India-based government information and communication technologies (ICT) provider The Assam Electronics Development Corporation (AMTRON) needed to provide every Assam student who achieved 60 per cent or higher in their school leaving exams with a free PC. AMTRON needed to comply with strict budgets to deliver reliable, easy-to-use PCs to thousands of students. It finally decided on a range of PC hardware running Ubuntu Desktop Edition. It delivered 14,000 Ubuntu-based PCs in 2008 and is in the process of delivering a further 14,000 Ubuntu-based PCs in 2009. The cost-effective Ubuntu Desktop Edition solution is free, easy to use and very popular with the students of Assam.
Last year I hung out with Mark Anthony Hand in London, and reported on his media choices in a What Are They Using feature in last December's Linux Journal. Sitting in a pub, he showed me how he grabs BBC shows on a MythTV setup and watches them later on a Nokia 770 hand-held, both running on Linux. No telly involved. (Bruce Childers also had a nice feature on hacking more current Nokia tablets, in the same issue.)
The public administration of the city of Boom is using Ubuntu for ten new publicly accessible desktop PCs in its public library. The Boom library is not the only public library in Belgium using this GNU/Linux distribution.
For those who want to install Ubuntu or OpenOffice on other computers, the library is making installation disks available.
"The city council has decided to replace out-dated desktop PCs by ten very fast Linux-PCs running Ubuntu", the administrations writes on its web site. "The PCs will have a broad band Internet connection and can be used for a thirty minutes, or more if there are no other users waiting."
Finally, I want to give a big thank you to everyone who has contributed to all the OpenSource software that has allowed me to break free of the Microsoft treadmill. Ubuntu is defiantly “Ready for the Desktop” and the more people who make the switch the more support we will get from the Software industry.
They could also look into adopting GNU/Linux to meet their needs. The Roger Maris Cancer Center in Fargo, North Dakota successfully runs GNU/Linux:The proper care of our cancer patients would not be what it is today without [GNU/]Linux... The tools that we have been able to deploy from free software channels have enabled us to write and develop innovative applications which... do not exist through commercial avenues.Hospitals and doctor's offices that lack the human resources to deploy free software are better off sticking with paper records for now, at least until greater progress has been made towards improving user interfaces, interoperability, and reliability.
- Dr. G.W. Wettstein
There are many users out there however, who feel that they belong on a Linux installation. Whether it's for the sheer aspect of "power-using" a PC with a Linux-OS' comparability or just to try something new, Linux operating systems are definitely gaining ground. Many MIDs and netbooks are shipping with Linux operating systems.
The question of the day is: Have you replaced Windows with a Linux distro?
As part of the $16.5 million extension, Raytheon will be responsible for migrating the Navy's Tactical Control System to a Linux-based operating system.
Lots of random small changes. And one big revert - say "Goodbye" to Tuz, and "Hello again" to Tux.
For people who prefer the tazmanian devil, you can revert the revert with "git revert 3d4f16348b77efbf81b7fa186a18a0eb815b6b84" and you'll get your Tuz back.
Other than that? Pretty random. ARM, m68k, Microblaze, Powerpc updates. ACPi and i915. DVB and network drivers. PCI and USB. btrfs and ecryptfs. Networking and sound. All over the map, in other words.
With the release this week of Fedora 11 Preview, which incorporates install-time support for the Btrfs file-system into Red Hat's Anaconda installer, we have now delivered our first set of benchmark results for this next-generation Linux file-system. Through a horde of disk tests we have looked at the Btrfs file-system performance and compared it to that of EXT3, EXT4, and XFS. While Btrfs does perform well in some areas, it is not yet the performance king for Linux file-systems. As our results show, in some tests it even has a hard time competing with the incremental EXT4 file-system.
Even Linux "likes" laptops better because it absolutely knows what to expect, so to speak.
The downside of this is a lack of flexibility. In order for a capability to be available, there must be code in the GUI application. The command line gives an administrator complete control of maintenance procedures, and under certain circumstances, this is the only option.
From a design perspective, the choice of command line vs. GUI seems pretty straightforward. First, how quickly does the code need to be produced? Second, which interface makes the user most productive? While there is plenty of room for different points of view on the answers to these questions, it is simply not true that one is always better than the other.
