computer is  bad.”

All the best, Ben Mullett

PS
We are big fans of Knoppix and DSL - they work so well at their intended tasks, and Puppy Linux is remarkable - VestaPup and MacPup are particularly good fun.

PPS
Gabriel will doubtless wish to update his wallpaper/theme eventually, and then we have the fun of showing him how…..

Many thanks for the great email Ben. You don’t sound like much of an apprentice to me; more like an “old hand”. I think you have passed with distinctions and may consider yourself a Sourcerer (there’s no formal exam or certificate - enthusiasm and passion are what really count)! And I’m certain Gabriel will be sure to follow in his Grandad’s footsteps

Your comment about Firefox,

… Firefox is as well-blocked against unsuitable sites as anything else available - and all in free software!

is amazingly poigniant at the moment as the debate rolls on as to just how “Free” Firefox really is. But the sentiment is sound.

Please point Gabriel to this post - I’m sure he will be delighted to read about his computing activities on-line… If you wish, send me a picture of the laptop (and/or Gabriel or yourself) and I’ll add it to this post so we can all see; a ruggedised and water-resistant PIII lappy running Xubuntu sounds cooler than Iceland!

Tell Someone Else!

Fantastic. Mozilla have clearly been listening…

Welcome to Firefox - proposed replacement for the EULA

Alternative proposal

These are just mock-ups but I doubt that they’d be showing something far from what will transpire. It looks nice, requires no consent, and certainly wouldn’t aggravate me.

Update, now you can also see some mock-ups of how the license gets shown too.

Proposal for opening page of terms of use

And here is the Website Services Agreement:

Proposed text and display for the agreement itself

No SHOUTING, and they look to have removed most of the cruft which made it utterly pointless. I’m not convinced it is still necessary to actually do all this, and I would prefer if the “services” which cause all this grief (the anti-phishing and scam detection) were disabled by default.

But, this is definitely a massive improvement over where we were a couple of days ago…

Tell Someone Else!

Is anyone reading this old enough to remember that line from the BBC TV Sitcom “Citizen Smith“? I think I have just seen it in action.

In just a couple of short days there has been a massive expression of discontent with the imposition of an EULA on Ubuntu’s users of the Mozilla Firefox web browser. And it seems that the voice of the community is being listened to:

We’ve come to understand that anything EULA-like is disturbing, even if the content is FLOSS based.  So we’re eliminating that.

Mitchell Baker, the chairman of the Mozilla Foundation,  has just posted an update on her blog “The Lizard Wrangler”. The main thrust of her comments make it sound like Mozilla has listened carefully to the concerns so fervently expressed. Although the proof will be in the pudding so to speak:

We still feel that something about the web services integrated into the browser is needed; these services can be turned off and not interrupt the flow of using the browser. We also want to tell people about the FLOSS license — as a notice, not as as EULA or use restriction.  Again, this won’t block the flow or provide the unwelcoming feeling that one comment to my previous post described so eloquently.

Apart from a few rather vitriolic comments towards individuals, the majority of the comments made on “that bug report” (which will probably become quite infamous in it’s own right and get it’s own page on Wikipedia) were lucid and expressed a deep concern about the direction this might lead FOSS in general. A snowball effect of pop-ups and EULAs appearing for Free Software applications would be our a nightmare for the FOSS movement and lead to many people simply saying “so what’s the difference between this an Windows then?”. The snowball that is FOSS would probably melt rather spectacularly.

A user’s ability to choose to install a product from a massive software library without being told how they must use it is one of the great and liberating freedoms of using FOSS. Take that away and you are simply creating a carbon copy of the proprietary software experience.

If it becomes clear after Mozilla release their updated plans that there is still some requirement for the user to positively acknowledge (or accept) some form of usage restriction, then unfortunately Firefox can no longer be classed as Free Software and undoubtedly removes itself from compliance with Freedom 0 “The freedom to run the program, for any purpose“.

