Don't miss your last chance to register for Ohio Linux Fest! A mere two weeks away on September 25-27, it's coming faster than a Free Software freight train! Registration has been lighter than past years please forward this release to friends in the Ohio and surrounding areas. Columbus, Ohio The seventh annual Ohio LinuxFest will be on September 25-26, 2009 at the Greater Columbus Convention Center, in downtown Columbus, Ohio.
Ohio LinuxFest is definitely one of my favorite Linux and open-source conferences. If you’ve never been to a Linux conference, now is a great time to begin. If you have, it’s also a great time to experience this conference.
We start this weekly with a beta testing of the Spri Linux Beta distribution. The following Linux distributions were announced last week: Easy Peasy 1.5, CRUX 2.6, GoblinX 3.0 GNOME Edition, moonOS 3, Bluewhite64 Linux 13.0, Absolute Linux 13.0 and Linux Mint 7 XFCE Edition.
Head to www.ubuntu.com, download the ISO image for Ubuntu (currently at version 9.04) and burn the image to a CD. On your media server PC, change the BIOS settings to boot from CD, pop the disc in and let the Install wizard run its magic.
KDE, GNOME and Mac OS X handle this much better. On KDE and GNOME the screen darkens around a password entry dialog, and the dialog is modal, so the user cannot escape and must make a conscious decision.
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Windows 7 is neither overly powerful, customizable or modern. It does avoid many of the problems of Windows Vista by introducing aggressive prefetching and changing the UI design so actions require less clicks, and this makes the system appear faster. This comes at the expense of chewing up a lot of RAM, so a gaming system should probably have 4 GB or more.
I had a hard drive failure on my home Windows XP Pro DELL system last week. I decided this morning at about 4AM to rebuild the system as a dual boot with Ubuntu 9.04 on the second partition. The goal is to minimize my "Windows dependency" status as much as possible. Another goal was to come up with functional partitions that could be imaged and cloned. I couldn't sleep anyway.
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So for the price of: 1 hour and 27 minutes more of my time installing Windows XP Pro versus Ubuntu; 20GB of hard drive space used by Windows XP Pro versus 8GB of hard drive space in Ubuntu; no differences in functionality; potentially becoming XP-ground-zero for every malware-writing jackass in the world; I get the “equivalent” in Windows XP Pro?
The other hypervisors that are embedded inside of Linux distros or that are paired with Unix environments are also seen - and in proportions that make sense give the global installed base of iron.
Based in Agoura Hills, Calif., Symark sells a line of software access-control products intended for Linux and Unix systems, while BeyondTrust, based in Portsmouth, N.H., focuses on Windows.
While BFS lost with the Threaded I/O Tester disk benchmark, it won with the PostMark test profile. The BFS scheduler delivered just fewer than 5% more transactions per second than the Completely Fair Scheduler.
Nine tests carried out on a single low-end system (we may carry out more tests on multiple systems if there is sufficient interest) is not enough to call one scheduler better than the other.
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a type of real-time Internet text messaging (chat) or synchronous conferencing. IRC was born during summer 1988 when Jarkko Oikarinen wrote the first IRC client and server when he was working in the Department of Information Processing Science at the University of Oulu, Finland. This system enables millions of people around the world to communicate in real time.
Gloobus is an extension of Gnome designed to enable a full screen preview of any kind of file. Gloobus currently supports the following files: TXT , PDF, JPG, BMP, GIF, PNG, PSD, MP3, OGG, MPG, WMV, XCF. Finally I can preview PSD and XCF files :D.
Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and Safari. Those are the usual web browser names that make the news these days on the Internet. This are also the web browsers that the majority of web users use actively. Other web browsers face this tough competition. Last to feel the competition was the Google browser which – despite Google’s marketing power and efforts – remains at the lower end of web browser distribution.
Most people go for the big apps when switching to Linux, and for good reason: they are easy to find, usually very polished, often updated, and there's a lot of online documentation for them. What if you're not looking for the most popular, but instead the best app for you? Below are 25 excellent, high-quality Linux apps that go neglected far more often than they should be. Some are popular amongst those who have been at the Linux game for awhile, and others have become a staple of certain distros while remaining relatively unknown by users of different distros. No matter the reason they've sat in the midline of popularity, you can be assured that these apps do what they claim to do, and they do it well.
