Up until now we had free Linux stats from gs.statcounter.com.

Operating system statistics for Greece (2011/10 to 2012/10), by StatCounter

These are the operating system statistics for Greece for the last year. (I am using Greece as an example. All other countries are also supported). Linux distributions are in red, and reaches up to 1.22% according to statcounter.

Statcounter provides web statistics servers for your website, and they offer the aggregate statistics for free. If statcounter is not generally used for stats at websites at your country, then the stats may not be representative. Also, some users may only access certain popular websites that have their own statistics software, thus those visitors are invisible to statcounter. These are some of the caveats when analysing such statistics.

Let's dig a bit deeper. There is a new statistics service, getclicky.com, which has been running for about a year. The best thing about them is that they also provide statistics between Linux distributions.

Operating system statistics for Greece (2011/11 to 2012/11), courtesy GetClicky

Here are the overall operating system statistics for Greece, which can range up to 1.51%.

Linux distribution statistics for Greece (2011/11 to 2012/11), courtesy GetClicky

Here are the Linux distribution stats for Greece by Getclicky.

First of all, it appears there has been a hiccup at the end of October 2012 and start of November 2012, that shows a >12% Linux marketshare; we ignore those two weeks of stats.

In this specific chart Ubuntu is in blue, and has been consistently higher than other distributions. After Ubuntu, the second most popular option is Generic Linux (orange color), which corresponds to browsers that do not reveal information about the operating system through something called the User Agent. Some distributions do not set the User Agent, or if you use some other browser like Chrome/Chromium, then the User Agent does not reveal the name of the distribution.

To check whether your browser advertises your operating system to websites, click on What's My User Agent. If it says

Your User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:17.0) Gecko/17.0 Firefox/17.0

then it advertises your Ubuntu!

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Gangnam Style Official Cover

The Gangnam Style video on Youtube was released on 15th July 2012, and currently it has been viewed over 470 million times.

The song is in Korean with only a few verses in English, making it difficult to lip sync.

Thus, I created phonetic subtitle files (.srt) in order to aid in lip synching the song; subtitles are found at

https://github.com/simos/gangnamstyle

Currently there are phonetic subtitles for

1. English
2. Greek

So, you downloaded the subtitles. How do you download locally the Youtube video? Start the Software Centre and search for Youtube. There are several clients that support the downloading of the videos. For example, the youtube-dl command line client. In this case, you would run

youtube-dl "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f"

which will download by default the FullHD version of the video clip.

Other Youtube download programs are minitube (some people complain it may not work well in 12.10) and jDownloader.

Gangman Style in Totem, showing subtitles

Then, you can load the video clip in Totem (the default video player in Ubuntu), and select at View→Subtitles→Select subtitles... the appropriate subtitle file.

If you prefer a command-line video player, you can install mplayer2 (this is a fork for the «mplayer» project). The mplayer2 package defaults to UTF-8 subtitles which is good. You would play the video clip with a command line like

mplayer PSY\ -\ GANGNAM\ STYLE\ \(강남스타일\)\ M_V\(360p_H.264-AAC\).mp4 \
   -sub PSY\ -\ GANGNAM\ STYLE\ \(강남스타일\)\ M_V\(360p_H.264-AAC\).en.srt

How do you create your own phonetic subtitles for your language? You can use one of the several subtitle editors in Ubuntu, such as GNOME Subtitles, Subtitle Editor, Subtitle Composer and Aegisub.

Aegisub 2.1 with Gangman Style subtitles

I used Aegisub in order to create the English and Greek phonetic subtitles. In Aegisub, you load an existing .srt file, the video clip file, and then you extract the audio from the video file. Afterwards you can edit in place each subtitle line.

If you manage to create phonetic subtitles for your language, feel free to send them over to add to the repository.

Gangnam Style with Werewolf  Hugh Jackman as Wolverine

PSY has been doing a lot of promotional appearences.

If you can work out the lip syncing, you can then try to record a video singing Gangman Style. See Nixie Pixel's guide to recording video in Ubuntu using your webcam.

