Adam ordered an older netbook from geeks.com. When it arrived, the wireless Internet didn't work, so he upgraded the version of Ubuntu Linux from 8.04 to 10.04. This just broke almost everything else on the computer. He returned the netbook to geeks.com, but didn't expect them to offer a full refund of the purchase price and shipping — which goes against the stated return policy.A few weeks ago I bought a netbook laptop as a special from geeks.com. It was $199.95 plus $9.95 shipping — total of $209.50. It was an off brand and an older model, but would suit my needs...if it worked. It came installed with Ubuntu linux 8.04, a version that was two years out of date.
W3Schools.com has released their Browser OS shares for November. GNU/Linux is at 5% starting from 2.6% in November 2003. That is 13.3% CAGR in share over 7 years. In those years the number of PCs has increased 7% per annum (10% CAGR of shipments – 3% deaths) so the number of PCs received/installed of GNU/Linux has increased 20% per annum.
In this episode: The KDE team rebrands KOffice into the Calligra Suite. OpenSUSE unveils a rolling release version of its distribution and Google's Chrome OS has been delayed until next year. This time, we remember our discoveries, and ask whether next year might really be the year of Linux on the desktop. Also, would you like to be part of the team?
Thin clients have many advantages. One barrier to adoption has been that one needs special knowledge to set up a server to run them. Even with the availability of GNU/Linux installers that create a server, one needs to know stuff about networking or configuration to change or add things to the system.
see
* Skolelinux * Ubuntu, from the “alternate” CD * Debian GNU/Linux, using the package manager, APT * EdUbuntu
Google announced more details about its web-centric Chrome OS operating system, including a new 12.1-inch "Cr-48" reference notebook that will be provided to beta testers. The first commercial Chrome OS notebooks will ship in mid-2011 from Acer and Samsung, and will be available with free cellular connectivity provided by Verizon, the company added.
To be honest, there's a lot in the Chrome web store that is underwhelming; many apps are essentially links to popular webapps. This isn't necessarily a bad thing—it does still provide a place for you to search out and find good webapps for what you need, and many of today's webapps are pretty fantastic thanks to new technologies like HTML5. Once you find them, however, you're left with something pretty similar to a custom start page from the likes of myfav.es—or just Chrome's new tab page, but more customized. If you're looking for the Chrome web store to provide something that isn't already in your bookmarks bar, these five apps are sure to impress.
Also built into Chrome 8 is support for the forthcoming Chome Web Apps store. The store, which is still to be launched, will allow users to download paid-for and free applications for the Chrome browser.
Synchronisation has been improved as well and all settings can be accessed from the Google Dashboard, with links to the Google Dashboard provided in the Chrome browser’s Options dialogue box.
Performance wise, Google says that Chrome 8 should perform two to three times faster on most platforms than the version 7 release.
Optimisation only makes sense if the code in question is used a lot – this seems to be the philosophy followed by the compilers of the latest incarnation of Google's free V8 JavaScript Engine. The new "Crankshaft" compilation infrastructure for V8 uses runtime information to see which parts of the code would benefit the most from optimisation. The developers say that the technique is mainly useful in large JavaScript programs; short scripts, such as those used by the SunSpider benchmark, do not benefit much.
I signed up to be a beta tester of the new Google Chrome notebook
The Chrome OS Notebook appears to be a rather basic system that's almost the perfect definition of a netbook. Like the early netbooks, the Cr-48 runs a non-Windows operating system and its primary purpose is to run a browser.
While Chrome OS aims to make things quite a bit more user-friendly compared to the early day 7-inch netbooks, there is always going to be the case where a user will ask where the start button is to find solitaire.
Google Mobile Platform vice president Andy Rubin literally arrived with a bag full of tricks at the D: Get Into Mobile Conference, showing publicly for the very first time an Android "Honeycomb" tablet.
The roughly 10-inch Motorola device was sleek, black, thin, and sported an Android interface unlike any we've seen before. There was a very clean homepage, but the app page looked almost Apple iPad-like. Plus, when Rubin brought up the Gmail app, it looked almost exactly like Gmail on the iPad.
Longtime underdog Opera Software has released its browser Opera 11. Opera’s browser has developed a small cult-like following since its inception in 1996, its following based primarily on its speed, innovation and open-source ideals. In a series of browser firsts, Opera was the first browser to introduce tabbed browsing which has now become the industry standard.
Let's say you want to surf the Web and find some content. The first utility to look at is also one of the oldest, the venerable Lynx. Lynx actually was my first Web browser, running on a machine that couldn't handle X11. In its most basic form, you simply run it on the command line and give it a filename or a URL. So, if you wanted to hit Google, you would run:
lynx http://www.google.com
Lynx then asks you whether you want to accept a cookie Google is trying to set. Once you either accept or reject the cookie, Lynx loads the Web page and renders it. As you will no doubt notice, there are no images. But, all the links and the text box for entering search queries are there. You can navigate from link to link with the arrow keys. Because the layout is very simple and text-based, items are in very different locations on the screen from what you would see when using a graphical browser.
