Summary: Another feature of Vista 7 goes up in flames
The reality behind Vista 7 becomes less blurry because the release is only 2 months away. The closer it gets, the more wrinkles one sees. Here is the latest.
Microsoft quietly removes Ultimate Extras from Windows 7
One selling point of Windows Vista Ultimate Edition was its inclusion of Ultimate Extras, a special “members only” club of downloads incorporated into Windows Update. As of Windows 7 it’s no more – and the club wants its goodies back.
In fact, I cannot remember the last time I have had to re-install Linux at all. Thinking about it, the last time I…., nope not even then. Since Redhat 6.2 I have not had to do a complete reformat and reload, ever!
NEC Electronics is shipping a Linux-ready image-processing system-on-chip for IP set-top boxes (STBs). The EMMA3SL/P offers dual MIPS32 cores, is compliant with H.264 high definition (HD) and China’s audio/video standard (AVS), and offers multi-format video support for IPTV, says the company.
It’s not entirely their fault. Windows, for release after release, is just one big broken promise. The slick happy interface promises a smooth, high-tech, trouble-free experience, and Microsoft’s marketing takes full advantage of that misconception. But that promise is never, ever fulfilled. Sooner or later, on every computer it’s installed on, Windows’ inherent flaws break the system. We all know what happens. More and more frequent reboots. Slow performance. Junkware and crapware and spyware slowing things down, and even if they’re not there to do it, the scanners to catch them slow things down on their own. Viruses and incompatible .dll files and broken drivers and too many things being loaded as services that have no reason to exist. Disk fragmentation and registry cruft. Eventually the system gets too weighted down with all this crap to be usable, and it grinds to a useless halt, and you have to reinstall the operating system to clean things up and start fresh.
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So I’m cutting everyone off. Well, no, not everyone. I’ll still help my non-technical friends who are running Linux now, because I got them started on it. But strangely, they don’t seem to need much help, after the initial learning curve.
So I thought wow, what a great tool. I’ve recommended it to others before, but never actually used it. I’m glad UNetbootin added in the support for Sabayon Linux. I’m not sure how one goes about getting the options updated for the newer ISOs tho, but it will work with 5.0 when it comes out.
If you use virtualization on Linux, chances are that you’ve implemented a system based on the Xen hypervisor. Because the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) has become increasingly popular on Linux, you may want to consider switching your Linux-based virtualization environment from Xen to KVM. This article provides a six-step tutorial on migrating Xen-based virtual machines (VMs) to KVM.
Another on-line backup service that uses rsync is rsync.net. It is a very popular service, primarily because of it’s support (i.e. engineers man the phones for the most part). Currently, rsync.net supports:
* rsync/scp/sftp
* unison
* rdiff-backup
* It also supports certain commands using ssh
* You can mount the file system using sshfs
* An encryption tool called duplicity that uses rsync but also performs GPG encryption in the process
* Remote subversion repositories
* Remote data dumps of MySQL and PostgreSQL databases
For a long time I relied on an external hard drive and Jungle Disk as my daily backup solution. This wasn’t the most advanced backup setup, but it did the trick. Recently, however, I added a new device to my local network: a tiny Linux-based server with the silly name Bubba Two. Initially, I planned to use it for hosting my private wiki and testing LAMPP-based applications.
The GNOME Marketing team is pleased to announce the creation of the GNOME Press Team. The Press Team is a subset of the Marketing team, with a focus on tracking GNOME events worldwide, and communicating and engaging with journalists all over the world to help spread GNOME news.
For example, in the current release of KDE, you can use the new geolocation support to connect to locate other KDE users nearby so that you can socialize or exchange information. If you want information about the music album you are playing in Amarok, you can access Wikipedia without troubling to open up your browser. If you want to download your photos from Facebook, you can do so from within digiKam. Although these are far from the first applications to access the web directly, the extent to which the latest releases of KDE applications are doing so amounts to an integration of the desktop and online resources that provides a clear alternative to the idea of online applications.
While the KDE community busied itself with preparations for the 4.3 release, KDE 4 continued to spread to new platforms with ReactOS user Davy Bartoloni reporting (machine translation of original Italian) some success in running KDE applications on that operating system.
