Mintlinux 17 and Amharic review

[tegegne tefera]

I have been using now Mintlinux 17 for a couple of weeks and ready to report my preliminary findings.

Mint is important for two reasons for new beginners and windows refugees.

1. Its out of the box support for multimedia and other formats and 2. Its familiar desktop.

This release is even more important because it is a "long term support" (LTS) version. It is and ideal system for people who are after a stable system that they can install and forget.

Unfortunately for Amharic or for any languages that use Ethiopic script (probably other none Latin or none European and major asian languages except such as Chinese, Korean or Japanese) tings got a bit difficult. The new language and local configuration tool for cinnamon (the preferred desktop environment for Mintlinux) doesn't include the less popular languages. Therefore one has to manually install them which is not a very user friendly.

Except the language configuration tool which is written by mint team this version should support Amharic as it's upstream versions ubuntu and debian.

The easiest way that I found to install Amharic is to choose Amharic as an installation language and add later the other languages such as English, German, or what ever language one needs to use. That would install all the necessary components for Amharic to function properly from the get go.

But this installation leaves some Amharic terms even after one chooses another local such as en-us. I found that in fact pleasant.

I don't remember whether they were auto installed or I installed them latter the input method tools ibus and ibus-m17n work perfectly now. The previous Amharic keyboard layout has some annoying bug which made it difficult to get the letter አ but now that is fixed.

 Though I have been working on the translation of the installer for a long time this is the first time I have actually used a system that is actually installed using Amharic and I am not happy with the translation.

So my advise for those who want to use Mintlinux in Amharic especially those in Ethiopia is do go ahead and use Amharic as your installation language. And I am planning to keep this installation and maybe add xfce to it so I can work on the translation.

cheers

[Markus Pedersen]

Nice. Continue the good works, its used by us in Denmark too. 

[Fantaw Tesema]

Hello,

I am not updated about the nice work regarding Mintlinux 17 and Amharic review. What happened? Can anyone tell me about the work?

I use LM 17 but noting more so. //FT

On Sun, Oct 12, 2014 at 11:20 PM, Markus Pedersen <m4rk...@gmail.com> wrote:

Nice. Continue the good works, its used by us in Denmark too. 

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[tegegne tefera]

Yes Fantaw I kind of forgot to report back. The thing is there wasn't
much to report. The system so stable that it borders boring and easy
to forget all about it. Unless you suddenly find with a lot of time in
your hands and feel a bit adventurous you can install the whole thing
once and forget about it for the next 5 years. the thought that I can
just plug a small computer and forget about it and use it as a secure
remote server is very appealing.
I used a raspberry pi for such a purpose for the last one and half
years and it is quite convenient. I am looking for a similar cheap
machine that I can stick mint to and use it as a media server with gui
as well as remore server.
The pi takes 5 watt 2 amp mobile charger and you almost forget that is
is there but doing huge job.

[Fantaw Tesema]

Thanks!

Seems cute and useful. Never heard of it. But read some thing here http://www.raspberrypi.org/help/what-is-a-raspberry-pi/ if this is the right place. //FT

[tegegne tefera]

Yes repberrrypi has been huge success the last couple of years and it
inspired a lot of other single board computers. It was made as a cheap
educational tool but but people built supercomputers by putting
together a lot of pis together. Robots, self regulating
appliances...etc
There are other open hardware projects such as arduino which has
become very popular and probably are becoming the foundations of
future hardware due to it's openness. More over to day where computers
come as blackbox and opening them may void your waranty it is good
thing to have this things where kids can learn about computer hardware
and software without fear of breaking an expensive equipment
.

[Fantaw Tesema]

Hey,

As we can see we have a lot of choices of open source. I think it is because one pretty much uses time and knowledge to develop with little money involved, at least in most cases. When it comes to open hardware, physical components and lab are involved as well as one has to buy components to build circuits. Money is involved right from the start. Even though it was a hobby, some years ago I used to build a crossover for loudspeakers home use. I needed to buy several components than needed because the crossover should be tested with different values in order to get the optimal result, in this case the best sound possible in combination with loudspeaker box volume and construction, driver and other damping materials. The rest of the components after test is a waste of money if you do not continue or have no mass production, but that is the part of the process. Let alone you have to buy tools which are needed to electronic work and woodwork.

Anyway, why I mention is that open hardware is not growing as we would like it to be partly because several physical parts and activities is needed that cost money than open software where huge amount of investment is on ones free time. I might be wrong be that is how I think. Let us hope and open hardware will success widely in the future. Cheers. //FT      

.

[tegegne tefera]

Selam Fantaw
you have raised a very interesting question. As you mentioned the
overhead of developing open-source software as well as the logistic is
not the same as developing open hardware. More over when we talk about
open hardware we are not talking about giving away the hardware itself
for free.What we are talking about is the design of it. In fact the
very problem you encountered could be solved with very little waste
with open hardware. The very idea is to take the design of some one
else, make improvements and publish the improvements you made. That
means you do not do all the experiments yourself and the research and
development cost is shard by all.

Recently Tesla the company that makes those wildly popular electric
cars open-sourced it's entire patents. Being the market leader It did
not make sense for many. But Tesla figured that sharing its patent and
design would help it to save money and grow than hurt it. As you would
spend less on experimenting if there were many who were sharing the
designs for creating the perfect speakers. Beyond saving money to the
companies open-source development creates a more just and a society
that values merit.

Closed source development of any kind creates a lot of waste as we
have seen above. More over at the end of the day those who benefit are
not those who create things. People that do not develop any thing
capture the creation of others and benefit by preventing others from
using it.

[Fantaw Tesema]

Hey Tegegne,

Thanks for the details, and I agree specially by your last statement. As the same time I am not sure if open HW developing is less waste if everybody who share the design want to taste in real time. Simulation is not enough. I remember simulating the crossover which showed only curves, time, frequencies etc. and some references. Most of the time I needed to change component values by using my ears. This is one of the most known ways loudspeaker designers do. Mine was only three times hobby project. There are also a online community DIY (Do It Yourself) where I got some tips and tricks.

I guess in open HW world somebody share his/her design and get some suggestion and they will try to improve. Otherwise in most cases it is difficult or expensive if everybody is involved with the actually work and running result. Any way, like you mentioned someone who has a big capital and idea will get benefit of open HW project. Cheers. //FT