12.21.08

Links 21/12/2008: KDE 4.2 Raves; Linux 2.6.28 Before Xmas?

Posted in News Roundup at 7:39 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Stocks in focus for Monday [Red Hat to Impress?]

Red Hat RHT is estimated to report a profit of 17 cents a share excluding stock option expenses in the third quarter.
Week 51: Desktop? What Desktop?

But see, here’s the thing: whether Linux succeeds on the desktop is simply the wrong question to ask. The better question is where Linux has succeeded now and it will succeed in the future? For instance: Apache on Linux continually dominates the web server surveys on Netcraft. Yet we never hear 20-whatever is the Year of the Linux Web Server, even though you could make a case that the the 21st Century to date is the Century of the Linux Web Server. Why is that?
BBC iPlayer Desktop – Auntie, Why Do You Tease Me So?
New Compiz Animation: Bonanza

School’s not been out but one day and I’m already doing something [mildly] useful with my life. I wrote this effect yesterday that looks like the window is burning from the inside out. Why did I call it “Bonanza”? If you remember, there used to be a western TV show by the same name that had an old-western-style map that also burned from the inside out. Every time I see this effect, the catchy theme song from the show runs through my head.
NVIDIA CUDA 2.1 Beta Released
LB – Episode 33 – Zenoss by Linux Basement
Kernel
- Linux 2.6.28-rc9
- Kernel Log: What’s coming in 2.6.28 – Part 9: Fastboot and other remainders
Virtualisation
- The Future of Virtualization: Six Predictions
  
  A full range of offerings must be available. These will largely run on Linux as it is much more prevalent in this space.
- Xen: The startup in Citrix clothing
KDE4
- A glance at KDE 4.2 beta 2
  
  So that would be what all I could notice in a day. With added stability, beta 2 is a must try. It has so much more than the 4.1.x releases that you will definitely be surprised and more importantly, pleased! It works like a charm on this old laptop of mine with a GMA900 onboard Now I’m eagerly waiting for the final release
- KDE 2008 fly-by.
  
  So what’s up next year? Personally, I’m hoping, actually being confident that in 2009 we see the rise of new technologies such as Akonadi, Decibel, integrated desktop search and the semantic desktop. I’m looking forward to seeing KOffice2 becoming available and maturing. Higher level concepts such as the Social Desktop will start to be integrated, and a wide variety of new and existing applications will make their way onto everyone’s desktops and mobile devices.
  
  More imminent, there will be the second KDE conference in the Americas on Jamaica in January, and a smashing Akademy during the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit in July.
  
  It’s been a smashing year, and we’re not even done yet.
- Review: PC/OS OD 2009
  
  So, that’s PC/OS 2009. if you’re not sick to death of Ubuntu spin-offs it’s well worth a look, if only for its web-centric approach.
Distributions
- Puppy Linux for Old PCs
  
  As I’ll probably say here 100 times, it is much better to rescue an old computer and make it useful than to simply toss it out into the garbage. Linux makes this easy – er, well, kind of easy, depending on the distribution and your tolerance for troubleshooting. While more and more Linux versions are requiring more and more computing power, thankfully, not all of them suffer from the never ending quest for software progress.
- Arch Linux; Mean, Lean, Fast and Bleeding Edge
- Review: SymphonyOne 2008
  
  Overall I liked SymphonyOS. It’s a nice distribution with the new user in mind, simple, easy to use, and quite good to boot. I’d easily recommend this to new users who are in need of a very simple distribution to use, possibly install, and even maintain.
- Introducing Ulteo: your virtual Linux desktop
  
  It has been two years since Linux Format magazine last reported on Ulteo.
  
  Back then, we all thought it was going to be a standard new Linux distribution created by Gaël Duval, the founder of Mandrake Linux.
- Ubuntu
Devices
- Ultra-light ebook reader runs Linux
- Development bounties offered for open source STB

Sun

F/OSS

The Best Open Source Alternatives to MS Exchange
Bursting the proprietary-software bubble

In any free market, the price of a commodity, over time, falls close to that of its marginal cost of production. A number of things can interfere with this process, the most damaging being the existence of a monopoly, but in the absence of market distortion this rule always holds true.

And what is the marginal cost of production of software? The marginal cost of any product is the cost of making the next copy.

If you stop for a moment and consider it, you’ll see the cost of making the next copy of any piece of software is almost zero–with perhaps a vanishingly small amount for electricity.

That phenomenon is precisely the same as the one challenging the business models of the music and film industries. The equilibrium, free-market price of software is nothing.

A matter of survival

Free software acknowledges that truth. Proprietary software does not. Instead, like the banks, proprietary-software vendors have had to justify the cost of their wares by constructing complex arguments about value.
Open source, agile help move to lean software development
LAMP
- MIT using Drupal
- First Look: MySQL 5.1 Open Source Database
Denmark
- USB-stick with free software to students
- [Update]Tønder Municipality behind Free IT Software for all Schoolchildren
Versus Proprietary

Internet

IPv6 Makes Slow Progress
Why Internet & Infrastructure Need to be Fields of Study
Aussie System Admin Guild says NO to net filtering

The System Administrators Guild of Australia (SAGE-AU) has sent an open letter to Australia’s Minister for Communications, stating that it is “unable to support the Federal Government’s proposed Internet filtering initiative”, explaining the reasons why and outlining its “significant concerns”.
Psychiatric treatment used to ‘silence’ Chinese critics

Local officials in China appear to be increasingly using forcible psychiatric treatment to silence critics, a leading expert said today amid claims that at least 18 complainants were held in a mental hospital in Shandong province against their will.

Authorities in Xintai district committed people who had pursued grievances ranging from police brutality to property disputes, according to the Beijing News, well known for its investigative journalism. Some were force-fed drugs.
Brave New India

So when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh says it’s the greatest internal security threat, it allows various state governments to pass all kinds of laws that could call anybody a terrorist. Say, tomorrow, they came into my house here. Just the books that I have would make me qualify as a terrorist.