If this transpires to be the case, then I personally think that Ubuntu must move Firefox from the “main” repository and replace their default browser with, either the unbranded (and Free) version of Firefox, or another alternative. Firefox can and almost certainly should still be available, but it surely must be moved to the “multiverse” repository which contains: Software restricted by copyright or legal issues.

If I understand the core problem correctly, it seems to me that the best solution is to, by default, disable the phising detection and other services which require end user consent, and to make the positive user acknowledgement simply part of the process of enabling these features, e.g. when you click the check box to turn on phising protection you must acknowledge the use terms at that stage. Not when you just start browsing the web. And, of course, for Linux users these “protection services” are of little or no benefit anyway.

Just perhaps; Wolfie’s goal of “The Glorious Day” is about to make a comeback…

Tell Someone Else!

The creators and owners of the Open Source Firefox web browser seem to have ignited a bit of a war in the last few days.

In Ubuntu’s next development version (Intrepid Ibex) due for release next Month, Mozilla have demanded that for Ubuntu to continue to distribute Firefox, they must display an EULA.

This is the ONLY EULA I believe that is currently present in the “main” repository of Ubuntu and certainly the only one that a user would be required to accept in the default Ubuntu Desktop configuration as is currently supplied.

I like Firefox. It is a good browser. But I do not like having to accept an EULA that potentially restricts what I decide to do with this Free and Open Source software. And, if I am not mistaken, I think that this is actually a violation of the terms of the GPL under which most of the main Ubuntu distribution is supplied.

Ubuntu/Canonical does have a choice. It can compile it’s own version of Firefox and simply turn off the ac_add_options --enable-official-branding option. OK, it won’t be called Firefox any more but I suggest that users will either know and not care or not know and not care about the name change.

There is a rather long [and growing] set of comments associated to a BUG report on Launchpad. I’d recommend any and all Ubuntu Users to read and have their say - whatever that may be.

My personal opinion is that Ubuntu Ibex should ship with the Debian branded version of Firefox (called Iceweasel) for now and then take stock for future releases. They can always include true “Firefox” in their restricted repositories - but there is NO-WAY a peice of software requiring an EULA should be included in the default main repo.

Here is the EULA in all it’s gory detail [coloured emphasis mine]:

MOZILLA FIREFOX END-USER SOFTWARE LICENSE AGREEMENT

July 2008

A SOURCE CODE VERSION OF CERTAIN FIREFOX BROWSER FUNCTIONALITY THAT YOU MAY USE, MODIFY AND DISTRIBUTE IS AVAILABLE TO YOU FREE-OF-CHARGE FROM WWW.MOZILLA.ORG UNDER THE MOZILLA PUBLIC LICENSE and other open source software licenses.

The accompanying executable code version of Mozilla Firefox and related documentation (the “Product”) is made available to you under the terms of this MOZILLA FIREFOX END-USER SOFTWARE LICENSE AGREEMENT (THE “AGREEMENT”). BY USING THE MOZILLA FIREFOX BROWSER, YOU ARE CONSENTING TO BE BOUND BY THE AGREEMENT. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THIS AGREEMENT, DO NOT USE THE MOZILLA FIREFOX BROWSER.

DURING THE MOZILLA FIREFOX INSTALLATION PROCESS, AND AT LATER TIMES, YOU MAY BE GIVEN THE OPTION OF INSTALLING ADDITIONAL COMPONENTS FROM THIRD-PARTY SOFTWARE PROVIDERS. THE INSTALLATION AND USE OF THOSE THIRD-PARTY COMPONENTS MAY BE GOVERNED BY ADDITIONAL LICENSE AGREEMENTS.

1. LICENSE GRANT. The Mozilla Corporation grants you a non-exclusive license to use the executable code version of the Product. This Agreement will also govern any software upgrades provided by Mozilla that replace and/or supplement the original Product, unless such upgrades are accompanied by a separate license, in which case the terms of that license will govern.

