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Links 21/02/2009: Compiz 0.8.0, Ubuntu 9.10 Called Karmic Koala



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Contents





GNU/Linux

  • 10 things you need to know about Linux if you are coming from windows


    What you need to know about Linux if your coming from windows: 1. There is no registry in Linux

    In windows there is the registry, the registry is a database which keeps all your settings. If you want to change anything not in a menu (or in a menu) you need to use the regedit program. Or a script. In Linux there is no such thing as a registry.

    2. In Linux everything is a file

    [...]


  • eBook and Comic Book Reader, Organizer for Linux Hits 1.0


    Radical Breeze announces the immediate availability of RadicalCodex 1.0.

    RadicalCodex 1.0 is an eBook and digital Comic Book organizer and reader specifically built for Linux.


  • Blueman 1.0 Brings Better Bluetooth to Linux


    Linux only: Blueman, the Bluetooth manager for many Linux desktops, has update to provide a friendlier, easier means of connecting your phones, earpieces, and even 3G/EDGE-connected devices to your system.


  • Linux comes to Windows users' rescue


    I recently got a note out of the blue from another technology journalist. He wrote, "I know I'm often critical of Linux, but I'm SOOOOO GLAD I installed Ubuntu on my laptop. I installed some patches to Vista and now Vista won't boot, not even in Safe mode. Uggh!"

    He continued, "So now I've booted the computer up to Ubuntu and can start figuring out what's wrong. Meanwhile, I discovered a great tool called Unison and I've mounted my Windows drive and I am using Unison to back up everything to a 300-gig external hard drive before I start tearing Windows apart... just in case. I guess I have my afternoon's plans made."




  • Events

    • Tour of LinuxFest Northwest 2008


      Near the end of every April Bellingham Washington’s technical college hosts LinuxFest Northwest. This video is some of what we saw last year, with LinuxFest Northwest around the corner we thought it would be a good time to show all what it is about!


    • Nothing on the Agenda? How About an Open Source Weekend?


      Are you interested in open source software? Do you use Ubuntu at all? Will you be passing through the Los Angeles area later today or tomorrow? Think you'll be spending any time over the next two days near a computer with an internet connection? Are your weekend plans peppered with a few small gaps (or wide open expanses) of free time?


    • Libre Graphics Meeting launches community fundraising campaign


      The Libre Graphics Meeting (LGM) is an annual workshop for developers and users of free software graphics applications to collaborate and advance the cause of high-quality free graphics software. From now until April 22, you can help support this event by making a donation to the LGM 2009 community pledge drive. LGM is free to attend, so your support is critical to making this important event a success.






  • Media Centre





  • Graphics

    • [ANNOUNCE] xf86-video-ati 6.11.0


      xf86-video-ati 6.11.0

      Highlights: - - Lots of bug fixes since 6.10.0 - - Crtc/output/encoder rework - - Render repeat mode fixes

      6.12.0 will be soon to follow with accel support for r6xx/r7xx chips

      Alan Coopersmith (2): Remove xorgconfig & xorgcfg from See Also list in man page Add README with pointers to mailing list, bugzilla & git repos


    • [compiz] [ANNOUNCE] compiz-0.8.0


      New plugin "commands" that handles the bindings for arbitrary commands that previously were handled in core. In addition to the previously present key bindings button and edge bindings were added as well.






  • KDE Plasma

    • PlasMate


      Plasmoids in KDE 4.3 will be a lot easier and nicer to make as a result of these people using it and giving us feedback. Between now and then we're starting to see the beginnings of some cool little widgets written in Python, Ruby and Javascript.


    • More on Plasma in 4.3


      Coming out of Tokamak, the Plasma team has been setting goals for 4.3, putting together Summer of Code ideas and writing code for 4.3 that generally kicks ass and takes names later. Expect noticeable improvements to extenders, theming, layout flexibility, performance and general I-can't-believe-it's-not-butter-ness.

      A few big picture things we're also starting to focus on in a more serious fashion now that the 4.0->4.2 journey is firmly lodged in the year known as 2008 include (other than content creation tools, which I covered in my last blog entry) the educational desktop, a netbook/MID appropriate interface and a simple media center mode for the traditional desktop set up.






  • Distributions

    • Knoppix: live CD par excellence


      Knoppix is another classic example of the innovation that can come about when good code is avaiable under user-friendly licences like the GPL.




