TooMuchGreen

Check this out, it’s a Windows XP themed Ubuntu distro from China. Microsoft are “apparently” not going to take any legal action against the producers (Ylmf), although I’ll wager that’s said through clenched teeth

So, what’s the lowdown. Well, Ylmf is built on the latest version of Ubuntu (9.10) and includes all the standard goodies + a few extra niceties to compliment the blend. Here’s a brief run through of the install and a few added shots from the end desktop..

Initial splash, already nicely themed..

 Read more... (estimated reading time 2:05 mins)

TooMuchGreen has officially regressed to it’s former blog status, it likes being a blog and we enjoy blogging through it.

The “business” side of things is now fully re-branded as the wonderful MEBBI™ Solutions.

MEBBI™ Solutions provide all the services previously offered by TooMuchGreen plus a few new additions, why not visit our lovely new website and have a look around..

http://mebbi.net

Sector awareness for the benefits of open source adoption is rapidly growing amongst the forward thinking enterprise. An open source solution provides not only a comprehensive replacement but delivers added security and performance boosts to existing systems whilst offering huge reductions in immediate expenditure and long term cost of ownership.  Read more... (estimated reading time 47 secs)

One of the easiest and most popular cost saving routes into Open Source is a simple “Open Office >  MS Office” replacement. Open Office is a free and completely compatible alternative which even across a relatively small enterprise network can contribute substantially to major reductions in T.C.O through negating one area of software licensing expenditure. Compatible as it is, though, reluctancy for change at operational level is a big one, even more so at the user end as they’re the ones who like (?) to complain about the minutiae (of document formatting?).  Read more... (estimated reading time 1:55 mins)

For any business network security at the client end is the most vulnerable area and the most difficult to “police”. Even with a rigid and up-to-date AD policy & virus checking software update system implemented you’ve still got the userbase to “manage”. Running an I.T department is certainly not just about fixing computers and making sure eMail flows smoothly, this is something I know all too well from many years of experience (or should I say “exposure”).  Read more... (estimated reading time 2:29 mins)

So, another government organisation was brought to it’s knees on New Years Day by the W32 Conficker worm virus (professional etiquette prevents me from revealing my source and the institution in question), nice timing, and a happy new year.

The result of the attack was a 100% national lockout of all computer user accounts & till systems, quite something and a nice introduction to 2010 for the poor I.T staff who had to drop their games consoles to tackle a major security breach whilst the rest of the UK were sat finishing off the Christmas chocolates and watching TV with their feet up.  Read more... (estimated reading time 2:22 mins)

Let’s stop mulling it over, for the technically aware there can be no doubt the future of computing is cloud based (both locally and out across the www), it’s going to happen (it is happening). But what does this new virtual world present to us in terms of the good old desktop operating system?  Read more... (estimated reading time 2:51 mins)

Up and away from the industrial depths of server side technology and groupware the lighter side of the “home-user” Linux desktop continues to offer a changing face of optional identity. Obviously at ground level we have base GNOME, KDE and XFCE window managers but around the big three rotate a whole array of tweaked distros all claiming to offer the definitive desktop interface of today. Some are barely functional, some are too functional, some try too hard and are confusingly neither and some have completely missed the point, but, there are an odd one or two which actually survive the statutory 60 minute evaluation period and for me gOS is one such release.  Read more... (estimated reading time 2:10 mins)

I attended an Ubuntu evening this week at the Met Hotel in Leeds. Organised by the West Yorkshire fraction of BCS the seminar was hosted by Ubuntu’s Matthew Barker and was a promotional awareness event held to present an overview of the company, product and current/future direction.

Matthew’s presentation was incredibly positive and I was most warmed by the parallels with TooMuchGreen’s corresponding ideals, it was also nice to see a couple of fun new acronyms pop up – JEDI & UFO. As we all know the I.T world loves its acronyms however these two are particularly choice. JEDI stands for Just Enough Desktop Infrastructure and UFO is the complimentary solution – Ubuntu + Firefox + Open Office (OK yes, that’s UFOO, but you get the idea).  Read more... (estimated reading time 1:23 mins)

What goes around comes around (to coin a phrase – with another) and in the computing world basic concepts can be no different.

Unlike the high powered, self contained desktop units of today early computing functionality was delivered from a central unit (a mainframe) which shared it’s resources to client terminals, the end user was basically presented with a screen and keyboard, no internal storage and no local control over the software. The generic term for this type of configuration is a Thin Client system.
Popular Thin Client solutions for business use outside of computer labs and academic institutes were systems from Wyse (I used to support Wyse systems in the mid 90’s). Wyse terminals presented the user with green screen text via serial data transmission (as oppose to ethernet) and were adopted for use around the National Health service (hospitals & doctors surgeries). Modern day Wyse systems are still the norm around the medical world and although hooked up around more recent software are still based on the same original concept.  Read more... (estimated reading time 1:54 mins)