7 comments

You connect your mobile phone to your computer with a USB cable. Most Android phones come with either a microUSB, a miniUSB or some proprietary-to-USB cable. If your phone did not come with such a cable, you need to get one.

When you connect your phone to the computer, it might be initialised as a CDROM device (uses the usb-storage kernel module) that comes with Windows drivers. It is the same issue you get with many 3g USB dongles that are initially recognised as CDROM devices. You need to use usb_modeswitch with the correct parameters in order to pass to the next stage (which makes the phone appear as a phone device, not a CDROM). If you do not have 'usb_modeswitch', install the usb-modeswitch package.

How do you find whether you need usb-modeswitch? And what parameters you need? See the usb-modeswitch project page and their helpful forum. You can also google with your device model number and the keyword usb-modeswitch.

Then, the next thing to do is to add a udev rule so that the correct permissions as set for your Android device. Use lsusb to identify the Vendor:Product ID of your phone. It looks like 1d6b:0001, and the Vendor ID in this case would be 1d6b. Then, run

gedit /lib/udev/51-android.rules

and type in

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS(idVendor)=="XXXX", MODE="0666"

You need to replace XXXX with your correct USB Vendor ID. Save and exit.

Finally, restart udev with

sudo restart udev

Afterwards, you can download the Android SDK for Linux. It's a 17MB file, and (at the moment of writing) the filename is android-sdk_r07-linux_x86.tgz. The download pages talk about installing Eclipse and other stuff. For the purposes of shell access and copying files, it is OK to get the Android SDK only. Once you download it, uncompress. Locate the directory android-sdk-linux_x86/tools/. In there you get the adb (Android Debug Bridge) tool.

Run ./adb start-server in order to start the server on the host side.

Then, see whether your phone has been identified, with ./adb devices

> ./adb devices

List of devices attached 
SOMEDEVICENAME    device
> _

If you do not get the last line mentioning 'SOMEDEVICENAME  device', then your phone was not detected (probably the usb_modeswitch issue needs to be done). If you get the line but with '(no permissions)', then something was wrong with udev setting up the permissions earlier. A shortcut is to ./adb kill-server and then run the same command with a sudo at the start.

Finally, we can

> ./adb shell
$ id
uid=2000(shell) gid=2000(shell) groups=1003(graphics),1004(input),1007(log),1011(adb),1015(sdcard_rw),3001(net_bt_admin),3002(net_bt),3003(inet)
$ uname -a
Linux localhost 2.6.29-perf #1 PREEMPT Tue Aug 3 20:01:27 EET 2010 armv6l GNU/Linux
$ _

If you managed to root your Android phone, you can also

$ su
# id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root)
# _

You can search at http://forum.xda-developers.com/ on how to root your phone. Most Android phones can be rooted. Note that things can go horribly wrong so there is a big chance to mess up with your phone if you are not careful. Study well before you root.

You copy files to and from the phone with

./adb push myfile.txt /sdcard/       # copies file myfile.txt from your computer to the /sdcard directory on the phone.
./adb pull /sdcard/myfile.txt .      # copies file /sdcard/myfile.txt from the phone to the current directory.

Once you master these command, you can do more interesting things, such as cross-compiling programs on your Linux and then installing on your phone. Let's see how to write our own program.

Visit http://www.codesourcery.com/sgpp/lite/arm/portal/release1293 and download the IA32 GNU/Linux TAR package. Uncompress it. You get an arm-2010q1 directory with the ARM GCC cross-compiler.

Let's write a program, hello.c,

#include <stdio.h>
int main(void)
{
 printf("Hello, world!\n");
 return 0;
}

We compile on our Ubuntu with the command

> arm-2010q1/bin/arm-none-linux-gnueabi-gcc hello.c -static -o hello_static
> _

We need the -static keyword in order to make a static executable. Static means that our executable has everything that is required to run, and does not depend on other phone software/libraries.