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ReactOS is still in alpha stage and not recommended for everyday use. Attempting to use the latest KDE Windows installer on ReactOS resulted in a blue screen of death and so this demonstration of running KDE applications required compiling them on Windows and then transferring the binaries to ReactOS.
There are some great distributions in our wonderfully cluttered Linux distro landscape. Some are very similar to others, and some are wildly different from the rest. The one thing to remember is that while these distributions may be amazingly well thought out, and amazingly well put together their obscurity will present two problems.
MEPIS LLC has released SimplyMEPIS 8.0.10, an update to the community edition of MEPIS 8.0. The ISO files for 32 and 64 bit processors are SimplyMEPIS-CD_8.0.10-rel_32.iso and SimplyMEPIS-CD_8.0.10-rel_64.iso.
On Ocotber 24, 2009 the HAM Radio operators attending the Florida Linux Show 2009 Orlando sponsored by Red Hat will be contacting the Ontartio Linux Fest through HAM Radio operators attending that Linux show on the same day.
Big thanks to all the people that have helped and guided me since I came to Debian, including (but not limiting to) Piotr Ożarowski, Loïc Minier, Josselin Mouette and Sebastian Dröge! I also want to thank all the people involved in the NM process, including my application manager Patrick Schoenfeld.
Canonical picking up a JPEG 2000 patch for Ubuntu’s Firefox would certainly be interesting and welcome, although it doesn’t change the matter of JPEG 2000 image files largely being unused by a majority of Linux desktop users.
Brazilian independent software vendor (ISV) Handcase has ported 60 applications from PalmOS to the Android and Moblin platforms, with another 40 said to be on the way. The apps are available in English via web-based subscriptions, in a variety of free, advertising-driven, and paid plans.
Timesys announced a new version of its LinuxLink software development framework for embedded Linux that supports the 2.6.30 kernel and Atmel’s industrial- and PoS-focused, ARM9-based AT91SAM9G45 processor. LinuxLink now supports Atmel’s SAM9G45 evaluation kit and provides a wide variety of peripheral drivers, says the company.
Eyecon Technologies has announced a media “control point” reference design based on Marvell’s tiny, Linux-based SheevaPlug Plug Computer reference design. Due this fall from unnamed consumer electronics companies, the device offers an embedded version of Eyecon’s UPnP/DLNA-compatible home media content aggregation software, says the company.
The time has come! The submission site for Android Developer Challenge 2 is now open. You can now submit applications for the Challenge at http://market.android.com/adc. Full instructions are also available on the site.
Mandriva Linux One is the best way to test, install and switch to Linux thanks to Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring.A full Linux operating system on a single CD for both new and experienced Linux users, it is fast to download and install, and also safe to try with a live mode.
Install Mandriva One in a few clics and get a complete desktop with full hardware support.
Battery life is surprisingly good on this little thing. I’ve been working on it for what must be over two hours now, and I’m still at 30%. CPU load is something like 10% on average, and memory usage has yet to rise over 200 MB, and that’s with Firefox open.
Australian sales of mini-notebooks jumped a massive 398.4% in the second quarter of this year, compared with 12 months ago. It’s clear evidence that consumers prefer mobile PCs, even when they come with a higher price tag than a desktop equivalent.
Larry Augustin: Increase our focus on our customers, continue to support the very strong developer and open source community and continue to drive the business along those directions. I think we’ve got a great customer base here. We have a product that people love. I think that’s witnessed by the developer, open source traction we have. We’re going to continue to leverage that.
In this pocast, SugarCRM Interim CEO Larry Augustin discusses the company’s search for a permanent CEO; the company’s cloud- and SaaS-focused channel partners; working with Microsoft and Windows Server; and SugarCRM’s growth strategy for open source CRM. Plus: Will SugarCRM run in Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud?
An alternative scenario is that Mark simply made a local fix to their Moodle code. Doing that would miss out on the opportunity to engage with and learn from the development community. Worse that fix would have to be reapplied each time a new Moodle release is installed, something that could involve costly merging of changes.However the actual result is that Mark now has better understanding of the code, Moodle has bug fix and both parties have a positive interaction to look back on and that will hopefully encourage further work together. Mark also has a good standing with the Moodle community, something of benefit to him personally as well as his employers.
