Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• Desktop

  • The Future of IT…Here They Are.

    Most of our work…work done by The HeliOS Project involves working with kids one-on-one. We find children that do not have computers due to financial disadvantage and do our best to give them one. It is indeed gratifying work. I have not had many chances to work with kids in large groups before…I mean working with them in a technical environment.

• Kernel Space

  • LinuxCon Preview: Is FOSS Becoming More About What Execs Need Than What Developers Want?

  • Graphics Stack

    • Here’s The R600 Gallium3D Driver Running Gears

    • Mesa

      • Intel’s Preparing To Push Its New GLSL Compiler Into Mesa

        Mesa 7.9 is shaping up to be one hell of a release. Mesa 7.9 is already set to carry many ATI Gallium3D driver improvements along with enhancements to the LLVMpipe driver that uses the CPU for rendering, the early R600g driver, various Gallium3D architectural and state tracker improvements (MSAA, Stream Out, etc), more OpenGL 3.x functionality, and tons of other changes. But there’s still more coming! Intel’s Ian Romanick has announced on the Mesa development list that they would like to merge their new GLSL compiler into Mesa in August.

      • Mesa’s Clover OpenCL Gets Some Love

      • Testing Intel’s New GLSL Mesa Compiler With ATI Graphics

• Applications

  • 5 of the Best Free Linux Typing Tutors

    Being able to touch type is the ability of typing without looking at the keyboard. When touch-typing, the individual uses all fingers instead of just a few fingers. Consequently, typing speed increases dramatically.

  • Tool of the week – ftsh

  • Synfig and Project Morevna

    Open Source and Linux provide rewarding surprises. And one of these surprises is the software Synfig.

  • Some Really Interesting Gwibber Mockups For Ubuntu!

    Neil Patel is the Technical lead for Ubuntu Netbook Edition and Unity at Canonical Ltd. With the current drawbacks with Gwibber’s UI in mind, Neil have created some really good looking Gwibber UI mockups.

  • Ubuntu Tweak 0.5.5 Released, Features PPA Purge Integration

  • Instructionals

    • How to install Dropbox in Mandriva 2010.1

    • How to change GDM background/wallpaper

    • PHP API for CUBRID Database – Video Tutorial

    • Installing FB4Linux in Eclipse

    • Batch processing

    • Weekend Project: Using PulseAudio to Share Sound Across All Your Computers

    • Chrooting Apache2 With mod_chroot On CentOS 5.4

    • Resizing images with correct gamma using PHP and GD

    • Creating a Reporting Site using BIRT

      In this article series by John Ward,author of BIRT 2.6 Data Analysis and Reporting we will be looking at a practical example of building a reporting site. In this part of the article, we will be looking at a scenario where we have a Bugzilla instance setup with a series of bugs related to BIRT. We will look at a series of requirements and build the reports necessary to fulfil those requirements.

    • How to Install VLC 1.1.1 in Ubuntu 10.04 ‘Lucid Lynx’

    • Compiz Screensaver install and troubleshooting

    • A guide to successful FOSS conference presentations

      We just wrapped up the Ohio LinuxFest call for presentations, so pitching presentations is on my mind. Regional, volunteer-run conferences are not only a good way for people without a travel budget to see some big names in open source, they’re also a way for first-time or inexperienced speakers to hone their presentation skills. Regional conferences also provide an excellent forum to educate users about your favorite project or topic.

    • Author interview: UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook

  • Games

    • The Legend of Edgar 0.65

      25th July 2010 – v0.65 is now available.

      * Added the next part of the story
      * Dying and then being stunned by a Centurion no longer leaves you immortal
      * Fixed a crash when creating the Fire Shield

• Desktop Environments

  • Is Creating Graphical Environments an Artistic Endeavor?

    I compared a couple of ideas on the desktop to a piece of art by Cezanne. In it, I explained that this expressionist painting was able to make people who looked at it, understand that although it is expressionism, you still understand the shapes and forms in it and relate them to elements in real life. Later, I received this comment “A desktop is a tool, not a piece of art.” Is this true? I want to put this question to you all.

• Distributions

  • New Releases

    • PelicanHPC 2.2 RC Released

      PelicanHPC is a live CD for high performance computing cluster and is based on Debian. The latest version of the distro is PelicanHPC 2.2 RC and runs only on amd64.

  • Fedora

    • After a short detour, I’m back in Fedora 13 x86_64 with Xfce — and I remain impressed

      Whenever I make a major jump to a new computer and/or operating system, there’s usually quite a bit of distro-hopping instability as I try to figure out what works best for my hardware, my work and my moods.

  • Debian Family

    • A Debian server at 150Mhz, 32Mb

      For the past four or five days I have been running the Mebius laptop as my home file server, torrent slave and music player. I jumped to put a larger hard drive into the machine when I realized Debian could configure the network, the sound card and the hard drive (at its full 120Gb size!) without any extra effort from me.

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Ubuntu 10.04 on Envy 14

        I ended up having to obliterate Quickweb off the drive in favor of the much more feature-rich but still very fast booting Ubuntu. Now i’m not going to sit here and preach how good Ubuntu is–just go out and try it. Download the Live CD, you don’t even have to install it to try it (although it wont be fast unless you physically install it). But Ubuntu, thus far anyway, runs like butter with the Core i5 and 8gigs of ram. Much faster than any other OS i’ve had experience with (Yes, even you, OS X).

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Linux Mint 10: “Julia”

          Linux Mint 10, based on the upcoming Ubuntu 10.10 “Maverick Meerkat”, will be released in November this year under the codename “Julia”.

• Devices/Embedded

  • PopBox STB to ship soon, but sans Netflix, Pandora

    The PobBox reportedly runs a customized version of Linux 2.6 as its internal operating system, on a RISC-based Sigma Designs SMP8643 system-on-chip (SoC) processor. For more specs and features, including details on the device’s hardware and its supported multimedia formats, read our earlier PopBox coverage.

  • Zbox HD-ID11 Review

    Pros: This tiny home theatre box is the perfect partner for streaming HD content to your TV, or as a mini Linux entertainment system

  • Phones

    • Linux on mobile fast-track

      Linux will dominate mobile devices by 2015. That’s according to a new report from technology analyst ABI Research.

  • Tablets

    • OliverPad: India’s Answer To iPad?

      Olive Telecom has announced the launch of OlivePad – VT100, India’s first 3.5G Pad.

      Designed as a multi functional device, Olive Pad operates on an Android Operating System and supports 3.5G HSUPA, Wi-fi, and Bluetooth.

    • Microsoft’s Real Tablet Competition: Google Android

      The situation is pretty simple to explain: As Microsoft scrambles to position Windows Phone 7 against Apple’s iPhone, and Windows 7 for tablets against the iPad, Google keeps lining up more and more hardware partners to build tablets running Google Android.

Free Software/Open Source

• Events

  • Five Pictures of OSCON

    It’s my favorite conference, I think. I love the smaller, more focused events too, but OSCON is a gathering of the tribes and we need one of those.