Copy to the phone,

> ./adb push hello_static /sdcard
1687 KB/s (647869 bytes in 0.374s)
> _

Then, connect to the phone,

> ./adb shell
$ cd /sdcard
$ ls -l hello_static
-rwxrwxrwx system   system     647869 2010-11-14 14:17 hello_static
$ ./hello_static
./hello_static: permission denied
$ _

What went wrong? When we type mount, we see that the /sdcard partition is mounted with the noexec flag. We cannot run stuff from /sdcard. What to do then? Copy stuff on the phone memory?

It appears that the SD card file system is also available from the /data/hwvefs mount point. There must be some background here, but the gist is that you can access the /sdcard content from /data/hwvefs/sdcard, and you can run them!

$ cd /data/hwvefs/sdcard
$ ./hello_static
Hello, world!
$ _

The commands you come to expect on your Ubuntu system are not available on Anroid. You can install Busybox for Android. Still, these commands do not have the features you expect to get on Ubuntu.

Let's compile the bash shell. We download bash and uncompress.

We add the cross compiler to our path,

export PATH=/home/myusername/arm-2010q1/bin:$PATH

Then, we enter the bash-4.1 directory and run (assumes we installed build-essential)

> ./configure --prefix=/opt/arm_bash --host=arm-none-linux-gnueabi --enable-static-link --without-bash-malloc
configure: WARNING: If you wanted to set the --build type, don't use --host.
 If a cross compiler is detected then cross compile mode will be used.
checking build system type... x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
checking host system type... arm-none-linux-gnueabi
checking for emacs... no
checking for xemacs... no

Beginning configuration for bash-4.1-release for arm-none-linux-gnueabi
...
$ _

Then,

make

sudo make install

The bash for the ARM is available at /opt/arm_bash/bin/bash

Let's examine it,

> file /opt/arm_bash/bin/bash
bash: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, for GNU/Linux 2.6.16, not stripped
> _

The important part is the mention to ARM. If there was a mistake in the configuration, you might see x86_64 here, which is your own computer!

As we did with hello_static, we install bash, and run it.

$ ./bash --version
GNU bash, version 4.1.0(1)-release (arm-unknown-linux-gnu)
Copyright (C) 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>

This is free software; you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
$ ./bash
bash-4.1$ _

Reading the UDS proceedings we see a big push for development on the ARM platform for mobile devices. There was mention for a packaged ARM cross compiler on the Ubuntu repositories (?) which would make things easier and more natural. It would be great to get as much of the user experience we are used to from the Linux desktop down to the mobile devices. Future looks great.

3 comments

The closest Firefox addon to the functionality of CertWatch is Certificate Patrol, which keeps track of website certificates and notifies when a revisited website has a different website certificate. CertWatch collects more information than Certificate Patrol and keeps track of root, intermediate and website certificates, plus visit details.

Once you install CertWatch and restart Firefox, CertWatch will take up to 30 seconds to parse all root certificates that your Firefox comes with. Every secure website that you visit is vouched for by some root certificate that pre-exists in Firefox. Your Firefox has about 150 of those root certificates, and you can traditionally view them in Edit»Preferences»Advanced»Encryption»View Certificates»Authorities.

Screenshot of CertWatch 1.0 running for the first-time

This is Firefox 4 (beta1) with a new profile. Both Firefox 4 and Firefox 3.6.8 (as found in Ubuntu 10.04) come with 149 root certificates. If you have more than 149, then you accepted yourself extra root certificates which are fully enabled and can vouch for secure websites. As you browse, your Firefox collects intermediate certificates (I plan to explain all these in future posts at certwatch.simos.info). These are added to Firefox without user interaction, as long as the respective root certificate is in Firefox as well.

Screenshot of CertWatch 1.0 Preferences

These are the preferences, accessible from Tools » CertWatch Preferences. When you visit a secure website, there is a process where the website certificate is vouched by the root certificate that Firefox already knows. Between the website and root certificates there could be intermediate certificates, creating what is called a certificate chain.

What the preferences do is specify when you should get a notification while you visit a secure website. The default preferences say that for the certificate chain of a secure website, show the certificate details if any of the website, intermediate or root certificates are encountered for the first time.