    • Ubuntu

      • Canonical’s April 2009 Surprise: More Than Ubuntu 9.04


        When Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) arrives in April 2009, Canonical plans to introduce a separate surprise as well — a new version of Landscape (image courtesy of Canonical). Never heard of Landscape? That will change in April 2009.


      • Introducing the Karmic Koala, our mascot for Ubuntu 9.10


        Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce the *Karmic Koala*, the newest member of our alliterative menagerie.

        When you are looking for inspiration beyond the looming Jaunty feature freeze, I hope you'll think of the Koala, our official mascot for Ubuntu 9.10. And if you'll bear with me for a minute I'll set the scene for what we hope to achieve in that time.


      • Ubuntu 9.10 is named Karmic Koala, will eat tasty eucalyptus


        Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth has announced plans for Karmic Koala, version 9.10 of the Ubuntu Linux distribution. It will include improved support for cloud computing, better netbook compatibility, and faster boot time.


      • Easy Steps to Rip a DVD to ISO in Ubuntu 8.10


        An ISO file is the easiest and most universal method for backing up a DVD. The file is an archive file specifically for DVD VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS files, and is an exact copy of the disc. ISO files can be quickly burned to a new dvd using standard burning software, making it the optimal choice for storing backups.

        In Windows, third-party software is the only way to backup a DVD. Luckily, Ubuntu Linux has removed this need, and as a result, you can backup your dvds using a standard feature built into the OS --no software or Terminal required.








  • Devices/Embedded

    • Chinese thin clients run Linux


      A ShenZhen China-based manufacturer is shipping several thin clients that run embedded Linux and target educational, government, business, taxation, and medical organizations. SZ Bencse Electronic Technology (Bencse) offers the entry level J5200, plus four higher-end H-5800 models, and ships worldwide at affordable prices, it says.




    • Phones

      • Asus has team working on Android netbooks


        ASUSTEK COMPUTER HAS A TEAM WORKING on developing a netbook which will run Google's buckshee open source Android operating system, according to business publication Bloomberg.


      • Open-source systems battle for market


        Meanwhile, the LiMo Foundation — a consortium of more than 50 companies including operators Vodafone and Telefonica, the applications designer Azingo and systems integrator Wind River committed to the development Linux-based open source software — is preparing to launch new handsets through six of its operators by the end of the year.


      • Access Linux Platform 3.0 live, in person, and oh-so-full of widgets


        We got a quick look at the latest version of the Access Linux Platform (ALP) today, running on an early build of TI's OMAP 3-based Zoom hardware. Access seems excessively enthused with widgets, and really isn't doing a bad job at them, featuring transparency galore and even a second home screen for housing a separate set of them (perhaps "work" or "home" or "really great world clocks").


      • ACCESS Linux Platform 3.0 unveiled


        ACCESS has unveiled the next major version of its Linux-based mobile software platform. The ACCESS Linux Platform (ALP) 3.0 brings a significant user interface overhaul with support for rich visual effects.






    • Sub-notebooks

      • Can Cellphones Grow Up to Rival PCs?


        Netbooks have been a rapidly growing category of computers, mainly because they are more portable and typically cost $400 or less. So far they have been mostly based on Intel’s Atom chip, which uses its X86 instruction set and thus can run Windows. Some manufacturers, including ASUS and Hewlett-Packard have also offered versions of their netbooks that run Linux, but these have not yet been popular in the market.

        Some argue this will change as the combination of an ARM processor and Linux may allow netbooks to be sold for $200 or less.


      • HP Mini 1000 Mi Comes With Friendly Linux Distro


        HP has recently announced a sought-after Linux version of its popular Mini 1000 consumer netbook. Basically, much of the internals are similar to the other versions of the Mini 1000. However, the selling point of the Mi version, which stands for Mobile internet, is the Linux OS dressed up in nice clothes by HP.

        On the HP Mini 1000 Mi, the company chose to bundle Ubuntu, one of the most popular Linux distributions on the market. Nevertheless, HP listened to netbook costumers regarding their experience with Linux. Hence, average users simply won’t get the awkward feel of using Linux, as they feel on the Linpus Linux on the Aspire One or on the Xandros OS on the EEE PC series. Instead, the company developed a very appealing interface, which gathers all the internet, email and multimedia tasks on its home screen.