If you like your virtual-desktop managers to come with some flair and eye candy, Compiz is definitely worth a look. Linux users who just want simple workspace switching might be better served by Gnome Workspaces, but if you're on a rig with a nice graphics card—and you want to live it up with fancy graphic-intensive transitions between virtual desktops—Compiz's more advanced effects are pretty nifty. Compiz comes with a core of plug-ins that cover all sorts of 3D effects which can be further supplemented by using Compiz Fusion, a version of Compiz that sports additional plug-ins and enhanced graphics.
This month's issue includes:
* KDE 4.3 vs Windows 7 Comparison * Behind The Scenes: An Interview with Neal Brooks * IRC: The Forgotten Chat Frontier * Through The Lens: Photo Management Software * How To Set up Easy Samba File Sharing * How To Make A Cheap Film Scanner * How To Share A Printer With Windows Without Samba * Video File Format Cllomparison * PCLinuxOS on the Acer Aspire One * Creating Movie Archives with dvd::rip * Computer Languages A to Z: C and C++ * Scripts-R-Us: Repo Speed Test * Double Take by Mark Szorady * Forum Foibles * And much, much more!
Is the extra work and effort worth it? I think so, at least from what I'm experiencing so far. Arch is nimble and solid, and the rolling release means I don't ever have to go through the installation process again on this machine if I don't want to (barring a hardware catastrophe, of course). Arch has become my new home base from which I'll continue the odyssey.
Whilst the home user isn’t going to consider this as their main desktop solution (IMO). What it does, it does very very well. Boot time even from the LiveCD was very good and the system is virtually unbreakable, even for the most persistent of users! I was very impressed with the speed in which BBCiplayer performed on the test machine, giving a very smooth results even in fullscreen. I also tested it on the Twitterfall site which often appears to bog browsers down after when there are numerous other tabs in use. This did not happen with Webconverger and scrolling remained smooth.
There is more, no doubt. The biggest contribution they have made is to step up and answer the FUD about GNU/Linux not being ready and able to supply mission-critical needs in business.
Ubuntu is in heavy testing for its next release, code named Karmic Koala, or version 9.10. It is currently in Alpha 5, and it looks very promising already. There is a huge focus on reducing the boot times of Ubuntu for Karmic. Jono Bacon, Ubuntu’s Community Manager has recently posted some interesting tidbits about other things coming to Ubuntu in this 9.10 release…
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Look for Ubuntu 9.10, otherwise known as the Karmic Koala, sometime in October. Alpha 6 is due sometime next week, and the the Beta should be in early October. If you are adventurous, you can download Alpha 5 now and begin testing yourself. But I must warn that as it is an unstable alpha, things can break and things may drastically change on a daily basis; I would not load this on a machine you depend on.
The upcoming version 9.10 of the popular Linux distribution Ubuntu, code-named "Karmic Koala", is is approaching its October release. As part of the community dialogue over what should be in the next version, "Lifehacker", a website about getting things done, has come up with a wish list for the free operating system, and Ubuntu has responded.
If I average out these scores (A, D, B, C, A, B, A) using a 4.0 scale, I end up with a solid B (3.0 exactly). I’d say that’s a very accurate assessment of my experience with Ubuntu – generally above-average, but lots of room left to improve.
To that end, the second half of this article (coming out next week) is an exciting one. It will consist of a group-generated list of features/fixes that need to happen over the next year if Ubuntu wants to remain a viable competitor in the consumer OS arena. This list is the result of conversations with all the Ubuntu users I know – including some great emails that have poured in over the last two days – and should represent a diverse range of input.
Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #159 for the week September 6th - September 12th, 2009. In this issue we cover: Karmic Alpha 6 freeze ahead, UI freeze in place for Karmic, Ubuntu One has moved, New Ubuntu Developers, New Ubuntu Members, Ubuntu Stats, US LoCo Wiki Doc Day 2009, Ubuntu Pennsylvania, Launchpad meet-up: Sept. 28th in London, Meet Deryck Hodge, Ubuntu Forums Unanswered Post Team Meeting, An interview with Nathan Handler, Screencasting using Ubuntu: Part 1, Jono turning ?? - Wishlist predictable, Jolicloud innovates Atop Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and much, much more!
Perhaps somebody has already posted this before and I missed it!
I just noticed that Ubuntu is mentioned in the l33t subtitles of The IT Crowd Season 1 Episode 1. It’s rather embarrassing since I bought the DVD when I was in London in July of 2007 and just now watched the whole episode with the subtitles on.
The developers note that the Deluge BitTorrent Client has been replaced by Transmission and that the VLC Media Player, Tomboy, Samba, Vim and all of the old artwork has been removed to save space.
