Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• The flexibility of Linux

  I’ll admit, I’m somewhat interested in Google’s Chromebook concept. The Chromebook is Google’s spin on the “netbook”. Announced in May last year, Chromebook goes on sale in mid-June.

  The Chromebook runs Google’s Chrome OS, which is based on Gentoo Linux. While Linux has appeared on netbooks in the past (and were the only option on the very first netbooks) this is another example of the flexibility of Linux. You can use Linux as a base for almost any computing platform – it’s small, fast, and supports a variety of hardware.

• I shall build it and I shall call it gregBook

  Both my desktop and my laptop started working more slowly a few weeks ago. This indicated that something about the operating system (some version of Ubuntu Linux) changed in a bad way. Or, perhaps, since the slowness was mostly noticed in the web browser, the newer version of Firefox was somehow borked. It turns out that the latter is true to some extent because the developers of Firefox left Linux out in the cold with hardware acceleration (and despite the excuses for that I’m still annoyed … had the same issues applied to, say Windows, they would not have left Windows out in the cold). But that is a digression. It turns out that the cause was related to something I had installed that was related to the system. This little problem has been solved, but it brings up another issue, which has also been addressed on the blog Linux in Exile. This is what I wanted to talk about.

• Linux vs Other Operating Systems : 7 common myths busted

  Myth 1: Linux is just for geeks

  Linux is for everyone. While Linux based distributions like Ubuntu, Linux Mint and Fedora are developed with the non-technical user in mind, Slackware and others appeal to the more geeky ones. Believe it or not, installing Ubuntu is actually easier than a Windows installation , and using it requires no special skills.

  Myth 2 : Linux can’t handle Excel, Word, Powerpoint

  Linux can handle all the major file formats when it comes to documents as it comes with a powerful opensource Office suite called Openoffice.org (soon to be replaced by Libreoffice). So, apart from doing all the spreadsheets, presentations, and word processing out of the box, Linux can do tasks like publishing, image editing using only free and open source applications.

• Google’s Chromium OS on the Desktop

  That didn’t take long. A manufacturer plans to release a small desktop PC with Chromium OS in July. It’s Xi3 and their modular PC. One of the modules will be a Chromium OS…

• Kernel Space

  • Help me come up with good questions for Linus at LinuxCon Japan 2011

    My previous plea for help worked out very well. The resulting video of the talk can be seen here, with one of the highlights being the phrase, “It is cheaper to work upstream in the kernel” from Dirk Hohndel who works at Intel. There’s a summary of the talk on lwn.net over here if you don’t want to sit through the whole video.

• Applications

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • How to Use GNU Screen

    • How to Convert Videos in Linux with Arista

    • VBoxHeadless – Running Virtual Machines With VirtualBox 4.0 On A Headless Ubuntu 11.04 Server

    • How To Install A (Canon) Printer On Debian And Debian-Like Systems

    • INX : Command line and console Linux Live CD

• Desktop Environments

  • GNOME Desktop

    • The Ubuntu GNOME Remix — an ISO is imminent

      I hoped Ubuntu would do the right thing and start an official derivative featuring the GNOME 3 environment. That has not happened.

      But there is a new project, the Ubuntu GNOME Remix, offering a PPA today and an ISO install image at some point in the near future.

      The project aims for a Canonical endorsement, as seen on its “about” page:

• Distributions

  • Review: Zenwalk 7.0

    So what’s the verdict? It certainly is relatively user-friendly, and much more so than Slackware. It’s stable, and it definitely minimizes package redundancy. That said, it isn’t as fast as advertised, and the French and Japanese issues were annoying, considering that I thought I was downloading an English live medium (and I thought there would be different live media for different languages). Those are minor issues, though, and while I wouldn’t recommend it for a newbie, I would recommend it for anyone who wants the stability of Slackware without the hassle. Zenwalk isn’t the only kid in town, though; other Slackware-based user-friendly distributions with Xfce include Wolvix, Salix OS, and Vector Linux, so please do check those out too. You can the download Zenwalk install CD from here or the live CD from here.

