Questions
Since I am new to this trisquelgnulinux, I was wondering is it frowned upon to run dropbox and Skype, these are 2 programs that i need to use. I bought a usb to get my wireless working, so I could keep Trisquel. I am always looking for open-source alternatives for replacements, none are here right now. what do you think ?
wb4bbc
Well firstly, the use of dropbox and skype would be frowned on but for different reasons. However, at the same time we can't tell you what to do or not to do with your computer. I would however consider you to use free alternatives.
1) Skype is non-free software which could be used to monitor users. Here is the RMS's position on it. 2) Dropbox I would not use because you are entrusting your files to someone else. They can look at them. Sell them to other companies. Give them to governments who want your info. They may promise in the privacy policy not too do that but they can change that on a whim. You should store your files on your own computer. For this situation I would recommend setting up your own fileserver like a FTP and just host your own files. That way you control the computer.
Here is some info on skype replacements and more in the free software directory.
If you do however choose skype (which we advise against) we can't support you on that. Firstly, because we don't use it. Secondly, because we would have no idea how the program works. Microsoft keeps the source code a secret so we can't fix/support any problems that arise from it.
I was researching a similar question and eventually found an cloud computing blog that discussed how you could build your own cloud-based storage if you wanted to - You might try asking them? Otherwise you're pretty stuck - External hard drives, although have become much more reliable, still die. My friend bought a Lacie drive and his died in less than 6 months
I was researching a similar question and eventually found an
[http://www.onlinestorage.org/ cloud computing] blog that discussed how you
could build your own cloud-based storage if you wanted to - You might try
asking them? Otherwise you're pretty stuck - External hard drives, although
have become much more reliable, still die. My friend bought a Lacie drive and
his died in less than 6 months
You Make good points. I will have to think about what you said. You make alot of sense, when its closed they do have power over you.
One more reason not to use these file hosting services is, look what happened to Megaupload. Suddenly all the files they hosted were gone, illegal and legal. People lost so much stuff there in a bat of an eye and could do absolutely nothing about it.
Can you be certain there are no illegal files on dropbox?
I heard that they will help people to recover they legal files.
I was in the same situation yesterday, I have a lot of docs that I don't want to be only on my hard drive, but since what happened to MU, I just don't trust anymore.
Anybody have tried Ekiga? It looks good! But i didn't tried the Ekiga-to-phone yet.
I am a translator!
Ekiga is neat, but imho it's only needed for Ekiga-to-phone, because you can video-conference anyone through Jabber.
Ekiga-to-phone works well for me with a Diamondcard account, even when ekiga-to-ekiga is not working.
I believe the simplest alternatives are:
- XMPP ("Google Talk" being an instance of it), for instance through Pidgin (in Trisquel's default install) for video conference;
- SparkleShare (in Trisquel 5.0 Dagda backports repository) for file sharing à la Dropbox.
Both solutions are, of course, free software.
Good to know - I was also looking for some alternatives to skype (ekiga never worked for me) and dropbox-like sites. Merci la banane magique ;).
OwnCloud seems a eyecandy free software solution for having a personal cloud in your server.
Anyone here using ownCloud? I set it up on my personal webspace this week-end, in the hope of getting rid of Google for good. It's a promising idea but the product still seems buggy and unfinished. I was mostly interested in the Calendar, Bookmarks and Contact apps but they all have their issues. I hope that the next versions will fix most of them. In the meantime, if anyone wants to discuss ownCloud here, I'd be delighted to know what your feeling about it is!
Anyone here using ownCloud? I set it up on my personal webspace this
week-end, in the hope of getting rid of Google for good. It's a promising
idea but the product still seems buggy and unfinished. I was mostly
interested in the Calendar, Bookmarks and Contact apps but they all have
their issues. I hope that the next versions will fix most of them. In the
meantime, if anyone wants to discuss ownCloud here, I'd be delighted to know
what your feeling about it is!
I was just looking at it this weekend. At the moment, I have an office program I am using called Feng Office, and there is a GPL'd community version. The main differences as best as I can tell are no billing options and easy backup and update buttons and other similar limitations since it is meant to be for a single organisation as opposed to a business. It has calendar, email integration, etc. like I saw on the owncloud website.
What I need is a roll your own dropbox. Still searching... I have a server so need to pay for other services. Also, I want GPL software if just for the sake of security. It isn't about others hosting the data, if only I have the keys to control access to the data. Nothing wrong with someone storing your data for a price.
Those who want to use Dropbox and still be sure that no-one is able to read your data, can simply use Tomb:
http://tomb.dyne.org/
It works fine under Vanilla Ubuntu, Debian and should work fine under Trisquel as well.
They have an additional wiki entry about Dropbox:
https://github.com/dyne/Tomb/wiki/Tombdropbox
Still that is only one issue with dropbox. I could encrypt my files with GNU Privacy Guard too and be fairly sure no one could read them. The other problem still exists. As pointed about above people stored their files on megaupload and now they are just simply gone. So even if I encrypt my files and have them on dropbox it doesn't mean they won't simply go poof one day.
Thanks for the Tomb link....Looks good..
You are welcome !
Just make shure to keep your tomb key outside the Dropbox folder. Also dropbox seems to have issues to sync only deltas. So I would not make the tomb file bigger than necessary. A few MB will usually be enough to keep your private textfiles for example.
IMO It would not hurt if Trisquel integrates Tomb into their repos !
I am a translator!
Twinkle is a working SIP client which I recommend (it works fine with an Ekiga SIP account). The Ekiga software isn't functional unfortunately (it crashes).
Would some one be so kind as to inform me of what I need to get then flash videos in Yahoo, BBC, Reuters, etc working? YouTube works just fine. Also is this a rolling release or when a new version comes out will I have to scrub my hard drive and start fresh? Otherwise this is a pretty good distro (5.0-DVD version 32 bit) because every thing is free and non-proprietary and I prefer to keep it that way.
THANK YOU in advance for your time and consideration.
I am a translator!
Trisquel is not a rolling release. But you do not have to wipe your HDD - as long as you install software only from the official repository you should be able to update the distro number without reinstalling. I updated from 4.5 to 5.0 without problems.
As far flash videos go: there is a greasemonkey skript, Linterna Magica. Install greasemonkey, then search for Linterna Magica on Duckduckgo. There are also Abrowser plugins Unplug and FlashVideoReplacer. Afaik, installing all of those will max out the amount of flash videos that work. If something doesn't work with the above plugins and/or Linterna Magica, you can only try searching for the respective video on some other platform like youtube, vimeo, etc.
Thank you Cyberhawk. I will give those tips you gave me a shot and will get back to you. have a wonderful day.
В 16:59 +0100 на 29.02.2012 (ср), name at domain написа:
> Trisquel is not a rolling release. But you do not have to wipe your HDD - as
> long as you install software only from the official repository you should be
> able to update the distro number without reinstalling. I updated from 4.5 to
> 5.0 without problems.
>
> As far flash videos go: there is a greasemonkey skript, Linterna Magica.
Linterna Magica does not work with Yahoo and BBC. Yahoo might get
supported someday if I find the time to look its insides and it turns
out it is technically possible.
> Install greasemonkey, then search for Linterna Magica on Duckduckgo.