Let's visit https://addons.mozilla.org/ with CertWatch installed.

Screenshot of CertWatch 1.0 - certificates at addons.mozilla.org (animated GIF)

Each tab correspond to a certificate. All these three certificates are the certificate chain that verifies the secure website https://addons.mozilla.org/. The numbers at the tab names indicate how many times CertWatch encountered these certificates. It's the first time, so they all show 1. The black star ★ indicates whether the CertWatch Preferences apply for each certificate. Since the preferences indicate first time only, then all tabs get a star.

From the list of root certificates, only a handful of them will be ever used during your browsing and with CertWatch you now have the facility to figure out which ones are actually being used. At this stage I would consider this as the first most important use of CertWatch; keeping track on how many times certificates are used. If you encounter a new certificate when you visit a revisited website, then this is something to investigate.

CertWatch keeps its copy of certificates in an SQLite database in your Firefox profile. For Linux, the path is ~/.mozilla/firefox/YOURPROFILENAME/CertWatchDB3.sqlite. You can read the database with any SQLite client such as the Firefox Addon SQLite Manager or sqlitebrowser (Packaged in Debian and Ubuntu as sqlitebrowser). In the SQLite database you can view the root/intermediate certificate table, the website certificate table, and the website visits table. In all cases the full certificate is stored in case you want to contribute to the EFF SSL Observatory.

CertWatch is developed on Ubuntu Linux 10.04, with Eclipse 3.6 (Helios) and the JSDT environment.

Install the latest version of CertWatch, which is available from the addons.mozilla.org (AMO) CertWatch page.

Follow the progress of CertWatch at the http://certwatch.simos.info/ CertWatch blog.

Here are some secure websites for testing, https://www.google.com/, https://www.paypal.com/, https://www.facebook.com/, https://twitter.com/

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This is the 9th issue of Ubuntistas for May-June-July. You can click on the image above and have a look at the issue. The text should look Greek to you but you can get the gist of the content.

The contributors for the 9th issue of Ubuntistas are

1. Almpanopoulos Nikos (editing)
2. Diamantis Dimitris (author)
3. Kwstaras Giannis (author)
4. Papadopoulos Dimitris (author, desktop publishing)
5. Petoumenou Jennie (editing)
6. Savvidis Solon (author, public relations)
7. Fwtiadis Grigoris (design)
8. Fwtiadis Fillipos (author)
9. Hatzipantelis Pantelis (author, desktop publishing)

I remember the first discussions that led to the creation of the Ubuntistas magazine. It happened at the Ubuntu-gr forum where I was a moderator at that time. As moderator, our goal was to provide a friendly environment so that users get quality help and continue to use Ubuntu. As a result of that, the chances that some of these users would end up giving back to the community would be higher.

My input to the discussion was that there are many way to contribute back and I gave a list of (very boring) things to do. I felt that a magazine endeavor requires many people to cooperate and it was quite complicated task. My belief however was that they should give it a go anyway.

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It has been in progress for over ten years and there has been a beta about two years and a half ago. At the same time there had been a discussion on the relevant license for these fonts. The first draft of the license would have made the fonts obsolete as soon as they would be released. However, after public consultation, the project selected to use the Open Font License (OFL).

⬟⬠⬢⬤⬣⬲⬳⭆⭄⭃⬨⬍⬎⟲⟴✪◊▼◨◵↺↯⃟

StixFonts support mathematical symbols from Plane 1, however the WordPress post editor is not able to handle them and truncates the post when you save .

Apart from mathematical characters, StixFonts support Latin, Greek and Cyrillic. Compared with DejaVu (default font in Ubuntu), DejaVu still has overall bigger coverage. You would want to use StixFonts if you write academic documents and require to use a wide range of math symbols.

You can get the StixFonts from the StixFonts project website, at version 1.0, in OpenType format. From the zip archive with the fonts, extract the *.otf files into your home directory, in a subfolder called .fonts (if it does not exist, create it). No need to restart the system; any newly restarted applications should be able to see and use the fonts. OpenOffice.org 3.2+ is required (for example, in Ubuntu 10.04) due to the OpenType format of the fonts. If you use OpenOffice.org for your document writing, it might be a good idea to create special styles for your math content and set the StixFonts as the font of those styles. You can type in those math characters using Insert → Special Character... in OpenOffice.org as shown below.