  • Debian Family

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Skype Ubuntu Messaging Menu / NotifyOSD Integration

        • Ubuntu Sound Gallery could make finding and installing sound themes easy

          Have you ever installed a sound theme in Ubuntu? No? Well you wouldn’t be alone. Finding extra sound themes for Ubuntu is a task and half in and of itself, and that’s before the rather archaic installation process.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Phones

    • Android

      • Modders Make Android Work the Way You Want

        CyanogenMod is one of the biggest hacks to ever hit the Android mobile platform.

        It’s got an estimated 500,000 users. Many Android programmers use it as a starting point for their own coding projects. And according to the project’s founder, a number of Google employees have it installed on their Android devices.

        Essentially, CyanogenMod is a tricked-out version of the software you’re already running on your Android phone.

        Every Android-powered device comes running a version of the operating system, from 1.5 (Cupcake) all the way up to 3.1 (Honeycomb).

      • The Android Tablet Ecosystem Is In Need of Major Changes

        Huang made very clear that he thinks Android tablets have to come in at lower price points, emphasizing Wi-Fi over 3G for connections. Meanwhile, there are also strong concerns being voiced over the marketing of Android tablets, or rather, the lack of any unified marketing for them.

        That hasn’t stopped powerful new players from entering the Android tablet space, though. Dell has announced plans for an Android tablet, among several other hardware makers.

      • Google Deodorizes Sniffable Android Security Flaw

      • The Android Empire Rules the Smartphone World

        The Android platform tops the list in sales of smartphone operating systems for the first quarter of 2011, according to a report by market researcher Gartner (NYSE: IT).

        Total smartphone sales accounted for 23.6 percent of global handset units overall, and various phones sporting Google’s (Nasdaq: GOOG) Android OS took 36 percent of that market. They sold more than 36.3 million units in the quarter. Next in line was Symbian, taking 27.4 percent of the market share. Following were Apple’s (Nasdaq: AAPL) iOS platform with 16.8 percent and Research In Motion’s (Nasdaq: RIMM) BlackBerry platform at 12.9 percent.

Free Software/Open Source

• Weekend Project: Pre-Loading Maps for Open Source Navigation Apps

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Mozilla Firefox 5 Beta now out – that was fast!

    • Mozilla follows Chrome with add-on to hide navigation bar

      As we showed you yesterday, recent prerelease builds of Chrome 13 have an experimental new user interface option that allows users to hide the navigation bar. But Google isn’t the only browser vendor trying to shed toolbar pixels. Mozilla Labs has published an add-on that brings a similarly svelte design to the Firefox Web browser.

Leftovers

• Microsoft Fog lets users down again.

• Brain scans show Apple fans really are religious about Apple.. The use of any non free software is an act of blind faith and brand loyalty is irrational.

• Health/Nutrition

  • Forchlorfenuron alters mammalian septin assembly, organization, and dynamics. This compound is commonly used to increase fruit size, so buy organic until the long term effects are better known.

  • AMA publishes report on health effects of cell phone use.

  • The TSA’s secret “tests” of the X-ray body scanners were phony. They did not test a real scanner, and they kept important details of the test secret.

• Defence/Police/Aggression

  • US Citizens, please protest giving presidents the ability to launch military attacks at will.

• Cablegate

  • When the UK evicted the inhabitants of the Chagos Islands, it promised to maintain their buildings and plantations. It ignored that promise, reflecting its intention to stop them from ever returning home. A Wikileaks cable shows that the UK intended its marine conservation zone as an additional obstacle to their return.

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Fukushima 1 reactor core completely melted and is still an uncontrolled release. . Reliable prior estimates weeks ago were that radioactive iodine and cesium were roughly 50 to 70 of what came from Chernobyl.

    Nobody really knows where all the water is going, but it can’t be anywhere good.

  • Fukushima will be an uncontrolled release for at least six months, but people doubt the honesty of Tokyo Electric.

  • EU agencies have issued warnings to women and children over lower count levels but the US EPA raises acceptable levels and halts rain and milk monitoring [2]

    “I really am horrified,” said Daniel Hirsch, a nuclear policy lecturer at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “It’s quite staggering and it seems to be part of the pattern of the EPA trying to make sure that there are no measurements that could cause people to be concerned.”