2. TERMINATION. If you breach this Agreement your right to use the Product will terminate immediately and without notice, but all provisions of this Agreement except the License Grant (Paragraph 1) will survive termination and continue in effect.

3. PROPRIETARY RIGHTS. Portions of the Product are available in source code form under the terms of the Mozilla Public License and other open source licenses (collectively, “Open Source Licenses”) at http://www.mozilla.org/MPL. Nothing in this Agreement will be construed to limit any rights granted under the Open Source Licenses. Subject to the foregoing, Mozilla, for itself and on behalf of its licensors, hereby reserves all intellectual property rights in the Product, except for the rights expressly granted in this Agreement. You may not remove or alter any trademark, logo, copyright or other proprietary notice in or on the Product. This license does not grant you any right to use the trademarks, service marks or logos of Mozilla or its licensors.

4. PRIVACY POLICY. The Mozilla Firefox Privacy Policy is made available online at http://www.mozilla.com/legal/privacy/, as that policy may be changed from time to time. When Mozilla changes the policy in a material way a notice will be posted on the website at www.mozilla.com and the updated policy will be posted at the above link.

5. WEBSITE INFORMATION SERVICES. Mozilla and its contributors, licensors and partners work to provide the most accurate and up-to-date phishing and malware information. However, they cannot guarantee that this information is comprehensive and error-free: some risky sites may not be identified, and some safe sites may be identified in error.

6. DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY. THE PRODUCT IS PROVIDED “AS IS” WITH ALL FAULTS. TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, MOZILLA AND MOZILLA’S DISTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSORS HEREBY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION WARRANTIES THAT THE PRODUCT IS FREE OF DEFECTS, MERCHANTABLE, FIT FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON-INFRINGING. YOU BEAR THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO SELECTING THE PRODUCT FOR YOUR PURPOSES AND AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PRODUCT. THIS LIMITATION WILL APPLY NOTWITHSTANDING THE FAILURE OF ESSENTIAL PURPOSE OF ANY REMEDY. SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OR LIMITATION OF IMPLIED WARRANTIES, SO THIS DISCLAIMER MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.

7. LIMITATION OF LIABILITY. EXCEPT AS REQUIRED BY LAW, MOZILLA AND ITS DISTRIBUTORS, DIRECTORS, LICENSORS, CONTRIBUTORS AND AGENTS (COLLECTIVELY, THE “MOZILLA GROUP”) WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF OR IN ANY WAY RELATING TO THIS AGREEMENT OR THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THE PRODUCT, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF GOODWILL, WORK STOPPAGE, LOST PROFITS, LOSS OF DATA, AND COMPUTER FAILURE OR MALFUNCTION, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES AND REGARDLESS OF THE THEORY (CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE) UPON WHICH SUCH CLAIM IS BASED. THE MOZILLA GROUP’S COLLECTIVE LIABILITY UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF $500 (FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS) AND THE FEES PAID BY YOU UNDER THE LICENSE (IF ANY). SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OR LIMITATION OF INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR SPECIAL DAMAGES, SO THIS EXCLUSION AND LIMITATION MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.

8. EXPORT CONTROLS. This license is subject to all applicable export restrictions. You must comply with all export and import laws and restrictions and regulations of any United States or foreign agency or authority relating to the Product and its use.

9. U.S. GOVERNMENT END-USERS. This Product is a “commercial item,” as that term is defined in 48 C.F.R. 2.101, consisting of “commercial computer software” and “commercial computer software documentation,” as such terms are used in 48 C.F.R. 12.212 (Sept. 1995) and 48 C.F.R. 227.7202 (June 1995). Consistent with 48 C.F.R. 12.212, 48 C.F.R. 27.405(b)(2) (June 1998) and 48 C.F.R. 227.7202, all U.S. Government End Users acquire the Product with only those rights as set forth therein.