Clement Lefebvre has announced the release of the Linux Mint 7 "Gloria" XFCE edition, a community-maintained modification of the standard Linux Mint distribution that uses the XFCE desktop environment by default. There are a lot of changes in this new version, and, among the base packages, you will find the Linux 2.6.28 kernel, Xorg 7.4 and XFCE 4.6.
Linux Mint 7 XFCE really does mix together the stability of the Ubuntu 9.04 base, Linux Mint 7 features and beauty, along with quickness of XFCE to create a powerful, full featured, desktop that’s fast and light enough to run on older hardware.
Though you're probably tired of all these Ubuntu-based distros, don't hesitate to give moonOS 3 a try. The Enlightenment desktop environment has matured a lot and can provide a solid production platform if you're willing to forgive its bugs here and there. Also, a big plus is the fact that you can tinker with it in so many ways to best suit your computing needs. Last but not least, it's simply b e a u t i f u l, without asking for a monster machine.
NEC develops and manufactures mobile terminals for NTT DOCOMO, INC. and SoftBank Mobile Corp. that capitalize on the company's core competencies and incorporate wireless communications technologies such as W-CDMA (*1) and LTE (*2), Linux (*3) platform development, low power consumption innovations and ultra-thin technologies.
Yesterday, everyone was prepared to see Motorola’s latest form factor that would bring it back from the brink. Instead, what we got was an announcement about an innovative new user interface, or skin, that runs on top of the Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Android operating system.
We are taking a look at the Alpha 680 netbook from Skytone (no relation to Alfa Network Inc., makers wireless products). The Alpha 680 is the world's first Android netbook, giving users all the features of Google's mobile phone operating system right on a netbook. The unit is not yet available in the US, but we got our hands on one because we wanted to test some of our WiFi products with Android, and also had considered becoming a distributor. Because the device was so different from any other netbook we have used, we decided to do a full blown public review. Here is the video, then further down we have more to say about the item and some pictures as well.
Rich Wolski, UCSB professor and CTO of recently-established Eucalyptus Systems, discusses the company's first commercial product for the enterprise -- an open source private cloud platform that supports Amazon AWS APIs and leverages VMware.
If you’ve got friends and family who use Linux or you want them to know more about Linux, why don’t you join Software Freedom Day festivities in your area? There’s a bunch of Software Freedom Day (SFD) groups and you should check out the SFD Maps of Teams Registered for SFD 2009. Each SFD group will have different kinds of activities planned for their respective areas. Maybe your area will have a seminar or some kind of party just to get to know other people who use free and open source software. It could also be a time to let new Linux users to get to know those who are experts in the community. The goal is to celebrate software freedom in whatever possible way and in every possible place in the whole world.
Mozilla Labs has launched a new version of its Firefox web extensions package just a few days after Google opened up support for extensions in its Chrome browser.
The open source outfit has dubbed Mozilla’s Jetpack 0.5 “the bootstrap edition”.
Mozilla has released a second beta of its internet app suite SeaMonkey 2.0.
MAMPU currently collects and tracks OSS adoption statistics and trends for all agencies. The following links provide up to date data for the benefit of agencies and the public. They are updated every two weeks.
Replacing proprietary solutions with Open Source solutions is not the same as leaving the flock and being eaten by the wolf, but to understand that you have to understand a little more about IT. Otherwise all you can do is choose to believe one side or another.
As well as being welcome, I think this is a shrewd move on Google's part. It is essentially raising the bar for *all* cloud computing providers. It is obviously pretty confident that it can supply good enough services for people to want to keep their data in them, even if they can remove stuff quite easily. The bet is probably that users will shy away from cloud computing providers who *don't* offer the same kind of pledges as Google. It will be interesting to see how the other major players respond.
Even the alpha version is incredibly impressive - real drag and drop 3D humanoid manipulation (*very* eerie), with a simple-to-use interface. If you think that free software is only about important but boring stuff, try out MakeHuman, and be amazed.
The key differentiator is the seamless integration with the Java platform underneath. It's something no other languages provide, even alternative languages for the JVM (Java Virtual Machine), or at least not up to the level that Groovy does.
Finalisation of the new wireless-networking standard — which is capable of delivering throughput speeds up to 300Mbps (and even higher) — took exactly seven years from the day it was conceived, or six years from the first draft version. The standard has been through a dozen or so draft versions.
PEOPLE without criminal convictions could be subject to covert surveillance, under new police tactics revealed this week.
Durham Police has begun applying methods used to contain people found guilty of violent or sexual crimes to individuals not convicted of such offences.