  • UK plans to build nuclear reactors underestimate the availability of tidal power generators and overestimate its future costs.

  • The US will continue to subsidize big oil.

  • Coal Ash Index – mountains of unregulated toxic waste threaten lives, natural resources and property.

  • Toxic FEMA Trailers find their way to Alabama Tornado Victims – from one global warming disaster to another.

• Finance

  • A Senate committee has laid out the evidence against big US banks. Now the Justice Department should bring criminal charges

  • New York State is investigating big banks for their roll in the housing bubble.

  • Matt Taibbi — ‘Wall Street a threat to America’

  • Goldman Traders Tried to Manipulate Derivatives Market in ’07, Report Says

    Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) mortgage traders tried to manipulate prices of derivatives linked to subprime home loans in May 2007 for their own benefit, according to a U.S. Senate report.

    Company documents show traders led by Michael J. Swenson sought to encourage a “short squeeze” by putting artificially low prices on derivatives that would gain in value as mortgage securities fell, according to the report yesterday by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The idea, abandoned after market conditions worsened, was to drive holders of such credit-default swaps to sell and help Goldman Sachs traders buy at reduced prices, according to the report.

  • The People Versus Goldman Sachs

    Apparently, Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi will not rest until some Goldman Sachs executives are behind bars. He will not rest until the tarnished company’s reputation lies in tatters on the floor. These goals are admirable. Give Taibbi an ‘A’ for effort. Unfortunately, these noble goals, as much as we might hope for their fulfillment, are unachievable.

  • A New Wall Street Investigation: Is the Hammer Finally Coming Down?

    Got a chance to meet Josh Rosner (co-author, with Times reporter Gretchen Morgenson, of the new book Reckless Endangerment) last night during an appearance on Eliot Spitzer’s In the Arena. We were brought in to talk about the new investigation of the banks that apparently is being launched by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, which looks like it might be the first for-real attempt at a prosecution of the systemic corruption that led to the financial crisis.

    Schneiderman’s probe, news of which came out yesterday in this piece by Morgenson, reportedly targets the banks’ mortgage securitization process during the bubble years. Morgenson reported that Schneiderman is focused on at least three companies: Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and old friend Goldman, Sachs.

• Civil Rights

  • Wisconsin Firefighters and Police now on chopping block while rich political campaign contributors isolate and reward themselves with bonuses.

  • Hautala report on access to documents

    Hautala’s draft report on public access to documents for the years 2009-2010 has been published. The report concerns implementation of the regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 on public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents.

    Lisbon Treaty introduced a new constitutional framework of EU institutional transparency by establishing a firm fundamental right of access to documents of EU institutions. Now the Regulation does not only cover the Parliament, the Council and the Commission, but also all other EU institutions and agencies.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • Google stops digitizing old newspapers under pressure from publishers who want to sit on them. [2] The rich and powerful would prefer we forget the lies they told in the past. Every local library should offer this service. PJ adds:

      shame on the newspapers for ruining everything. … Look what these newspapers want to charge you to read an article that didn’t cost even half that if anything at all at the time. … $2.95 to read one single article. Imagine you are some not exactly rich researcher and you are trying to find out what happened to write a book. You can’t afford to do it. … $359.95 for a year’s pass to read anything for 90 days. They call it Pay-per-View. And Google did the digitization for them.

    • The stupidity of our copyright laws is finally laid bare

      Watching British politicians engage with technology companies is a bit like listening to maiden aunts wondering if they would look better in thongs. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, to name just two such aunts, fantasised that Microsoft was cool, and spent years trying to associate themselves (and New Labour) with Bill Gates – even going to the lengths of making the Microsoft boss an honorary knight. Then we had the equally ludicrous spectacle of Cameron and co believing that Google is cool, which is why its CEO, Eric Schmidt – who for these purposes is the Google Guys’ representative on Earth – was an honoured guest at Cameron’s first party conference as leader. Given that, it’s only a matter of time before Ed Miliband discovers that Facebook is the new cool. And so it will go on.

Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• Desktop

  • New Linux Laptop from ERACC – Self-Review

    The user ordered a serial Express Card for use to control some hardware that needs a serial connection. He said the serial control is not something that is a critical need, just desirable. This needs to work from within the Windows 7 Professional VirtualBox virtual machine. The serial express card is working just fine from Linux. I connected a MultiTech 56k MultiModem to the serial port and used minicom to send AT commands to the modem. I was able to control the modem from minicom. Unfortunately I could not get Windows 7 in the VirtualBox virtual machine to use the serial port. I tried every permutation of serial configuration over a period of about two days and never got Windows 7 to “see” the serial port. The client is going to keep the Express Card so we can keep trying to get it working with remote support. This is in the “iffy” section because it may work in the future even if it is not working now.

    The good. Everything else I was able to test works. The sound is working. The wireless NIC connected to our wireless router and pulled an IP address from the wireless router after I entered the WPA2 security information. The wired NIC, when connected to our LAN switch, pulled an IP address from our Linux internet gateway. The DVDRW drive is working to read and write DVDRW discs. USB ports are working. The external headphone and microphone jacks work. I do not have any eSATA hardware, so could not test the eSATA port. As already reported above, the Express Card port works. Even the 1.3 Megapixel Web Camera works. I started Kopete and ran the video configuration to test this.

  • Linux Desktop vs. The Rise of Tablet Computers and Smartphones

    There of course, is no problem with competition. However, with the rise in the consumption of smartphones and tablet computers, the importance of desktop is slowly waning. Linux on the other hand, is just starting out on its quest for world domination. Will Linux be able to match these new and ‘viral’ trends in technology? Or, will it go down as an operating system that was never meant for normal users? If you ask me, I think Linux has a fair chance of beating the hell out of these tablets and smartphones. Here’s my side of the argument:

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • Linux Outlaws 208 – Mint for Pillow?

    This time on Linux Outlaws: More PSN troubles, Microsoft buys Skype, more controversial stuff from Shuttleworth, Miguel de Icaza tries to save Mono, Google adopts Arduino and much, much more…

  • KDEMU Swidish Meatballs with Krammeberry Sauce

    In this episode: Prince Guillermo A. Amaral (gamaral) Duke Paul Adams (padams) Kevin Krammer (krake) Kevin Ottens (dr_ervin)

• Kernel Space

  • Using Kernel Linux 2.6.39

    As soon as the new stable kernel has been released by Linus Torvalds, i downloaded them and install it on my workstation few days ago. It was a nice release, and one thing i would like to test is the new EXT 4 SMP scalability and also further performance improvements after they removed the BKL (Big Kernel Lock) and many other patches from the kernel developers. At that time, i didn’t install it on my desktop first, since i’m not really sure whether the current NVidia driver already supported this new kernel or not.

  • Graphics Stack

    • A Tiny Wayland Compositor Emulates Four Displays

      One of the Clutter tool-kit developers has announced a tiny Wayland compositor that was written and it provides support for multiple display emulation. This Wayland compositor is capable of emulating four displays and for now basically serves as a technical example.

    • Bumbleebee brings NVIDIA Optimus graphics switching to Linux

      NVIDIA’s Optimus technology allows laptops with the latest Intel chips and NVIDIA graphics cards to automatically switch between Intel’s integrated graphics and NVIDIA’s higher performance graphics depending on what programs you’re running. This allows you to get better battery life when you don’t need bleeding edge graphics, while giving you the ability to play high performance video games without rebooting your computer to manually switch graphics cards.

• Applications

  • A gray area: darkstat

    I don’t know if I should really call darkstat a console program or not. For what I saw, there was very little that it did at the console, with most of the attention going to its web-style output.

  • New Version for Xnoise Brings Tags Editing and Subtitles
    Support

    New version for lightweight music player Xnoise brings tag editing and subtitles support for video playback.

  • Recommended Linux productivity software

    Hopefully, some of you may find the compilation useful. If nothing else, it gives you an insight into how I think and work, which might not be that bad of a model for emulating, after all. More importantly, though, it exposes a wealth of resources, including tutorials and reviews, which could help you get around your Linux.

