10.19.08

Links 19/10/2008: New Linux Kernel, Migrations to GNU/Linux, PCLinuxOS 2009

Posted in News Roundup at 9:26 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Andrew Lahde: Goodbye!

My suggestion is that this great man start and sponsor a forum for great minds to come together to create a new system of government that truly represents the common man’s interest, while at the same time creating rewards great enough to attract the best and brightest minds to serve in government roles without having to rely on corruption to further their interests or lifestyles. This forum could be similar to the one used to create the operating system, Linux, which competes with Microsoft’s near monopoly. I believe there is an answer, but for now the system is clearly broken.
Linux versus Windows: another fine Microsoft TCO Analysis

So what’s the bottom line on the review? simple: if you hire someone to prove that increasing upfront spending on school computers by about 30% without getting a productivity improvement is a good thing, they’re going to have to make some pretty slick logical leaps somewhere – and I think this one got to its destined conclusions by using nicely formatted Excel tables and lots of verbiage to hide assumptions amounting to the required conclusions.
Alien Arena 2008 Receives Graphics Improvements

While not commonly mentioned at Phoronix, Alien Arena is an open-source sci-fi first-person shooter that has been around since 2004 and uses the CRX engine, which is a derivative of the Id’s GPL source-code. Version 7.20 of Alien Arena 2008 was released this week and a few features had caught our attention. In addition to a number of game-play improvements, Alien Arena 2008 has received a number of improvements to its graphics renderer with GLSL program management, parallax mapping, new lighting, new shaders, and other work.
The Sine Qua Non of the Free Desktop
Yakuake — yet another pop-up terminal
Elive 1.9.10 ScreenShots
Metro Released
Leave It To The Little Guys…
Versus Windows and Mac OS X
- Why good people make bad OS choices
  
  For my mother-in-law, I picked her up an ASUS Eee 900A, which runs Xandros Linux for, with sales tax, just over $300. She loves it and she’s been reading the Miami Herald news using Firefox and playing solitaire like a fiend for the last day and a half.
- R.I.P. – Windows XP
  
  It’s true that Ubuntu has some quirks for the user switching from XP, but I’ve found these quirks to be a byproduct of 15 years of Windows use – not any inherent problem with Ubuntu itself. In fact, once I get used to the Ubuntu way of doing things, they’re almost universally better.
  
  I have debated for 3 years making the switch to a linux distro, and after 2 weeks of making the switch, this is all I have to say:
  
  Goodbye Windows XP. May you rest in peace.
- Linux incognito part one: the Leopard
- If you sit out Vista, what are your alternatives?
  
  Linux proponents have seemingly declared every year since 2000 as being the year for Linux On The Desktop. Linux seems to get better with every iteration, but is it there yet? It might be.
  
  I spend about half my day on a Linux box. About the only time I flip to Windows is when I have to do something that Linux can’t – like working with Exchange’s calendars conveniently for example.
  
  With the new distributions that are constantly coming out, Linux programmers have been consistently moving the ball down the field, encroaching on Windows’ desktop territory. As decent as things are now, with another 2 years of coding 2010 just might BE the year of Linux On The Desktop.
Ubuntu/Debian
- 10 features Ubuntu should implement
- History of Ubuntu, from Warthog to Ibex
  
  Ubuntu, our favorite and the largest community-supported linux distribution is gradually becoming one of the best free and open-source operating systems ever.
  
  [...]
  
  Coming later this month, Intrepid Ibex will be the ninth Ubuntu release. For all we know, it has got a new network manager with better support for 3G networks, Nautilus now has support for tabs, auto-install drivers option now works with printers, there is a whole new black theme and a better flash support.
- Ubuntu 8.10 beta review
- Ubuntu 8.10 Coming Soon
- Why Ubuntu Then?
- Lubi – Linux based Ubuntu Installer
- Debian (Etch) Linux
PCLinuxOS
- PCLinuxOS 2009 Beta ScreenShots and Review
- PCLinuxOS N1PTT-TR3 RELEASED!
- Meet PCLinuxOS 2009 (Beta 1)
  
  To the excitement of its many loyal users, the PCLinuxOS development team released the first beta of the highly anticipated 2009 release. It’s been a long time coming but it seems it’s finally on its way. There were no big surprizes found in this release, but lots of updates.
- PCLinuxOS – Why would you want to try it out?
Desktop Environment
- Join us in Jamaica next January for Camp KDE
  
  In January 2008, the KDE community celebrated the release of the much anticipated KDE 4.0 in Mountain View, CA. When the event was celebrated by a packed house, we realised that there was a strong demand for KDE events in the Americas. One year later, the community will celebrate this new conference series at Camp KDE 2009, to be held in Negril, Jamaica.
- The 5 Best Xfce – based Linux Distributions
Sub-notebooks
- A really cheap Netbook
- The 1980s Netbook
- Laptop plan is not child’s play just yet
  
  But worse than its origins were the criticism of the software itself. Negroponte had opted for Linux and an entirely new user interface called Sugar (the rumours said that he had turned down an offer by Steve Jobs of free-to-ship version of MacOS).
SaaS
- Crystal Ball Sunday #13: Cloud Computing
- Missing in the Cloud: package managment
Kernel

F/OSS

MAFIAA

Leftovers

Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

home audio video buff Marc Merlin 07 (2005)

Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.

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2 Comments

Jose_X said,

October 20, 2008 at 8:22 am

http://ostatic.com/174660-blog/open-source-is-ideal-open-formats-are-critical

The case made I think is about the superiority of open formats.

I agree partially. In real life, there will be closed source and that is fine if people know what they are getting into. Some businesses just won’t reveal source, but some people may trust these companies anyway. In these cases, it helps to have “open formats”. Such a format may or may not be useful with the products of these closed source companies. It depends, and trust will be a factor in guiding buying decisions.

What I want to stress is that an “open format” is only as open as the implementations “supporting” it actually choose to support it faithfully with no tricks. Of course, some formats allow for undocumented extensions to be created. Buyers that accept this would be wise to realize that this means anything goes for the closed source undocumented extensions even from otherwise honest companies.. a box of chocolate — you never know whatcha gonna get.

The applications define how the formats are interpreted. There are many ways to be off from the published docs. Small differences might be tolerable but not always, and the vendors can probably implement any extension mechanism they want even within the guidelines of the standard (eg, implementing the extension as comments or cued in through allowed otherwise insignificant whitespace and other variations and possibly in encrypted/nonobvious fashion).

With open source, even different formats need not present a problem because the open source of the app allows converters and filters to be created to a large degree (the issues would be that different subsets of functionalities mean that some information will not be used depending on the application reading/converting the file).

So the short of this is that in a bug-free world with no funny business being carried out by closed source companies and with all extensions by them being fully documented, a common open format allows for interop to a great degree and should be all that is needed from a strictly “end” user pov. In the world we live in, if you go with a closed source product you risk from minor to major incompatibilities.

I want to mention a special case of closed source products. Monopolies have business incentives to be sloppy and secretive so that others cannot interoperate. Failures to interoperate with world+dog benefit the monopolist.
Roy Schestowitz said,

October 20, 2008 at 8:34 am

That’s why legal enforcements (e.g. a policy) requiring open standards and/or Free software are needed and are increasingly adopted.