10. MISCELLANEOUS. (a)This Agreement constitutes the entire agreement between Mozilla and you concerning the subject matter hereof, and it may only be modified by a written amendment signed by an authorized executive of Mozilla. (b) Except to the extent applicable law, if any, provides otherwise, this Agreement will be governed by the laws of the state of California, U.S.A., excluding its conflict of law provisions. (c) This Agreement will not be governed by the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. (d) If any part of this Agreement is held invalid or unenforceable, that part will be construed to reflect the parties’ original intent, and the remaining portions will remain in full force and effect. (e) A waiver by either party of any term or condition of this Agreement or any breach thereof, in any one instance, will not waive such term or condition or any subsequent breach thereof. (f) Except as required by law, the controlling language of this Agreement is English. (g) You may assign your rights under this Agreement to any party that consents to, and agrees to be bound by, its terms; the Mozilla Corporation may assign its rights under this Agreement without condition. (h) This Agreement will be binding upon and inure to the benefit of the parties, their successors and permitted assigns.

What a mouthful. I’m sure that even the legal team at Microshaft would be proud of it!

I highlighted a couple of areas that I think I understand…

BY USING THE MOZILLA FIREFOX BROWSER, YOU ARE CONSENTING TO BE BOUND BY THE AGREEMENT.

When I read this EULA after a routine update to Ibex on Saturday, it just appeared to me in a tab of Firefox next time I restarted. If you are using Ibex and you missed it last time round, just start Firefox from a terminal thus: firefox -ProfileManager, create a new profile, and you should get it again. My understanding of the quote above is that as I am now reading the contents of the EULA in Firefox I have, without my express consent, actually agreed to this garbage.

You must comply with all export and import laws and restrictions and regulations of any United States or foreign agency or authority relating to the Product and its use.

Hang on. I’m an end user. WTF have export and import laws got to do with me? And how on earth am I supposed to be aware of and understand “all export and import laws and restrictions and regulations of any United States or foreign agency or authority“. That’s a pretty bloody tall order by my understanding.

I’m sorry Mozilla, but this just stinks!
And OH YES. WHY DO YOU HAVE TO SHOUT IT ALL TOO?

Update 2: Mitch Baker has just posted a blog entry. Basically it sounds like they fscked up but haven’t worked out a fix - yet.

Tell Someone Else!

Thanks to Roy for pointing this one out. A region in the US has a somewhat bizarre ideal (with little or no hope of success I would imagine):

The Government of British West Florida is striving for Dominion Status as a Commonwealth Realm, on a par with Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and The Bahamas.

As well as wanting West Florida to become a member of the Commonwealth they have apparently decided to sign up to the CONSEGI Declaration declaring ISO pretty much irrelevant where IT standards are concerned.

The Dominion of British West Florida Joins Brazil, South Africa, Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba, and Paraguay in condemning the actions of the ISO/IEC in rejecting the appeals lodged against the approval of DIS29500.

All Dominion of British West Florida Government offices are required to seek first systems that support ISO/IEC 26300.

Bo, Baron Von Servers of Fayette,
Chairman of the House of Lords Select Committee on Stamps and Stationery

Nice one Bo. Perhaps they should suggest Gordon does the same thing. It might help his popularity rating. Or it certainly won’t do it any harm…

Tell Someone Else!

This is the second instalment. If you haven’t already, you’ll probably want to to read the first instalment first.

At the end of the first part of this article, I had installed the main components onto the motherboard, checked out the case and am now ready to start putting it all together.

The first major component to go into the case is the PSU. I purchased a good quality power supply from Corsair that featured modular cabling and a high efficiency and quiet design. The modular cables are a great thing - apart from the main feed to the mobo, everything else you plug in as you need it. This helps to reduce clutter in the case and improves airflow so keeping everything cooler and fans spinning slower.
In this picture the black pouch toward the bottom contains all the other cables: Sata, Molex, PCI-E and Fans. So once you know what hardware you have to power, you just connect in the cables you need. This is a very neat solution. The PSU itself and the overall presentation was excellent. This really does look the business…

After looking at it for a while, it was time to fit it into the case. Nothing too hard about that. It did require installing “upside down” as the there is no ventilation underneath where the PSU sits. The Antec Three Hundred manual suggests that the PSU should go in the other way up to help airflow. So be it. You can also see that I have bolted in the CD/DVD drive (at the top) and the HDD at the bottom of the case.