  • Proprietary

    • Ninite automates installation of Windows, Linux apps

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • #Re-Add The Weather Indicator To Ubuntu 11.04′s Panel

    • Create a New Shell With Two sh-bangs?

    • DocFetcher : Simplifying searches

    • Another gray area: Ascii Sector

    • wget with username and password: access password protected sites

  • Games/Proprietary’

    • 0 A.D. Alpha 5 Released!

      The awesome folks over at Wildfire have let loose 0 A.D. Alpha 5 codenamed Edetania

    • 4 Proprietary game from Ubuntu software center

      Usually i never open Ubuntu software center, i use aptitude or apt-get, casually the other day i opened it and i noticed that in the what’s new area there were some proprietary games.

    • The Fatal Error of Depending on ‘Proprietary’ Software

      Rather than sticking to the UK, about which I know little except for some history and my ancestors escape from the place 150 years ago, consider the world. It is hard to find numbers about one country but M$ files these wonderful summaries about the world…

    • Counterstrike : Condition Zero on Fedora !

      It’s been a really really long time since I played on my system last. Actually, it’s been a very long time since I played a PC game at all. I used to be an avid gamer a few years back, and Counterstrike and Age of Empires were my favourites.

    • Invasion of the Blobs

      Phil Hassey author of the Galcon Fusion games has releases his Ludum Dare Game Jam competition entry, which is free to download on the following platforms Windows, Linux, Mac, Android and IOS.

• Desktop Environments

  • Revisiting the tabbed desktop

    One of the things I had time to try, but didn’t have time to write about, was a revisit to someone else’s idea. I do that quite often, now that I think about it.

    This time it was urukrama’s tabbed desktop from a couple of years ago. Things like that tend to roll around in my mind, and then bubble up after a while.

  • Where ends the Workspace and where begins the Application?

    When we look at the thread, we can distinguish three groups of people participating:

    1. Users – they either like or dislike the behavior
    2. Application developers – they consider the behavior as a bug which breaks their application. They want the behavior either weakened or disabled by default
    3. Workspace developers – they consider the behavior as a feature provided by the workspace. It is not a bug that the window can be dragged. No application gets broken by it; in the worst case it’s an annoying, but very consistent behavior.

  • Desktop Summit Team Unveils Exciting Program of Talks

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

    • Open Governance Roles and Responsibilities

      Last week, in my blog on the Maturity Level List and in the previous week’s Maturity Levels, I left some indications of what would be expected of a maintainer of a portion of the Qt codebase. In this blog I’d like to explain a bit more what’s expected of people working via the Qt Open Governance, what roles will exist and what responsibilities will each have.

    • Activity config UI for Contour and Active

      this short video shows the new ui for the configuration of an activity: right now you can configure the activity name and wallpaper, probably more options to come (even tough it will remain as simple as possible). It is accessed by a button on the activity switcher weel or from the activity itself (if the used Plasma containment provides a config button)

    • Meet the Gang!

      In between demoing his comic art and joining in the discussions during the meeting, an artist’s hands are never idle! So Animtim prepared this little collection of Krita hackers and artists… Only he himself is missing! So meet the gang, rendered by the Sketch brush!

• Distributions

  • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • Mandriva Application Manager – New look & feel

      Another screencast preview of the new Mandriva Application Manager (the name may be changed to Mandriva Package Manager or else, once we plan to have a web version, more focused on applications) has been published at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHKDpl8UKMQ . It maintains some features from the original design but is more native oriented. One of the main difference is that now instead of Get,

    • Mageia Linux Overview (rc) [flash]

    • Mageia RC1 is released! “Mandriva Fork”

    • Final release approaching now: RC available for last tests

  • Red Hat Family

    • Fedora

      • Fedora Greeters

        I’ve been watching the Ubuntu “power users” group set up with enormous interest. Although Ubuntu has aimed squarely at being easy to use, I’ve never seen it as being particularly unfriendly toward power users, and the idea of needing a specific area in which people can talk about power user issues seems somewhat odd. However – judging from the activity, it seems to have hit a real nerve. Whether or not it is a good idea in the long term remains to be seen: I’m firmly of the opinion that splitting communities into factions is a bad idea, so how they will overcome that in time will be a challenge, but clearly it’s meeting a real need.

