• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Microsoft’s monopoly crumbling

Microsft’s monopoly is being threatened from all sides. This is a good thing for consumers. Microsoft will not be able to charge ridiculous amount of money for their software anymore. They will have to change and adopt if they would still like to be an important player in the future. The old ways of gauging customers for huge amounts of cash is over. Today there are plenty of alternatives and customers are switching to them. Microsoft is slowly crumbling and becoming less and less relevant. Now with Google Chrome OS taking its aim directly at Microsoft, it is inevitable for this large monopoly to finally fall apart.

New site for Linux users launches

With the popularity of netbooks and the Android OS, Linux is becoming more mainstream than ever before. If you are dipping your toe into the Linux waters for the first time, or are an experienced developer on the platform, then the new Linux User & Developer website is for you.

Debunking Common Misconceptions Among Linux Newbies

Linux is for gamers too. Too many people believe the popular myth that there are no or very few computer games available for Linux. Actually, there are many games available, in a large variety of genres and styles. There are First-Person-Shooters (FPS), Role-Playing Games (RPG), arcade games, puzzle games, strategy games, flight simulators, and other games. Just run online searches for a list of “top linux games”, or ask the nearest Linux fanatic what his favorites are.

Often these Linux games do not always have quite as high a resolution or quite as many features as their proprietary, commercial counterparts, but any gamer can have a satisfying experience if he is willing to patiently experiment with the various Linux games that are available.

Furthermore, due to special “emulator” technically written for Linux, it is sometimes possible to play Windows games on a Linux computer.

[Ubuntu Beats Windows 7 and Windows XP by a huge margin]

Abundant performance delivered by today’s quad-core processors has shifted the performance bottleneck from the CPU and memory to the disk I/O subsystem in most of day-to-day usage scenarios. In order to optimize system’s responsiveness, performance-hungry computer enthusiasts carefully selecting top-notch, 10K RPM mechanical drives and stunningly fast SSD disks. But, what about the operating system – which one of modern operating systems is capable of utilizing fast hard drives and multi-core CPUs most effectively?

Events

• Florida Linux Show 2009 Orlando Teams Up

  The Florida Linux Show and Florida Linux Alliance Group team up to present the the Florida Linux Show 2009 Orlando. The Florida Linux Alliance Group or FLAG is a new non-profit 501(c)3 corporation whose mission is to advocate Linux and Open Source Software and Linux education in the State of Florida.

• Linux.conf.au Call for Papers and Miniconfs

  Although the next Linux.conf.au isn’t until January, 2010, it’s never too early to start planning. Conference organizers have put out a call for papers and miniconfs so if you’ve got an idea you want to share, now’s the time to put together your proposals.

Desktop

• Seven complaints about Linux and why Windows users make them

  Microsoft has a long history of making contracts with hardware developers that say that they cannot write drivers for non-Windows operating systems or even disclose the methodologies of the hardware to non-Microsoft developers in exchange for promotion deals. This effectively prevents drivers for Linux from being made.

• Are proprietary programs specifically reducing function for Linux?

  By cross platform programs I mean programs which are meant to be run on both windows and Linux operating systems. Programs like openoffice, firefox, thunderbird, java, flash, vmware, hardware drivers and many others. These programs are supposed to be able to run on more than one operating system and work in the same manner.

• Click2try Adds Linux C/C++ Developer Workstation

  Click2try enables developers to test, evaluate and host existing and new Open Source software products on pre-configured virtual appliances. Apart from offering on-demand and virtualized developer tools, the website also allows developers to try applications for free and then use them continuously if required with subscriptions.

• The fun of legacy hardware

  The source of the problem is an ITE IT8330G PCI-ISA bridge with IDE controller that is only supported by the ide-generic driver. This is rather obsolete and isn’t loaded in most kernel images including bootable CDs. The latest Ubuntu CD that would boot is the 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) alternate CD.

Server

• Open Source and the Cloud: Where’s the LAMP?

  LAMP, with its flexibility, simplicity and perhaps most importantly – lack of upfront licensing costs – fueled an explosion in the hosting services market once upon a time. It’s entirely possible that a similarly open source cloud stack could do the same, particularly since far more software is delivered via the network than when the hosting industry first expanded.

Kernel Space

• Kernel Log: progress with free graphics drivers, three new stable kernels

  A new version of the nv driver supports later NVIDIA GPUs. Drivers giving 3D support for later Radeon GPUs are making progress, and so is code for running the X server without root rights. The kernel developers have now issued new stable kernel versions and no longer support the 2.6.29 series.