These are the mathematical alphanumeric symbols (fraktur style) in Plane 1. You may notice that some characters are missing (such as capital N fraktur style). It's not a bug. In OpenOffice.org, you click on characters and these are added in a string. Then, when you completed the string with all the special characters you click OK and they are inserted in your document. While we wrote ubuntu as sample text, these are symbols meant for math documents. However, the potential for geekiness in the Facebooks and the Twitters is easy to describe.

The beta version of the StixFonts are already packaged in Debian/Ubuntu as 'otf-stix'. I suppose the package will be updated soon with the new version 1.0.

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A big enhancement in OpenOffice.org 3.2 is the support for OpenType fonts. A typical Linux user is able to do most of the tasks with TrueType fonts, however any new exciting fonts available are mostly OpenType fonts. So, OpenOffice.org 3.2 (to be released this month) has OpenType support and most likely Ubuntu 10.04 is going to have OpenOffice.org 3.2.

You can install OpenOffice 3.2 RC (or final, in a few weeks) on your Ubuntu by downloading the relevant archive from download the release candidate. Extract the files and enter the DEBS/ subdirectory. Then, run sudo dpkg -i *.deb in order to install the development version of OpenOffice 3.2. The installed files are located in /opt/ooo-dev3/program/ and you run now run swriter (for Writer). It is quite possible there is already a relevant PPA repository; tell me in the comments and I'll update here.

We test with the Greek Font Society OpenType fonts, which are distributed with the OpenFont License. The Debian/Ubuntu repositories already have the GFS fonts packaged for you. You can either install the fonts with your package manager (open synaptic package manager, search for ttf-gfs), or run from the command line

sudo apt-get install ttf-gfs-artemisia ttf-gfs-baskerville ttf-gfs-bodoni-classic ttf-gfs-complutum ttf-gfs-didot-classic ttf-gfs-gazis ttf-gfs-neohellenic ttf-gfs-solomos ttf-gfs-theokritos

Here is a screenshot of the PDF file of GFS Fonts Sample. With OpenOffice.org 3.1 or earlier these fonts would not appear in Writer and would be replaced with the default OpenOffice.org font. In addition, if you tried to export to PDF, you would get the default font (that is, the OpenType fonts do not get embedded in the PDF file either).

Here is the .odf file of the GFS Fonts Sample. If you load it in OpenOffice.org 3.1, you will notice that the default OpenOffice.org font will appear for each line in the sample file. If you load the sample .odt file in OpenOffice.org 3.2, you need to have the GFS OpenType fonts installed beforehand.

The GFS fonts support Greek, Greek Polytonic and several ancient Greek characters. See How to type Greek, Greek Polytonic in Linux for instructions on how to configure and use the Greek keyboard layout in Linux. Note that to type Greek Polytonic, you do not need anymore to select the Polytonic layout; the default «Greek» keyboard layout has been updated so that you can type Greek, Greek Polytonic and Ancient Greek characters.  Ergo, άᾷᾂϡϖϝ€ϕͼϾʹ͵ϐϛ.

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Why would you want to buy a laptop without pre-installed Windows?

1. Because you are simply not going to use Windows (for example, you plan to use a Linux distribution)
2. Because your school has an Developer Academic Alliance (formerly MSDN AA) with Microsoft and they provide the Windows software for you
3. Because your organisation has a company-wide agreement for Microsoft software, and you do not wish to pay twice for Windows.
4. Because you somehow have a Windows license or Windows package installation box already.

Sadly, when talking to the sales personnel of a manufacturer, it might look an easier strategy to just mention points 2 or 3. There is already some prior knowledge with the sales personnel that large organisations do not need the pre-installed Windows software.