Twelve million addicts, err, players cant be wrong. Theres no doubting the draw of World of Warcraft. And today, as Blizzard rolls out its third, much-anticipated expansion to the game Cataclysm, CodeWeavers ensures that Linux gamers can play right along with their PC and Mac brethren. CodeWeavers Linux customers will be able to run Cataclysm as if they were running on Windows with today’s immediate shipment of CrossOver Games 9.2.1.
Wolfire, developers of the upcoming rabbit fighting game Overgrowth (sequel to the open-sourced Lugaru), have posted a teaser site indicating a second Humble Indie Bundle is in the works. The original bundle promoted several indie Linux games with a “pay what you want” offer; moreover, the source code for several of the games was released in the process.
Just in time for the holiday gift rush, the Promo team has set up stores where you can find a variety of shirts, hats, and accessories sporting cool KDE designs. Special thanks to Eugene Trounev, Bugsbane and Sebastian Kügler for some of the first designs.
It is one thing to have engineers answer questions when they have the knowledge to do so. It is another thing to have them submit their plans and patches to a community forum and have them exposed under the harsh light of peer review.
On more than one occasion, I have heard a hiring manager say that he didn’t have time to have a developer go through peer review of specs or patches – after all, he was hired because he was competent to do the job, and what are we paying him for if he’s going to be second-guessed by “the community”? After a first job or internship, peer review is more an exception than the rule for professional software developers (regrettably, I might add).
The holidays are upon us and many are running around trying to get loved ones shiny boxes to open Christmas morning. Oftentimes, Linux users get a cute plush penguin or a cool book. But sometimes surprises come from the most unexpected places.
This is what will happen this year, only now it's no longer a surprise. Despite being guilty of letting the cat out of the bag, Sabayon is planning a Christmastime Gaming Edition release. Fabio Erculiani, Sabayon founder and lead developer, said, "We can show the world that Linux is a valuable, performant Gaming platform." This is sure to include a long menu of popular games native for Linux and demonstration versions for several commercial offerings.
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So, be sure to hit the hay early Christmas Eve so Santa can leave your shiny new Gaming Edition under your keyboard.
Readers are asked to decide who deserves to win the 2011 Linux New Media Award for Favorite Linux Distribution.
As with previous version, Mandriva is holding a contest to bulk up its wallpaper choices in the upcoming release, Mandriva 2010.2. This is the second update to 2010 Spring due out around Christmas. This time though, you get to vote for which you like best. But hurry, contest ends December 16.
Equities research analysts at UBS AG (NYSE: UBS) boosted their price target on shares of Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) from $44.00 to $50.00 in a research note to clients and investors on Wednesday. The analysts currently have a “buy” rating on the stock.
Linux software developer Red Hat Inc.'s stock could rise 20 percent over the next year on better-than-expected revenue, an RBC Capital Markets analyst predicted Wednesday.
Red Hat, Inc., a provider of open source solutions, has announced the next generation Business Rules Management System, JBoss Enterprise BRMS 5.1, as part of its open source middleware portfolio, JBoss Enterprise Middleware.
In a release, the Company said that JBoss Enterprise BRMS is an open source business rules management system that enables active decisions with easy business rules development, access and change management. This functionality allows businesses to quickly change the rules and active decisions that underpin enterprise applications to respond to market dynamics and competitive positioning.
The 52-week range of the stock is $26.51-$49. An analyst at RBC Capital upgraded shares of Red Hat from Sector Perform to Outperform this morning. The firm also boosted its pricetarget by nearly 43% from $40 to $57.
Red Hat, Inc., a provider of open source solutions, announced that it joined in a brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking correction of the standard for inducing patent infringement.
According to a release, the "friend of the court," or amicus brief, submitted by Red Hat and others seeks reversal of a lower court decision that threatens to expand patent litigation. The brief argues that the law requires that only those who actually know of the specific patent at issue and know that it covers the alleged infringing activity can be found liable.
It certainly is faster compared to Mepis 8.5 on my old desktop box, which by the way does not allow pretty effects regardless of the distro I use.
The desktop-base package just updated on my Debian Squeeze desktop, and it brought with it the new wallpaper for the distribution's soon-to-be-stable release. What do you think? (Click the image for the full 1366x768 view).
I wrote yesterday about the "whimsical spaceship" (that's a good name, don't you think?) theme coming to the Debian Squeeze desktop and Grub screen and wondering why the login screen still was so Lennyish.
Today a new gdm3 package rolled into Squeeze, and once it installed (I've been using Aptitude on the command line to do the updates) I logged out and saw yet more spaceship whimsy.