The Zenoss Core project recently hit the 1 million downloads mark on SourceForge. That means on average someone downloads Zenoss every 90 seconds. These downloads have translated into over 1M managed servers & network devices, and 75K active end users from over 23K organizations across 175 countries . Needless to say we’re thrilled with the up-take over the past 27 months. This is a good sign that we are moving the ball forward in enterprise IT operations and there is clearly a lot of interest in better ways of managing infrastructure.
The New Zealand Open Source Society is launching a project to demonstrate the viability of free open source software on public sector desktops.
The Public Sector Remix project aims to help public agencies reduce the cost of desktop computing. The project will deploy free open source software for nominated staff to use for common business tasks and evaluate the results.
Zimbra, which is a Yahoo! company, specialises in open source server software for e-mail and collaboration and claims its software provides a set of end-user and administrator benefits that make it a flexible solution for deployments of all sizes.
If you’re stitching together open source code or deploying applications, Hewlett-Packard’s free application Fossology is designed to analyze the source code for any project and report accurately on which licenses are being used.
* Mozilla Creative Collective launches
* Mozilla Service Week: Act now!
* Extend Firefox 3.5 contest
* New Mozilla Labs website
* BBC experimenting with open video
* Web accessibility and CSS3 transforms
* Jetpack developer contest
* Fennec 1 beta 3 for Maemo
* AMO upcoming projects
* Multitouch in Firefox
You might think that Acquia is to Drupal as Red Hat is to Linux, but that analogy doesn’t quite work. For one thing, Red Hat charges for its version of Linux, while all versions of Drupal, including Acquia’s, are free. Imagine that Linus Torvalds wasn’t merely the gatekeeper for the Linux kernel but also chief technology officer at a company aiming to be the central source for Linux support; that’s the somewhat precarious position Dries Buytaert, and therefore Acquia, occupies. So the company has to be extra careful not to make changes that might alienate the thousands of volunteer Drupal developers. “In every major action, we talk about how do we make sure the community stays together,” says Erickson. “But Dries and Drupal are so tied at the heart, it’s in Dries’s DNA for that to happen.”
Computerworld speaks with Drupal’s lead developer and several Drupal shops about the open source CMS used in a growing number of organisations around the world, including the Prime Minister’s office.
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“It is a great time for open source technologies and Drupal is thriving in this environment.” There are now more than 400,000 Drupal sites around the world, and drupal.org has a million unique visitors per month.
In a new study on open-source adoption in the business intelligence (BI) market, it’s becoming clear that both the benefits and shortcomings of open source software are nearly universal across all technology segments.
Cloudera is clearing making a credible play to become the commercial brand associated with Apache Hadoop. Not only did Hadoop founder Doug Cutting recently join Cloudera from Yahoo!, Cloudera is set to announce the inaugural Hadoop World Conference, scheduled for October 2nd in NYC. The conference is being organized by Cloudera founder Christophe Bisciglia with sponsorship from Yahoo!, IBM, Intel, eHarmony and Booz Allen Hamilton. The tentative agenda has presentations from, amongst others, Cloudera, Yahoo!, Facebook, IBM, Microsoft, eBay, Visa, About.com, NYTimes and JPMorganChase.
I think that is no more valid a response than those who offered by filesharers who argue that its OK for them to do what they are doing because the labels screw the artists. Not only does iTunes refute the idea that people just want free stuff, but look at what happened in January of this year when Monty Python started a YouTube channel and gave away free streams of their stuff: their DVD sales on Amazon.com went up 23,000% (not a typo). Here’s another example. My wife owns a cafe. She makes espresso there and the guy who makes it used to work at Starbucks. I obviously can get espresso for free there. But I don’t, I drive two miles away to a Starbucks store and pay $2.01 for it because I like the way it tastes.
GLOBAL GAMING FACTORY (GGF), the Swedish firm attempting to buy file sharing site The Pirate Bay, has claimed it has been the subject of a smear campaign orchestrated chiefly by former GGF board member and chief technology officer Johan Sellström.
FACT, I say to you that I believe whilst you have had an impact (albeit small, since Im constantly being harassed by sellers in our local area) at local car boots and places where counterfeit DVD’s are sold, your stance on file sharing and how you intend to tackle it is, IMO very vague.