Dell used to sell the N Series laptops with Ubuntu Linux, however they do not sell them anymore, at least in Europe. I contacted a Dell customer care manager on this issue and I was told that N Series laptops are available when you call Dell Sales by phone. I did just that, however the telephone salesperson explained that they do not have N Series laptops anymore. He verified with his own manager.

Dell does sell netbooks with Ubuntu Linux in Europe. For example, the Dell Mini or the Dell Latitude 2100. The situation with the netbooks is almost perfect, but...

What would be desirable is to provide the option, when you customize the Latitude 2100, to be able to select the operating system under the Operating System options. In this way, the customer is in a position to make a better decision between the differences of the two options.

In a regional Dell website, it is possible to select the operating system while you are customizing the computer. In this case, when you select Ubuntu Linux, you can easily see that you are saving €30 compared to the initial price.

It is not clear why Dell UK and Dell Germany do not provide the facility that we see with Dell Greece. Normally the localised editions of a website take any changes later than the main languages (English, German).

Updated (soon after posted): It is possible to get the Dell UK page for the Latitude 2100 so that both pre-installed Windows and Ubuntu appear in the same section. It might be an update that has been rolled out just recently. When you visit the Customise page,  you can now see that by selecting pre-installed Ubuntu Linux, you save £24 compared to pre-installed XP.

What would be ideal is for the consumer to have the option to avoid the pre-installed Windows, in a way shown above at the Dell Greece website for the Latitude 2100. Having options for Ubuntu Linux or FreeDOS (for those who already have a Windows license) would be the best value for the customers. This would make Dell the best company around.

So, what's going on with the other laptop manufacturers?

Acer, Asus, Compaq and HP do not appear to sell computers without pre-installed Windows to the European market. I have not been able to locate retailers that would sell a laptop with FreeDOS, let alone a Linux distribution.

Is this the case with Acer, Asus, Compaq and HP in other markets?

This is an example of laptop models from the SE Asian market. The laptops come with FreeDOS and if you want pre-installed Windows, you pay extra (€53 or $74). The quoted price for the laptop is not subjected to local tax for the specific SE Asian country. Here is the price equivalent for each laptop,

Acer: €325 or $460

Asus: €525 or $745

Compaq: €365 or $515

Manufacturers such as Lenovo and Toshiba appear as black sheep to me, regarding the European market. Lenovo is supposed to sell laptops with SuSE Linux, however I could not find an example. Toshiba is completely out of the radar. They might not be a big laptop manufacturer.

What would be great for the European customer is to have the option to buy a product without pre-installed Windows. And this option of buying a computer without pre-installed Windows should be a visible and accessible option.

25 comments

I am attending GUADEC this year, thanks to the sponsorship by the GNOME Foundation!

I am organising the GNOME Localisation BoF, which takes place on Friday, 10th July, 2009, at 17:00. I am also having a session on the GNOME translator command line tool gnome-i18n-manage-vcs on the same day at 15:00.

gsoc

A few months ago, there was a program in Greece, along the lines of the Google Summer of Code, to help Greek developers in FLOSS projects. The program was organised by EELLAK, a Greek non-profit, composed of 25 institutions of the tertiary education and research centres. As it took place during the spring, it was nicknamed Greek Spring of Code (gsoc).

Apart from developing software, the program had a localisation angle, and we applied for the localisation of GNOME 2.26 to the Greek language. In practice, this meant that we had to lift the documentation translations from 32% to 100%, complete the remaining UI translations.

We achieved the goal .

Many contributors helped in this effort; Jennie Petoumenou (also co-organiser in the effort), Marios Zindilis, Fotis Tsamis, Kostas Papadimas, Nikos Charonitakis, Sterios Prosiniklis, Giannis Katsampiris, Michalis Kotsarinis, Vasilis Kontogiannis and Socratis Vavilis.The overall task was difficult, and our team did an amazing task to complete the translations on time. Thank you all, and especially Jennie and Marios for undertaking huge chunks of the translation effort for this release.

Here are the GNOME EL 2.26 deliverables in HTML, PDF.

ellak-conf

The fourth Greek FOSS (ELLAK) conference took place in Athens on the 19-20th June 2009.

