Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers
• Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

• TuxRadar by the numbers

  Linux users make up 34.47% and Mac users are 9.19%. Here’s the full list:

  1. Windows: 55.11%
  2. Linux: 34.47%
  3. Macintosh: 9.19%
  4. iPhone: 0.45%
  5. Unknown: 0.35%
  6. iPod: 0.14%
  7. FreeBSD: 0.08%
  8. SunOS: 0.07%
  9. Android: 0.05%
  10. SymbianOS: 0.03%
  11. OpenBSD: 0.01%

• Linux will never rule the desktop, and here’s why:

  If you draw a line giving the rate at which Linux is taking over the desktop you’ll see it’ll take several years from now to become the biggest operating system on desktops.

  This is never going to happen, because the desktop as it is will die long before we reach this point.
  The good thing is Microsoft will probably die with it!

  [...]

  As hardware will keep getting cheaper and cheaper and smaller and smaller in the coming years, I don’t see any application left for PC’s so the desktop will probably die. And guess what will be running on 90% of the dedicated devices? Most probably it’s a version of a certain free and flexible open source operating system.

  I can’t wait for the year the desktop dies!

• The Sun Sets

  Sun’s share in the EDA space has been steadily declining since the hey days of the 80’s. It appears that Linux is the eventual winner for EDA operating systems. I wish IBM well in their pursuit of Sun.

• Linux

  And yesterday I realised another thing. My Gentoo machine is complete its feel almost of I am going to get bored. I got a chill because what is there next after Gentoo “Linux from scratch” , luckily I am busy with B.Sc Computer Science, so there is a new field to keep me busy programming.

• Installing Linux on my girfriend’s laptop: an overview

  I could go on and on like this, because there’s still some tweaking and configuring to be done, but the main things are installed and are working just fine. She already used it a couple of times, telling me she didn’t notice the difference with Windows.

• Why Linux is Better

  In contrast, OpenSource software is designed, built, and deployed in an entirely different manner. Yes, there are committees, or small groups that actually are making most of the decisions, but these groups are generally open in their communication and anyone can get involved. The decision making process is fundamentally different for OpenSource than it is for Commercial software.

• Applications

  • Synapse Brings Elegant Jabber/Google Talk to Linux

    Linux only: It will only ever truly support Jabber/XMPP/Google Talk, but Synapse, a new alpha-level IM app, is a pretty—and pretty efficient—way to chat if you’re all about open-source communication.

  • Calibre: iTunes for e-books?

    Calibre is a cross-platform, open-source library for your e-books that can also sync them to your e-book reader. Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, it offers a massive range of individual book customizations, as well format conversion and newspaper-style RSS feed grabbing, but lacks a slick interface that would go a long way towards convincing skeptics that it’s a powerful tool.

  • Six Latest Firefox Addons You Should Check Out

    We all love Firefox for the sheer number of extensions that can be added to it. There are plenty of brilliant yet unpopular extensions that have been written about before.

• Kernel Space

  • A Working X Input 2 Implementation

    This morning, however, Peter Hutterer (of MPX fame) has his first working X Input 2 implementation.

  • ATI Linux Drivers Gain Support For Unreleased RS880

    AMD’s current flagship offering when it comes to integrated ATI graphics is the Radeon HD 3300 / 790GX. This IGP was introduced last fall as a minor refresh to the Radeon HD 3200 / 780G Chipset. As something new for consumers to consider, soon it looks like AMD will be introducing the RS880. The RS880 will likely have a marketing name within the Radeon HD 4000 series and will be their fastest integrated graphics solution, well, for now.

• Distributions

  • Arch Linux Review

    Arch Linux is a rolling release distribution, meaning there is no specific dates for new releases, it is continously developing, it is almost always at the bleeding edge, with the most updated versions of packages.
    This means you only have to install once, and then just keep updating arch, and you will always have the most “recent release”, this is one of the aspects I like the most about Arch Linux

    [...]

    Arch Linux is a great distro, it has almost always the latest package versions available, it is optimized to run on modern computers, and is a great option for the Desktop user, it may requiere a little of work to make it work, but do not be afraid it is actually easy to make it, you just need some time.

  • SAM-Linux, PCLinuxOS’ Ugly Duckling?

    Running SAM2008-claw-rc1 is still a very enjoyable experience proving once more that SAM-Linux is definitely not an ugly duckling.

  • PCLinuxOS 2009.1 userbar

  • My Distro is Better Than Yours…. Not!

    The way to strengthen Linux is to work for the developers of the distro that you like, to strengthen the community and to help others. The way to strengthen the position of your favourite distribution is to promote it with good public relations and to advertise its merits. Stay positive and we all get better.