• BSD

  • Running ZFS With CAM-based ATA On FreeBSD 8.1

    In these benchmarks we compared the performance of the traditional ATA infrastructure in FreeBSD/PC-BSD 8.1 to that of the new CAM-based ATA infrastructure when using ZFS. The tests included LZMA compression, Gzip compression, Compile Bench, PostMark, and the Threaded I/O Tester.

• Openness/Sharing

  • ‘Business will overcome its opposition to Creative Commons or perish’

    Joi Ito wants to revolutionise the internet. His vision is of a world unperturbed by a complicated, costly and outdated copyright system, where everybody can collaborate and share content on the web as they wish.

    He doesn’t want to get rid of copyright, he just wants you to be able to adapt it to your needs. He wants to build a sharing economy.

• Open Data

  • Local Spending in OpenlyLocal: what features would you like to see?

• Standards/Consortia

  • ODF Documents

  • How To Judge Your Vendor’s Support for a Standard

    For people who adopt software, trying to judge the value of so-called “standards support” in a product can be an incredibly frustrating experience. Standards implementations often fail to live up to their promises and, worse, it can be very hard to tell in advance of installing and running the software whether or not the “standards support” it supposedly provides is actually going to meet your needs.

  • Taking webm for a Spin

    I first blogged about webm the day Google released it. It has taken some time but now I have full support for webm in my preferred Linux desktop distro (Fedora 13). I’ve been doing some testing and I have to say I’m impressed.

Leftovers

• 3 Staffers With McInnis Campaign Resign

  Three people working with the Scott McInnis for Colorado governor campaign have resigned their positions. This comes as McInnis, a Republican, has been battling plagiarism allegations.

• Science

  • Quantum Time Machine Solves Grandfather Paradox

    A new kind of time travel based on quantum teleportation gets around the paradoxes that have plagued other time machines, say physicists.

• Security/Aggression

  • CCTV turning schools into ‘prisons’

    Researchers found the widespread use of CCTV, ID cards, electronic registration systems, fob-controlled gates and fingerprint technology as schools attempt to crackdown on troublemakers.

    Staff at one comprehensive patrolled corridors and playgrounds with radios to make sure children behaved at lunchtimes, while teachers at a private school used technology to spy on children’s computer and internet use.

  • Bar owner defends toilet CCTV move

    THE owners of a new bar have defended their decision to install a CCTV camera in the men’s toilets.

  • ‘Sneaky’ Wandsworth Council makes million on station CCTV

    More than 21,000 fines of between £60 and £120 were issued for motoring offences such as stopping to drop off family and friends.

  • Mother arrested after ‘stealing ball’

    Lorretta Cole says she was trying to teach her neighbour’s children a lesson after she claims the ball repeatedly landed on her property and even damaged her car.

  • Police forces under pressure over Europe evidence demands

    The Government has until the end of the month to decide whether to opt out of the scheme – which would give authorities in any country in the whole of the EU the power to order our police to produce evidence, or even interrogate or launch surveillance of suspects without their knowledge.

  • WSCC laptop containing information on children stolen from home of employee

    West Sussex County Council has been described as showing ‘poor regard’ to the importance of protecting children’s personal information after an unencrypted laptop containing information about children was stolen from the home of one of its employees.

• Environment

  • Does BP Have an ACE Up Its Sleeve on Climate Education?

    In May, PRWatch reported on a controverisal new group, “Balanced Education for Everyone” (BEE), that is trying to stop public schools from teaching kids about climate change science. BEE argues that teaching climate change is too scary for kids and “unnecessary.” But BEE’s efforts also raised other questions, like what are kids learning about climate change in school, anyway, and who is influencing it?

    [...]

    Connecting the Dots: Hushed Relationships Between ACE and BP

    ACE was founded with an initial donation of $2.675 million in “private funding,” the source of which is undisclosed on ACE’s Web site. However, a September 30, 2009 article about an ACE school presentation says all of money to start ACE came from one person: Michael Haas, the group’s founder. A second article posted on Grist.com in July 2009 confirms this. So why is ACE so cagey about reporting this on its website?

  • BP admits it ‘Photoshopped’ official images as oil spill ‘cut and paste’ row escalates

  • Unsafe From Any Gulf

    The Los Angeles Times reported last week that, “worst-case estimates place the total oil spilled in the gulf at about 126 million gallons over two months. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates the country disgorges that much hydrocarbon pollution to the air in 10 days.”

  • Environmental & Health Effects of Oil Dispersants a Mystery to BP and the Government

    U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson questions BP’s widespread application of oil dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico, as does everyone else. According to Jackson, the government is “uncharted waters” with the use of dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico. “The amount of dispersant being used at the surface is unprecedented,” Jackson says. BP is also applying the chemicals in the sub-sea environment. In addition, dispersant is stopping oil from collecting on water surface, where it can be more easily controlled.

  • Governors Declare Day of Prayer for Gulf Spill

    Leaders of the Gulf Coast states have designated Sunday a day of prayer for the regions affected by the oil spill that has sent millions of gallons of crude gushing into the Gulf of Mexico for the last 66 days.

  • Coast Guard Photos Show Spill Workers Without Protective Gear

    There’s something missing in the Coast Guard’s latest PR photos of oil spill cleanup workers: protective gear.

  • Gulf Seafood Gets Chemically Tested for Oil, Not Dispersant

    NOAA, the FDA and the Gulf states have been rigorously testing Gulf seafood for oil—doing smell tests with teams of human sniffers, and performing chemical tests for the harmful polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, found naturally in crude oil.

  • Giant oil skimmer ‘A Whale’ deemed a bust for Gulf of Mexico spill

    The oil is too dispersed to take advantage of the converted Taiwanese supertanker’s enormous capacity, said Bob Grantham, a spokesman for shipowner TMT.

    He said BP’s use of chemical dispersants prevented A Whale, billed as the world’s largest skimmer, from collecting a “significant amount” of oil during a week of testing that ended Friday.

  • Chemical Agriculture Group Says, Shut Up and Eat Your Pesticides

    Rachel Carson ignited the debate over pesticide safety a generation ago. Its latest phase began today (July 15).

    Chemical farming interests have taken aim at Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) influential “Shopper’s Guide To Pesticides In Produce,” a popular consumer tool introduced more than a decade ago that has helped drive expansion of organic produce sales at the expense conventionally grown, pesticide-contaminated fruits and vegetables.

• Finance

  • Why we must reduce military spending (Reps. Barney Frank and Ron Paul)

    As members of opposing political parties, we disagree on a number of important issues. But we must not allow honest disagreement over some issues interfere with our ability to work together when we do agree.