Here's an unbelievably shameless attempt by Sir Roger Singleton to shout down the justified concern in the face of the insane UK government vetting scheme, which he heads. Let's consider some of his comments.
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So, all-in-all, your statements are a total disgrace, because you simply dismiss all the deeply-felt concerns of parents up and down the country without addressing them in the slightest. You have simply re-stated your own indifference to what the public thinks - a public you are supposed to serve.
This will help the Haiku development team identify and address bugs, and thus improve the quality of the system as development keeps advancing towards the subsequent development milestones. Bugs found in Alpha 1 should be reported to the Haiku bug tracking system at http://dev.haiku-os.org.
Researchers at university hospitals who lead drug and device studies get as much as $110,869 a year from industry, and those who shared data and expertise with companies were “substantially” more likely to report positive results, a survey found.
In 2005 there was a huge scandal when it was revealed that Sony’s attempts to crack down on music piracy had got out of control. The company included a rootkit (XCP) on many of its music CDs which was installed on the user’s PC without permission. Now a court has ordered compensation to be paid to an XCP victim.
I'm a freelance editorial photographer. Which broadly means that I charge a creative fee for my photographic services, the product of which the client is entitled to use, exclusively (called an embargo period), before I then syndicate it, and the rest of the pictures made at the shoot. As such my current business model revolves around my ownership of the copyright of my images and trading the licensing rights thereof. I represent myself and so pay no commission on my fees to an agent on the initial creative fee (though those fees seldom cover the cost of the shoot), however, when syndicated through Corbis Outline, I pay a minimum of 50% if they re-sell it, and 50% of my fee again if one of their agents sells it for them. I also produce self directed projects which I exhibit, and my work is collected by the National Portrait Gallery in London,UK. My total monthly income from archive sales are approx €£150 GBP. I also sell my work directly and independently.
Every mobile phone in Japan may be installed with software to block illegally copied music if the world's first such system is approved by talks that start in Tokyo next week.
But the idea that civil liberties should be curtailed simply to keep afloat a dying - and widely-hated, both by artists and consumers - industry, should be self-evidently absurd.
It's worrying that the author of this latest simplistic attack on file-sharing, apparently "a former member of Runrig", is unable to see this. He and other demagogues that attack sharing for whatever reason would do well to look at the facts, and not glibly regurgitate the propaganda of the industry and its lobbyists.
But no. They're going to identify and isolate these fans and try to ban them from the internet. Christ knows how that's going to work. Perhaps they'll employ a uniformed enforcer to run in and physically knock the mouse out of your hand every 10 minutes. Maybe an email arrives, curtly informing you you've been fired from Google. Now clear your cache and get out. I guess the powers that be could pressurise local service providers, but if they start cutting off broadband connections willy-nilly, neighbourhood Wi-Fi "theft" will skyrocket. And how do you stop people using iPhones and other mobile internet devices? Smash their fingers with rocks? Position snipers on rooftops?
The example at issue (used by Crosbie to illustrate something he calls ‘Intellectual-property nihilism’) goes like this:
Crosbie is contracted to write a particular piece of software, and does so, setting specific conditions — how much he’ll be paid, etc — required before he’ll release it.
A burglar breaks into Crosbie’s house, and steals ‘the program’. (Note the equivocation, which we’ll get to later.)
At issue, is what punishment — if any — does the burglar get?
1. According to Crosbie’s (hypothetical) ‘IP Nihilist’, the burglar is guilty only of breaking and entering, OR at absolute worst, the theft of physical property — the USB key or Hard Drive on which the program ‘resides’.
It is increasingly apparent that modern copyright law is utterly and completely incompatible with the right to privacy.... What has changed? Before home computers, compact discs and Internet file sharing, it was conceivable for copyright laws to be enforced in a manner that did not bring the state to any-one's doorstep. If there was an illegal copy of a book in a bookshop, one could report it to the authorities. If someone brought a video camera into a theatre or a concert, they could be readily seen.
Given today's technological realities, this is no longer the case.... the problem lies in the fact that current copyright laws are completely unenforceable unless the government or industry groups start to read every e-mail and analyze every form of online communication done by citizens.
ALIS, Israel’s answer to the MPAA, has moved aggressively against a site which provides translated subtitles for movies and TV shows. Three individuals who work to provide free subtitles on Qsubs, one of Israel’s most prominent subtitle providers, have been ordered by ALIS to pay $264,000 each in damages and issue a public apology.
In a recent interview with IGN, Game Crazy’s Director of Used Games Marc Mondhaschen says that publishers are reaping benefits from game trade-ins, albeit indirectly...