The National Music Publishers Association filed copyright-infringement suits against two businesses, including one owned by MySpace cofounder Brad Greenspan, that publish lyrics online for profit.
A number of commentators, led by blogger Alan Mutter, have noted lately that the paid online content bandwagon seems to be stalling into a lot of talk and not much action. But what if newspapers rally and act in unison to make much of what they offer online available only to those who pay?
VMware drags its feet on Linux-based vCenter appliance, annoys Linux users
The vCenter virtual appliance server 2.5 has been available as a free technology preview since late February. The cross-platform client interface is still in development but some components have been available in technology preview since May, with no word on how long users will have to wait for a full production release of either product. All of that doesn’t sit well with some people.
Eric Siebert, a TechTarget blogger and IT veteran, said he thinks VMware may have been dragging its feet a bit on this project because its customer base is predominately Windows. But VMware needs to step up its Linux efforts if it wants to compete with Xen and Hyper-V for Linux users, he said.
Why is this happening? Is Microsoft using Maritz and his other Microsoft colleagues as what it calls “insider friend, ‘the Fox’” or is this neglect simply part of the company’s overall weakness?
VMware — being part of EMC — is Microsoft Partner of the Year 2008 and so is Citrix/Xen, whose role has become Microsoft centered.
Another one of Microsoft’s suspicious ‘puppets’ is Yahoo!
Yahoo Acquires Arab Portal, Bing Gets Backdoor Into Deal
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This morning Yahoo announced that it was acquiring Maktoob.com, “the leading online community in the Arab world.” According to Yahoo the site has an audience of 16.5 million people. The purchase price has been estimated at between $75 and $100 million and was apparently in the works before the search deal with Microsoft was announced last month. Yahoo said the acquisition is part of a larger strategy to grow its audience in emerging markets and become the “destination of choice” in those locations.
It is reasonable to treat Yahoo! almost like a subsidiary of Microsoft in particular areas. As we have seen before, Microsoft may also use its partners to acquire other companies for competitive reasons. This is sad. █
A friend of mine suggested that I should include as boilerplate in my security stories, a line like: “Of course, if you were running desktop Linux or using a Mac, you wouldn’t have this problem.” She’s got a point. Windows is now, always has been, and always will be insecure. Here’s why.
First, desktop Windows stands firmly on a foundation as a stand-alone PC operating system. It was never, ever meant to work in a networked world. So, security holes that existed back in the day of Windows for Workgroups, 1991, are still with us today in 2009 and Windows 7.
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It also doesn’t help any that Microsoft’s data formats can be used to hold active programming code. Microsoft Office formats are commonly used to transmit malware. Microsoft’s latest Office 2010 tries to deal with this by blocking all but read access to documents or ‘sandboxing’ them.. Since you can’t edit a sandboxed document, I’m sure that’s going to go over really well. Of course, what will actually happen is that users won’t use the sandbox utility, and they’ll just spread malware instead.
Security researchers are raising an alarm for a potent malware cocktail — backdoor Trojans and password stealers — being pushed to Windows users from about 55,000 hacked Web sites.
Summary: Awareness campaign about the sins of Vista 7 is about to launch
WE AT Boycott Novell have spent the past year exposing the reality behind Vista 7. Knowing how similar it is to the process which preceded the release of Windows Vista, it seemed important to inform people before — not after — Vista 7 fails to gain traction in the market.
Adding to the list of failures, here is another item from the news. It reminds us yet again why Vista 7 is not suitable for sub-notebooks.
Windows 7 cuts almost a third off the battery life of some netbooks shipping today with Windows XP, several recent reviews and user reports say.
Laptop magazine reported in its blog on Monday that during a recent test, a Toshiba netbook lost 2.5 hours of battery life when running Windows 7 instead of XP, or about 30% (6:53 for Windows 7, versus 9:24 for XP).
Compare that to ARM-based sub-notebooks which can run GNU/Linux for an entire day. Windows does not even support ARM.
Come tomorrow, the FSF will unveil the Vista 7 “Sins” campaign. There is a spoiler out there already.
