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Links 15/11/2010: Plans for Xfce 4.8, Preview of Debian 6, Linux Mint Has High Demand





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



  • Audiocasts/Shows

    • CAOS Theory Podcast 2010.11.12
      Topics for this podcast:

      *Our latest CAOS Special Report – Control and Community *Red Hat releases RHEL 6 *Symbian and Oracle highlight community challenges *The latest on government adoption of OSS from GOSCON *Open core issue continues, now with Linux and evil twins






  • Kernel Space

    • What's The Fastest Partition Scheme On Cheap Flash Media?
      You read the Fastest Flash article so you already know Ext4 can turbocharge your thumb drive. But you run Linux, so of course want even more! Is there anything else to do?


    • Graphics Stack

      • X.Org 7.6 Release Candidate 1 Is Finally Here
        Alan Coopersmith has announced the first release candidate of X.Org 7.6. Originally the X.Org 7.6 release was supposed to come in October, but that didn't happen and now into November we are finally seeing the first test katamari.






  • Applications



  • Desktop Environments



  • Distributions



    • New Releases



    • Red Hat Family

      • RHEL 6 has Nothing Noteworthy for Home Desktops
        Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Final shows up on 10th November 2010, almost 44 months after its previous major release (RHEL 5 was released on 14th March 2007). But at the time it came, it's already bit obsolete for desktop use. Of course, desktop has never been a sweetpot for Red Hat. But was it really tarnishing it's rock-stability by riding a few versions up on some packages? What was holding RH back from appropriating KDE 4.5 series, or for that matter jumping to GNOME 2.32? Sure, it must have backported some goodies from Fedora 13 and 14, but they work underneath, the worry is that it'll put on these DEs till, say, 7 to 10 years. Moreover, KDE has undergone many improvements from its 4.3 to 4.5 versions.




    • Debian Family

      • Preview: Debian 6 "Squeeze" (Part 4: Standard)
        It was a nice experience being able to have this much control over my system. Maybe this is why Arch is supposed to be so good. Stay tuned for a final[ish, but not really] report on the state of Debian-based Oxidized Trinity!


      • SimplyMEPIS Version 11 Alpha 1 (10.9.70) and antiX core
        That was the only issue that I ran into with the very first Alpha Build for the next SimplyMEPIS release. A lot of people reported a similar issue, so it is certain to get fixed in the very next Alpha Build, which will probably be available in a week or two.


      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • 8 Beautiful Linux/Ubuntu Wallpaper Packs You Should Take a Look
          We have featured a number of wallpaper collections here before which includes the likes of beautiful Ubuntu Maverick wallpapers, awesome Android desktop wallpapers etc. Now, here is a bunch of Linux/Ubuntu wallpaper packs among others you might like.


        • Flavours and Variants

          • Linux Mint 10 Download Links
            The release of Linux Mint 10 has brought more traffic than we’ve ever seen before, and sadly also much more than our server is able to cope with. We’ve got dedicated servers for the website, the blog, the forums and the seeding of the torrents, and even with that, we’re not able to face the traffic!


          • How to install Linux Mint 10 on a btrfs file system
            Linux Mint 10 is the first version of Linux Mint with built-in support for the B-tree File System (btrfs). Btrfs is one of the newest file systems in the Linux kernel. It is a copy on write file system with the following features: snapshotting and writtable snapshots, object-level mirroring and stripping, file system compression, multi-device support, online and offline file system checking, etc.


          • Linux Mint 10 Reviewed
            Linux Mint is arguably the front-runner when it comes to Linux distributions that target Windows users looking to migrate to linux. Now Mint has released a new version named “Julia”. Mint claims to be a user-friendly OS that just works for the average user; its forte being elegance, ease of installation and usability. It began in 2006, based on Ubuntu, and basically follows Ubuntu except in some important areas which we will discuss after installation.


          • Linux Mint 10: A beautiful rescue distro
            This is certainly a great rescue distro: easy to use, responsive, elegant, and functional. The only flaw I found is that it does not fit a CD...which is the same case of the alpha release of SimplyMEPIS 11. Is Linux moving to Live DVDs instead of Live CDs?