  Not much has been heard in recent months about the open-source graphics driver for NVIDIA GPUs, properly known as “xf86-video-nv” but usually shortened to just “nv”. Recently, however, NVIDIA man Aaron Plattner released version 2.1.14. Although innovations are few, some of the changes mean that the driver now handles a great many later graphic chips that were previously only supported by the Nouveau driver or the proprietary NVIDIA driver. These include various GeForce 7950 cards, the GeForce models 285 and 295, and many other graphics cards in the 9000 series.

• Linux 2.6.31-rc2

  It’s out there. Larger than I’d like, but the bulk of the changes are due to some late arch updates (MIPS, and powerpc documentation).

• NVIDIA Issues An Open-Source Driver Update

  NVIDIA’s Aaron Plattner has just announced the release of the xf86-video-nv 2.1.14 driver, but does it have anything in store? Not really. The NVIDIA open-source X.Org driver update brings support for a couple of new ASICs, fixed mode-setting for some NVIDIA GPUs, and other fixes, but nothing too exciting… At least compared to the ATI X.Org module and other drivers that have picked up kernel mode-setting support and other exciting features.

Applications

• Group test: screencasting apps

  Screencasts – digital movies with the desktop as a backdrop, the mouse as the protagonist and a voiceover – have become an integral part of electronic learning and form the basis of the computer-based training industry. As bandwidth becomes affordable and video-sharing websites start popping up, there’s a huge influx of free and open source tools.

• 101 Open Source Apps for Enterprises

  Until recently, few enterprises were using open source software for back office applications, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM). But last month, an IDC survey of Western European companies found that nearly ten percent were using open source enterprise software. That’s surprisingly high for a market where the industry leaders themselves have only a ten percent share. IDC also reported that the leading open source enterprise applications are growing – by 20 percent or more per year.

• 9 of the Best Free Linux System Monitoring Tools

• Review: Exaile in Ubuntu 9.04 – Complete Audio Player for GNOME

  Exaile is a powerful and complete audio player for the GNOME desktop environment, which can easily compete with more popular players like Banshee or Rhythmbox.

• Organise your music with Picard

  Organising your digital music collection can be a Herculean effort. Yet when you have several gigabytes of tracks to sift through, your only chance of finding what you want to hear is if your music files are properly tagged.

  Don’t panic if your machine can’t tell Barry White apart from the White Stripes, though: the creators of Picard feel your pain. That’s why, by the time Picard is finished with your music collection, each file will know the album it belongs to, the artist who performed it, its track number within the album and a host of other details.

• Fluendo Releases Its Own Linux DVD Player

  Sadly, there is no Blu-ray Player for Linux, yet. Last year CyberLink released its own DVD player for Linux.

Gaming

• An Interview With A Linux Game Porter

  I’m hoping the story with Caster will help quite a bit, even if it’s only Indie studios I’m working with for a while yet. There IS a market there and it’s underserved. Each win like World of Goo and Caster helps sell the story to other studios and to the mainline publishers. And it’s a story that it doesn’t have to be the way you see it and there’s a seriously underserved market that’s more than willing to pay you money for your product. If they see there’s a market and it may well pay them the extra expenses, you’ll see more stuff happening.

• Unigine Game Engine Continues To Advance

  As we have shared earlier, the company behind Unigine is working on a new game that will run on Linux, which is not too surprising when considering the fact that the company is very Linux friendly.

• Wine 1.1.25 Released

  The Wine development release 1.1.25 is now available.

Desktop Environments

• Maemo To Switch To Qt

  As some had already anticipated when Nokia acquired Trolltech, the next version of the Maemo platform will have its application framework based on Qt instead of Gtk+. This news was announced at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit. While the switch to Qt may seem a major defeat for the GNOME community, this isn’t exactly true, as many of the underlying technologies will still be GNOME-centric.

• The Open-PC Project Announced at GCDS 09

  During the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit Frank Karlitschek announced the open-pc initiative. The aim of this ambitious project is to cooperatively design a Free Software based computer by and for the community. Read on for more information about this initiative from the team.

  The project was initiated in response to the lack of quality in the Free Software-based hardware solutions currently on the market. As many reviewers and end-users have stated, the pre-installed software used by hardware vendors generated a bad image for Free Software with potentially interested end-users. Much of the software was buggy and not widely tested and device drivers were often unstable, non-free or not available at all.

Distributions

• Mandriva Linux One 2009.0 (KDE)

  Mandriva Linux One is certainly worth a download for anybody in the market for a desktop Linux distribution.