  • Help Us With the Bankster Scorecard

  • Wall St. Reform Passes! Reformers Celebrate Rare Victory Over Entrenched Special Interest

    AFR’s 250 consumer, labor, business, housing and grassroots groups, along with dozens of academics and think tanks, came together in an unprecedented effort to pool their expertise on complex financial matters to provide a counterweight to the big money lobbying onslaught and technical expertise of Wall Street.

  • Taxpayers Owed Big Bucks Under the Bailout, Little Help for Homeowners Facing Foreclosure

    These numbers are much higher than what is reported in the media because CMD’s Wall Street Bailout Cost Table takes into account all 35 government programs, not just the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) managed by the U.S. Treasury Department. Still unpaid: $568 billion in TARP money and $1.4 trillion in Federal Reserve loans and investments.

  • The Evolving Nature of the Corporation

    What is a corporation? In the aftermath of the financial crisis, the nature of the corporation has been the subject of considerable debate. While this is a very complex topic, two major points of view seem to be emerging, which we can use to book-end the different ends of a spectrum, with many hybrid positions in-between.

    [...]

    At the other of the spectrum, is the view of the corporation as an organization that will use all lawful means for its single-minded objective of generating profit and wealth. As we have seen with the financial crisis, that single-minded focus on wealth can degenerate into a behavior dominated by greed, where a relatively small number of people will do whatever they can to earn large sums of money without worrying about the impact of their actions on the larger society.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Chez Sludge: Complaint Filed Regarding Francesca Vietor’s Threat To the Guardian

    The “Chez Sludge” scandal in San Francisco, involving the city giving away free toxic sewage sludge as “organic Biosolids compost” for gardeners, took another turn on July 13, 2010. The Food Rights Network filed a formal letter of complaint with the California Bar Association, asking the professional society for California lawyers to investigate Chris Desser, attorney for Francesca Vietor, in Vietor’s threat of libel against the UK Guardian newspaper.

• Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

  • Wikileaks: No Substitute for Transparency

    I’ve been disagreeing with a lot of people about transparency recently, and even though it’s kind of going out of fashion on the edge of my community, I’m still going to stand up for the principle. Transparency, real and true, is a good thing for many reasons. It’s not magic fairy pixie dust that makes the world a wonderful place, and anyone who sold it as such needs to do their historical homework. What is does it complex, important, but not sexy enough for many activists.

    What a lot of people commenting on the debate about government transparency don’t get is that it’s not just about the information. Action always has an inherent politics to it; publishing data about itself is as much about telling government how it’s supposed to behave as it is about the data. Even if you’re wildly juking the stats, you’re at least communicating to yourself how different things should be. The action involved in transparency is the action of telling on yourself. No matter how subverted, two things remain true: you know that you should be doing better, and you’re going to accidentally expose incidental truths.

  • Data retention: Got nothing to hide?

    It recently came to light (thanks to some good reporting) that the Government has been fishing around with ISPs for their support on a new and radical data retention policy. This would legally oblige telcos to retain large amounts of data about their customers’ communications activities in case law enforcement needed them at some point in the future.

  • Paedophilia used as an excuse to snoop on internet users – again

    Members of the European Parliament are being asked to sign a written declaration that will, ostensibly, “set up a European early warning system for paedophiles and sex offenders”. In reality, it will extend the Data Retention Directive to search engines.

• Copyrights

  • $27 million claimed; $500 awarded

    A claim arguing both copyright infringement and moral rights infringement looked for $27 million in damages. (Plus, amongst other things, the goods and services tax on the monetary awards.) By the end, the Honourable Mr. Justice Russell of the Federal Court of Canada determined that the defendants’ copyright misdemeanor was confined to posting the plaintiff’s work on their website, without his consent. Justice Russell did not conceal his opinion of the plaintiff’s conduct; “The evidence adduced concerning infringement of copyright suggests that the Plaintiff’s claims are disproportionate and opportunistic.”

  • Tech News Sites Tout Misleading BitTorrent Piracy Study

    A new study has been making the rounds, concluding that only 0.3% of all files available on BitTorrent are confirmed to be ‘legal’. The results of the study were promoted by anti-piracy outfit AFACT and have been picked up by several news outlets, including Ars Technica and ZDNet, who all failed to see that the report is bogus.

    [...]

    Unfortunately, the results of these type of studies are pushed by anti-piracy outfits and taken for granted by outsiders, even by respected news outlets on the Internet such as Ars Technica and ZDNet. In this case their reporters were completely taken in by the report.

    Just a few minutes into reading the study we were shaking our heads here at the TorrentFreak headquarters. Mistake after mistake is made in the report and conclusions are drawn based on painfully inaccurate data and methodologies. We’ll lay out the most critical errors below, which represent just the tip of the iceberg.

  • ACTA

    • ACTA leaks – but secret squirrel stays secret

      Just who is the bad apple at the ACTA negotiations, excluding the public and forcing discussions between the parties to be held in secret?

      Not us, says the EU, which has come in for some stick of late – not least from Pirate Party MEP Christian Engstroem – for its refusal to allow MEPs to disseminate anything from the talks back to their voters. Rather, the blame should be laid at the door of just one of the parties to the talks, but the official line is that they are staying schtum on just which.

  • Digital Economy

    • A Guide to the Digital Economy Act – Part 3

Leftovers

• Security/Aggression

  • Reliable Encryption for the Rest of Us

    Many encryption utilities–such as the BitLocker feature in Windows 7 Ultimate, or the Rohos Mini Drive utility for protecting info on a thumb drive–are available. But my favorite tool covers all the bases: It’s free, it’s easy, it’s effective, and it works on all major operating systems. TrueCrypt lets you create virtual encrypted drives. Versions are available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux; if you install it on several machines running different OSs, you can open your encrypted files from a network share, thumb drive, or other shared storage device.

  • Afghanistan war logs: Massive leak of secret files exposes truth of occupation

    A huge cache of secret US military files today provides a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and Nato commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fuelling the insurgency.

• Environment

  • BP Acquits Itself of Sole Blame for Gulf Spill after Internal Inquiry

    BP has said that it is not the only oil Company responsible for oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The Company is firm on the view that the claims of its negligence in the oil spill are baseless.

  • Tony Hayward to quit BP

    Tony Hayward, chief executive of BP, is to leave the company, bowing to pressure over his handling of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion, the aftermath of which has become America’s worst environmental disaster.

• Finance

  • Wall Street Exhales After Sidestepping Pay Czar’s Wrath

    Wall Street took the latest government report on its pay practices in stride Friday, saying it would review U.S. pay czar Kenneth R. Feinberg’s suggestions about compensation while privately expressing relief that the report wasn’t tougher on them.

  • Citigroup, JPMorgan Said to Have Sold AIG Protection to Goldman

    Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are among the banks that sold Goldman Sachs Group Inc. protection against a failure of insurer American International Group Inc., said two people with knowledge of the transactions.

  • Feinberg Says Companies Should Adjust Pay Policies for ‘Crisis’

    Kenneth Feinberg, the Obama administration’s special master on executive compensation, called on 17 bailed-out financial firms including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Citigroup Inc. to adopt compensation policies that allow directors to lower top executives’ pay when a firm’s survival is under threat.

