Zimbabwe among the top 5 countries on Earth

Yes - actually. And not in any "bad" way either (like when we broke the world record for inflation...) but, at least as I see it, in a positive way.

According to Pingdom, a web monitoring company, who got their figures from StatCounter (as you may understand is a "hit counter system" for internet) Zimbabwe is the 4th largest linux desktop user country!? I will admit that I am more than a little surprised as the ongoing discussions in the "open source community" in Zimbabwe rather give the feeling that we are not getting through with our message of a legally free system for computers and computer systems.

You will find this information by clicking here.

The flipside of the coin is that Zimbabwe is also rated as one of the worst offenders in software piracy, according to some sites we are number 5... according to others not among the top ten but definitely "up there". I find the "number 5" difficult to accept as that would mean over 90% of software would be pirate copies. And that is not the reality I see on the ground.

Either way - nice to be among the good guys and interesting. I/we think increased linux usage here would mean huge cost cuts for eg schools, hospitals, government and so on. But to get the message through is another story and there is an attitude towards software of "it can not possibly cost that much let me find it cheaper or for free" - meaning piracy.

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One upgrade too many

My life naturally consists of lots of upgrading and testing software on computers. Not least my own where I often want to test something out.

Well, you can go too far... a couple of weeks ago I decided to test a "release candidate" of the linux desktop environment KDE, version 4.5 RC2 to be more specfic.

One thing that I suspect caused headaches later was that the upgrade was disrupted at least 2 times due to our sometimes ver slow internet.

When all was supposedly done I rebooted and stared at a black screen. No graphics, only terminal commandline login. Oooops. Big time.

I can not even remember how I finally managed to get back to a working graphical interface but I found x number of half or nonworking applications. Had to give up and reinstall an older version. A working one! Luckily I have since looong made sure that all user data is on its own partition and will normally not be messed up by experiments like this.

This once more proves the old truth: do not mess with your working/production computer. Test new stuff on another one - but how many have an extra computer lying around? Not me, at least not one that is not being used.

Lesson learnt: do wait until final release...

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Is Bilbo a blogger?

Just testing the newly installed Bilbo blogging tool, see Blogilo. Otherwise back at work and in full swing.

Eric started primary yesterday, full of expectations and was basically ready to leave home more than an hour earlier than needed. Will post some photos later of our uniformed boys.

For my part I by pure coincidence found a chiropractor and is now under treatment for the sciatic nerve problem. If it is helping I am still not 100 but at least he took time to explain the problem, showed me on the X-rays and generally seems to know what he is doing. And is organised, most welcome after earlier doctor experiences.

Still have some follow-up visits lined up this week but then I hope not to see any doctor until it is time for bp-check some time in June or so.

Zimbabwe still slowly but surely improving. Let's hope that will be the story all throughout 2010!

Computers and Mana Pools

Just a comment on the sometimes somewhat weird world that happens to be my profession. As I work on my laptop that has Kubuntu Linux as OS I sometimes need to run various versions of Windows for support reasons. I do this by running something called VirtualBox - an environment where I can run other systems "inside" my Kubuntu main OS. That way I have Windows XP Pro, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista installed and can run them without rebooting.

Currently I am testing out next version of Kubuntu Linux, "Karmic Koala", to be released October 2009. And I find it so good that I write this, visit Facebook, chat and check one of my (many...) email lists from within the pre-release of Karmic. So I sort of swap between my main version and the new depending on what I am doing...

Otherwise I am really looking forward to go to Mana Pools next weekend for the annual Game Count. Feel in bad need of a break.

Techno blog

Just have to be a bit "over the top" about how well the latest version of Kubuntu is working. Now I have also added Virtualbox and can run Windows XP and Vista within my Linux environment without reboots etc., good for support to those who are using those (yes, I know they are the majority by far....)

And that means I can use one of the few apps I have really been missing, Float's Mobile Agent, to sort out phonebook and such on my SonyEricsson phone. In XP (works better than Vista) within Kubuntu. Great! And test whatever antivirus etc anyone might need, any problems arise I can take a "snapshot" first and then roll back to that later.

Yep, I am excited still after some 25 years in this business over stuff like that...