Neil, you have problems with your HP laptop. But this is not HP’s fault. The laptop you bought has been designed for use with windows only, like all (?) other HP laptops for home users. Most (all?) HPs Business products are fully Linux compatible and come with pre-installed FreeDOS. A few months ago, I bought an HP Compaq 6720s (GR 644ET), installed Ubuntu 7.10 64-bit on it, and everything worked out of the box (except eth0, due to problems in Ubuntu’s kernel). I have absolutely no problems with my laptop, even the built-in card reader works out of the box. ... Read more 》

April 2007, I joined the Fellowship of the Free Software Foundation Europe. I also became involved in the development of Debian GNU/Linux with my first package, aufs, sponsored by Daniel Baumann. This was the starting point for my Debian stuff. Now I maintain 6 packages in Debian. One of the most interesting packages is gnome-app-install, which will be part of the gnome-desktop task (already added to tasksel’s list). Users will be able to install applications easily. It also activates the automatic codec installation, so users will be able to play most multimedia files easily. ... Read more 》

Two days ago, I sent my Debian Maintainer application to the debian-newmaint mailing list. Previously, I asked several sponsors if they would advocate me. malex said yes. Another sponsor, who is also an Ubuntu MOTU, also wrote a bit. A Debian Maintainer can upload new versions of his packages, if they are not NEW and if the Packages contains a DM-Upload-Allowed field. This would allow me to upload new versions of gnome-app-install or app-install-data, dir2ogg, etc. without needing to ask a sponsor first. ... Read more 》

Dear readers, I used to blog on fsfe.org, the website of the Fellowship of the Free Software Foundation Europe. There was one problem that made me switch to wordpress.com: only Fellows can post comments. I will write here about my activity in free software projects, like Debian and Ubuntu, and my own software. I am still working on the categories and will maybe change the style.