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Want to create an animation on GNU/Linux and then convert it to a video file?

I am honored to have had a chance to interview two of the most dedicated Freedomware and GNU/Linux advocates.

In an exciting networked world we are living in, just about everything can be connected to anything. By all means that includes your mobile phone, at least if it is not more than a couple of years old. You can connect your mobile phone to your computer via bluetooth, or more commonly via USB, in which case it will also re-charge itself. Depending on your phone once it detects it has been connected to an USB port, it will offer to enter one of the two modes; a file transfer mode and a phone mode.

A file transfer mode will mount your phone to your desktop as if it was a disk (like an USB stick) and then you can move files back and forth between your hard disk and your phone (like putting a cool music file to use as your ring tone). However, what we will be focusing on here is the phone mode, which is quite interesting, because it allows you to, by using appropriate software, synchronize your phone and control it using your computer.

The news of Con Kolivas, a Linux kernel developer, quitting that role, along with an interview in which he explains why, could and should make loud noises around the Free Software community which is often touting GNU/Linux as the best operating system one could use, and not just because of freedom you have with it. In the interview he says certain things which should cause tectonic shifts in the mindset that we have all been having. Why didn't we realize these things before?

In my four years of using Linux, getting USB drives, memory cards, CD-ROMs, and Windows shares in a state where I could actually use them has been one of my most frustrating problems. Printing, by comparison, has been far easier. I was frustrated even that I had to use the "mount" command, not to mention all the issues with getting it to work the way I wanted it to. In my four years of using Linux, it has gotten a lot better about automatically detecting and mounting devices; in particular, I almost never have to mount hard drives or CD-ROMs manually any more. Other devices, however, remain problematic. You may never have to use the mount command in Linux. You may also win the lottery jackpot; I wouldn't bet on either. This article is intended to help new users save a lot of the time and trouble that I have gone through.