  • Levitt Sees No Link Between SEC-Goldman Suit, Bank Bill: Video

  • Issa Questions Timing of SEC’s Goldman Suit, Settlement: Video

  • Goldman Hands Over A.I.G. Hedge List, Report Says

    Goldman Sachs told United States investigators which counterparties it used to hedge the risk that American International Group would fail, three people with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg News.

  • Top 5 White Collar Crimes: Goldman Sachs Settles Largest Fraud Case In US History For $550 Million

  • Weighing the Trade-Offs in the Goldman Settlement

  • Inquiry Begun of S.E.C. Timing in Goldman Fraud Case

    The inspector general of the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether political or other factors influenced the timing of the filing and subsequent settlement of the commission’s securities fraud case against Goldman Sachs, according to letters between his office and a Republican congressman.

    [...]

    H. David Kotz, the S.E.C. inspector general, who is an independent watchdog for the agency, began the inquiry in response to an April 23 letter from Mr. Issa, a California Republican who is the ranking minority member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

    The S.E.C. has denied that its timing was influenced by politics.

  • Did Goldman Sachs provoke a world hunger crisis?

    A nonprofit accuses the bank’s traders of starving people by dramatically bidding up prices for wheat, corn and rice. Is that fair?

  • Documents Detail $4.3B in Goldman Sachs Payouts

    International banks and financial companies were indirect beneficiaries of the government’s 2008 bailout of American International Group Inc., according to newly released documents.

  • Pay czar faults 17 companies over compensation

    The government’s pay czar announced Friday that 17 companies benefiting from federal bailout money handed out $1.6 billion in excess executive pay at the height of the financial crisis. The firms include Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America.

    Kenneth Feinberg, who was appointed as the Obama administration’s special master for compensation, examined executives earning more than $500,000 at the 419 companies that received taxpayer assistance. Of the 17 companies that he found were egregious in their compensation, 11 have paid back the assistance received from taxpayers.

  • Goldman Sachs to Get Ken Burns Effect

    Goldman Sachs (GS) has contracted documentary film maker Ric Burns, co-producer of the Emmy-award winning 1990 documentary, The Civil War, to make an “industrial,” a movie about Goldman for internal consumption only, according to The Wall Street Journal’s Susanne Craig, citing a Goldman rep.

  • Goldman, the Movie. By Goldman

    That isn’t a real movie title. But filmmaker Ric Burns, who created the PBS series “The Civil War” with his brother Ken, is shooting a documentary about the Wall Street firm. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is paying for the film, has editorial control and is overseeing the project through its marketing department, a Goldman spokesman said.

  • Goldman Sachs Sues to Overturn Arbitration Award

    The creditors claimed the unit facilitated the fraud committed at Stamford, Connecticut-based Bayou, which filed for bankruptcy protection in May 2006. Bayou co-founder Samuel Israel pleaded guilty to directing a $400 million fraud and is serving 22 years in prison.

• Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

  • Explosive Leaks Provide Image of War from Those Fighting It

    In an unprecedented development, close to 92,000 classified documents pertaining to the war in Afghanistan have been leaked. SPIEGEL, the New York Times and the Guardian have analyzed the raft of mostly classified documents. The war logs expose the true scale of the Western military deployment — and the problems beleaguering Germany’s Bundeswehr in the Hindu Kush.

  • War Diary

  • How to read the Afghanistan war logs: video tutorial

  • Implementing the Digital Economy Act: Consultation

    The closing date for comments is 30 July, so you have a few days to mull things over before submitting.

Free Software/Open Source

• The Jargon of Freedom: 60 Words and Phrases with Context

  What exactly does it mean when Richard Stallman says that the Creative Commons’ Attribution-ShareAlike license has a “Weak Copyleft”? Why exactly is it that “Freeware” and “Non-Free Software” mean the same thing, while “Free Software” is something else entirely? And what is this business with “Free Beer”, and where can I get some? If you’ve asked yourself these questions, this column is for you.

• CASE STUDY: Revenue Commissioners

  “We have reduced their bills and given them what they needed,” says McGrattan. “We’ve also moved them from proprietary systems to open source so all they have to pay is a support bill. So they are quite happy. They have recommended us to other customers and governments and told them what we have done.”

• Interview with Winston Damarillo, Morphlabs

  One of Southern California’s successful, serial entrepreneurs is Winston Damarillo, who founded Gluecode, which he sold to IBM in 2005. Earlier this month, his latest startup, El Segundo-based Morphlabs announced it had raised a Series B funding worth $5.5M. We thought we’d catch back up with Winston to hear about the Morphlabs.

  [...]

  [Winston Damarillo:] All of your startups have been centered around open source projects. What’s the open source connection here?

  Winston Damarillo: Sixty to seventy percent of our ingredients are based on open source. I always mention that anything I do has an open core, which is, the core of what we do comes from open source. In our case, the workload manager comes from Eucalyptus, the configuration management from Puppet, and a third systems management tool. All three are open source building blocks.

  [...]

  Winston Damarillo: One of the things I’ve learned, is that open source is now an accepted ingredient for any enterprise user. People are not scared anymore of using that. On what you need to know, from the business model side, is that we realized that open source support, by itself, is a declining and diminishing return on revenue generation. The more mature the open source product or project, the less the opportunity to make money. A good example of that is the Apache web server, where no one pays for support–they just download it and use it. What a successful company does, is implement what we call an open core–the idea is, you use open source, which you expect will mature over time, but later a product on top of that commercially, which allow you to make open source more scalable. That makes it more sustainable as a product, and not just as a support service.

• Test Management for Open Source Teams

  Gurock Software announced an offer to provide free licenses of their web-based test management software TestRail to open source projects and teams.

• SOS Open Source Goals and Customer Segments

• Security

  • Open source security solutions: An attractive alternative

    Mention ‘open source security tools’ and the first words that come to mind are Nmap and Nessus. Of course, Nessus is no longer open source. Its open source offshoot OpenVAS, has failed to acquire the same levels of popularity. Apart from Nmap and Nessus, Metasploit is probably one of the more popular offerings available on the open source security block.

  • Snort and Suricata Creators Exchange Heated Words

    Unfortunately, the flame wars stirred pent up frustrations among the projects’ leaders. SourceFire’s Vulnerability Research Team (VRT) continued the debate through performance tests posted on its blog, contending that “Suricata’s performance isn’t just bad; it’s hideously, unforgivably bad.” The article goes on to state that Suricata’s capabilities are inherently limited by its choice of the Snort rule language, and that despite a million dollars in development, the OISF has “failed, utterly, to deliver on their promises.”

  • Intel accelerates open source encryption

    The latest version of Truecrypt has many new features, including partitions with larger sector sizes, a volume organiser and automatic mounting of volumes.

