Ubuntu for phones

There few majors players in mobile OS: Apple and Android over all. In a second line Microsoft (with its Nokia slave) and RIM.

Now Ubuntu has come to this OS war in mobile devices. You may find a lot of reviews all around, not here. There’s something that comes to my mind constantly: environment.

OpenBSD is a great OS, very secure, stable, open, reliable but… what is its environment? Not desktop for sure, but high uptime servers for instance. So what in mobile OS?

  • From an IT point of view, environment is partnership with mobile manufacturers, easy apps developing, a good amount of well known apps available by default.
  • From a end user point of view, easy to use interface, smooth use experience, not crash in apps execution, and may use the apps I prefer -more than have tonnes of nonse apps-

The success for Ubuntu for phones would be decided by this non accurate list of environment items. Think about this list by comparing latest grows or fails in mobile OS: RIM, Windows, Android or iOS.

In my humble opinionUbuntu for phones:

  • comes late
  • has no support from the manufacturers
  • we already have a Linux on mobile environment with a huge company supporting its developement, yes, it’s Android

Adobe Digital Edition vs Python & GNU

A very good friend of mine send me a link time ago. It was a present, a gift, a book, a digital book. Nice, I feel very happy since I like the author, it has to have cost money because it was a recent publication.

But… there’s always a but, remember, you only have eyes for that book if you use Adobe Digital Edition. You may like it or doesn’t but that’s the way it goes. So I download proper software, I download the book and start to read.

I do prefer my Kindle that my computer for book reading. I look aroundn in the Adobe app and there’s no way to export or share with my Kindle. Adobe has decide Kindle is not supported by their platform (pardon? WTF!)

After spend few searches, I found a lot of shareware or “commercial” stuff for windows, not so easy for Mac. But I’ve found how to get as I want I found Circumventing Adobe ADEPT DRM for EPUB, from i♥cabbages, a blog about reverse engineering. Awesome. A couple of Python scripts that solve your problem, free software, up to you.

I just read it, I’ve just follow the instructions and after did what he says I transfer and convert the epub to my Kindle with Calibre.

Settled and done. Thank you i♥cabbages

Dd-wrt as a bridge

I’ve set my new Internet conection. The new ISP offers a low cost connection, low price, and low bandwith, it fits what I was looking for.

Unfortunately I just can plug one single PC, connection it’s controlled by macaddress plus a password. No problem, I’ve buy a Linksys WRT54GL (remember the L letter and the end, it stands for Linux).

First problem solved but I wanna go a little bit farther. I don’t wanna plug my devices through a cable RJ45. So I read out there if I flash the router with the dd-wrt firmware, I may configure it as a bridge and use the same wireless connection as a client and as an Access Point.

Second problem solved. Since I’ve been suffering few delay on my browsing I’ve done a simple speed test ’cause I suppose it was a DNS issue, not a speed issue, and so it was. So I search again about how to set my own DNS server in the router using dd-wrt firmware. I got it, you may read how to set your own DNS in dd-wrt. I choose Open DNS you may use any one, even Google offers you its own DNS (but it seems to me it’s too much information for me to give them, don’t you?).

So third problem solved… As you may notice, I didn’t show you the gory details about everything because it wasn’t my purpose, what I wanna to show you is that free sofware is worthy and that I keep my techie skills alive and kicking.