From the info-member list:
This Wednesday, August 26 at 11am, the Free Software Foundation will be launching its Windows7sins.org public awareness campaign, drawing attention to the threats posed by the adoption of Microsoft’s proprietary operating system. We have a launch event here in Boston on the Boston Commons from noon until 3pm, and we need everyone in the area to come along and help out and join in the ceremony as we conduct a ceremonial trashing of proprietary software.
**We’ll be launching our Windows 7 campaign with pomp and fanfare, with a giant 12 foot trashcan being filled with boxes of proprietary software.**
The event promises to be lots of fun, and with thousands of people passing through the Boston Commons every day we hope you will help us connect with the public by handing out information and explaining the benefits of free software. There will be camera crews and photographers capturing the event and we will be getting these images up online as soon as possible on the day.
Let us know you’re coming and bring along your friends and work colleagues – mail campaigns@fsf.org if you have time to help us set up, or just turn up at the Boston Commons near the entrance to the Public Gardens from noon.
If you’re not in the Boston area, there will be plenty for you to do to help us launch the campaign and get the message out. Stay tuned for upcoming instructions…
No doubt the Microsoft-sympathetic Web sites will use this as an opportunity to mock the FSF. They did the same thing when the FSF launched the “Bad Vista” campaign — a campaign which by all means was a great success.
Here is an E-mail which the FSF will distribute (a draft from last week):
RE: Important notice regarding impending lack of privacy, freedom and security from Microsoft Corporation.
As a decision maker within your organization, you undoubtedly strive to make choices that seek to improve the working lives of your employees, enhance the relationship you have with your customers and potential customers and secure the independence and freedom for your organization to operate.
For many years, companies like yours have relied on Microsoft and the Windows operating system. With the release of Windows 7 in October, Microsoft is selling the new version on a combination of fear and threats. They threaten to stop supporting older versions of Windows in the long-term, and because their system is proprietary, you are dependent on them to provide regular security updates and fixes. With the threat to withdraw their support, they try to strong-arm you into adopting new versions of their software even when you don’t need them and may have a negative consequence to your ability to operate, once again abusing its monopoly position, explicitly inducing vendor lock-in.
Like its plans to include DRM restrictions with Windows Vista, Microsoft’s continued attacks against the security, privacy and freedom of your organization, are no mistake. Microsoft has manipulated computer manufacturers to pre-install its products onto the computers you purchase. With its most recent actions, it further threatens computing standards by polluting and perverting the OpenDocument standard with its own XML-based file format. Today, many decision makers in America are now wholly dependent on Microsoft operating systems, such as Windows 7 for their business computing.
*The root cause of this dependency is proprietary software and with the release of Windows7, you have an opportunity to break your organizations dependency on it*
Free software, such as the GNU/Linux operating system and the office productivity tools set OpenOffice, provide all of the freedoms Microsoft tries to deny, and is therefore better in all areas: security, accountability and monetary cost. Microsoft agrees, and has recently reported as much in their corporate filings:
“The OpenOffice.org project provides a freely downloadable cross-platform application that also has been adapted by various commercial software vendors to sell under their brands, including IBM, Novell, Red Hat, and Sun Microsystems.”
“[Free software] vendors are devoting considerable efforts to developing software that mimics the features and functionality of our products, in some cases on the basis of technical specifications for Microsoft technologies that we make available at little or no cost.”
Free software is more secure because you and the wider community are independently able to read the source code of and customize any program you use in your infrastructure. It saves you from relying on a secretive third party, and the public availability of free software code means that many qualified eyeballs, the security experts and researchers around the world, are continually studying and reporting on its integrity. Replacing all your desktop systems with GNU/Linux will give you independence, access to thousands of free software applications and help break the social ill of proprietary software. Thousands of organizations have already moved to free software. What’s your organizational plan?
*Investing in Microsoft’s Windows 7 will only get you more stuck and more dependent on them.*
Take the next step — evaluate your organizations opportunity to use free software — and sign-up for regular announcements on making the move away from Windows and to receive information about the work of the Free Software Foundation.
[omitted]
A message from the Free Software Foundation, Boston, Mass.
The above is just a draft.
