A work colleague and I got into a discussion recently about online communities; the common threads or characteristics that occur amongst them and what key differences exist; and particularly whether there are recurring and crucial elements that, when present, make certain communities succeed, and when absent, make others fail.
Of particular relevance to my recent indulgence into Ubuntu is the epiphany I came to during the course of the discussion: The greatest examples of passionate online collaboration and vibrant community interaction I’ve seen occur in the open source and free software …

Ever the curious sort, I’ve just finished downloading and installing Windows XP Service Pack 3. I’d hoped to find some dramatic new features – or in fact any noticeable changes – however based on what I’ve seen so far this isn’t going to prove the case.
First off, there seems to be a fair amount of confusion as to whether SP3 has been formally released yet, and near as I can tell it hasn’t.
As covered in ZDNet (“UPDATED – XP SP3 available for download from Microsoft“) the release …

I just had a major ah-ha moment with regards to the utility of Linux workspaces.  If you’re not familiar with workspaces, here’s a background.  Workspaces are a way to preserve your valuable monitor space through the use of a series of different concurrent desktops.  When you have multiple applications open, you have the opportunity to allocate one or more of them to a unique workspace and quickly switch between the two using CTL + ALT + Left/Right Arrow keys.
Up until now I’d seen this as a potentially useful feature, but …

I just ran a quick test of the existing instance of Windows XP I had set up using Virtual Box to see if the software would run in Hardy Heron.
Initially Win XP wouldn’t load and I got an error indicating:
“VirtualBox kernal driver not installed.  The vboxdrv kernal moducle was either not loaded or /dev/vboxdrv was not created for some reason.  Re-setup the kernal module by executing ‘/etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup’ as root.”
However once I ran the command referenced by the error message I found I could boot up the virtual Windows XP …

I’m currently in the process of upgrading Ubuntu on my primary machine from Gutsy Gibbon to Hardy Heron and thought I’d chime in with some upgrade commentary while the 2 hour download process is underway.
So far thanks to the upgrade tool the process has been extremely straightforward. By selecting System –> Administration –> Update Manager and then Check For Updates I was informed that a new version of the distro was available and by clicking upgrade I was taken to the upgrade tool.
Beginning with some general …