      • ARM 'will beat Intel on power drain and price'


        ARM-based netbooks will beat those using Intel's next-generation Moorestown platform on price, match it on performance, and enable a new class of device costing as little as $150 (€£100), the UK chip designer has predicted.








Free Software/Open Source

  • Getting Lucene Down to Business With Lucid Imagination


    Lucene open source software has provided the building blocks for enterprise search technology for a few years. Now, it has a commercial backer. Lucid Imagination hopes that putting itself out there as the business face of Lucene will convince more enterprises to build software upon it -- especially when budgets tighten and open source becomes a more attractive option.


  • Petition - Free and Open Source OS's In Schools


    Personally for me this is a no brainer however i'm sure someone will disagree with me at some point, if you think that more Free and Open Source OS's should be in Schools then get your name on the petition.


  • Mozilla: Sometimes govt. is answer to Microsoft


    Despite this success, Baker believes that government, and in the European Commission in particular, has a role to play in further leveling the playing field. As she notes in a recent blog post, government entities would perhaps have less relevance but for the antitrust activity that resulted in Microsoft's dominant market share in the first place:

    Microsoft did not obtain its (Internet Explorer) hegemony solely through competition on the merits of IE. A number of illegal activities were also involved in creating IE's market dominance...The idea that Microsoft is an innocent victim (of European Commission intervention) is deeply flawed.




  • Washington Times releases open source projects


    The Washington Times has always focused on content. After careful review, we determined that the best way to have the top tools to produce and publish that content is to release the source code of our in-house tools and encourage collaboration.


  • French VAR Wins Major Open Source ERP Deal


    Do you still doubt the power of the emerging open source IT channel? Consider this: Axilom, a solutions provider based in France, has won a contract to deploy Compiere Inc.’s open source ERP (enterprise resource planning) system for La Poste, a global postal processing organization with 300,000 employees and 45 million customers. Here’s the scoop.




  • Gaming

    • The only thing better than starting small is starting smaller


      Commercial style games are big and complex almost by definition and so they will take a lot of time to implement. We don’t have that much time. We also refuse to make simple games instead (casual… meh). The only other option is to make the games small. Or even smaller. Therefore I would like to propose ultraepisodic games. Ultraepisodic games would work a lot like normal commercial episodic games, for example “Sam & Max”, only more episodic - each episode should be prepared and released within a month or even less, adding perhaps some additional preparation time before new seasons. Because teams working on FOSS games are much smaller than their commercial counterparts the episodes would also be much smaller, on the scale of a single level - hence the term ultraepisodic. I also think it would be benefiting to be able to make the new episodes even more frequently than the commercial games do - with a dedicated team, established world lore and asset repository two week time frame may be possible. To put the long story short, if the commercial episodic games are like comic books, then ultraepisodic games should be like webcomics.

      The idea of episodic gaming is nothing new. The important thing is to analyze how episodic or ultraepisodic release model would benefit the FOSS games and commundos.


    • Game Testing Job for a Free Software Person


      So I was browsing the FSF homepage because I wanted to dig up some info on their PDF priority project - but never mind that - and then I think "Let's check out them job listing!" and I do and then BAM! Game Test Analysts, (Santa Monica, CA). So I think to myself "Yeah, right! This has a logical explanation to it! Game theory I bet! So I click it and BAM! O_o! It's a real job offering for beta testing video games and it's posted on the Free Software Foundation's home page!






  • Business

    • Finding the right open-source price


      I'm currently working on pricing models for several new open-source companies, and I keep running into a similar set of challenges. The primary issue is that when you shrink a market, as open source does, you must to find a pricing model that solves the equation, meaning that your costs must substantially lower in order for you to make money.






  • Sun

    • Openoffice.org: 7 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do


      Even though OpenOffice.org - which is, yes, an application suite, not just a Web site - can’t do everything Office can, it can do a lot, and it has some of its own tricks that even Office can’t manage. Here are a few that may not be obvious, as well as a few ways to make OpenOffice.org less annoying out of the box.


    • Sun Studio 12 vs. GCC3 vs. GCC4 Benchmarks


      Earlier this month we published an article looking at the Linux versus OpenSolaris performance when using the new AMD Shanghai Opteron CPUs. Ubuntu Linux was faster than OpenSolaris 2008.11 in nearly all of the tests, but as mentioned in that article, OpenSolaris is still dependent upon GCC 3.4 where as Ubuntu and most other Linux distributions are now shipping with the newer and much-improved GCC 4 series.