  • Debian/Ubuntu

    • Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 134

      Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #134 for the week March 15th – March 21st, 2009. In this issue we cover: Ubuntu 9.04 Beta Freeze in effect, LoCo Team information request, Ubuntu Server: KVM call for testing, MOTU Release Charter, QA Team next testing day, Ubuntu Drupal 6.3.0 released, Ubuntu India re-launches User Forums, Ubuntu Honduras begins to work, FossConf 2009 – Madurai and Ubuntu Tamil Team, Announcing Eucalyptus, Ubuntu Forums nuts and bolts, Daniel Holbach: Time to Party, Soren Hansen: gtk-vnc and virt-viewer mozilla plug-in, Thierry Carrez: What I want Ubuntu Server to be, What is Qimo?, Ubuntu Podcast #22, Server Team Minutes: March 17th, QA Team Minutes: March 18th, Behind MOTU Interview: Roderick Greening, and much, much more!

    • Debian 5.0 ScreenShots

      Now Debian does not include all of those extra packages that you are use too. But Debian does a great job of keeping it lean and simple, and if you want you can use the handy apt-get util to get the extra’s that you need.

      Please enjoy the ScreenShots below…

    • Distro Review: Debian Lenny

      Ok it’s time for another distro review and I’m a bit overdue with this one but I’m a big fan of Debian and the dedicated community who develop it I make no secret of that. When I reviewed Etch (4.0) last year I declared that if I were to finally grow up and settle down with just one distro this would be the one. I like the fact that it’s not backed by any commercial entity and sticks closely to it’s Free Software principals. After some delay version 5.0 Lenny was finally released this Valentine’s Day, how appropriate but would it still be true love? There was only one way to find out…

  • New Releases

    • Scientific Linux 5.3

      Troy Dawson has announced the release of ScientificLinux 5.3, a distribution built from source software packages for RedHat Enterprise Linux, but enhanced with additional applications andtools: “Scientific Linux 5.3 has been released forboth the i386 and x86_64 architectures.

    • Absolute Linux 12.2.2 Was Released

      Paul Sherman, the creator of Absolute Linux, a Slackware-based Linux distribution, has announced yesterday, March 19th, the release of Absolute Linux 12.2.2. Among others things, changes were made to the Linux kernel that is now at version 2.6.28.7 and to the installation that now uses ext4 as the default filesystem. Ext3 and ReiserFS are of course still available for those who don’t yet trust the hype surrounding ext4.

    • Denix v.0.5 Full

      Denix v.0.5 Full

    • Welcome to the Incognito Forum

      Another distribution has joined LinuxQuestions.org. Please welcome Incognito. I’d like to thank anonym for working to get the forum setup and for participating here at LQ.

    • LinuxKidX – An educational Linux Distribution to children

      LinuxKidX is a LiveCD with possibility to install on hard disk based on Slackware Linux. The distribution has few games suite to kids from 2 to 12 years old.

    • Clonezilla 1.2.1-47

    • Igelle PC/Desktop v0.6.0

      Igelle PC/Desktop is a graphical desktop operating system for Intel (x86) compatible personal computers, including desktop computers, laptops, netbooks, etc. It features the usual features and applications found in modern desktop operating systems/environments, in an attractive and lightweight configuration.

    • K-DEMar 4.8

    • OpenGEU 8.10 Luna Serena

      The power and flexibility of Ubuntu and Gnome.
      The magnificence and beauty of E17.
      Perfect and fast even for a Virtual Machine.
      Finally a fully functional Enlightenment Desktop.
      OpenGEU: when a Gnome reaches Enlightenment.

    • Ututo 2009

    • GParted 0.4.3-4

    • Parsix GNU/Linux 2.0r0 `Boss Skua` is out! Happy Spring!

      Happy Spring! Happy Nowruz! After several months of testing and development, the final version of Parsix GNU/Linux 2.0 code name `Boss Skua` is out. Parsix 2.0 ships a brand new kernel based on Linux 2.6.26.8 with extra patches and drivers, the live CD compression system has been upgraded to version 3.4 which brings higher compression rate, UnionFS is default for live CD mode, several bugs have been fixed and several packages updated.

    • Zenwalk Gnome 6.0 has been released !

      Zenwalk Gnome 6.0 is out!

      We are proud to announce the release of Zenwalk 6.0 Gnome Edition! As always, Zenwalk features the latest Linux technology, featuring Linux kernel 2.6.28.7 and the Gnome 2.26.0 Desktop Environment.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Embedded Linux Training Event to be Held on May 6 – 8 in Maynard Massachusetts

  • Arduino hardware hacking: Part 1

    Arduino is cool. It’s cool because it’s a tiny device – about three inches by two inches – that comes with a USB port and a programmable chip. It’s cool because you can program it using a very simple programming language known as Wiring.

    [...]

    The Arduino programming IDE is available under the GPL for Mac OS X, Windows and, of course, Linux, so the only things standing between you and your own pet hardware project are an Arduino board, a cool idea, and of course a Box O’ Tricks – some neat little parts you can plug into the Arduino to make it do more interesting things.