Backing up files can be useful in case you suffer hard drive issues, but it can also be helpful in case of “messing up” a file, and needing a backup of it. There are many different backup options available for ubuntu. Some backup to the internet, where your files exist in “the cloud,” and allow you to easily share the files with others, while other simply allow backing up to another hard drive, directory, or remote computer. There are advantages and disadvantages to each of these approaches that I will be detailing as I analyze different peices of software available for backup.
Within the next few days we should see the first 2009 release of Sauerbraten and it brings a host of new features. In this article is a rundown on some of the key features along with screenshots we captured when running their latest Subversion code.
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Some of the major improvements in this first 2009 update for Sauerbraten include new rag-doll physics, a new particle system, new explosion effects, and quite a few other prominent changes.
I was recently looking for an Avant Window Navigator replacement and tried out most of the docks out there.
Gmail Notifier for Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope is an awesome little python-install application that integrates perfectly with the gnome desktop, and immediately alerts you of incoming Gmail messages.
Plasma devel is motoring along at its usual hectic pace. We held meetings with our SoC students last week on IRC and/or Skype and SoK students have begun lining up as well, we have 10 plugins of various types (Plasmoids, DataEngines, Wallpapers..) in kdereview that are waiting for final triaging into the 4.3 release (and a few more that I'm not sure are quite ready yet.. but we'll see :), the bugsquad laid waste to the Plasma bug reports over the weekend and the Plasma team has been up to its usual hyjinks.
GConf is a system of storing preferences of most of the installed applications, as well as the environment and desktop for GNOME for Linux.
GConf made its way into GNOME 2.0 first, but it also can be used in pure GTK+, XLib, KDE or pure text mode. The tool so far isn’t very spectacular, but its developers have quite ambitious plans.
Jayson Rowe interviews Stormy Peters, the Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation. Stormy discusses how she started in open source, her role in GNOME, her view of GNOME’s future and more.
That's a remarkable figure, and it speaks volumes about the power and flexibility Linux offers to all types of users. At the same time, it's the sort of number that can scare off users who are accustomed to choosing from a handful of OS options.
Mandriva has released the final version of Mandriva Linux Spring 2009. The new version offers KDE 4.2.2 as the default desktop, delivers up to 25 percent faster boots, supports additional netbooks, and provides enhanced networking and security tools, says the French software company.
10 advantages of Mandriva above other Linux distributions
* The default graphical theme in Mandriva looks much better than Ubuntu’s brown mess. * All graphical configuration tools are centralized in the Mandriva Control Centre. * Mandriva has some unique configuration tools, such as msec which permits you to change advanced security settings from the GUI.
Fedora 10 is a polished and attractive desktop, and offers some advantages over its closest rival, Ubuntu 8.10. Its up-to-date software may provide useful features to many people, although this could also mean less stability compared to more tested software. For beginners, Ubuntu is still undoubtedly the best choice, but for anyone willing to experiment a little and try out alternatives, Fedora 10 is certainly worth a shot.
Red Hat is hitting the road and shaking hands with channel partners. In fact, the Linux and open source middleware provider is launching a training road show for Red Hat Advanced Business Partners. But that’s not all. The VAR Guy thinks Red Hat’s annual channel revenues will potentially top $600 million within five years, up from about $326 million today. Here’s the math.
I've noticed how fast Jaunty is on my Thinkpad X300. Well, I timed it today:
* Power on: 0:00 * Thinkpad bootsplash clears: 5:26 * Grub text clears: 10:50 * Ubuntu progress bar appears: 15:07 * Ubuntu progress bar finishes: 22:98 * GDM login prompt: 26:52
The Jaunty development cycle was a hectic, pulsating (no pun intended) ride, and Karmic's looks to be just as vigourous! Here are my objectives for 9.10:
Audio:Enable power-saving by default for HDA controllers - after fifteen seconds, power down the HDA controller to squeeze some juice for those transpacific flights. I'll be calling for testers shortly, but I'm most interested in resolving anomalies after the controller powers back up.
Details are still sketchy. But sources tell me Canonical is adjusting some internal employee roles. The result will be a stronger, more immediate emphasis on ISV relations, especially as Canonical prepares to launch Ubuntu 9.10.
Students may find Ubuntu a better alternative to Windows for other reasons. There are no known active viruses that infect Ubuntu rendering any need to run antivirus programs effectively moot. Ubuntu takes up less space and is more efficient than Windows, giving it the unique ability to breath new life into any old pc or laptop a student might be thinking about trashing. Beyond the operating system itself being free, all addition programs for Ubuntu are also free.