That’s about it for the extra bits. There are plenty of spaces for extra Hard drives or 5 1/2″ units like another CD or a multi-card reader if I wanted to add them at a later stage. But for now, I need to offer in the motherboard (but not screw it down just yet) and once again take some time to look at the whole thing and think about the best way to route the cables. This is the part where you shouldn’t rush. Get a coffee and take you time. Think about where your cables need to go, where or how you can tie them out of the way and generally just get a feel for your computer’s internal layout.

Once I had a good idea about the layout I got some small cable ties and started to get the main bits out of the way. If any cables will run under the motherboard (no problem doing that if it works for you) now is the time to place them down and then screw your mobo into the brass standoffs that you have dutifully screwed into the base already.

You can see here how I’ve started to attached the various cables to the mobo and external drives etc. This is one area where I think the ASrock motherboard is inferior to others I have used in the past. Placing the power connectors where they have means that in almost all installations the cables from the PSU will have to route straight over the top of most of the motherboard. In superior layouts, these power connectors are places nearer the bottom or right hand side of the board to reduce this clutter. However, as the PSU cables are quite stiff and nicely sheathed, they offer little obstruction and are quite a long way up (vertically) from the mobo itself so they do not restrict the airflow from front to back too much at all.

You can see I have the SATA leads from the CD and HDD waiting to be plugged in and tied back. This is whilst I am routing the cables from the front panel down to the headers on the mobo which are along the bottom right edge of the board. Tidying up once all the cables are connected and clipping the cables ties back essentially completes the job.

Here you can see the finished build before I put the cover back on and start to setup the software.

I have read that you can test your mobo, processor and memory on the bench before installing it into the case by connecting your PSU, and a monitor and then shorting the power switch pins on the front-panel header on the motherboard! Whilst I have no doubt this works, I am not convinced of the safety and reliability of such a test so have not done this myself.

With this build, once the physical installation was complete I connected up a keyboard, mouse and monitor and powered the PC on. I was greeted by the ASrock BIOS’s welcome screen and went on from there.

Here’s Lobsang in all its glory… Well it is a black box with a very small and unobtrusive blue LED on the front at least…

I might write about the software install too if I find the time. There are some things worth discussing like partitioning of hardisks (something Windows doesn’t really encourage), BIOS settings and the like. If you are interested, please let me know.

I hope you enjoyed this brief write up and found it helpful. I have written both of these articles from Lobsang (this new PC) running on Ubuntu Hardy Heron and now Intrepid Ibex (Alpha 5) and I am very pleased with the performance. It boots really fast compared to my previous computer and it is almost silent now I have worked out how to slow the CPU cooler fan down

Tell Someone Else!

The best Office Application Suite and one that is free to boot, has just arrived in it’s first RC (Release Candidate) for the forthcoming version 3.0 release.

There are many new features, fixes and enhancements which you can read about in excruciating detail on the release notes page (which is not very well formatted or easy to read IMHO) or you can read the Marketing Team’s work on their Wiki which is a whole lot easier on the eye, and the mind

For me, the biggies are:

• Native Mac OSX support (if you use a MAC that is)
• OOXML Import filters (Though why you’d want them I’m not sure… I don’t think many intelligent people use OOXML and M$ are adding native ODF support shortly soon anyway)
• Cropping now works in Draw and Impress

Seeing as I have a nice shiny new computer, it seemed the perfect time to test the new version of OOo too.

I’ve downloaded the code from here in deb format as I’m using Ubuntu, installed the Sun JDK-6 using synaptic. When I get a moment, I’ll write up my impressions, hopefully in a day or so. I also recall finding a useful post a while back that lets you install another version of OOo without breaking your main install. I’ll explain that too.