  • Phones

    • Sprint Launches the Palm Treo Pro… Really

      Sprint has introduced Palm’s latest Windows Mobile smartphone… for real this time. The Treo Pro offers mobile broadband, Wi-Fi, a keyboard, and a GPS receiver.

  • Sub-notebooks

    • TomTop sells 7″ Xburst Netbooks for USD209

      CPU: XBurst 400 MHz CPU 32
      Operation system: LINUX
      Memory: 128M RAM

    • Linux Netbooks – Cheap is good

      It is shortly that netbooks have taken consumer-level Linux for both personal and professional reasons. With the increase in demand for these ultra-small netbook computers, Linux has a fair chance to attract its consumers. Linux is offered as a standard on many netbooks. They are a paradigm changer and their USP is the price and openness which the user experiences. Netbooks provide a real opportunity for Linux to market and gain the mind-share.

Free Software/Open Source

• Open-Xchange to Launch Open Data Cloud

  Data and personal content exists in many different silos across the Internet, amd getting them all into a single interface and sharing them is no easy task. One potential solution to the problem is set to be demonstrated next week by open source software vendor Open-Xchange with an approach that uses semantic microformats as a mechanism for sharing and publishing data in a collaborative manner.

• Open source middleware: the time may be ripe

  Another advantage to the open source approach is that products get designed and tested based on the input of a broad community. “FUSE and ServiceMix are developed in a very diverse community,” Debbie says. “Because of that, you see a lot of requirements come in from people that are in different types of environments. So, inherently, you’re going to be able to support a lot of different technologies. It really does require you use open standards, and align by the standards.”

• FLOSS Weekly 61: Arduino

  Guests: Massimo Banzi for Arduino.

  Massimo Banzi is the co-founder of Arduino with partners David Cuartielles, Gianluca Martino, Tom Igoe, and David Mellis. Banzi is the CTO of Tinker.it!. He has worked in Milan and London on projects for companies such as Prada, Artemide, and Adidas. For four years he functioned as an associate professor at the Interaction Design Institute Ivera. Beyond his private endeavors, he has been a guest speaker and teacher of workshops throughout Europe.

• Applications

  • Free Software Everyone Should Know About

    For photo editing needs, The Gimp makes a pretty good Photoshop replacement. It can do many of the same things. Granted, it’s nowhere near as robust as Photoshop, it will surprise many of the most skilled “shoppers” out there.

  • Kineo Open Source updates Moodle build with new extensions

    Kineo Open Source is pleased to announce that they are extending their standard hosted Moodle build, with a number of useful third party extensions.

• OpenOffice.org

  • THREE reasons to upgrade to openoffice.org3

    If you’re still using openoffice.org 2.X… oh, waitaminute, you don’t know what openoffice.org is? It’s a free (free as in “free beer” and also free as in freedom!) office suite: writer for letters, theses, etc (think “Word”); impress for presentations (think “powerpoint®”); calc for spreadsheets (think “Excel®” or “1-2-3®”); draw for, uh, drawings…

  • Writer’s Tools extension for OpenOffice.org

    Writer’s Tools is a set of utilities designed to help OpenOffice.org users perform a wide range of tasks. Using Writer’s Tools, you can back up documents, look up and translate words and phrases, manage text snippets, and keep tabs on document statistics.

• Government

  • Department of Defense to Open Source Corporate Management Information System

    The DoD’s Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and the Open Source Software Institute (OSSI) announced today a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) between DISA and OSSI, a US-based non-profit membership organization.

  • Open source firms register confidence in UK government policy

    But Shine also suggested that the government’s commitment was part of a larger national move towards open source software owing to the state of the British economy.

  • Research and Markets: Will Government Open Source Mandates Deliver Savings, or Increase Costs?

    We have seen a recent upsurge of news and blog posts regarding various government agencies worldwide investigating, moving toward, or (increasingly) requiring open-source-based software for their systems. Three key reasons dominate the
    rationale for these moves:

    -Expectation of reduced software costs;

    -Expectation of reducing or eliminating vendor dependencies; and

    -Expectation of improved standardization that will reduce future costs of software development, integration, and maintenance.

• Licensing

  • metapad turns ten

    Today marks the 10th aniversary of the first public release of metapad (see the history page if you don’t believe me). To celebrate I have finally, after long promise, released the source code for metapad. That’s right, now metapad is officially open source and available on GitHub. Not just freeware but truly “free software”, as is defined by the FSF.

• Education

  • MIT OpenCourseWare: Teaching the world for free

    By any measure, MIT’s OpenCourseWare initiative, which seeks to “open source” education by making course ware from premier institutions available online to all for free, is a success.

  • U. of Manitoba Researchers Publish Open-Source Handbook on Educational Technology

    Technology is changing the way students learn. Is it changing the way colleges teach?