Devices/Embedded

• Peek Presents Challenge: Linux on Peek

  In one of the blog responses, “Matt” writes, “The possibilities are indeed intriguing from a Linux point-of-view: This would be the cheapest Linux device I know about, and it has a screen, keyboard, and GSM.”

• Phones

  • Is Dell Building an Android PDA?

    Dell is reportedly developing a pocket Internet device that runs on the Android operating system but has no phone capabilities. Such a device could score in cost and convenience categories, but questions remain about what kind of connectivity options it would provide. Is the PDA dead and gone, or will Dell and Android be able to breath new life into it?

  • Report: Open Source Smartphone Shipments to Double By 2014

    Despite the lagging economy, smartphones remain a hot market, and open source phones are in the spotlight. According to research from Juniper Research telecom consultants, the number of smartphones shipped with open source operating systems will increase from 106 million this year to 223 million by 2014. Juniper’s study found that open source operating systems and applications “are playing an increasingly important role in the differentiation of new smartphones and are a key factor in the choice of which handset to choose from by users.” Juniper’s findings are being echoed by other researchers.

  • T-Mobile myTouch 3G Coming to myBackyard on July 8

    The official T-Mobile myTouch 3G site offers a countdown clock for T-Mo customer pre-orders, which just happens to correspond with the day of the media event. Om received the handset earlier and says the phone is worth the wait. Luckily, you don’t have to wait much longer to see more of it, although even pre-orders won’t be arriving until August 3.

• Sub-notebooks

  • Microsoft hands the victory to Chrome OS

    Today marks the knee of the great curve of Microsoft’s decline, it is downhill fast from here. The inflection point went almost unnoticed in 2003, but this time it is obvious to even the most myopic observer. The garbage scow named SS MS was just holed, and it’s listing badly.

  • What? Can’t take a bit of competition?

    So now the IT media world just went wild over Google’s Chrome OS announcement. Comments are coming in from all over, some overly optimistic, some dismissive. All of these are speculative at best, and none of them carry a lot of weight as Google hasn’t even done a code drop yet, much less a release.

Vanilla Is a Tasty Discussion Forum CMS

Licensed under the GPLv2, Vanilla works on all the major Web browsers and runs on virtually any Web server with more recent versions of PHP and MySQL.

Licensing 101 for Open Source Projects: Choosing an Open Source License

The most important thing for your open source project’s success is obviously good and useful code. Licensing, however, can make or break your project as well.

SourceForge Gears Up For Community Choice Awards

Categories run the gamut from technical (Best Tool or Utility for SysAdmins) and entertaining (Best Project for Gamers) to “life-changing” (Most Likely to Change the Way You Do Everything). Nominated projects are equally wide-ranging and while there are a number of familiar names like KeePass Password Safe and Audacity, quite a few lesser known projects are being given the opportunity to shine. Avogadro, a cross platform, 3-dimensional molecular editor, is up for Best Project for Academia and microblogging client Choqok has been nominated for Best New Project.

French Senate Adopts Revamped “3 Strikes” Anti-Piracy Bill

France’s highest constitutional authority ruled in June that Internet access is a fundamental human right, killing the three-strikes provision in the so-called Hadopi anti-piracy legislation. Today the infamous anti-piracy bill is back and in its revamped form has just been adopted by the Senate. “3 Strikes” is back on the table. Again.

Internet radio sites, music industry reach agreement over royalties

Reporting from Washington — The music won’t stop for Internet radio after a group of webcasters struck an agreement with SoundExchange, the organization that collects royalties for musicians and record companies, over payments for playing music online.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Microsoft offers Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade pre-order for $49.99

Rick’s Opinion

Still not worth it. Ubuntu is free and I own Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP Home, and Vista for all my Win32 needs. I can’t imagine a time in the future where I’ll need Windows 7 for any reason aside from a review.

“Windows 7 is the same as Ubuntu”

I asked him last night about his initial impressions of Windows 7 and, in typical teenage fashion, as he was bouncing between Meebo windows and browser tabs, he said it was “nice.” I managed to extract from him that his favorite feature was that he was able to use his Zune with it, something that had never worked terribly well with Ubuntu. Otherwise, he said, “Windows 7 is the same as Ubuntu; there just really isn’t anything different about them.”

Three Books Every System Administrator Should Read

Desktop

• Get started with Linux – part 1

  As the years go by, many computers start to slow down. One way to breathe new life into an old computer is to re-install Windows but, unless you have all the required discs, this can be tricky. One easier way to bring an old computer back up to speed is to install a copy of Linux.

