The latest release of openSUSE is now available.
Go forth and download!
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Author: Bob Martens
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Better Training
I posted Better Documentation not too long ago and since then I’ve started my CLA training through SUSE.
I’m working through their On-Demand offering and so far I’m looking forward to digging into it. Many of the topics seem to cover stuff I have a cursory knowledge of already. That’s the benefit of being exposed to Linux since at least 2005, and Unix even a little before that (thanks OS X).
The one downside right now is that the website I use to access the training has the following limitations:
- designed almost exclusively for desktop browsers
- requires Adobe Flash to play video and other interactive content
Deal-breakers? Of course not.
Funny enough, Apple pushed out an update for the iTunes U app for iOS that same day which brought the design more in-line with iOS 7.
I’ve watched and participated in a number of classes through iTunes U and Apple has greatly expanded what you are able to do within the app itself recently as well. When the update came down, a thought floated into my head which I quickly discarded as untenable (since Apple doesn’t allow companies to charge for content through iTunes U), but I do think there are lessons to be learned.
What if companies offered training through an iTunes U-like app interface? I’d be happy if it were through iTunes U itself, but that’s not going to happen.
What if we take the good parts of iTunes U, create a community around that, give it the ability to have both free and paid content available, and then get publishing tools created around such an ecosystem.
Impossible? Maybe.
Wanted? Definitely.
Would it need to be app-based? Maybe not, but I feel that for the best experience you would want it to be so. In order to have an offline training experience worth time and effort, I think that native apps are almost a given. Build interactive communities around the training as well. There is no need to make training something that only happens once and then you let things stagnant. Build communities around sharing knowledge specific to training for specific products.
None of this sound seven remotely easy, but I think there is an opportunity to really start turning the training and certification markets on their head. Work doesn’t need to be the only thing done remotely … training could be as well. What is missing, in many cases, is the tools to do so effectively.
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Where Does IT Fit
Nate Beran wrote a really good post about how IT views itself within a business over at his personal blog. It is called Dangers of IT Exceptionalism and I recommend you go and read it. It cuts to the heart of how IT views itself and how it is viewed within businesses. Both really excellent things to look at.
Here is one of my favorite lines:
The other problem, as I see it, is that IT has a uniquely global view of the enterprise.
That is 100% true. IT has the opportunity to touch almost every aspect of an organization. This is both a great power … and a great responsibility.
I agree with everything else Nate writes in the post about treating other departments as colleagues because, really, that is what they are. Every person you work with as an internal IT member is a colleague at that organization. You all are working toward the same goals and need to keep that in mind.
This can mean cutting people some slack when they seemingly “just don’t get it”, but also speaking your mind and being outspoken about things as well. The part about being true colleagues is that everyone should feel free to both agree and disagree on almost every subject because from that mass of ideas and/or opinions a good one will pop out you were not expecting.
I have some friends who are going to roll their eyes at this post and then have a hearty laugh at my expense.
They probably have already laughed because they can quote this post verbatim. It is not outside of my normal behavior.
Basically, don’t hold your breath on me ever completing the “One Month With Linux” thing. If it ever happens, it is not going to be for a long while.
This does not mean, however, that I’ve settled on a single computing platform. Oh no, we could never have Bob finally settle on something and free that part of his consciousness for more important things! That would be too nice!
That’s for a different post.
So, I’m going to continue to count down the release of openSUSE 13.1 because this release is a test bed for what SUSE is going to do with SUSE Enterprise Linux 12 and I think it looks like an excellent release. I’m going to continue to use OS X, Linux and (gasp) sometimes even Windows because at least the first two have their strengths and weaknesses.
I won’t really talk much about Windows.
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My Problem with GNOME 3: Follow Up
Here is a follow-up to my earlier post. Thanks goes out to Phil Wels for getting me the needed screenshots so that I can finish the comparison.
These screenshots were gathered from an 11″ MacBook Air with OS X Mavericks and the latest Firefox. Since Apple added an explicit full-screen mode since OS X 10.7, I have two images for comparison (and you can find the GNOME 3 and GNOME 2 screenshots in the old post).
I can definitely understand why Apple added the full-screen mode. When you split things up you get the following numbers:
- Windowed content height: 660 pixels
- Full-screen content height: 704 pixels
That’s a big difference.
Even more significant (in my eyes) is that it validates my gut feeling from earlier. OS X, even when using a regular Firefox window, shows more content than GNOME 3 (and even a few pixels more than GNOME 2). When you take into consideration the full-screen Firefox, then it gets to be ridiculous.
If I did my math correctly, you get the following:
- openSUSE 13.1 GNOME 3: 634 pixels or baseline
- SLED 11 GNOME 2: 23 pixels or 3.63% more
- OS X 10.9 (windowed): 26 pixels or 4.10% more
- OS X 10.9 (full-screen): 70 pixels or 11.04% more
You can see the advantage full-screen has on OS X 10.9. Of course, this matters the most on the smallest of screens (in height), and 768 pixels is about as small as they come … but it does show much GNOME 3 does crowd out content more than GNOME 2 and OS X.