    Not enough, says George Siemens, associate director of research and development at the University of Manitoba’s Learning Technologies Centre.

    While colleges and universities have been “fairly aggressive” in adapting their curricula to the changing world, Mr. Siemens told The Chronicle, “What we haven’t done very well in the last few decades is altering our pedagogy.”

  • Foster plan for open source education

    The bill, H.R. 1164, is now before the House Education and Labor Committee, chaired by California Democrat George Miller. Its full name is The Learning Opportunities with Creation of Open Source Textbooks Act of 2009.

• Programming

  • CollabNet-Sponsored Subversion Open Source Community Releases Subversion 1.6

    The CollabNet-sponsored Subversion open source community today announced the general availability of Subversion 1.6, the world’s leading software configuration management (SCM) tool for distributed teams. Major new features in the latest release include the ability to detect tree conflicts, improved management of credentials, and reduced repository space requirements. The new software is available immediately as a free download at subversion.tigris.org, and more information is available at www.open.collab.net/products/subversion/whatsnew.html.

  • Google Summer of Code Announces Mentor Projects

    As everyone should already know, Google is running the Summer of Code again this year. For those who don’t know, GSoC is where Google funds student’s to participate in Open Source projects and has been running for 5 years, bringing together over 2600 students and 2500 mentors from nearly 100 countries worldwide.

  • Community Live: Newcastle Maker Faire, March 14-15, 2009

    The chaps from BBC backstage were showing off some cool bits and pieces from the BBC’s R&D department, including an open source multi-touch sensor which makes cunning use of a web-cam and can just about manage to track 10 fingers (though not so easily on the prototype they were showing because the surface was so small). They also showed a _very_ clever software image stabilisation system which worked with the picture stream from dumb, but high definition cameras.

  • Programming for Kids with Basic-256 on Ubuntu

    My first introduction to computers and the world of programming was through languages like GW-BASIC, QuickBASIC, and ANSI C. As a kid, I inherited an 8086-based PC from my father, along with a few operating system manuals and programming references. Later on, I spend endless hours playing with Apple II computers in elementary school. This was probably the single biggest influence on my future professional life, as it taught me that I could easily make a computer do exactly what I wanted.

Copyrights

• Lawmakers Clueless About BitTorrent and P2P

  The entertainment industry managed to convince the French government to draft a law that will make it possible to disconnect people from the Internet, if they receive more than two copyright infringement warnings. Sadly, most of the politicians who plan to sign the law into action have no clue what they’re dealing with.

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers
• Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

GNU/Linux

• Ballmer: GNU/Linux Will Win on Netbooks

  I think this is a very frank analysis of the problem for Microsoft: after all, who’s going to pay extra money just to get the Windows logo on a netbook, when they can get the same features for less with free software…?

• Will Microsoft Abandon Windows to Compete with Linux?

  So what will Microsoft do after Windows 7 to remain competitive? I think they’ve realized that bloated operating systems aren’t going to do the trick with the introduction of Netbooks and smaller devices. They’ve also realized that their bullying and scare tactics don’t work with today’s more tech savvy customers.

• Why Windows needs multiple desktops capability

  The vast majority of Windows users in the world have never experienced the advantages that a multiple desktop computer environment provides. That is because most people use Microsoft Windows and that operating system only comes with a single desktop environment*. Users of the Linux operating system have been enjoying multiple desktop capabilities for many years already, and they are about to experience the next step of the multiple desktop paradigm evolution. So why are multiple desktops useful and how much do they really help?

• Shopping on Penguins

  Then I decided to look beyond Zappos to other on-line retailers. Here are the results for the top ten, as listed by InternetRetailer.com, with sales volume numbers in parentheses. Results for companyname.com are first, and other results for each company are summarized in text (Netcraft gives results in lowercase):

  1. Amazon.com Inc. ($14.8 billion): linux.

  2. Staples Inc. ($5.6 billion): linux, through akamai.

• The HeliOS Project Joins Software in the Public Interest

  We no longer have to devote our resources to administrating a non profit organization as Software in the Public Interest acts as our agent in this matter. We can devote our short resources to the matter at hand, and that is getting computers to kids that could not normally afford them. This weekend alone, we have 7 installs scheduled.

• WorldVista on Moka5 player virtual machine

  Thanks to the installation script by Ignacio Valdes and the patch by Kevin Toppenburg for his GUI Configuration tool, I was able to install WorldVista on a Moka5 virtual machine based on PCLinuxOS-2007.

• Applications

  • 7 Excellent Linux Apps You May Not Know About

    Everyone is writing “Foo Best” lists all full of good Linux apps, so here are my own 7 Best Excellent Linux Apps You May Not Have Been Introduced To Yet. They are presented in no particular order or categorization, they’re just good applications I’ve been using and enjoying. They are all 100% genuine Free/Open Source software and not crusted with proprietary baggage, and available via the usual distribution package managers.