A group called the Traffic Squeezer project released an open source application that accelerates WAN network traffic. The Traffic Squeezer software uses lossless compression and other procedures to accelerate traffic on Linux-based network devices, and it's said a port to an embedded hardware version is planned.
Jha praised Android, noting that 3,000 applications have already been developed for it. Motorola will focus on integrating messaging and social networking with the Android devices, he said, and will offer a range of devices in the high- and mid-tier price ranges. "We are probably investing as much as anybody on the Android platform," he added.
Our choice: EeeXubuntu
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Pupeee very nearly beat it to the top spot: it’s a great, small distro, with a lot packed into it. Unfortunately, the WEP problems meant that it just slipped below EeeXubuntu in the practical usability stakes. It also lacks the range of software that EeeXubuntu has available, even if it can cover the basics well. It’s worth noting that Pupeee can easily be run from a Live USB key so you could combine the advantages of both distros; all you need to do is mount your regular home directory after you’ve booted and saved files there. There’s scope for saving data between sessions in a special Pupeee file and it will automatically pick this file up again the next time you boot.
Meanwhile, gOS has far and away the best eye candy of the distros tested here, and the online integration is great if you’re certain that you’re going to have decent network access. It is, however, a little slow and would need streamlining before we’d use it regularly.
Finally, the lack of current packages for Xandros and its dependency on an irritating filesystem setup make it the clear loser of the four, although it does have an initial functionality edge over EeeXubuntu and gOS.
UMID is readying a MID-like ultra-mobile PC (UMPC) for the Korean market that runs Linux. The UMID Mbook is equipped with an Intel Atom processor, a 4.8-inch, 1024 x 600 touchscreen, WiFi, Bluetooth, 1.3-megapixel camera, and a HSDPA 3G cellular modem, says the company.
Nokia has announced the availability of the Maemo 5 SDK beta release. The beta includes an updated version of the tinymail-based Modest e-mail client, which takes advantage of Maemo's sophisticated new user interface framework.
The 5th International conference of developers and users of free / open source software “Linux Vacation / Eastern Europe” (LVEE 2009) will take place on July 02-05. The event combines both communication and rest of the enthusiasts of free software, including GNU/Linux platform, but not limited to it.
At Penguicon 7.0, there will be Linux lessons and ice cream making (What’s geeky about that? Using liquid nitrogen!). There will be gaming of all sorts – Jane McGonigal will be running her Free Space crowd forecasting project – music from the likes of Dual Core, presentations from Jon “maddog” Hall, and a slew of panels featuring science fiction and fantasy authors.“The twin suns of this binary system are two communities that share curiosity, creativity, and a welcoming volunteerism ethos. They are the free/open source software developers and users, and fans of science fiction and fantasy.”
The OpenOffice developers have announced the availability of the second release candidate (RC2) of version 3.1 of their free open source office suite. OpenOffice 3.1 RC2 addresses several major bugs, that were found in the first release candidate. Originally,
I don't believe Oracle will stop work on OO anyway; it enjoys annoying Microsoft far too much, and it will be thinking hard about extending its new top-to-bottom server strategy to encompass the desktop. You or I or Andrew Brown might not have the skills to add new features to OpenOffice, but open source software was never about you or I or Andrew Brown doing any such thing. Someone can, and if the need or desire is there it will happen – because nobody can stop it. And if the need or desire isn't there, then they won't and quite right too: it's not like Microsoft Office, where a burning need for new revenue forces massive feature churn every five years.
PC-BSD behaved nicely, even on the slim 512MB RAM, which was a bit sparse for the KDE 4.2 environment. Nevertheless, it was stable and robust, the hallmark of the BSD family. Furthermore, the collection of programs was good and well-balanced overall, with NTFS and multimedia support out of the box.
FreeBSD is definitely ready for my "desktop" (technically, my laptop, I guess). If it isn't, it's just the closest thing to being ready for it that exists right now, as far as I'm aware. No Linux distribution I've encountered measures up. As far as how most people mean "desktop ready", though, FreeBSD isn't up to the standards of the "desktop" oriented Linux distributions, MS Windows, and MacOS X. That's pretty sad, considering how easy it would be to get it there, with a little help from hardware vendors that already support Linux-based OSes.
Many of us have been saying it for a long time: location based services are the future. But up until now they’ve been a distant, hazy future, because they’ve been so difficult to use. That’s going to change soon, and it looks like Google is going to be leading the way.