• Graphics

  • Blender as an animation editor

    While working on some combat animations, I decided that the current Phoenix animation editor is too hard to use, and there are too many bottlenecks in the route to making it better. So, for now, I am looking into alternative approaches to editing animations.

  • Scribus

    As I mentioned before, here in the studio I use a Linux computer. Well, calling it a Linux computer is a bit inaccurate. I have a computer and it runs Linux. PCLinuxOS, to be specific. PCLinuxOS, like all Linux distributions, is freely available for download at many different websites. If you want to try Linux, I strongly suggest PCLinuxOS. if you want to explore a bit more, then visit DistroWatch.com. There, you can download and test drive (via a Live CD) any flavor of Linux being distributed today.

• Symbian

  • Cooperative to represent Symbian developers

    Only companies can become Symbian Foundation members and therfore play a role in decision-making over future developments in the open source mobile operating system. The Symbian Developer Cooperative (DevCo) has now been founded to ensure that the voices of individual programmers are not ignored.

  • Symbian and Nitobi Team to Ease Cross-Platform Mobile App Development

    The Symbian Foundation and Nitobi team up in an effort to make it easier for mobile application developers to create mobile apps for any device.

• Going Free

  • Impressive data visualization tool to be released as open source

    The former leaders of IBM’s Visual Communications Lab have been hard at work on a “summer project” — desktop software that will display large amounts of information in a number of visual formats.

  • Network and routing software goes open source

  • Time Flow 0.5 To be Released Open Source

    Fernanda Viegas and Martin Wattenberg of Many Eyes fame will be releasing a new data visualization tool they call ‘Time Flow’ soon on the website of their current company ‘Flowing Media’.

• Mozilla

  • Firefox Friday — “Beta 2 is coming, and it’ll break stuff” edition

    Beta 2 was actually slated for release today, but the download page is still serving up b1. When it’s ready, you’ll find Firefox 4 beta 2 at getfirefox.com/beta/.

  • Firefox 3.6.8 now available for download

• SaaS

  • Cloud For Ruby Apps Expands Services To NoSQL

    Heroku Add-on System will make it possible for the Ruby developers to make use of Apache’s open source CouchDB and offer systems capable of storing the unstructured data generated by web applications.

  • Rackspace’s bold move to open the cloud

    Rackspace’s OpenStack could signal a new race to open up cloud computing technology

  • OW2 Consortium will Support OpenStack with its Open Source Cloudware Initiative

  • WSO2 Launches WSO2 Business Rules Server

    Open Source integration provider WSO2 is shipping a business rules server aimed at letting companies quickly and easily create, access, and manage business rules within an SOA framework. WSO2 Business Rules Server (BRS) delivers a tool for separating business logic from underlying infrastructure code.

  • Empires built on free code aren’t cheap

    Consider Facebook. Like its web peers, Facebook uses a ton of open-source software. While ostensibly free, to make projects like Linux work for its purposes, Facebook heavily customizes them. While the company may not buy as much software, it ends up writing or customizing quite a bit of code.

• CMS

  • Web CMS: MODx Revolution Targets Drupal, Joomla Markets

    This past March we saw a hint of what was coming from the open source Web CMS project called MODx (news, site). Now their latest release, MODx Revolution v2.0, has officially arrived. This is the future of the MODx project. Let’s take a peek.

  • Open Source Enterprise Collaboration Tool TeamLab Offers New Modules

    If open source still makes you think of feature-bare products, command lines and dense nerd-level manuals, then you need to get with the times. TeamLabs is a fine example of open source Enterprise 2.0 at work. No more complicated than shopping on Amazon, it allows users to communicate, collaborate and project manage in a clear, stress-free style.

  • Dolce&Gabbana Deploys Hippo CMS 7 for Its Blogzine Swide

  • WordPress Theme Thesis Maker Backs Down, Adopts GPL

    Chalk this one up as a victory for the free software movement: Thesis, the wildly popular proprietary WordPress theme from developer/designer Chris Pearson, is now available under a split GPL, the license that makes it possible to alter and redistribute this software as you see fit.

    Pearson’s decision marks the end of a high-drama clash between him and Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPressWordPressWordPress and of Automattic, which runs WordPress.com and a handful of related software. Some folks wondered if the battle of words might end in a battle of legal precedent as Mullenweg struggled to preserve free software principles and Pearson struggled to maintain control over his highly successful software.

• Joomla!

  • Public gain loudspeaker on future Joomla! features

    The project lead team behind open source content management system, Joomla!, is looking for greater contribution from the wider community on which features make the cut, and which are left for the future.

  • Joomla! the future

    With an estimated 10 to 50 million public websites running under Joomal and with 750,000 downloads per month it is an important open source project. Computerworld Australia caught up with co-founder and core developer, Andrew Eddie, about his own history as well as that of Joomla’s, and where the content management system is headed in the future.

  • The history of Joomla!: An in-depth chat with CMS core developer, Andrew Eddie

• Education

  • 4 Tips for Adopting Open Source Software in K-12

    IT directors interested in open source software have an ever increasing number of resources available for learning more about options, best practices, and pitfalls. Online communities, conferences, blogs, and Webinars all provide perspective.

    After a dozen interviews and review of even more online sources, THE Journal put together a list of tips for IT directors considering open source software (OSS) in their districts. The main take-away? Focus on what is needed and what will be accepted in any given situation–and the cost savings aren’t so bad either.

• Healthcare

  • How open source can improve health care

    David Riley, head of the CONNECT initiative for the Federal Health Architecture (FHA) Program. Riley is responsible for creating the product direction and overseeing product development for CONNECT.

  • Day one of the health care IT track at O’Reilly’s Open Source convention

    I think the collective awe of health care aficionados at the Open Source Convention came to a focal point during our evening Birds of a Feather session, when open source advocate Fred Trotter, informally stepping in as session leader, pointed out that the leaders of key open source projects in the health care field were in the room, including two VistA implementors (Medsphere and WorldVistA), Tolven, and openEMR–and not to forget two other leading health care software initiatives from the U.S. government, CONNECT and NHIN Direct.

• Semi-Open Source

  • Open Core Model Vulnerability Exposed?

    Clearly, individual OSI directors have been less than thrilled with the open core business model. Simon Phipps, in particular, made a pretty strong argument that open core was just plain bad for business. But, though Phipps is an OSI director, he wasn’t speaking in any official capacity on behalf of the OSI with these statements.

    This weekend, Russ Nelson, another OSI director and License Approval Chair posted an entry on the OSI Board Blog sharply criticizing open core. This falls under my definition of official response.

  • The story of R: a statistical tale with a twist

    Ihaka learned about the open source movement during his time at MIT. “That is really where free software came from, that is were Richard Stallman was and the free software foundation is still based in Cambridge I think. Those ideas were sort of hanging around in the air.”

• BSD

  • FreeBSD 8.1 Provides Evolutionary Open Source Software Upgrade

    Putting out new releases of OS software isn’t always about adding major new features — sometimes it’s just about making existing features usable and stable. In the case of the open source software FreeBSD, that’s certainly the case with the newly hatched 8.1 release.