  • 4 Quirky Open Source Efforts That You May Not Be Aware Of

    The world of open source includes many quirky and unusual applications, some of which can be quite useful. There are also many new efforts to apply open source principles to hardware designs. In this post rounding up four unusual open source implementations, you’ll find an offbeat attempt to crowdsource hardware, two open source browsers that you may not use even though they offer uniquely good features, and an instant-on Linux desktop that you can only get for free for the next few weeks.

  • 3 Free Open Source Tools for Sampling Music Online

    Do you ever get a song playing in your head that you just can’t get rid of? Do you like to sample new music in search of tunes that you may like? There are several good open source tools for sampling and playing music when you’re online, and you can get going with them almost instantly. Here are three top choices.

  • Blu-ray Focus Grows Within FFmpeg Project

    Earlier this week Google had published their list of 2009 Summer of Code projects and FFmpeg was among them. Last week we published an interview with the FFmpeg developers where we learned more about their v0.5 release and other topics like OpenCL, Blu-ray, and multi-threading. Since running that interview, where it was found that Blu-ray wasn’t actively being worked on due in part to a lack of hardware, a number of readers have stepped up and offered Blu-ray drives and media to help developers, which may result in Blu-ray support coming sooner rather than later.

  • Exploring the Stars with KStars Planetarium Software

    I’ve always been a big fan of backyard astronomy, and now that the weather is warming up (well, depending on where you live) I’ll be spending more time stargazing. For Linux users, KStars is a fantastic celestial navigation aid that offers tons of custom features. Designed to be easy for beginners, yet powerful enough to satisfy serious astronomy fans, this desktop planetarium package really delivers. Here’s the default start view, from my geographic location in Atlanta, GA.

  • Mind mapping application for Linux

    Xmind is an Eclipse based application, which can run on any platform. So, yeah, not just Linux, but – stumbling on their website – I was pretty much surprised to find out that a .deb download option has been care taken of.

  • Teaching Kids About Computers With Tux Paint

    Kids love computers, and kids love to draw. If you want an application that combines these two in a kid-friendly format, have a look at Tux Paint. This free Linux-based drawing program is designed specifically for children, offering a ton of fun features that are sure to keep a youngster occupied for hours (well, at least one hour).

• Kernel Space

  • FOSS Debates, Part 3: Mission Control

    “I don’t think there is one,” Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel, told LinuxInsider.

    “In fact, the reason I like open source is that I find it exciting to see how _different_ the things people want to do are, and how that constant pulling in different directions actually ends up taking people somewhere — and how the end result is not necessarily what any of the participants really were aiming for from the beginning, but actually likely _better_ for it,” Torvalds explained.

    “Linux itself is an example of that,” he added. “When I started out, I had no big goals, anything like the current kernel. Almost all of the motivation and impetus for everything fancy that we do today came from outside, from people who had different needs and views of how things needed to work than I do.”

    Torvalds compares open source “to a more organic development model,” he said. “To me, it’s a lot like ‘life’ — after all, what’s the overriding purpose of life? I dunno, and I really don’t think such a thing should matter or even necessarily exists. We live and do our best, and pass on our genes and knowledge, and change our environment — hopefully for the better.”

    Same thing with open source, Torvalds said: “The point about being open source is that you _can_ do exactly that — ‘change the environment’ and ‘pass on your genes.’”

  • 25 Mythical and Humorous Facts About Linus Torvalds

    Many people consider Linus Torvalds as the world’s greatest computer programmer/hacker. That’s why it’s no surprise that most of his loyal fans have praised him and have told stories about his amazing accomplishments.

  • Another Week, Another New NVIDIA Linux Driver

    It has not even been a week since the release of 185.13 Beta Linux driver, but today these Santa Clara engineers have pushed out yet another driver update for Linux. The NVIDIA 180.41 driver is this newest driver and it brings support for new Quadro FX graphics cards, improved power management on some systems, and bug-fixes.

  • Comparison of File Systems And Speeding Up Applications

    The results are very impressive and the final patches to libvirt were finalised pretty quickly. They’re now in the development branch libvirt. Coming soon to a virtual machine management application near you.

• Desktop Environments

  • Digest of Enlightenment 17 Dimensions

    This digest is a quick glance at some of the dimensions of the enlightenment window manager in the current state of development. Essentially what I did (while cruising pretty good after a few drinks) was setup a few desktop screenshots I thought folks might enjoy and would give a little depth to the new e17 environment. Note that these are just my preferences; the e exchange and main site have a whole lot more to gaze upon.