Tell Someone Else!

That didn’t take long.

Following my first post on this last week, all the bits duly arrived on Saturday morning. I was expecting the delivery to be on Friday, but for some reason SCAN had a problem “picking” the case which meant shipping slipped by a day. I phoned to see what was up and they apologised and said they’d ship using a Saturday am delivery without me even having to ask.

Fortunately, the weather was so dire over the weekend that I had plenty of time to get on with the assembly. Just to give you an idea, I guess the whole build (hardware only) from start to finish took about 3 or maybe 4 hours at most and I wasn’t rushing.

If you want to do a build, first of all, don’t scrabble about on the floor (especially if it is carpet) or somewhere where you will have to move or be frequently disturbed. I commandeered the dining room for the weekend, it’s a decent size table and there’s plenty of space and the light is OK.

So, here’s the pile of bits I purchased (you can click on any of the images to see a bigger picture) sitting on the table:

Not a huge pile - you can see the case at the back, the motherboard to the left at the back, the PSU is in the box with the big yellow 520 written on it and in front of that is the box with the processor in it.

The first thing I did was to get the case out the box, take off the side and front panels and then just sort of look at it for a few minutes to familiarise yourself with the layout. I even read the manual too!

Compared to my previous case this one was really nice. Well made, two big fans with speed controllers and lots of room. You can see at the front there are two intake ports where you could install additional 120mm fans if needed although, for my requirements, I very much doubt they will be.

The next stage is to work on the motherboard - taking care about sensitive electronics, keep your handling of the board to a minimum and hold it by the edges when necessary. Here’s the ASrock board I ordered and a close-up of the LGA775 socket for the processor:

The LGA775 has been around for a few years now, but it is the first time I’ve built one with it. The unusual aspect of it is that the pins are on the mobo rather than on the processor itself. This makes the format of the actual processor quite “dinky”. I was surprised at just how small it was…

Especially as this was the single most expensive item of the whole order.

Installing the processor into the socket on the mobo is actually quite straightforward:

There’s a small lever that you un-clip to lift up the cover, then you remove the plastic cap that protects the pins, then gently place the processor in the socket - it has a couple of alignment notches and a marked corner to ensure it will only fit one way round. Finally you just close the cover back down and clamp it shut using the lever and latch. Here you
can see the processor nicely retained in it’s socket.

Generally, the processor packages called “Retail” come with their own standard HSF (Heat Sink and Fan) cooler but these tend to be very cheap, quite noisy and not the most efficient available. There are other processor packages that are called “OEM” and these are usually just the processor on it’s own. I couldn’t find an 8400 in an OEM package so I now have a spare stock Intel HSF (I’ll stick it on eBay probably) but the cost difference is negligeable so I don’t feel agrieved about this.

Because of the generally poor performance of the stock HSFs I had ordered a specialised device anyway - the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro - which has been at the top of the reviews for a couple of years and is still there now.

Not the most exciting picture in the world I know but this is what the box looks like.

The supplied instructions are easy to follow (if you read them properly) and it quite simply clips over the top of the processor. The biggest challenge is making sure you orientate it correctly. Unlike what I did

You should position it so the exhaust from the HSF (On the right side in this photo) is directed to the exhaust case fan. Now I thought I’d done it right but I didn’t actually “offer up” the mobo to the case to check it, but instead relied on the male’s ability to visualise in three dimensions and their oft-mentioned superior “spacial awareness”. It turned out that I was actually 90′ wrong.

This actually brought up an interesting point worth mentioning: TIM (Thermal Interface Material). A thin layer of manufacturer supplied TIM was present on the contact plate of the Freezer 7 Pro and protected by a plastic cap before use. Needing to remove the cooler and re-orientate it however, meant I really should clean the contact area of both the processor and the cooler and use some fresh material. Luckily I had a tube left over from previous builds.