Linux boost at Maastricht University with Android tablets

CC-BY-SA WikiMedia Commons.

I learned yesterday that all employees with a longer contract will be equipped with an Android tablet. That is great news for this blog, because Android uses the Linux kernel. It means two things:

1. adoption of Linux at Maastricht University gets a boost
2. this blog becomes a lot more relevant and it is probably time to start a blog series about Android apps that will benefit researchers at Maastricht University

My first suggestions:

• Evernote (for meetings)
• OpenStreetMap (for travel, 10 free offline country maps; offline route planning)
• Plume (Twitter client; for tweeting at conferences; see doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003789)
• Rainy Days (for home-work travel)
• Feedly (to read Table of Contents of journals)
• Coursera (MOOCs to learn something outside your own domain) and DuoLingo (to learn your fifth foreign language)

Of course, don't forget the apps for the online services you likely use already, like DropBox, Google Drive, a good webbrowser (Chrome or FireFox) etc. You may also be interested in the app our UM Library recommends for electronic reading of journals, Browzine.

So, the remaining questions really is, which app does ICTS recommend for reading our university email?? And, will that still require super powers for Microsoft to delete everything on your Android device if you accidentally (or your kid, dog, cavia) types the wrong security unlock code too many times??

Linux in Maastricht: not just me

This blog has been a bit silently lately. Fairly, I have been running Linux at Maastricht University for 2.5 years now, without much problems. Perhaps the least pleasing thing is the lack of UM-styled templates and the horrendous quality of the Outlook web interface.

But, I am not alone in using Linux in Maastricht. Here are a few things I recently ran into:

1. M.Sc. Public Policy use Linux in their teaching, and in this post they describe how to install LaTeX on a variety of Linux operating systems. Unfortunately, the commenting system is hidden to the general public, so that I cannot ask them if they know writelatex.com, and whether they know beamer templates for the UM style.
2. Apparently, UM has done research into the Linux kernel and kernel development in the past. The two papers are listed below.

van Wegberg, M. & Berends, P. The open source code movement: the linux operating system. Multi-Organizational Partnerships and Cooperative Strategy 283-287 (2000).

Ghosh, R. A. & David, P. The nature and composition of the linux kernel developer community: a dynamic analysis. SIEPR-Project NOSTRA Working Paper (21st February) (2003).

Setting up ActiveSync with Android

ICTS has two documents that describe how to set up Android that so that you have access to your agenda and email. However, there is one huge disadvantage: you can also use this by allowing the server to "Erase All Data" without warning. This is not some weirdly named permission, it will really delete all data if for some reason it got upset with your phone. Check the horror stories. What was Microsoft thinking??

Reading literature from home with your UM account

Well, this is not strictly for GNU/Linux only, but useful anyway: you can read non-Open Access literature from outside the UM network, using your UM account using EZProxy. And it is as simple as typing a URL: you just append .ezproxy.ub.unimaas.nl to the domain name. Thus, instead of typing http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v465/n7299/full/465685e.html you use http://www.nature.com.ezproxy.ub.unimaas.nl/nature/journal/v465/n7299/full/465685e.html. That's all.

Update: if you are using Firefox, check this plugin. If you are using the Chrome browser, you can also check out this extension:

Maastricht University should be known to the extension already (but the "manual" URL is given below too), and my configuration of the extension looks like:

Changing your UM password #2

Yes, there is a better way. I just got email from Jeroen van der Kooij from the university's ICTS Servicedesk who informed me about MyAccount which looks like:

Changing your UM password

Changing my password is something I do occasionally. Not often enough, with an interval of 3 months not being that bad, and at least that infrequent to not remember how to do it. I surfed the Maastricht University website and searching it for 'wachtwoord' finds a lot of stuff (which seems Google-powered), but not how to change my main account.

In the end, I found this option in the Outlook web interface, which is of course a very natural place to search for it, unlike the "Employee Self Service" :)

Is there a better way? Can you change your password, for example, via My UM?

Setting up Kmail with IMAP

First of all, IMAP is not supported by the ICT service center, so, be warned. The configuration is pretty standard, and here are some screenshots for Kmail. I followed the guidelines for setting up IMAP with outlook, and it basically boils down to the following:

• imap.maastrichtuniversity.nl
• SSL (port 993)
• account: firstname.lastname@unimaas.nl
• passward: the same as for webmail

The main difference with the main documentation is that only the unimaas.nl domain works for me (the screenshot was taken before I figured that out):

This is what the Security tabs looks like for me:

Sending email is not supported, so find yourself a local SMTP server. (Though I will try next week if the UM SMTP server works from within the UM network... or perhaps via VPN?)

Of course, you can use the UM SMTP server when sending from within the university. Kmail supports multiple mail transports, and I have both GMail and UM configured. Now, if I only knew how to get Kmail to select a transport based on the current IP...