  • KDE

    • Software-properties-kde, jockey-kde enhancements for Jaunty

      Some enhancements for the KDE frontend of everybody’s favorite /etc/apt/sources.list editor, as launchable from Adept (and more recently lauchable from KPackageKit) have been uploaded just now to Kubuntu 9.04. I actually made the changes back in February, but I forgot to bug mvo enough to get the changes into the main bzr branch…

    • KDE Brainstorm: Get Your Ideas Into KDE!

      KDE is about the community, rather than the product. It is not all about the code: there are many other ways in which people can be part of KDE, and a very simple way is to connect with other people.

      In an effort to bridge the gap between users and developers, the KDE Community Forums have launched a new initiative to coordinate feature requests. A new “Brainstorm” section has been created in the KDE Community Forums: users are encouraged to post requests there.

  • GNOME

    • GNOME 2.26′s 5 Best Features

      I started running GNOME 2.26 on the Ubuntu 9.04 alpha a few days ago, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised. While the Ubuntu 9.04 alpha 6 is still very much a work in progress, GNOME 2.26 manages to run like a charm on it. I’ll soon be installing it on my other Linux distributions.

    • Hands-on: GNOME 2.26 brings incremental improvements

• Distributions

  • PCLinuxOS 2009.1 – A lovely distro

    PCLinuxOS 2009.1 is a superb distro. It’s very well made. In particular, the Gnome edition is the crown jewel of this release, with great stability, fresh looks, and tons of excellent programs across a broad range of sections.

  • PCLinuxOS 2009.1 – A Taste of an Old Friend

    The key items that pushed me over:

    * I decided KDE may be ok to “push” through… force myself
    * Dual-monitor support was EASIER than Ubuntu
    * Wireless was EASIER to get setup than Ubuntu
    * Software packages were more up-to-date. An example is Open Office – 3.0 instead of 2.4
    * Flash was all set
    * Java as well
    * Wallpaper – I dig being able to select different wallpaper for each of my monitors… that adds to the cool factor
    * Konqueror – I am liking Konqueror more and more (I wish I could get this up and running on Windows)

  • [Per Øyvind Interview]

    > 5) What are the biggest challenges for Mandriva in the future ?

    Hm.. Ubuntu? ;p Hehe, or to be more serious, learning from Ubuntu and also from the mistakes of itself in the past to regain trust, visibility, appeal and image. Without doing this, Mandriva will just keep on failing and failing and failing as it’s pretty much done over the last years. In stead of frequently trying to find new ideas, products, services and various ways to stay aflot and generate income, the company needs to gain self-awareness and actually fix what’s broken in stead of working around it any possible way in denial of the real problems.

  • Red Hat

    • Video: The seeds of open source

      Sometimes open source ideals make for the strangest–and most wonderful–bedfellows. We met Dr. Vandana Shiva–physicist, scientist, environmentalist, and activist–several years ago. Her work saving seeds and protecting traditional knowledge in the farming industry parallels the openness, transparency, collaboration and freedom of open source ideology. Her simple, clear explanation of why knowledge should be shared–and the devastating results should it be hoarded–is part of the essential truth that makes the work we do so incredibly important. But don’t take our word for it.

    • Oracle: We’re Not Forking Red Hat Linux

      Yet, as it turns out, Oracle Enterprise Linus’s binary compatibility does not mean that its version is entirely identical to Red Hat’s. In fact, there are some important differences, including support for a key file system technology.

  • Ubuntu

    • Ubuntu Podcast Episode #22

    • Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) – My Thoughts So Far

      1 reboot later, past the (in my opinion) great new GDM theme and nice new splash screen, I’m logged in, installing my nvidia drivers (180.xx) as recommended by a little pop-up. After that install and reboot, I get compiz effects working great, as well as an extended desktop – awesome!

    • Linux & Open Source Slideshow: eWEEK Labs Shows You How to Install Apps on Ubuntu Linux

      For the past few years, eWEEK Labs Executive Editor Jason Brooks has been crowning Ubuntu Linux the desktop Linux champ, both in the reviews he’s written and in his own choice of desktop OS at work and home. The biggest reason for Brooks’ Ubuntu inclination is application availability. If there’s a piece of Linux-supporting software that you want to run, there’s a good chance that it’s been packaged up in a ready-to-install format for Ubuntu Linux.

    • Just In: The Apple II Gains Eternal Life in the Web Browser

      It’s useful to note, too, that these puzzles run well in Firefox on Ubuntu Linux, although you’ll need to install Java onto Ubuntu first. The steps for installing Java on Ubuntu are not all that difficult. If you need help, ask one of your Linux buddies. If you don’t yet have a Linux buddy, this is the time to find one.

      Here are directions for installing Java on Ubuntu that worked for me:

      First make sure the multiverse repository is enabled by going to

      System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager->Settings->Repositories

    • The Zen of Ubuntu

      The Linux operating system is finding its way into all sorts of interesting places, particularly where its potential users have open minds towards the use of alternative systems to Windows and Mac. An interesting and refreshing example of such open mindedness is the White Wind Zen Community, a modern Zen monastery located in Ottawa, Canada.

