I was attempting to find a useful podcast tool on Linux so that I can get This American Life as a podcast, instead of my normal method of timeshifting our local NPR station. After a few attempts I found Castpodder, which had the best interface of any of the pieces of software that I could just package install off the network. And off I was to start setting up podcasts.

Castpodder had the benefit of prepopulating the tool with a couple of podcasts, one of which was LUG Radio, a regular podcast by a bunch of Linux Users in the UK. While there are parts of it where I think they could get their facts a bit better, overall it is a pretty amusing show, and it has definitely let me know about a few things I wouldn’t have otherwise.

One of them was Redmonk, an open source analyst firm. These guys do analysis of open source software and communities from a business perspective, and post all their content online. From their charter:

RedMonk is the first analyst firm built on open source. We’re dedicated to providing high quality research at no cost, and believe that the dialog that follows is beneficial to us, our community and our clients.

They also have a podcast, though I haven’t started listening to it yet as I’m getting through some of the LUG Radio backlog right now. However, as we start looking more at Linux in schools, it’s good to get some information on best bractices in Open Source beyond just my own personal experience. Redmonk looks like a reasonable place to gather some of that information.

The last thing I learned is that C# doesn’t kill puppies, at least not that many of them. I’ve been looking at it a bit recently, and basically it’s Java with all the rough edges scrubbed off. The fact that there is an actual open implementation that works, and that it comes with nearly every distro now.