For those who characterise the FSF as “anti-Microsoft”, it is important to remember that the FSF offers no-one special treatment. Apple too is harshly criticised by the FSF (especially over DRM). Earlier today, Popey (Ubuntu enthusiast from the UK) wrote: “Apple blocking anything but quicktime from viewing trailers?”
No product is perfect and neither are Apple’s. Yet it is better to criticise Apple for trying to gag those who experienced/witnessed burning Apple products because Apple essentially puts the lives of more people at risk, purely for financial reasons. █
In August, 2006 I attended the Girvan Workshop for the Cell Broadband Engine and it’s an experience I’ll never forget. For two solid days, IBM engineers explained the processor’s architecture, tools and the many software libraries available for building Cell applications.
Platform Cluster Manager – formerly known as the Open Cluster Stack and in its fifth release – includes an open source implementation of the LSF job-scheduling tool called Lava and developed under a project called Kusu. OCS also includes Nagios for system monitoring, Cacti for node and cluster monitoring, Ganglia for workload monitoring, and other software that’s needed to run an x64-based supercomputer cluster based on Linux.
HP started reselling its own bundle of the Platform cluster tools, called Platform HPC for Insight Control Environment for Linux, in March. This followed Red Hat’s own Red Hat HPC Solution, which debuted in October 2008, and Dell’s own twist on the Platform stack, called OCS Del Edition, which came out two weeks later. Companies can also download the Cluster Manager tools from Platform directly and pay for support contracts if they want to build their own HPC setups.
1991: Linus Torvalds, a 21-year-old university student from Finland, writes a post to a user group asking for feedback on a little project he’s working on. He’s built a simple kernel for a Unix-like operating system that runs on an Intel 386 processor, and he wants to develop it further. The kernel eventually becomes Linux, which is released in 1994 and distributed over the internet for free.
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To that end, Richard Stallman, a programmer at MIT, founded the GNU Project in 1984. Stallman and his collaborators began assembling the various pieces of a free operating system that would be compatible with Unix, strictly adhering to the idea that software should be not only be freely available, but also give its users the ability to freely experiment with its inner workings.
So why is all of this? Freedom. Linus Torvalds had no idea what his OS project would look like 18 years after announcing it, but I am willing to bet that he is proud. His kernel is now the most mature kernel on Earth. It has more hardware support than any other, and it is more widely used than all but the NT kernel. Anyone is free to modify it. Anyone is free to fork it. Anyone is free to redistribute it. And boy, do we. Most distributions use a different kernel configuration, and many have their own patch sets and hacks that they use to optimize the Linux kernel in some way. These changes can be trivial (as in GoboHide), or complex changes that allow one to use radically different driver models, processors, or initialization systems. Yet, all of the ways we use it, it’s still Linux.
Support for X Input 2.0 with Multi-Pointer X capabilities can currently be found in the latest Git master code for the X Server and related libraries, while it will appearing in desktop Linux distributions once there is the X.Org 7.5 release.
Alongside Firefox, Chrome and possibly Safari, Opera is one of the leading non-IE browsers you can choose to run on your operating system. What makes Opera attractive is that it has quite a few features built in without a need for external modding, like mail, RSS reader and BitTorrent client, it is fast, it is secure, and it can even be run as a portable application.
The choice of a good text editor is very important because one needs to write, edit, compose/save notes almost on daily basis while working on office projects, class assignments, etc. Like all other operating systems, Ubuntu supports a large numbers of text editors. Below we have compiled 15 useful text editors and their installation details for your productivity.
During his 12 weeks at Google’s Summer of Code this developer managed to integrate Google Doc’s cloud with Nautilus, so all your docs can be browsed and edited on Linux just like normal documents.
We’ve reviewed Scribus a number of times in the past and even included a feature made using the tool in one of the back issues of Linux Format magazine. However, each revisit tends to throw up the same old problems: Scribus’s lack of reliability and poor interface. Thankfully, after two years of solid development, these woes have been banished. Well, mostly – read on to find out what’s changed…
It will be about two or three weeks until the boxed version of Shadowgrounds: Survivor starts shipping for Linux, but it will also be available for a (paid) download and for renting through LGP’s rental service.