We had our annual localisation meetup!

I organised a workshop on git, with a focus on how to use when starting into software development. There was emphasis on using github.com to host and manage the development. In addition, services such as github.com allow to cooperate during the development, making programming a more social and interesting task.

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In detail, the Credit Note says

Item No.  Description                    Quantity Unit Price  Net  VAT
          Cust Invd b4 parts recd 3rdpty    -1      26.96   -26.96  S

                                                                 GBP
  VAT Summary                                      Subtotal   -26.96
                                                   Freight      0.00
   VAT    VAT Rate      GBP        GBP             VAT £       -4.04               
   Type     %       Total Net £   VAT £                
    S      15         -26.96      -4.04           
                                                   Total      -31.00

Now, that was the short story for getting my Windows refund. The long story was that I had to go through several weeks of effort to figure out how to get a new computer without Microsoft software. I contacted by phone both Dell and Microsoft and I estimate I was on the phone for about four hours in total. To save you the effort, here are some tips,

1. You will get stonewalled. I did not get any reliable information on how to buy a computer without Microsoft software while I was researching my options. I actually gave up and proceeded with buying a computer with Windows, considering that my last resort was to use the EULA method as soon as I got it delivered (I would not accept the EULA, thus I would be entitled for a refund or credit).
2. Apart from phone calls, I spent some time on Dell Chat. In one case, I was told that I can get a computer from the Latitude range with FreeDOS. They would have to get the precise configuration of the computer so that they can give me a quote. We made sure that the configuration was correct (the one in my basket with the one I would get the quote for). It sounded very promising, however, at the end the computer with FreeDOS would be about £30 more expensive than Vista. I asked for clarification on this issue but I did not get any.
3. You will be often told that you are the first person that asks for a computer without Microsoft software. Try to think that you are a pioneer and don't feel let down.
4. When calling by phone, avoid using premium telephone numbers. Get a good SIP account and configure Ekiga or SFLPhone (has recording feature). For Dell UK, try 01344 373727 which apparently is fine even if you are not a Public sector customer.

By using the software, you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the software. Instead, contact the manufacturer or installer to determine their return policy for a refund or credit.. (why are there two dots? -- simos)

When you first boot a new computer that has Windows pre-installed, you are presented with the above screen. Why would Microsoft give the option to reject their software? I believe the reason is that they want to enter into a contract directly with the customer, thus there is no issue with removing this facility in future versions of Windows (probably for similar reasons, Hotmail now supports POP3, apparently so that small mobile devices can retrieve e-mail. You can now migrate from Hotmail to GMail easily.). However, the whole environment is setup in such a way that virtually noone would be able to pursue a successful refund. One has to scroll the tiny text box in order to find the pictured paragraph (no option to print!). Even the Microsoft Customer Care EMEA are not aware of the option not to accept the EULA.

In your case, if you do not intend to use the pre-installed Microsoft software (apparently includes the case where you already have a license, such as an Academic License), you have the option to reject for a refund or credit. Simply press the Shutdown button and do not accept the license. Then, get on the phone.

I installed Ubuntu 9.04 (x86_64) and the computer runs fine .

It was unexpected when Intel got a heavy fine from the EU for anticompetitive practices. Does this practice by Microsoft (making it extremely difficult to obtain a refund or credit) constitute an anticompetitive practice?

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There is a new guide on how to write Greek and Greek Polytonic in Linux, and in particular using the latest versions of Linux distributions.

https://docs.google.com/View?docID=dccdrjqk_4cqjn9zcj (LATEST VERSION)

The guide shows in detail how to add the Greek keyboard layout to your Linux desktop, and how to write Greek, Greek Polytonic and other Ancient Greek characters.

The guide is also available in both ODT and PDF format. (both files are somewhat obsolete. use google docs URL from above instead)

For a Greek version of the guide, please see http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dccdrjqk_3gx3bq5f9 (does not update as often as the English version)

We attach the HTML version of the guide in this post. The docs.google.com version is the latest, please read that instead.

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