    • Ubuntu and me

      At the end of the day, I’m glad FreeNAS didn’t work out (I think if I had an older used computer it might have been better). Ubuntu will still offer me a stable fileserver, but it also lets me let it double as a webserver and I get to learn another operating system.

      Ubuntu. It’s not just a cool name.

    • Ubuntu Developers Aren’t Scary

      Soon after that I became friends with Jordan and with Daniel Chen, who lives nearby. Daniel showed up to our LoCo’s Gutsy and Hardy installfests, and at the Hardy one I convinced him to start mentoring me on how audio works. They’re both nice guys, just know that mentioning brokenness in QA to Jordan or in audio to Daniel will very likely result in a long, drawn-out analysis of the situation. You’ve been warned.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Fashion robot runs real-time Linux

    Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) has demonstrated a Linux-based humanoid robot that will perform in a fashion show next week. The HRP-4C runs the robotics-focused hard real-time ART-Linux distro, which was released this week for Linux 2.6xx under GPL.

    The HRP-4C robot and the open-source ART-Linux distro (see more farther below) were developed by AIST’s Human Robotics Group (HRG). ART (Advanced Real-Time) Linux has been used in a variety of humanoid robot prototypes from the Japanese government-backed HRG/AIST, says the group. The newest HRP-4C model announced earlier this week has been a hit on YouTube (see below). Designed to look like a young Japanese woman, the robot stands (and walks) about five feet, two inches (158 centimeters), and weighs about 95 pounds (43 kilograms).

  • Emulator tapped for Android-to-N8xx port

    A “NITdroid” hacker has released code that enables desktop computers to emulate Nokia Internet Tablets running Android. Philippe Coval has posted a video showing his “NITdroid-emulator” working alongside a new version of Qemu, running the open-source NITdroid Android-to-N8xx port on a Linux desktop.

  • Linux-based mobile Internet device platform cuts development time

    Montabello, a new Linux-based software platform for mobile Internet devices (MIDs) from MontaVista Software, Inc., provides an integrated set of applications including a web browser, document reader, email client, contact manager, and calendar suite.

Free Software/Open Source

• Chandler: After Shifts in Focus, it’s a Good Self-Organizing App

  The story of the open source notebook and to-do manager application Chandler is a long and complicated one, as we covered here when it arrived in version 1.0. It was originally started as one of Mitch Kapor’s projects, but Kapor (the founder of Lotus) left it, and it took on new life as a community-driven project for Windows, the Mac and Linux. Now available in version 1.0.2, it’s a powerful mashup of to-do list tracking, tickler alarms, note tracking, calendaring and more. Collaborative workers can also use it together to brainstorm, share project, event and calendar items, and track milestones. Here’s a look at how it works.

• TeachingOpenSource.org

  One of the signs of a healthy ecosystem is that it is constantly expanding into new niches. Here’s a new angle on opennes I hadn’t come across before – a site devoted to the *teaching* of open source coding skills…

• DE: Federal government to increase its open source expertise

  Germany’s federal government will increase its knowledge on open source and will make open source software available to public authorities.

  The project is one of 27 that were approved earlier this month as part of an IT investment package aimed to help the country’s IT sector battle the economic crisis.

• Mozilla

  • EC Principle 4: Microsoft’s financial and other incentives to distributors must be browser-neutral

    Microsoft has also used a range of techniques to encourage the distribution channel (often known as “the OEMs” for “original equipment manufacturers”) to ship IE. The OEM distribution channel is a funny thing. When I started working in this industry I assumed that the OEMs would pay software vendors for the right to distribute a piece of valuable software. But it turns out that’s backwards. The software maker pay the OEMs to include software on the OEM’s machine. So first the vendor makes the software, then they pay someone else to distribute it. The OEMs get to include software in their distribution packages for less-than-free — they make money by including software. This is because the distribution channel — the ability to actually get human beings to look at a piece of software — is so valuable. Software vendors end up paying for their products to reach people, and hoping to make money afterwards. For many product-focued people I think it is hard to internalize just how critical the ability to get people to pay attention to the product is, and how “distribution” can outweigh product quality in building success.

  • Internet Explorer 8 launch fails to dent Firefox

    The release of Internet Explorer 8 hasn’t had any significant impact on Firefox or any other competing browser, data collected by StatsCounter shows. While the final release of IE8 increased its market share slightly on launch day to 1.39 percent, Firefox 3.0 grew more quickly and reached 25.38 percent. The most significant losses were for Internet Explorer 7: the outgoing browser lost 0.4 percent of the total share.

  • Firefox 3.1 Beta feedback from Vietnam

    In preparation for the upcoming release of Firefox 3.1 3.5 later this year, we have been looking for feedback from users regarding the current beta builds and specifically feedback for the new localization efforts to date.