        [...] the need for Fedora to be open and welcoming is more important now than ever.

  • Debian Family

    • Stepping Outside the Repository

      Package management and the repositories of software in distributions like Debian GNU/Linux are one of the great features of GNU/Linux. For most individuals and organizations, installing and updating packages from the repositories will be the best way to manage IT. Most of the work is done by the package managers and the end-user can do periodic or instant updates according to his needs.

    • Love of Money is the Root of all Evil

      The state of MA, whose IT is run by that other OS even fell prey to this thing and, for weeks, account information and access to accounts was given to a band of thieves. The malware hid itself and used multiple APIs of that other OS to infect PCs on the LAN and every USB drive inserted. Isn’t it time for this nonsense to end? Use Debian GNU/Linux and take control of your PC.

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Psensor 0.6.2.8 Released, The Best Way to Display System Temperatures in Unity

          Psensor 0.6.2.8 has been released and is now available in its unstable repository. Psensor is a graphical temperature monitoring tool for Linux. Psensor has already been added to Ubuntu 11.10 archives so it will be available to download from software center in Oneiric.

        • Evolution 3.0 in Ubuntu 11.04

          With the great GNOME 3 PPA for Ubuntu, you get most of the GNOME3 desktop.

        • Meet Unico, The New GTK3 Theme Engine in Ubuntu 11.10

          Gnome 3 stack is steadily landing into Oneiric. Work is also being done to port default themes Ambiance and Radiance to GTK3.

          Light themes in Oneiric will most likely use Unico theme engine and not Murrine as some style guidelines for GTK3 themes have changed. Unico was actively developed in past but the work stopped as the new overlay scrollbars in Natty took precedence. Unico engine is already present in Official Ubuntu 11.04 repositories but that should be only meant for testing purposes as it is far from being finished. However, the development has resumed now.

        • Data From Canonical…

          “We will pre-load well over 10 million PCs with Ubuntu this year and we are more than doubling users every year in India and China.”

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Will Mint be the new Ubuntu?

            I’ve been sick. Or, as our British-speaking readers might say, I’ve been ill. Just about as ill as you can be and still manage to drag yourself in to work. Congestion, fever, sore throat, ugly disgusting gunk ejected in huge heaving coughing fits. Lost my voice, too, more or less. Not completely, but enough that I sound like a bullfrog. Ill.

            This is to explain the stasis.

            But to break the stasis, I bring you soaring praise of Linux Mint 10.

            As regular readers may remember, I switched my laptop to Mint 10 two weeks ago. The more I use it, the happier I am with it. It has been absolutely rock stable, no interface glitches whatsoever. It boots fast, it looks great (although part of that is my doing, from tweaking the fonts and themes and adding Docky and such). I’ve grown fond of the Mint menu and am starting to prefer it over the default Gnome menu. Applications look great and come up fast. KDE apps work and look fine too. It never crashes, never locks up. Nothing breaks it. Even the shutdown splash – traditionally a crapshoot in Ubuntu-based distros since they adopted Plymouth – works consistently.

            It just works.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Phones

    • Android

      • T-Mobile plans huge summer Android splash, according to leaked roadmap

        T-Mobile has an aggressive lineup of predominantly Android-based smartphones planned for this summer, starting with the 4.3-inch HTC Sensation 4G on Jun 8, followed later by a slider version of the MyTouch 4G, according to a leaked roadmap. Meanwhile, Android continued to make gains in the latest Millennial Media and Gartner studies, with Gartner pegging Android’s global 1Q smartphone share at a dominating 36 percent.

  • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

    • Dell’s 10.1-inch Streak Pro tablet breaks cover

      Dell is set to roll out its long-rumored, 10.1-inch Streak Pro tablet in June with Android 3.0, according to an industry report. The business-focused tablet is said to run on an Nvidia Tegra 2, and offers dual cameras and up to a 64GB solid state drive (SSD).