  • Programming

    • Does Open Source Experience Help in Today’s Job Market?


      I learned the language (it “fits your brain“) and wrote it every chance I could. I made some (very small) contributions to open source projects, wrote Python documentation and started a short-lived magazine. Eventually, I caught the attention of the crew at Linux Magazine and by late-2002 I was running a PHP conference for the company. I’ve been hanging around ever since.

      So, that’s my (extremely linear and abbreviated) tale, from nearly 10 years ago. It leaves out a lot of the long nights spent hunched over a laptop, the bone-shaking worry about the crumbling job market, and downright luck that I fell into the position that I did. But it was a path that followed a trail of open source crumbs. And, in the end, it worked for me.






  • Applications

    • Announcing: Keryx 0.92, the Dubious Dingo!


      Introducing Keryx 0.92, the Dubious Dingo! Do not let the name scare you away from testing this release. Though there have been a very small number of fatal Dingo attacks on humans, they are mostly shy and aloof around us bipeds. We are releasing 0.92, the Dubious Dingo, in honor of our brave geek friends in Australia, on the eve of the even more dubious Great Firewall of Australia. May your internets stay free, and your polititians gain a shread of common sense!




  • Loosely Related

    • Experts work to unlock PCs for African users


      The ANLoc Network is encouraging African language speakers in African and the diaspora to celebrate International Mother Language Day by helping to develop a locale for their language.


    • Getting Girls Into Tech


      Most kids need a lot of encouragement and support to discover and pursue their real dreams. It's the rare maverick who is born with enough inner strength and stubbornness to persist in the face of continual opposition, and the most difficult kind to resist is the gentle, well-meaning kind from people who think they know what is best for you. The FOSS world is the best playground of all for anyone who is seriously interested in high-tech; I'd like to see it become a lot more child-friendly, and especially girl-friendly.


    • Hercules releases GPL MIDI drivers for Linux & Mixxx 1.6.1+Herc is released.


      On Feb 16, 2009 Hercules released GPL Linux MIDI drivers for their DJ Console / DJ Control series of MIDI input controllers ( Mk2, RMX, MP3 Control, DJ Control Steel ).






Leftovers

  • Yelp Extortion Accusations Ignite a War of Words


    The article goes on to cite a handful of Bay Area business owners, the majority of whom are quoted anonymously, as saying Yelp's reps tried to coerce them into buying ads by offering to "fix" their bad reviews in exchange. The accusations aren't pretty, either: One sentence compares Yelp to the Mafia, vaguely citing "several business owners" as having made the claim.


  • Pirate Bay: survey says that 80% of our torrents are legal


    Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi took the stand today at his trial and attacked the notion that The Pirate Bay is stuffed to the crow's nest with illegal content. Not true, he said; his own survey of 1,000 torrents suggested that most were legal.


  • No Photo Ban in Subways, Yet an Arrest


    Finished with his camera, Mr. Taylor, 30, was about to board the train when a police officer called to him. He stepped back from the train.

    “The cop wanted my ID, and I showed it to him,” Mr. Taylor said. “He told me I couldn’t take the pictures. I told him that’s not true, that the rules permitted it. He said I was wrong. I said, ‘I’m willing to bet your paycheck.’ ”

    Mr. Taylor was right. The officer was enforcing a nonexistent rule. And if recent experience is any guide, one paycheck won’t come close to covering what a wrongful arrest in this kind of case could cost the taxpayers.


  • Et Tu, Lamar?


    That legislators are more than willing to sacrifice your civil liberties at the Altar of Protecting The Children—it’s a political resume builder they can take home to their ‘stitch-ee-unts, listed right there beneath helped fight the war on terror and above took on the fat cats on Wall Street—isn’t even really news anymore. It’s standard fare, really.

    This bill specifically requires ISPs to retain for a period of two years records identifying users assigned dynamic IP addresses at specific times. It’s hard for detractors concerned about privacy, overreaching governmental power and authority, and false accusations to object to providing law enforcement with the necessary tools to track down child porn peddlers and, well, users. (Personally, if we’re absolutely sure of it, I’d just as soon have them tarred, feathered, and shot on sight—but this isn’t about that.)


  • Congress Wants WiFi Owners To Keep Log Files For 2 Years... For The Children




Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day



Gabriella Coleman, an anthropologist studying the Free Open Source Software movement 02 (2004)

Ogg Theora





Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.

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