  • 100 tips to help you work smarter with Firefox

    The beauty of using Firefox is the control that it extends to users, and there are almost limitless ways that it can be tweaked, hacked and mastered to improve speed usability and productivity.

  • Firefox inches towards 50%, Safari holds steady

    These are the kind of stats that should make the Mozilla folks very happy. According to W3Schools data, Firefox climbed to 46.4% in February, while the various versions of IE dropped by 1.2% to 43.6%. Granted, this is skewed towards developers, but most sources agree that IE is on a downward slope.

• Applications

  • Open source math programs and languages

    In closing, I will point out that the proprietary alternatives to many of the programs and languages that I have discussed here have their place. They come backed with whole companies of people who have done a lot of work to make things smooth and also provide a great deal of technical support. Going the open source however has both economic and ideological advantages. These options may often be somewhat less glossy and have less tech support, but they also come with a community of really dedicated people who really love using these programs and languages and are happy to answer a question here and there on various forums but won’t be at your beck and call the way a technical support person will be (of course, you will probably more likely to get an answer to a question on a weekend or after hours on a forum…). Furthermore, if there is some feature, bug or functionality that you want to have someone add or take a look at respectively, there are often people in the open source community who are willing to help you make the changes or will even make them themselves. This is something that you cannot do when you cannot access the source code, and is one of the big advantages of the open source route. Whatever you decide, best of luck in your journeys!

  • Wdiff compare – Good!

    The other nice thing about wdiff is that it was already installed on my machine! About two (maybe three??) years ago I googled around for something that would do diffs on text files, but the searches only showed diff, kdiff etc. Wdiff apparently dates back to the early 90s so my search terms maybe weren’t the best – or too many other people are using and linking to diff! Anyway, wdiff seems to be part of the standard install for OpenSuSE and I’d had it all along.

Leftovers

• Apple to Pivotal: Take the ‘pod’ out of Podium

  Apple has issued a cease and desist letter to Pivotal, creators of Podium, a hands-free iPhone stand – namely over the use of the word “Pod” in Podium.

• London imposes de-facto 9PM curfew on under-16s

  London cops have been given the power to “disperse” anyone under 16, gathered in groups of two or more, from almost all of central London, after 9PM. The police don’t have to see the kids doing anything wrong, they only have to believe “the presence or behaviour of a group of two or more persons in any public place in the relevant locality has resulted, or is likely to result, in any members of the public being intimidated, harassed, alarmed or distressed.”

• Apparently, You’re Only Allowed To Comment On Failed Business Models If You Believe In Them

  But now we’re even seeing the flipside, as well. Randy Siegel is saying that Jeff Jarvis shouldn’t be trusted on talking about the future of media because the worse newspapers do, the better Jarvis does — both as someone the media goes to, and in getting consulting gigs that help companies trying to avoid the fate of newspapers. Of course, there’s something tautological about the whole thing. Basically, Jarvis is being slammed for being right. Because he’s right, more people go to him for info — and to Siegel, that means he can no longer be trusted? Wow.

• Newsprint Firm Tries to Revamp Debt to Avoid Bankruptcy

  First the newspaper industry began suffering. Now it is newsprint.

• Censorship/Web Abuse

  • Of Blacklists and Barbra Streisand

    Of course, the classic Streisand effect applied to blacklists: as soon as you create one, everyone wants to know whats on it, and some will manage to do so despite the blacklists – thus ensuring that those sites will get far more traffic than if no blacklist had been created.

  • Banned hyperlinks could cost you $11,000 a day

    ACMA’s blacklist does not have a significant impact on web browsing by Australians today but sites contained on it will be blocked for everyone if the Federal Government implements its mandatory internet filtering censorship scheme.

  • Australia’s Web blacklist leaked

  • Google soon to be banned in Australia under draconian censorship laws

    Recent action by the Australian Government may see Google and many other popular websites banned in Australia under existing censorship laws.

• Copyrights

  • Kiwi ISP Already Disconnecting Alleged Pirates

    Following a breakdown in talks it’s been revealed that one ISP has already implemented a version of it, and may have already threatened innocent customers after allegations from copyright holders.

  • UK Recording Industry: Investigate Google For Not Giving Us Money

    Of course, what he really means is that he’s finally realizing that Google actually has the leverage in this fight. They have the value that musicians want: a platform to gain tremendous amounts of attention, that many musicians are using to successfully build an audience. That’s the value. Google doesn’t need those music videos to make money, so it’s fine without them. But, musicians sure could use the boost that YouTube gives them.

  • Court Asked To Declare Copyright Royalty Board Unconstitutional

    It’s not often that Metallica, Dr. Dre, and Peter, Paul & Mary are brought up during oral argument, but such was the case today when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit delved into Internet radio royalty fees.