  • Devices/Embedded

    • Hacked Kinect Handles Photos, Minority Report Style
      With the open source driver for the Kinect released, it didn't take long for some Kinect hacks to surface. Now someone out there has used the open source Kinect driver to turn the device into a gesture-based multi-touch control device, allowing it to identify gestures that can be used to manipulate photos, similar to how it's done in the Minority Report film. Check out a video of it in action after the jump, and a clip from the Minority Report film to remind you of what we're talking about.


    • Mini PC touted for upgradeable design
      Xi3 Corporation announced a compact PC it claims will be readily upgradeable, thanks to the use of one board containing the processor and memory, along with two separate I/O boards. The Xi3 Modular Computer offers a choice of AMD processors, SSD (solid state disk) storage, 1080p video output, two eSATA ports, and an "Xm3dia" expansion port, the company says.


    • Sub-notebooks

      • Volunteers Report: OLPC Samoa School Deployments
        In May 2010, XO laptops from OLPC were deployed into two primary schools in Samoa - 48 XO-1.0 laptops to Laumoli Primary School children plus additional laptops to teachers and 27 XO-1.0 laptops to Paia Primary school children plus additional laptops to teachers. These schools are located on Savaii Island.








Free Software/Open Source



  • Monitoring with Nagios: New Online Training from the Linux Magazine Academy


  • Help me start a FOSS Tithing movement
    A tithe is a voluntary tax (often 10% of income), usually paid yearly to a religious organization. I'd like to adopt this concept for free and open source software (FOSS), which in many ways is like a religion.

    Please help me start a FOSS tithing movement. I've set up FOSSTithe.org to keep track of company pledges and amounts donated. I also set up a Google group for discussion.

    I'll go first: DuckDuckGo hereby pledges to tithe 10% of its income to free and open source software projects. I plan to keep this up indefinitely, i.e. as long as I'm in charge.


  • Web Browsers



    • Mozilla

      • Firefox Elementary Theme is Quite a Revelation
        We have seen other elementary based works before like Nautilus Elementary and the Elementary 2.0 GTK theme itself, but the elementary version of Firefox here quite stand apart. The latest update brings in a name change as well. From now on, it will be called as 'eFirefox'.


      • Firefox 4, How To Undo The Changes
        I have been working with the latest builds of Firefox 4 for the last two months. The browser has changed tremendously, both interface wise but also under the hood. The interface changes will likely split the Firefox user base. This article is for users who prefer the “old” interface and way of working the web browser. It looks at each change and offers alternatives or options to undo it. That obviously depends on the change at hand, and there may be changes that cannot be undone at all.






  • Databases



  • Oracle

    • LibreOffice Logo
      The LibreOffice project has a preliminary logo. The symbol aside, I see some issues with the type. The combination of the top of the 2nd f and the dot of the i is a little unfortunate. The b and r might work for body text, but not here. Setting Libre in bold only emphasises the unfortunate proportion of the 2 words (close to, but not quite the same width).


    • Apache's Java threats aren't new
      The Apache Software Foundation isn't very happy with Oracle leadership of the Java Community Process. They've gone so far as to issue a lengthy statement saying that if certain items and conditions don't change that they'll leave the JCP.




  • Project Releases



  • Programming





Leftovers



  • Security



  • Defence/Police/Aggression





  • Finance

    • Ireland's young flee abroad as economic meltdown looms
      Now he is forecasting mass mortgage defaults and an ugly popular uprising. The first stirrings are already visible, he says, with "anxiety giving way to the first upwellings of an inchoate rage and despair that will transform Irish politics along the lines of the Tea Party in America", giving rise to a new "hard-right, anti-Europe, anti-traveller party".




  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • The Tea Party is not new, or coherent. It's merely old whine in new bottles
      Lectures about fiscal responsibility from the occupants of a plush suite on the 20th floor of one of the fanciest hotels in Las Vegas stick in the craw like a slice of cantaloupe swallowed sideways. Appropriately, the Tea Party Express's open bar, trays of fruit and skyline view at the Aria hotel on election night smacked more of a corporate event than a political, let alone a populist, one.

      At one stage I turned to a man standing next to me and asked if he was a Tea Party supporter. "No," he said. "I was hoping you were." He was a state department official who had brought some foreign journalists in the hope of meeting some real Tea Party supporters to interview. But they couldn't find any. There is a reason for that.









Clip of the Day



Symantec on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6



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Credit: TinyOgg

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