• Project Releases

  • DHS, vendors unveil open source intrusion detection engine

    The Open Information Security FoundatThe Open Information Security Foundation (OISF), a group funded by the U.S Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and several security vendors, this week released an open source engine built to detect and prevent network intrusions.ion (OISF), a group funded by the U.S Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and several security vendors, this week released an open source engine built to detect and prevent network intrusions.

  • Livetecs Launches TimeLive 3.2.1 – An Open Source Time Tracking Software

    The main feature of the new version is a completely re-write of TimeLive with fully integrated set of tools for managing every aspects of projects.

  • The Apache Software Foundation Announces Apache FOP Version 1.0

• Government

  • Greens to use political power in push for open source software

    The Australian Greens will use any gain in political influence to push for more open source software procurement by Government, according to its spokesperson, Senator Scott Ludlam.

• Standards/Consortia

  • FFmpeg’s VP8 Decoder Blasts Google’s Decoder

    It was just back in May that Google opened up the VP8 video format that they got their hands on through the acquisition of On2 and at the same time they created the WebM container format. VP8 has already received a lot of love by the open-source community — both developers and end-users — and support for it has already worked its way into FFmpeg, GStreamer, and other multimedia projects. Google released the libvpx library as their official VP8 decoder library, but now the FFmpeg developers have created their own decoder and it’s shockingly faster than that of Google’s own open-source library.

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded

GNU/Linux

• Desktop

  • Ten Reasons to Dump Windows and Use Linux

    Now is a particularly good time to ditch Windows for good, for workstations as well as servers. For instance, now that Microsoft stopped supporting Windows Server 2003 on July 13, you’ll need to find something different to use for your servers. Whether it’s switching from Windows Server 2003 to 2008 or to Linux-based servers–or changing out tired and faulty Windows Vista desktops for the alien Windows 7 or something more user-friendly–Linux provides you with freedom and freedom of choice.

  • Linux: Retro Desktops

    I like messing around with my desktop. I decided to give it a retro Windows look. I used the Redmond theme, set all my fonts to Monospace 10, used a boring gray background, and tweaked my editor and terminal colors.

  • A Linux experiment gone horribly…perfect!

    After doing everything I (and the consultancy I work for) would have done, I determined that the best approach was to re-install the OS. Problem is, he couldn’t find his restore discs and (as I mentioned earlier) he didn’t want to shell out the money for Windows 7. This laptop was just going to be his spare laptop for home use (it was his primary laptop at work).

    I decided it was time for an experiment. I knew the laptop had a restore partition so if I left that partition alone we could still restore the machine back to factory defaults (if he could find his restore discs). So…it was time to bring out the big guns. Said big guns? Ubuntu 10.04. I was fairly certain 10.04 would work like a champ on the machine. It did. But the big test would be when the user had the machine in his hands and put it to use.

  • Disadvantages and advantages of Linux over Windows

    Linux is customizable. As the video for Compiz Fusion showed, the visual appearance of linux and the desktop environment can be extensively customized – and once again, this all can be done for free. In contrast, Windows has more limited customization. While there are programs that allow one to change the appearance of Windows dramatically, many of these programs are not free. Additionally, the capabilities for customization with linux extend past visual customization. Beginning users can stick with default settings, but more advanced users can dive deep within the system to tweak how it will work with their hardware, improving speed and power. In contrast, the Windows operating system is closed to a point, and tinkering is not supported or encouraged.

  • Deciding whether user-friendly Linux distributions is at the expense of core users

    The question is simple and understandable: does this shift to prepackaged, easy-to-use linux distributions alienate those who appreciate the ideals of linux’s origins? Do user-friendly linux distributions proliferate at the expense of the core users?

• Server

  • BitNami Offers Express Ticket to Open Source Stacks

    If you ever wanted to explore the latest content management, wiki, or microblogging products without the headache of setting them up, a free solution from the BitNami Project is just what you need.

    One of the benefits of free and open source software is the ability to download world-class software and implement it gratis on your systems. At times, though, there is a big difference between theory and action. Complex server systems, like Ruby on Rails, Tomcat, Joomla!, or even a straight-up LAMP stack can be difficult to install and properly configure on a Linux system, particularly for admins with a little-less-than-expert rating on Linux.

• Audiocasts

  • CAOS Theory Podcast 2010.07.23

  • Going Linux Jul 22: #109 – Computer America #28

• Applications

  • Canola Media Center Works Surprisingly Good in Ubuntu 10.04 “Lucid Lynx”

    Canola is a open source media center application which was primarily built for smart phones and netbook devices. To be frank, I had never heard about Canola before and so I decided to give Canola Media Center a spin in my laptop powered by Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx.

  • Simple Systems Administrators Toolbox

    My toolbox is very plain Jane, and for a reason. It’s basic because these are the tools that get the job done on every Unix-like platform available. Everything I’ve come to rely on is open source, even on proprietary platforms like AIX. If there’s a part of my toolbox missing, I’ll download the package or source and make sure it’s available.

  • Screen: A SysAdmin’s PowerTool

    gnuA major power tool that I left out of my sysadmin’s toolbox article is GNU Screen. Screen has been an absolute lifesaver in the past, especially because I sometimes work remotely over wifi connections that might not always be the most reliable. Screen is a session manager for shells, a way to run and preserve multiple shells without actually having to be connected to the server. The most common way I use screen is over ssh. When connected to a server over ssh, the bash session is run over that connection, so any programs or scripts that are run are also dependent on the ssh session being active. However, when screen is run, it runs in the background, separate from the ssh session. That means screen lets your wifi connection die in the middle of running a script without the script dying as well.

  • Dwarf Fortress for the console … sort of

    you can play Dwarf Fortress at the console, which is either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your perspective. The 40d19 version for Linux which was released a few months ago allows you to set some options and send output to the console instead of its conventional SDL “translation,” if I understand it right.

  • Feh is a fast, lightweight image viewer that uses imlib2.

    Feh is a fast, lightweight image viewer that uses imlib2. It is command line-driven and supports multiple images through slideshows, thumbnail browsing or multiple windows, and montages or index prints using TrueType fonts to display file information.

  • What’s happening in compizland?

    There are still a few more unofficial plugins to go until we have 100% feature parity with the 0.8 branch. Among some of the ones I’m working on right now:

    * Animations Plus
    * Newton (Physics Engine for Compiz)
    * Sound (ALSA based sounds on window events)

  • Gwibber Concept – Part 1

  • 5 Best Web eCommerce Software for Linux

    5 Best Web eCommerce Software for Linux: The buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks is called electronic commerce (commonly known as e-commerce or eCommerce). Today, eCommerce is mostly done on the web and is conducted entirely electronically for buying virtual items such as access to premium content on a website and purchase of physical items using eCommerce payment gateway.

