Just a quick post to draw your attention to two excellent blog posts that Dan posted recently (in case you haven’t seen them already): Yesterday, he published a great opinion piece on the European Parliament’s motion to extend sound copyright even further into the future including a video of a speech given by Becky Hogge at these proceedings. This is definitely worth a read! He also finally released his mammut Sabayon 4 review which we hinted at in Episode 78 — this might be the most scathing review Dan has ever written. Well, for Dan standards, anyway.

With this, I’ll leave you to enjoy your weekend. I myself will probably spend it checking out Jaunty and playing lots of Fallout 3. We will most likely record the next show on Monday evening (CET) — so if you want to catch it live, feel free to stop by.

Last night, Dan and I did a little experiment. We attempted to stream the recording of Episode 78 live on ustream.tv — “attempted” is the right word, because I discovered that both the webcams I tried with my Eee PC would invariably cut out after a few minutes.  We managed  to stream the audio feed of the whole show though, I guess that’s something. Because this was highly experimental, we only announced it in our IRC channel (#linuxoutlaws on irc.freenode.net) and on the Linux Outlaws group on identi.ca. In the end we got about 34 viewers, which isn’t bad considering we didn’t advertise it at all before going on the air.

Streaming the making of the show live is something I wanted to do for quite some time and we had many requests from listeners to do it. I will try to get the webcam issues sorted out for the next recording session (probably on Monday) and we’ll take it from there. If people keep saying they like this sort of thing, I am definitely happy to keep doing it. As long as it doesn’t detract from the audio podcast version of the show at all — and in contrast to Leo Laporte, I really mean this. Anyway, please feel free to tell us what you think of this idea in the comments or the forums. We appreciate your feedback a lot and always take it into account.  Right now, we will only stream video from my end I think, but you can of course hear Dan’s audio over the stream. Maybe you guys & gals can persuade him to stick his mug up on camera one day as well…

Oh, and one last thing: We will be calling this little venture Linux Outlaws Live (or LOL for short). That acronym is way to tempting not to use it.

Update: I have set up a preliminary page at /live where you can watch the stream when it goes on the air. We will announce air times in our identi.ca group since we don’t have a specific schedule for recording yet.

You might remember Miguel de Icaza hinting at a new, secret project from Aaron Bockover in our interview with him in Episode 75. Well, Aaron has now released that project under the name “Moonshine” — which I must say is 100% Outlaws Approved!

Apparently Moonshine harnesses the Moonlight plugin for Firefox to enable you to automatically play back Windows Media files on your Linux desktop. Right now you still have to compile the thing to get it to work, but I can’t wait for packages to crop up for all the major distros. This might be another important step on the way to enabling casual users that just want “things to work” to make an easy transition to Linux.

It’s one of these special moments that doesn’t happen that often: The Debian project just released Debian 5.0, affectionately named “Lenny”. In times when most distros release at least twice a year, something like a new Debian version is a rare treat indeed. It always fills me with a sense of exitement and wonder what the new release will bring. As I am writing this, my download of the .iso image is nearly finished and I can’t wait to try it out.  Debian will always have a special place in my heart as the loving “mother of distributions” that you can always rely on in times of need. Although I do not use it for my day-to-day computing needs, I will always have a soft spot for it. Debian seems to get a harsh treatment by certain people from time to time, but I think it is very important to remember that Ubuntu, Mint and countless other distributions wouldn’t be possible without Debian’s strong back, invisibly propping them up in the background.

So, if you are excited about this like I am, head over to the Debian download page and grab a copy of Lenny. I really like installing from the small ‘net install CDs. If you have a good broadband connection, that is a very handy way to install your system, especially if you aren’t scared by the command line installer.

Congratulations to the Debian team to getting this release out the door and many, many thanks for all their hard work on it. Dan and I  recorded a short interview about Lenny with the Debian Project Leader, Steve McIntyre, a few days ago and as Dan mentioned before that will be part of Episode 77 to be released very soon. Stay tuned and in the meantime, enjoy Lenny!

Lenny Is Looming

Hey folks, just wanted to update you on what’s happening with the show and also give you a sneak peek at what you can expect in episode 77. We recorded the show tonight and it went really well I thought, it was packed, man was it packed. There was so much content cram in we had more stuffing than a Bernard Matthews turkey and we still managed it in about 80mins. So what can you expect to hear this week? Well for this I have to break out the bullet points so stand back everyone, nobody tries to be a hero and nobody gets hurt:

• We spare a thought for our brothers and sisters Down Under, we’re thinking of you
• All the usual releases, will there be another mention of SystemRescueCD? You’ll have to listen to find out
• More news than you can shake a stick at, no matter how big it is
• A full Microwatch section with some added gaming news
• An interview with Debian Project Leader Steve McIntyre about the release of Lenny
• Fab reviews Cruncheee on his eeePC and also the new revision of Crunchbang 8.10.02
• We discuss the future of linuxoutlaws.net and ask for your input
• We have a full mail bag as ever, will there be an Aussie accent? Again you’ll have to listen and see
• We play a great public domain song by a famous band you wouldn’t expect, trust me it’s a cracker

All this in 80mins or so, that’s not bad going. Hopefully the show will be out this Sunday,  it needs a fair bit of work and Fab has a big party on Saturday night so he’ll probably be wrecked but you didn’t hear that from me ok? Hope you all enjoy it and we’ll be back next week with even more new stuff, I’m not exactly sure what yet but as usual we keep rolling like Cypress Hill on a tour of Holland.

Take care everyone, see you soon

Dan

Tonight, shortly after 02:00 CET, a process on our server stalled out the CPU and shot down the machine. I only noticed it this afternoon via text message from Dan, who was alerted by some helpful souls on identi.ca. I promptly rebooted the server, but I am sorry to have only realised the problem that late. I was pretty busy at work and never even thought about checking my servers all day. I appologise wholeheartedly for any inconvenience this might have caused, especially with the delivery of the podcast files.

It seems like something went wrong with our Laconica installation (which is also hosted on the machine in question) shortly before the server died, or so my log files would indicate. At least the latest errors are from that process. I will investigate this issue further and keep you posted. It seems like Laconica both caused this issue and kind of helped to solve it at the same time. How very Zen.

Just a quick heads-up to let you all know we just released Episode 75 which is our interview with Miguel de Icaza. It’s over an hour long, so we made it a special episode. I think it turned out really well and as Dan said after editing it, it might well be the difinitive interview with the man. OK, enough touting our own horn here, I already have enough delusions of grandeur as it stands.

Fire up your podcatcher, check out the episode and then tell us what you think of it. Enjoy!