Right now it has only been tested with Dell hardware. I know for a fact it will not work with the Asus eeePC due to their silly wireless drivers. Because of that, I will probably end up either borrowing code from eee-controls or eee-applet or just using those and porting them for use in this applet.
In the past few days French-based Linux company Mandriva has released a beta version of its upcoming Mandriva 2010 Linux distribution. We took it for a spin in a virtualised VMware environment.
Certain distributions tend to get more press than others. SimplyMEPIS isn’t one of the ones that gets drooled over by the media the way that Linux Mint, Ubuntu and others do. I include myself in this as a journalist since this blog has been up and running since early July and I’m just now getting to a review of SimplyMEPIS. It’s a shame though as SimpyMEPIS has quite a bit to offer the desktop Linux user as you’ll find out in this review.
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Product: SimplyMEPIS 8.0 Linux
Web Site: https://www.mepis.org/
Price: Free
Pros: Easy install, good selection of apps and excellent online manual.
Cons: Still uses KDE 3.5 instead of KDE 4.
Suitable For: Beginning, intermediate or advanced Linux users.
Summary: SimplyMEPIS is looking just a tad bit dated at this point but it’s still an excellent choice for desktop Linux users.
Rating: 3.5/5
There’s been an exciting development recently in Fedora QA land: thanks to the superhero Kevin Fenzi and friends, we’re now doing an automated Rawhide build of each official live Fedora spin every night, and publishing them here.
PackageKit improvements – PackageKit now has plugins to install applications from a web browser, and from the command line if a user tries a command from a package not yet installed.
Pentaho, the commercial open source alternative for business intelligence, recently announced that Specsavers, the UK’s most trusted optical retailer, is deploying business intelligence (BI) to its international hubs, based on a platform using Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform and Pentaho BI Suite Enterprise Edition. The deployment allows Specsavers to standardize information delivery and metrics at a regional level to help drive continued growth and to maximize corporate agility.
Levementum, the industry leading open source system integrator, announced today an alliance with Pentaho, the commercial open source alternative for business intelligence (BI).
The CentOS development team have announced the release of CentOS 4.8, a free Linux distribution based on the source of version 4.8 of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). The CentOS 4.8 legacy branch release is the eighth update to the CentOS 4 series and features several big fixes, updates and new functionality.
First impressions were extremely favourable. The default desktop manager is Gnome (2.26) which is very Windows-like with enhanced multi-monitor support in this release. The usual tools to customise desktop colours, wallpaper and screensaver are all there plus support for additional 3D graphical effects, courtesy of Compiz Fusion, should you want them. A separate KDE implementation (Kubuntu) is yet another option plus it features extensive multi-language support.
Issue 2 of Ubuntu User is now out. Featuring an interview with Mark (SABDFL) Shuttleworth, my second Q&A column (Answerbuntu), plus tons more Ubuntu goodness.
This means that all of your Karmic-targeted specs should be either at Beta Available or Postponed by the end of day on Wednesday. Please make sure to update the status of your specs. You should check that packages you care about are at a version suitable for release.
Requests for freeze exceptions for main should be filed as bugs in Launchpad against the relevant package (or just “Ubuntu” if the package is not available yet). Once the bug is filed and the necessary information is available, please subscribe the ubuntu-release team.
A recent Ubuntu global survey showed that only 28% of respondents were from the US, and the majority of these were using the OS only for basic functions such as Web, database and backup servers while only a small minority used it for advanced work such as cluster computing or virtualization. On the other hand, most respondents said they are assigning mission critical tasks to the OS and are planning to add more Ubuntu OS servers in the future.
The Official Ubuntu Server Book will help you identify and resolve the open source server’s network and hardware issues, including an unresponsive Linux host, memory issues, and network card errors.
Old rumours that Nokia is looking to replace Symbian with the Linux-derived Maemo OS on it smartphones have been re-stoked following publication of what’s thought to be the phone firm’s latest smartphone-cum-internet tablet.
First, I love Android due to its open source nature and its Linux underpinning as well as its Java development environment. This is actually perfect for a FOSS advocate and a Java Champion like me. I have tried a mobile phone that runs on Java as well as a mobile device that runs on Linux and I can honestly say that the Android blows them out of the water. Google has done a tremendous job marrying these technology into a single (and still open source) platform.