Google has just announced that it has become the default location provider service in Firefox, which means beginning in the latest Firefox Beta (available here) users will be able to update their location from their web browser without having to install an extra plugins or programs through Google. This is big.
There are more than 7,000 Firefox extensions in Mozilla's official catalog, and a good portion of them can drastically improve how you browse the Web. Then there are the stinkers. These add-ons that actually make the browser slower, or harder to use. We've compiled a list of 20 that you should steer clear from, if only for their lack of basic utility.
Again, no need to panic here folks. Most indicators show that open source companies are holding up well during the recession. Heck, Red Hat’s annual revenues grew 25 percent last year.
With open source, companies use free software that is just as competitive, in most cases, to software products offered by industry giants such as Microsoft.
The French candidate for the European Parliament Marielle de Sarnez says public administrations' interest in free software is essential. "This is an issue of competitiveness for the EU in the information technologies sector, as well as the condition of our technological independence."
Sarnez, a member of the European Parliament since 1999, is currently campaigning to be re-elected to the European Parliament. She has recently pledged her support for free software, after being approached by the Free Software advocacy associations April in France and the Associazione per il software libero in Italy. The two organisations want candidates for the European Parliament to pledge their support for free software.
The Hungarian government's request for open source software is continuing to surprise the country's open source companies.
The companies have been studying the procurement document ever since it was published on 16 April. "We are desperate. We just cannot find open source in it. It is not in there at all", said a representative of a group of open source companies, who declined to be named. "Maybe the reason is that this tender is focusing on open standards. It is also possible the government does not see the difference."
It was a busy and happy week, and among the many things I received several requests for information on how to facilitate adoption of OSS by public administrations. After the significant interest of a few years ago, it seems that the strong focus on “digital citizenship” and the need to increase interoperability with other administrations is pushing OSS again (and the simplification, thanks to the reduction in procurement hurdles, also helps). I have worked in this area for some years, first in the SPIRIT project (open source for health care), then in the COSPA and OpenTTT projects, that were oriented towards facilitating OSS adoption. I will try to provide some links that may be useful for administrations looking to OSS:
The dream of an effective and open e-government, a great hope of the Obama administration, rides on the ability of government officials to emulate the Web 2.0 model in the private sector, where some of the biggest success stories have been built through a decentralized, crowd-sourced model, a White House official said today.
Open source is picking up steam in enterprise computing, even as the economy peters out. If West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller has his way, open source will soon make its mark on medicine, too, with the lower cost of open source a key impetus behind the move.
Last Friday, 24th of April, the foundations for vendor independent ICT education in the Netherlands were laid down. Initiated by the Free Knowledge Institute, Ecabo and Vocational Education centre ROC Mondriaan, more than 20 representatives from some of the key institutes for VET and Higher education (MBO and HBO in Dutch), from government and several companies specialised in GNU/Linux certification and training participated in this first meeting.
Zend Technologies, maker of tools for building PHP applications, is extending its Web development framework to the Amazon Web Services computing cloud.
Cloud capabilities in Zend Framework 1.8, being announced Friday, provide developers with the ability to store and serve data redundantly and manage virtual machines.
This means that Microsoft cannot simply ignore ODF, because it runs the risk of cutting itself off from a significant and growing proportion of the public sector market. This also explains why it is adding ODF support with the new Service Pack, as described above.
All-in-all, I think things have gone much better in the office sector than I or many others feared when OOXML gained its "approval" from ISO. OOXML has not caught on, and there is every chance that ODF will become a widely-used national and international standard.
The negative side, if we read Doug’s blog is that there are some inherent limitations to the implementation that seem to make Microsoft Office a clear inferior ODF capable office suite than others. At that time I found it hard to believe and believe that this would be more damageable to ODF than to Microsoft Office. I also pointed out it was the first time Microsoft had taken a sorry tone to speak about one of its products. I will however refrain to make any particular comment at this stage: Clearly, this moment is historical, and it is a happy one. Critics, if they prove to exist and be valid, will be voiced later.
Tara Hunt’s book, The Whuffie Factor, gives the Free Open Source Software world a tool for thinking about how to reach out beyond the echo chamber of technologists, who already “get” how important FOSS is, to the much larger world of technophobes who, with their dollars and keyboards, will decide whether FOSS will succeed on the desktop or not. We in the FOSS world are really good at writing game-changing code, but we need to get better at getting people to use the code in mainstream applications, and we need to get better at forging alliances.