  • Portable Linux Apps Which Work With Any Linux Distro

    New website PortableLinuxApps features a number of portable Linux applications, which will work on any Linux distribution. These can run off your flash drive or from a folder in your home directory; it doesn’t matter. Best of all, there’s documentation out there to help you make your own program, should you not be able to find what you’re looking for.

  • A GStreamer based Video Transcoder – Transmageddon

    GStreamer is a pipeline-based multimedia framework which provides an interface to programmers for writing various multimedia applications.

  • Proprietary

    • Cofio unveils AIMstor 2.2 to unify data protection technologies

      The new application also provides event notification for backup, continuous data protection (CDP), replication and file level activities; real-time tracking and alerts of user file system activities; and new support for Linux Master, Linux Client and Linux Deduplicated Repository.

    • Spectrum Introduces Linux-Based Signal Processing Platform

      The SDR-2010 is a very powerful and adaptable Linux-based signal processing platform. It is an Intel (News – Alert) 64 Architecture Server hosting the new high-performance PRO-2910 PCI Express based carrier cards. Each card has dual XMC/PMC sites.

  • Instructionals

    • Merge directories with unison-gtk

    • Convert Flv to Mp3 in Linux – FlvToMp3

    • Stupid afio Tricks

    • Remove Ubuntu One from Ubuntu 10.04

    • A Deadly Linux/UNIX Command in Action (Video)

    • Simply adding a Linux Partition via fstab

    • Not getting a package on Ubuntu?

    • RPM quickies – The Ultimate RPM Guide for Newbies!

    • How to install Sabayon 5.3 on a btrfs filesystem

    • Collaborate with Abiword

    • Expect great script automation from expect-lite

      Expect-lite is targeted at the verification testing environment; it produces a pass/fail result at the end of the script. However, its use is not limited to this environment. The tool is written in the Expect scripting language, but it requires no knowledge of Expect. In fact, it’s so simple it takes no more than five minutes to learn.

    • 5 More Websites To Learn More About GIMP Photo Editing

    • How to build a NAS box

  • Games

    • Sauerbraten “Cube 2″ 2010 Update Released

      If you are looking to do some Linux / open-source gaming this weekend but are looking for something new besides the recent release of VDrift, the Sauerbraten developers are out with their first update in 14 months. Sauerbraten 2010-07-19 “Justice Edition” has been released with plenty of changes.

    • Sleep is Death

      I’ve been meaning to mention this game for months now, so here it is: Sleep is Death is the latest game from indie developer Jason Rohrer, who also created the acclaimed games Passage, Between, and Primrose. As with his other projects, Sleep is Death is not a traditional game, focusing on two players crafting an interactive story akin to an online multiplayer Dungeons and Dragons session minus the players’ guides.

    • glc – The Linux FRAPS

      For those wondering, FRAPS is a Windows program that can be used to record video streams of applications running on your desktop, most often games. For instance, I’ve used FRAPS to grab a handful of cool videos while playing Live for Speed.

      Being able to record your desktop activities has many aspects – educational, tutorial and sometimes sheer bravado. There are circumstances where nothing short of a video demonstration is going to work.

    • Mac Gaming On The Rise

      The Reticule recently posted a new article on the rise of Mac and Linux gaming. The article included discussion of the release of Steam for Mac, as well as the importance of independent developers in keeping Mac and Linux gaming alive. Developers such as Spiderweb’s Jeff Vogel and Wolfire’s John Graham offered their comments about the benefits of supporting multiple platforms.

• Desktop Environments

  • K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

    • My first week on KDE, part 2 – A Review

      When I started looking at moving away from Ubuntu I was leaning toward KDE after the wealth of great screenshot I’d been seeing in the Ubuntu Forums monthly desktop screenshot threads. I was especially interested in the possibilities of Bespin, a theme/widget style for Qt4 that has knocked my socks off in some desktop screenshots. I’ll admit I haven’t played with Bespin much yet but I definitely need to track down the info I was given before so I could look into it. Logo for the K Desktop Environment (KDE)On the whole I’m really liking KDE. There’s a lot to learn, and I do have to relearn how to do some things in KDE but it’s definitely a learning curve worth climbing. One of the things you learn pretty quickly about GNOME is the fact that a lot of the configuration tasks are hidden away from the general user, and while the GNOME Configuration Editor and Ubuntu Tweak do help a lot there are some things, like screensavers, where all but the most basic things are not available, and even then you can easily have to deal with the command line to make further tweaks. If the tweaks are even doable under GNOME. With KDE there are user changeable options for just about everything, if you can figure out where to look. Unfortunately finding information isn’t as easy in KDE as it is in Ubuntu, which lets you search one in the Help app and get results in every installed app. In KDE I first have to know where I want to look and I’ve started in the wrong place a few times. I’ve also found the KDE help files aren’t nearly as in-depth as GNOME’s are so I’ve had to turn to my web browser a few times to find the information I need.

    • Using KDE 4 – Day 7

      Will I switch? I don’t know. What I do know is that starting Monday I am going to actively begin hunting for a good KDE distro that plays well with my WiFi card. I would LOVE to keep using this edition of Mandriva, but where I could probably find every package I need or install every utility I need from source I am less sure that I will be able to fix the suspend/resume +no wifi problem that I have.

      Because of the WiFi problem that I have in Mandriva I am going back to Ubuntu this weekend. For the sake of this series I stuck with Mandriva in order to use KDE4, but I cannot keep doing the reboot thing, I use suspend/resume a LOT.

      All in all this was a very informing exercise for me. I hope I was able to translate what I experienced this week in writing to you guys – if you have any suggestions on how to improve these seven day challenges let me know!

    • Why I’m not moving to KDE (yet)

    • Not Really The Best Approach

      Today I stumbled across Netrunner GNU/Linux Community Distro and it made me wonder about a few things.

      Originally, it was Ubuntu with out the “evil Mono(tm)”, now of course mainline Ubuntu has no mono either, so their USP was gone! So they changed their main idea.

      The latest release is based on Kubuntu (which makes it a 4th generation distro) and aims to improve the KDE that is provided by Kubuntu by, this is what really got me, integrating more of Gnome into KDE.

  • GNOME Desktop

    • Introducing The Board

      I’d like to present you The Board.

      [...]

      What is it made of? The Board is built on top of bleeding edge GNOME platform. It’s written in Javascript using the GObject Introspection-based Gjs. The UI is fully written with Clutter and Mx (with some small bits of GTK+ and Clutter-GTK+). It’s a nice example of how you can do cool apps using the GNOME platform nowadays.

    • Desktop in the Shell

      In the light of the upcoming GNOME 3, the more document-centric Shell and the browser-mode nautilus (instead of spatial mode), I wanted to remix my thoughts a bit.

• Distributions

  • Arch + XFCE: The perfect Desktop (for now)

    In the past week I’ve used Ubuntu 10.04, Mint 9, and Arch + GNOME, but Arch + XFCE seems to beat all of those.