In addition to the coverage, we also looked at the assessment methodologies themselves. The popularity and conditions placed on the utilisation of these assessment methodologies also can have an impact on what is the most appropriate for your organisation. For example, going with a community run assessment methodology better ensures that the model is peer reviewed and verified.
Last but not least, the open source desktop publishing application Scribus is now in its 1.3.5.1 revision. I was using the older 1.3.3.12 build for my own publishing projects and was impressed with the results I could achieve with it, but this version brings the program to an even greater level of polish and professionalism. Best feature: direct export to PDF, with pro-level pre-flight checking options.
Betavine has been getting kudos from the open source community for launching Linux drivers for mobile broadband dongles for a number of Netbook computers. In addition, support for open standards such as W3C is engrained in Betavine’s DNA.
That is not an issue as GIMP can use Photoshop bruses. Simply download any brush you like, uncompress it and copy it to /home/username/.gimp-2.6 (this will vary according to username and version). Next time you launch GIMP, you can select your new brushes and make great designs.
*Cloud computing, similar to Linux and other open source software, is also clearly emerging as a major opportunity for hosters and service providers, as well as vendors that cater to them.
The federal economic stimulus package provides $19 billion to upgrade the U.S. health care system to digital records. It’s a nice gesture, but the U.S. federal government has already developed a robust medical ERP system that could significantly improve U.S. health care. It’s called VistA. It’s open source.
“There’s great hope for open-source,” said Don Thomas, president of Austin, Texas-based SoftLight Development, a technology consultancy and software developer. “I think a lot of doctors love the idea of being able to get out there and get what they want. But it’s one of those things where they hear all the negatives or all the positives, so I encourage all physicians to get out there and do their homework.”
In a field as complex and fast-changing as health care a proprietary system would be hard-pressed to keep up with the needs of thousands of hospitals. Open source won’t be perfect either, but putting the resources close to the people using them just makes more sense.
The clock kit ships with a power supply, backup battery, a clear acrylic enclosure, and all the parts you need to get the clock ticking in no time. Although everything you need to know about building the timepiece is available online, you may need some soldering skills to put the entire contraption
Recently the dot carried an article about the first public release of PySide, LGPL python bindings to Qt. We conducted a short interview with one of the people behind PySide, Nokia employee Matti Airas
A new set of LGPL-licensed Python bindings for Qt has been announced. The project, which is backed by Nokia, will make it easier for commercial software developers to adopt Python and Qt for rapid application development.
We’ve been excited to see what would happen with the RECAP Firefox extension, which is being used to help free up public domain court documents that have been locked up behind the PACER paywall. However, there were also questions about how the folks who run and/or benefit from PACER would react.
It appears that the US Courts, concerned about competition from software that offers the possibility of widespread free access to documents filed on federal judicial dockets, for which the public would otherwise have to pay the courts at the rate of 8 cents a page, are ready to resort to scare tactics to discourage lawyers from using that software.
Today, however, Mandelson’s Department for Business said responses to the consultation had persuaded it to reconsider introducing the threat of disconnection from the internet.
A new Open Source BitTorrent tracker set to be released in September promises to boost download speeds by up to 150% and decrease the load BitTorrent users put on ISP networks by 20 to 50 percent. Based on the widely used OpenTracker software, the new BitTorrent tracker aims to overcome many of BitTorrent’s current limitations.
Following the earlier court defeat for Fredrik, Gottfrid and Peter and the pending civil action taken by several Hollywood studios, the Swedish authorities have now ordered The Pirate Bay to be disconnected from the Internet. The site’s bandwidth suppliers have been threatened with a large fine. The site is completely offline.
It’s difficult to think of anything to say to people who think these ways, other than “good luck.” The real world doesn’t believe in such limitations. If the newspapers collude and come up with a pricing scheme where the lowest option starts at $10 per month — fine. Just go do it, and then let’s see what happens. Because talking about it is getting pretty silly.
Spanfeller’s piece should prove to be an interesting one to publishers and advertisers alike, but some think it is just simply too late for the industry to adopt a different model. Publishers that try to go a different way face the very real possibility that their advertisers won’t follow them, when they can simply get lower rates elsewhere.