The Bloomsbury Academic Press version of REMIX is now Creative Commons licensed. You can download the book on the Bloomsbury Academic page.
Given the ubiquity of Git as a version control system throughout the free software community, one would expect there to be more books about it. So far, that is not the case—though there are indications that is changing—so Travis Swicegood's Pragmatic Version Control Using Git is welcome for those trying to come up to speed on Git. Overall, the book provides a nice starting point, though there are some rough spots.
Because publication is so important to researchers, the Sci-Mate contains software that makes it relatively easy for scientists to collaboratively assemble high impact publications. Open access wiki software allows individual researchers to place highly specialised knowledge into a pre-existing context in such a way so as to increase the value of both their contribution and the value of the pre-existing information. With academics in mind, the “Wiki-Mate” records authorship, assigns copyright, defines licenses, manages editing, and includes custom software for an interactive peer-review process.
This is the most comprehensive and up-to-date collection of free online college classes available to the general public. We’ll be updating this list frequently, so please bookmark it for future reference and let us know about any broken links or free online courses we’ve missed.
IBM Corp. is ushering into the era of social networking its ten-year old Web site that supplies technical information on open source software. My DeveloperWorks aims to help IT developers collaborate on topics including Java, Linux and XML.
Open Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) are gaining popularity as an apt eLearning framework for African universities. At eLA 2009, Open Educational Resource advocates Felix Olakulehin, Romaric Sagbo, and Nicholas MacGowan von Holstein will discuss its benefits vis-à-vis its practicability and sustainability.
But perhaps more damning is the rest of the report, which highlights just how ineffective the IWF's blacklist really is at tackling the root of the problem. It's well-established that these sorts of filters don't work, despite the IWF implying it can take credit for reducing the number of child porn sites. The IWF says that less than one percent of the sites can be traced to hosts in the UK, and that a huge portion of the commercial sites it's found can be traced back to just ten domain registrars.
Until recently, the recording industry were committing publicity suicide by routinely issuing legal threats to file sharers. Now, they seem to have changed the routine, going for fewer, but bigger targets. The goal is clear: if you own the Internet, you don’t have to worry about pirates — or anyone else.
A new poll shows a Swedish party that calls for legalizing Internet file-sharing could win a seat in the European Parliament in June.
The poll published Thursday in the Stockholm newspaper Dagens Nyheter shows the Pirate Party's backing has surged after a court verdict against The Pirate Bay file-sharing site. Four men behind The Pirate Bay were convicted this month of copyright violations and sentenced to a year in prison.
A poll carried out by a major Swedish newspaper predicts that the Pirate Party will grab around 5.1% of the votes in the upcoming European Union elections. This means that the movement, which has gathered huge momentum due to the Pirate Bay ‘guilty’ verdict, will get a seat in the EU Parliament.
So, once again, it's a case where being overly aggressive on trademark is doing significant harm to business prospects.
Imagine, instead, if Susan Jeffers, rather than having her lawyer send a letter demanding credit, had simply emailed the author of the original blog post and said "Hey, this is a great blog post, and I've written this book you might be interested in, which even uses that same phrase you mentioned, 'feel the fear and do it anyway.' I'm sure you'd like the book, so let me send you a copy. Thanks!" Think what might have happened?
Canada already has quite stringent copyright laws, and it has even passed stricter copyright laws over the past few years at the urging of the entertainment industry. It's difficult to see this new announcement as anything other than a condemnation of the US Trade Rep's process for putting together such a list.
[O]bviously nothing could be further from the truth. Copyright, as presently constituted, is *precisely* about locking up content in inert packages, and forbidding others to do anything with it except gaze respectfully on the containers. The Publishers Association seems to believe that making content “available” means printing it on dead trees; as Lessig describes in his fine book, content – creation – is actually something hugely richer and more alive than that sadly limited intellectual monopolist's viewpoint.
The National government will freeze any further changes to the Copyright Act with an eye to throwing the whole thing out and rewriting it from scratch.
Over the last two months the National government has progressively scrapped Labour’s ‘band-aid’ adjustments to the Copyright Act 1994.
Comments
amd-linux
2009-05-02 15:44:20
MS' black suitcase tactics seem to be successful, sometimes:
http://www.osor.eu/news/es-open-source-community-protests-national-plan-for-school-pcs
This is disgusting as many teachers could be employed for this money that now helps to finance another yacht for Mr Ballmer and Gates. I want to puke.
Roy Schestowitz
2009-05-02 16:29:01