  • Reviews

    • First Look: Jolicloud 1.0

      It’s been a while since our last review of the Jolicloud operating system, and since we just got a brand-new eMachines eM350 netbook (see it in the enclosed image) we thought to give you guys a glimpse into the new release of Jolicloud 1.0. As many of you already know, the distribution is not yet available for download as an ISO image. At the moment, Jolicloud 1.0 is only available as an upgrade option to selected users. But don’t despair, as it will be available for download by the end of the month!

    • Fastest OS on the world its Puppy 5 Lucid

      This is first review of Puppy 5 lucid which is Ubuntu based. It is the fastest OS I used ever,it feels better than DSL.So I am going to share my Experience with you.

      [...]

      Puppy 5 is a tremendous success. The boot sequence has been improved; it looks nicer, more polished and is more streamlined. The desktop is even more refined. You get tons of great programs. Then, there’s Quick pet. Everything works out of the box, including Wireless, Samba, multimedia playback. All of this in just 130MB.

  • PCLinuxOS/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • Myths Surrounding PCLinuxOS 2010

      #1 PCLinuxOS is a Mandriva Spinoff

      It was started with a Mandriva base, but over the years it has grown to different personality. Except for the beloved Control Center none of the components are borrowed from Mandy. PCLinuxOS 2010 is built from the ground up using the home grown repository. Tex and PCLOS devs have taken bits and pieces from Fedora, OpenSuse and Mandriva, even some of the patches used are from Debian, PLD and Chakra. Would you call it a respin of all these distros?

      The greatness of a modern linux desktop distribution lies in how well you integrate components, no matter from where they are taken, and how well you take decisions regarding choosing/upgrading the critical components and introducing new technologies. In this regards, PCLinuxOS is tightly integrated, well-put-together, stable and out-of-the-box usable distribution. It’s a respin of none!

  • Red Hat Family

    • ClearOS Enterprise 5.2 released

      The ClearFoundation has announced the release of version 5.2 of the enterprise edition of its open source Linux server, network and gateway solution. ClearOS, formerly known as ClarkConnect, is aimed at small businesses and distributed environments, and the latest release includes a number of updates, changes and new features.

    • Download ClearOS Enterprise 5.2 Now

    • Fedora

      • BETA: An Exploration of Fedora’s Online Open Source Development Community

        Research Purpose

        To find out how to maintain, sustain, and grow the Fedora Project’s online open source development community.

  • Canonical/Ubuntu

    • Ubuntu 10.04 Passes The Test

      As others have said, Ubuntu is the great beginner’s distribution, and now, after seeing how well my less than mainstream hardware was handled, I can say it should be the very first distribution anyone should try. [I did not always feel this way, as only last year I truly believed that there were fewer problems with OpenSuSE 11.2 versus any other distributions I have tried, which includes all the usual suspects, and few less popular ones, like Zenwalk]

    • Flavours and Variants

      • Seven Ubuntu Derivatives worth Checking Out

        I make a point of trying as many different variations of Ubuntu as I can, this way I can be informed when I recommend one version over another to friends and family. The following is a round up of my favorites I have found over my last three years in the world of Linux.

      • New Artwork For Lubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat [Screenshots]

        Lubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat, the unoficial LXDE flavor of Ubuntu got an artwork update last week. I’m posting this only now because I had some issues downloading the latest Lubuntu development ISO.

      • Manhattan OS (Based On Ubuntu) Makes It Easier To Convert Users To Linux [Review]

        Manhattan OS is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu created by Kevin McDole, a frequent WebUpd8 reader and commenter. Manhattan OS is in fact inspired by everything we post here, at WebUpd8. Initially I though this review would be really easy to do since I am very familiar with everything in Manhattan OS, but I then realized half of WebUpd8 is used in Manhattan so that would take like… a year for a full review. So we’ll do a light review only and for any application for which you want to find out more, just search for it on WebUpd8.

      • Peppermint

        • Peppermint Linux: An interesting approach

          There are so many Linux distributions out there. Some of them are pretty standard and some of them go well out of their way to try to bring something different to the table. I’ve seen just about every take on the Linux desktop. Today, however, I came across a distribution, Peppermint Linux, that added another new twist to the desktop. It’s nothing earth shattering. In fact, it really only takes advantage of a technology given to us by Mozilla Labs. That technology? Prism.

          [...]

          With just a bit of tweaking on the desktop I believe Peppermint Ice has a real winner on their hands. It’s a unique idea that needs just a bit more work to make for the ideal social desktop.

        • VPS.NET Is Proud to Announce its Sponsorship of Peppermint OS

          As one of the world’s top providers of virtual private server cloud hosting, VPS.NET is constantly researching and developing smarter and more intuitive services to meet these growing needs. As part of its commitment to innovation, VPS.NET is sponsoring the soon to be released Peppermint OS, a Linux-based operating system that is cloud/web application centric. VPS.NET will be providing the infrastructure for Peppermint OS’ online presence.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Embest announces Devkit3250 evaluation kit

    Embest has released an evaluation kit – the Devkit3250 – based on NXP’s LPC3250 ARM926EJ-S microcontroller, supporting by the Linux open-source operating system.

  • Nokia/MeeGo

    • BMW, GM, others choose MeeGo for in-car computers

      The nonprofit Linux Foundation on Friday said the GENIVI Alliance will go with the open-source MeeGo OS for its new In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) system. The decision gives automakers like BMW, GM and PSA Peugeot Citroen the new mobile platform and makes Delphi, GM, Intel, Magneti-Marelli, Visteon, Wind River and others the suppliers. IVI includes apps in vehicles that can be used by everyone in the car, including navigation, media, location-based services, and access to the Internet as well as media players and phones

  • Android

    • Vodafone 845 review

      One of the massive advantages of the Android platform is that it’s open source, so anyone can use it to load onto their phones.

  • Sub-notebooks

    • WebOS Netbooks in the tunnel

      Jon Rubinstein confirmed the Fortune Brainstrom Tech that netbooks running webOS platform are in the pipeline.

    • OLPC: What does the XO-1.5 HS look like?

      Ok, so you know about the XO-1.5 and you’ve been told about the XO-1.5 HS which is an X0 but with a different keyboard.

    • How can India build a $35 tablet? More details emerge

      On Friday I covered the $35 tablet prototype that the Indian government unveiled. Over the weekend, it’s been called everything from the “future of computing” to “devices [that] cannot compensate for [India's] crumbling education infrastructure and absenteeism of teaching staff.” A few more details have emerged, however, suggesting that this prototype is a lot closer to a reference spec than something that will see the light of day soon.

      I started digging into this a little bit further when a little birdie from Intel said “It doesnt add up – the sum of the parts is no where near the whole cost they are claiming…” Not a literal birdie, of course, but I’m waiting for an OK to attribute the quite reasonable statement to a source. Regardless, both the Times of India and thenextweb.com shed a bit more light on the device.