To be sure, every release of Ubuntu — just like every other operating system out there, open-source or proprietary — has its bugs, some of them quite serious. Ubuntu 10.10 is not a standout in this respect.
The Ubuntu Certification Programme has been around for a while. I think now is a good time to start sharing more on this activity with the community and invite participation. We have created a wiki with the following content to start the conversation.
Ubuntu One Music has now support for iPhone's new AirPlay technology, which allows users to stream audio, video and image files stored in your Ubuntu One account directly to your Applet TV, stereo device, or any other AirPlay-compatible hardware. The AirPlay technology was made available by Apple via the new iOS 4.2 software update.
Recently I said that Ubuntu 10.10 is really not a compelling upgrade. Linux Mint 10, though it’s based off of 10.10, is (in my opinion) worth the trouble. Like 10.10, Linux Mint 10 is not a revolutionary update, but the changes here are not focused on the Canonical services.
That’s how many one FAB, TSMC, might produce in 2011. TSMC expects to produce about 1.8 million wafers for Qualcomm in 2011 and each wafer can hold about 1000 ARM CPUs. These CPUs will go into iPads, smart-phones, smart-thingies, and a variety of personal computers, few of which will run that other OS, certainly not “7ââ¬Â³.
Thankfully, Google has started the release process for their latest and greatest Android version -- Gingerbread. I'm looking forward to installing CyanogenMod's spin of 2.3 as soon as it's available. The big frustration for me, however, is that Gingerbread turned out not to be the tablet killing OS we all hoped for. Oh sure, there are some Android tablets available, but until Google allows regular access to the Marketplace, tablets running Android are going to be a kludge.
There's no doubt that Androids are swarming, but 300,000 activations a day, as Google VP of Engineering Andy Rubin tweeted? "Seems like a stretch," said Frost & Sullivan analyst Michael Jude, who added the figure "may represent the number of phones being shipped from manufacturers, many of which end up in warehouses rather than in people's pockets."
The Jolicloud team have today announced their intention to release Jolicloud 1.1 for download later today with updates rolling out to current Jolicloud users during this week. Click through for more details…
The message from today’s announcement is clear – with Jolicloud 1.1 the French developer is offering its users an experience one step ahead of what Google, Apple and Microsoft are announcing. “While everybody talks about HTML5 as the future, we deliver it today, now and for everyone,” explains the blog post. “But here is the trick, you should not be forced to buy an expensive device to benefit of these technologies. With Jolicloud, you just need to recycle any computer.”
Mr. Marino contended Mr. Aleynikov simply made a mistake in trying to download open-source code from Goldman, but didn't steal proprietary information from the investment bank. He said Mr. Aleynikov made no efforts to sell the information he took and didn't share it with Teza.
On a regular basis, we at OStatic round up our ongoing collections of open source resources, tutorials, reviews and project tours. These educational toolkits are a big part of the learning mission we try to preserve at the site. We regularly collect the best Firefox extensions, free online books on open source topics, free tools for developers, resources for working with and enjoying online video and audio, Linux tutorials, and much more. In this post, you'll find an updated set of more than 45 collections and resources. Hopefully, you'll find something to learn from here, and the good news is that everything found in this post is free.
LibreOffice RC1 is released, this new beta release comes to fix some known issues, now the Linux and MacOSX builds are English builds with the possiblity to install language packs. Find bellow the release notes in details, also the installation instructions for Fedora, Debian, LinuxMint and Ubuntu.
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Due to a vulnerability in the design of the WebSocket protocol, the Mozilla Foundation has decided to disable support for this protocol in the forthcoming Firefox 4 Beta 8 release. The vulnerability in the code for transparent proxies can potentially be exploited to poison the proxy cache and inject manipulated pages.
Just like promised Mozilla has delivered an update to the stable branch of the Firefox web browser. The update, which is released on the same day as the Mozilla Thunderbird update, fixes several security and stability issues in the web browser, making it a recommended update for all Firefox 3.6.12 and earlier users. Firefox 3.6.13 is currently in distribution to wordlwide mirror servers to ensure that updating Firefox users will not experience lags or slowdowns during the rush once the update has been announced officially. The official update notification can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours, it is hard to say at this point.
Browser-maker Mozilla still has a tricky relationship with Google, judging from statements made last night by its new chief executive, Gary Kovacs.
Reporters had a chance to ask Kovacs a few questions at the Mozilla open house yesterday, when the company invited us into its Mountain View, Calif. headquarters to preview some of the new features in its Firefox browser. The gathering came just a day after Google held its own press event, where it announced some improvements to its Chrome Web browser, as well as a pilot program for Chrome OS, its netbook operating system that’s built around Chrome.
