Home


Idilix.net aims to promote Free (as in freedom) and sustainable technologies. It is organized in two main areas: the articles and the tutorials. If you don't know where to begin, start by browsing the articles to understand the philosophy behind all this. If you are already aware of free technologies, you can browse the tutorials to assist you using them. To find Free and Open Source Software to download use our Search on the main menu.

Articles are, mainly, about the philosophy around Free Software, GNU/Linux and some more general topics about technology past, present and future.

Tutorials are short lessons on how to use or develop a particular technology. It is focused on helping those who are migrating to Free Software / OpenSource but also those who already use them everyday.

You are warmly invited to participate (no subscription needed to comment) and join the community to create your own articles or tutorials. You can also subscribe to our newsletter to be informed of what's going on here (one letter every 3 to 6 month). Feel free to give feedback (contact button is on the footer) and share (there are share buttons at the top of most pages). We hope you will find this site useful and pleasant!

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS is out! Stable, friendly & functional (April 26 2012)

The new Long Term Support version of Ubuntu is out! It's the fifth Ubuntu LTS release, the first desktop edition to receive five years of support and the first LTS to include the Unity interface. As we could have guessed, Unity has reached the maturity of an enterprise-grade distro. But that's not all! Ubuntu 12.04 also includes some brand new stuff like the HUD interface, a new dash look with new lenses, a revamped system monitor that includes privacy settings and the "management service" among other small functionalities here and there. All of these changes are an overall improvement over the previous 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot. If we consider that LTS releases are usually more conservative, 12.04 LTS has a lot of new stuff!

For this release we also prepared a new series of tutorials that are already online on the Ubuntu tutorial page. A new tutorial was created to help newcomers go through the migration over to GNU/Linux. The focus of this new tutorial (called "First steps") is to show how to download, try and install Ubuntu. Two additional videos to help understand the transition from Windows to Ubuntu and from Mac to Ubuntu were also released (as suggested by Brendan, by the way, thank you for the suggestion!).

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS is hands down the best Ubuntu yet. Rock solid stability, great user-friendliness and amazing functionality. This might very well be a turning point in the history of GNU/Linux and the adoption of Free and Open Source Software by the masses. Let's hope the "Precise Pangolin" receives the love it deserves!!!

Linus Torvalds awarded the 2012 Millenium Prize, the closest equivalent to the Nobel Prize

Today is a great day for freedom! The renowned Technology Academy of Finland has officially declared Linus Torvalds together with Dr Shinya Yamanaka the two winners of the 2012 Technology prize. It is considered by many as the closest equivalent to the Nobel Prize since there is no Nobel Prize for technology innovators. It is undoubtedly the greatest technology prize today.

Ubuntu 11.10 officially released today! (Oct. 13, 2011)

Ubuntu 11.10 final version was officially released today (Thursday, October 13th, 2011) and we have managed to release the first series of tutorials for this new version too! The other tutorials will be published as soon as they are ready so stay tuned.

This is the second release that has the (controversial) Unity interface and maybe this time people will start understanding why Canonical Ltd. decided to do Unity. Compared to Oneiric 11.10, Natty 11.04 was just a draft. Now unity is beautiful and smooth, some really cool search functionalities have been added and all the not-so-useful stuff removed. I've noticed by chance a three finger track-pad recognition (to move a window) meaning that the trend of mobile devices and gestures are coming to the desktop too.

The next release to come in April 2012 will be the first LTS version with the unity interface and I believe it will be a watershed!

For the time being, let's give a warm welcome to Oneiric Ocelot!

Software Freedom Day (Saturday, September 17, 2011)

This Saturday will be the 8th time that the world will celebrate the Software Freedom Day. Like everything that is important, there's a day for that! The first SFD was held on the 28th of August 2004, organized by the Software Freedom International (SFI) and gathered more than 70 teams around the world. In 2005, more than 120 teams joined the celebrations on the 10th of September. Since 2006 the official date was established on the third Saturday of September and an increasing number of participants make of this date a special day for Free Software. Last year about 500 teams participated in over a hundred countries around the world. You can also participate in a local event or create your own team in the Software Freedom Day Website.

Site update (August 2011)

This is it! The promised update of the site is online! (13th of August).

 

We are very excited with the improvements achieved in this update. The site was rebuilt (almost) from scratch and the entire structure changed to be easier and more friendly. Some other stuff happened under the hood too, we're on a new server to deliver pages faster and be able to receive more visitors. We believe the improvements will compensate the few concessions we had to make. In the next paragraphs I'll explain why and what is different. Forgive us of if these changes affect you and please, contact the webmaster (info at idilix dot net) if you have any difficulties.