08.18.08

Links 18/08/2008: Fedora Scholarship Launched, Canonical Joins LF

Posted in News Roundup at 4:51 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

People Behind KDE: Michael Pyne

What’s your advice to people who want to get into KDE development-type stuff but don’t know where to start?

1. Figure out if you want to “develop-develop” or if you would be better at non-coding but still important types of tasks.
Review of CrossOver Linux 7.0.2
Why would anyone choose Windows over Linux?

So after her success I was back to the question that perpetually plagues me: Why would anyone choose Windows over Linux?

* There’s far less risk for viruses and malware.
* It’s free.
* Applications are free.
* It’s far more flexible.
* It has multiple routes for support.
* It is improving at a far faster rate than Windows.
* Bugs and security holes are patched much quicker.
Review: OpenGEU 8.04 ‘Luna Crescente’ Beta Live CD

WHEN I decided to try the OpenGEU Linux distribution, I had little experience of its Enlightenment window manager. I had played around with Elive, the Debian-based live CD featuring Enlightenment, in the past but had never spent any time getting to know and understand this elegant-looking WM.
IBM: Mainframes enjoying global resurgence
Canonical Joins The Linux Foundation
The Linux Kernel
Linux and Web 2.0: the Killer Combo

I said I wouldn’t post as much about technology unrelated to the Web, but I have noticed that Linux is a hot topic on Digg right now. The OS – and, let’s face it, Linux is easier to define when we just view it as an OS – has been gaining momentum ever since Windows Vista turned into a nightmare for Microsoft. Actually, the word “momentum” is probably too strong, it is more like “gaining a little traction after spinning its wheels for so long” or maybe “finally emerging from complete obscurity”.
Concept Distro

In the Linux world, while we appear to have direct competitions between the distributions, the reality is that we co-operate far more than you might expect unless you’re involved with development. A Concept Distro would need upstream work from just about everybody.
The Fedora Project Announces Fedora Scholarship

Helping develop and foster up and coming talent in the open source software field, the Fedora Project, a Red Hat sponsored and community-supported open source collaboration, has announced the newly created Fedora Scholarship programme.
Ubuntu growing its ecosystem of apps, partners, Canonical says

Malcolm Yates, the global independent software vendor (ISV) alliance manager at Canonical Ltd., traveled halfway around the world, flying from London to San Francisco with a message for LinuxWorld: Ubuntu is growing up. No longer just an operating system for geeks, Ubuntu has begun to evolve into a mature ecosystem with a small but growing cache of applications to run on top of an OS and more partners to expand its reach, he said.

Periodicals

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 104
Mandriva Flash 2008.1 on ASUS Eee PC 900

After some three months of keeping the default Xandros installation on my ASUS Eee PC, it was time for a change. While the Eee PC variant of Xandros Desktop is an extremely well-designed and an excellent entry-level Linux for anyone looking for basic Internet and computing functionality, it’s unlikely that it would satisfy an average computer geek for too long. Sooner or later its limitations in terms of power computing and software installation, not to mention the “don’t leave it alone” desire to tinker with any new toy, would likely see many of these netbooks’ flash drives being wiped clean, making room for a new, more powerful operating system.
The Linux Gazette: August 2008 (#153)

F/OSS

[ANNOUNCE] GIT 1.6.0

The latest feature release GIT 1.6.0 is available at the usual places…
The Commercial Bear Hug Of Open Source

At first glance, the words “commercial open source” seem like a contradiction in terms. Isn’t open source a community-based movement that was set to overtake the world of commercial software? Wasn’t the famous LAMP stack, Linux, Apache, MySQL and Perl, Python and PHP going to open a world in which software existed outside the traditional realm of property? You know, free–not like free beer, but like free speech?
Forbes rewrites the history of open source

In the name of defining jargon, Forbes this week tries a complete rewrite of open source history.

This is accomplished by someone named Dan Woods, who calls his company Evolved Media. (He might want to rename it Unevolved Medium.)

Woods does this by ignoring Eric Raymond’s ground-breaking The Cathedral and the Bazaar, making Richard Stallman the father of something he frankly detests.

Stallman personally lectured me on this when I first took this beat, so I’m not getting this from examining fossils or old newspaper clippings. It’s from the horse’s mouth.

[...]

Woods, for some reason, insists on calling open source “commercial open source,” when the whole idea of open source was that it would be commercial.

This way, I suppose Forbes‘ editors get to twit the hippies and claim that open source is no big deal.

In fact, open source is a very big deal.
ANZ women in Open Source gain momentum

With increasing interest and influence in the open source movement, women in Australia and New Zealand are pushing their way into a normally male-dominated arena.
The Brampton Factor: Analysts fail on open source

For open source software to achieve its full potential, people’s perceptions must change. Yet how can that happen when open source is so woefully neglected by analysts, asks Martin Brampton.
Commentary: Convergence ignites growth of open-source collaboration
Community Live – Osmosoft’s TiddlyWiki Hackathon and Pizza on Rails
Jitterbit: An Open Source Project That Bridges Data Gaps
Sun Releases LWUIT an Open Source Development Toolkit
Compiere’s Open Source ERP ‘Bridge’ for CRM Vendor
Free software can do many jobs
Open source drives WordPress to 6.5 billion page views