This past Monday updates in both the 5.1 and 5.2 series of MariaDB were released. It’s a pretty big deal, as some issues have been solved that affect a large number of users. You should read the release notes for MariaDB 5.1.53 and for MariaDB 5.2.4 as well as the release announcement. The annoucement contains download links from worldwide mirrors.
Everyone who follows Java knew that the Apache Software Foundation was going to resign from its nominal Java Community Process leadership position. Apache had given fair-warning that it was not going to rubber-stamp Oracle’s Java plans in November. Then, when Oracle rolled over Apache and Google’s objections to its Java plans in December, the scene was set for Apache to leave and, eventually, force a Java code fork.
There’s a long story behind why Apache, a four-time JCP “Member of the Year” is going with its own Java-related plans. The story actually doesn’t start with Oracle, but with how Sun handled the “open-sourcing” of Java in 2006.
Oracle is planning to take over the world. Or, at the very least, the server OS world. That's the logical conclusion to reach after hearing the recent comments of Larry Ellison, Oracle's bombastic CEO. "Solaris is clearly the No. 1 Unix, and we're working very hard at making Oracle Enterprise Linux the number one Linux," InfoWorld reported he said at a company event last week.
[...]
When it comes to security, the upgraded Unix server OS will include secure boot, so applications and data are secure as they start. The OS will also enforce role-based root access and encrypt ZFS datasets to provide extra security to stored data.
The popularity of open source content management systems, and the number of open source CMS options have grown exponentially in the last three years. However, it has become increasingly difficult for users to separate the good from the bad, in a market where--irony of ironies--even proprietary options are trying to look more like open source projects in order to get buyers' attention.
NetCitadel LLC released version 4.1.3 of Firewall Builder today. Firewall Builder is a leading firewall management solution for Linux iptables and other firewalls.
Last week I had a weird experience. I went to the Department of Communications and Social Research of the Faculty of Communication Sciences of La Sapienza, the first and biggest University in Rome. The reason I went there was to attend the presentation of the Italian Manifesto for Open Government, on which I’ll report soon in another article. The promoters of the Manifesto spent the whole morning explaining in detail all its ten articles, including the fourth and fifth that strongly assert the importance of opening public data, that is publishing them without restrictions in open file formats.
Even though Adobe won't produce a Flash Player for Linux on PowerPC, it still maintains the player for Mac OS X on PowerPC. Nice for the Mac users, shitty for the Linux users.
Aside from all of that. Why should video — a growing component of information-delivery on the Web — be funneled through Flash?
Luckily HTML5 is there to save us from all of this. Once it's totally rolled out, video will come into Web pages through standard tagging that enabled web browsers understand, and the video will be presented in codecs that are already part of that browser's collection of viewable formats.
And if/when the biggest video site around, and that would be YouTube, dumps Flash for HTML5, look the #$$ out.
To my mind, the biggest variable that will determine whether China will reap the largest benefits from its participation in global ICT standards activities will be whether it decides to only participate in the traditional "Big I" standards organizations, or whether it will also fully engage in participating in, and more importantly founding, standards development and promotional consortia. Least effective of all will be continuing to form inward-looking consortia limited to domestic companies. From this route I can see only institutionalizing antagonism, standards wars, and lost opportunities.
Distancing himself from Republican Party orthodoxy (as he's prone to doing), Texas Congressman Ron Paul gave a rousing speech on the U.S. House floor in support of WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange. "Why is the hostility directed at Assange, the publisher, and not at our governments failure to protect classified information?" asked Paul. He went on to compare WikiLeaks to the Pentagon Papers, explaining how both exposed American wars that were based on "lies." He also asked his colleagues which events caused more deaths, "Lying us into war, or the release of the WikiLeaks papers?"
The nominal trigger for this was the denial of service to WikiLeaks by PayPal, Visa and MasterCard, supposedly for “illegal activities” although the USA has stated that the USA has not charged WikiLeaks with any illegal activity. PayPal was caught in a lie that it claimed PayPal had received a letter advising them of illegal activities by WikiLeaks. In fact, PayPal and other such services are only too glad to serve businesses such as porn and gambling regardless of their legality. Thus many see this action as a smoke-screen.
The stupidity of locking up a guy who voluntarily turns himself in to a police station and refusing him bail on questionable charges as a flight-risk is beyond belief. His lawyers have been unable to communicate with the Swedish prosecutors for months and yet the court in the UK took the matter seriously. This is clearly a case of judicial harassment and the UK legal system is being jerked around by the Swedish authorities.
In spite of all this, as of December 3rd, 2010, the official “Save as WWF, Save a Tree” website says that this “green” format…is only usable with some version of Mac OS, will soon be usable with some versions of Windows… but no mention of Linux, which is the most environmentally conscious operating system around.
Operation Payback - Anonymous Message About ACTA Laws, Internet Censorship and Copyright