Free Software/Open Source

• Read-only nation: can Open Source change the British way?

  We asked if open-source software had a part to play in increasing technological innovation in the UK. It seems that for a nation with such a great engineering heritage, we have too easily passed the tech leadership flag over to the US and to the emerging economies.

  Steve George from Canonical speculated that open-source software could inspire more people to engage with technology, and that the UK’s firmly closed-source infrastructure could be stifling innovation, making us less competitive on the global stage.

  And then you, the beloved readers of El Reg, joined the fray.

  Most people seem to agree that the UK could be doing better. Oliver Jones offers the following: “In computing terms, I have long thought of the UK as being a ‘read-only’ nation. They love shiny Apple products and Sony PlayStations, but have zero interest in learning how to make something better.

• Open-source platforms benefit developer and user

  As a software developer for federal agencies, our company might have reason to be afraid of a new trend — giving away software products for free. Sounds like a losing business model, doesn’t it?

  But, in fact, we think it’s a great idea for government and our company.

  How government benefits…

• Events

  • 2011 FOSDEM & Embedded Linux Conference videos published

    The team at embedded Linux site Free Electrons have published videos from this year’s Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting (FOSDEM) and Embedded Linux Conference (ELC). The eleventh annual FOSDEM event took place on 5 and 6 February in Brussels, Belgium, and the Embedded Linux Conference was held on 13 and 14 April at the Hotel Kabuki, San Francisco.

  • Solutions Linux & LinuxTag 2011

    I was traveling last week to attend two events: Solutions Linux in Paris and LinuxTag in Berlin. It was a bit unfortunate that they happened during the same week, as they conflicted for two days — which means I missed some days for both events. And on top of that, the Ubuntu Developer Summit was also last week, which resulted in some people missing the events…

    Compared to last year, both events had a quite visible difference in terms of number of visitors. I’m not exactly sure why this is so; it could be because there were conflicts with other events, or also because they moved to first half of May, which is different from previous years.

    What was most amazing, however, was to be present at booths just one month after the GNOME 3.0 release. For both events, we had tons of GNOME 3 PromoDVDs (kindly offered on behalf of the openSUSE project) to give away, and that was a big success: I think we gave around 600 of them at Solutions Linux and probably a similar amount, if not more, at LinuxTag (Tobias would know better than me here).

  • Gentoo LinuxTag 2011 and static gallery generators 2011-05-21

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Firefox 5 Beta Is Here, What’s New?

      So what’s new in Firefox 5? The release notes mention support for CSS animations as the only new technology included in the release.

    • The Next-Generation Browser: No URL Bar

      Being able to type the address of a website is one of the most essential features we expect from web browsers today. Yet it is the URL bar and its purpose that is now being reconsidered by both Google as well as Mozilla for Chrome and Firefox. The next major revision of web browsers will include options to hide the URL bar. Further down the road, it is inevitable that the URL bar will become what it is supposed to be: A tool – not more and not less.

    • What’s Inside Mozilla’s Firefox 5 Beta?

      Mozilla has released the first Firefox beta under its new rapid-release model: a program designed to ensure more frequent updates to the browser at the expense of huge, sweeping changes between new Firefox versions.

      Case in point—the company just sent Firefox 5 from the newly designed Aurora development channel to the public-facing Beta channel. That means that it’s available for public consumption and feedback. However, the list of new features might seem a bit scant at first, especially if one takes into account the historical jumps that have previously occurred between Firefox version numbers.

      “The shift to a rapid release development cycle delivers cutting edge Firefox features, performance enhancements, security updates and stability improvements to users faster,” reads the blog post announcing the Firefox 5 beta release.

• CMS

  • Chris Rock using Drupal

    A lot of the recent “scores” I’ve listed on this site have been from serious institutions: ING, Investor.gov, The U.S. Small Business Administration, and The World Economic Forum.

    But don’t think for a moment that Drupal’s losing any ground in other areas. I was in NYC recently, the mecca of the media and entertainment industry, and Drupal is about to get really big there — that’s food for another blog post that I’m planning to write.