• Why I Use Linux: Lofton’s Story

  By using Open Source softwares and exemplifying them as intellectually honest ways to work and perform my duties I introduce and reinforce the idea that being intellectually honest is easy and can actually save time and money as well as giving the students a new understanding of what intellectual honesty really is.

• Routing around the desktop

  The nature of the enterprise desktop is changing, and the emphasis now is on instant accessibility, mobility and flexibility – attributes which Linux, on the server, desktop, netbook or mobile device, is well placed to provide

• Neowin Exclusive: Stallman on the current state of GNU/Linux

  I don’t know how many people have a specific intention to use future versions of Windows or MacOS. I also don’t know many people intend to buy a computer, and will find that it comes with Windows 7 whether they wanted that or not. But if the numbers are large, my feeling towards them will not be one of awe, because I don’t wish for the kind of success that consists of gaining power over lots of people. For the GNU system, the question is rather how many people we can liberate.

  My message for anyone that uses Windows or MacOS is to notice that using them means that Microsoft or Apple controls your computing. They decide what you can do, and what you can’t do. So escape! Join us in the Free World! We have worked 25 years to build it, for freedom’s sake. Now all you have to do is choose freedom.

• 10 Things for Linux Desktop Evangelists to Ponder

  Continuing the theme from #6, be willing to pay for Linux. Be willing to discuss Linux as a product people buy. Be willing to say “not free” isn’t always a bad thing.

  I know Linux proscribes selling Linux, but there are many success stories where Linux is the cornerstone of a profitable product (think TiVo). A nicely constructed Linux Desktop is worth money, whether FOSS thinks so or not.

• Linux, FOSS, and the Time-Honored Tradition of Charging More for Less

  There is something fundamentally defective with a business that feels it can’t survive by giving customers a fair deal. Stick with FOSS. What you see is what you get, warts, roses, everything, with no place to hide tricksy dealings or dishonesty.

Kernel Space

• Interview with Ksplice Co-Founder

  Ksplice is an amazing new technology which allows patches to be applied directly into a running kernel, without needing a reboot. Linux Magazine talks with co-founder and Chief Operating Officer and discusses the origins of the project and what it has to offer.

• Kernel Log – Coming in 2.6.31 – Part 1: New Wi-Fi drivers and other network-related changes

  Linux 2.6.31 will be IEEE 802.15.4 capable and will include a new Wi-Fi driver for Intel chips. Developers have also added support for recent Ralink Wi-Fi components and revamped the Rfkill framework. The Wi-fi stack and drivers are now better able to use newer power saving technologies.

• A Root-less X Server Nears Reality

  One of the benefits of moving the different graphics hardware drivers over to using kernel mode-setting, an in-kernel GPU memory manager (whether it be GEM or TTM), and other newer X innovations is the possibility of now running the X Server without root privileges. By doing so, this of course improves the security since this very large chunk of code is no longer running with all of these high-privileged rights.

• Keeping In Touch: A Guide To Linux Audio Comm Channels

  I hope you’ll check out some of the links and sites presented here. Much important activity goes on in the Linux audio world that is not covered by the high-profile journalists, but hopefully the sites mentioned in this article will help keep you up to date. I’ll be back with more Linux audio-related news in this column in about two weeks. Meanwhile you can surf the sites mentioned in this article and let me know what you think should be added to my lists. Above all, breathe, stay vertical, and keep yourself open to communication.

Applications

• Lightweight But Powerful Image Editing Application: mtPaint [Windows & Linux]

  GIMP, despite it’s interface, is the best open-source image editor. But often all you want to do is simply resize a picture or a similar minor task and for that you could use an application such as mtPaint which has a lot of great features such as:

  * Quickly transform image gamma, brightness, contrast, saturation, hue, posterize from a single dialog, and preview the results in real time.

• 5 Top of the Line Twitter Desktop Clients for Linux

  If you’ve been using Twitter through its website, I recommend that you use a desktop client instead to further enhance your tweeting experience. Since Twitter has become immensely popular, there are tons and tons of available desktop applications that support this great micro-blogging service. So I’m here to assist you on narrowing down the choices, and hope to somehow give you an idea on picking the one that suits you best.

• Blog From Your Linux Desktop with Drivel

  Blogging has done nothing but gain steam over the last few years. Most bloggers are posting directly to sites like Facebook and MySpace. I consider that type of blogger to be amateur. The serious bloggers are using their own sites powered by outstanding open source solutions like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla!, or even home-grown solutions. But there are others who regularly blog to Blogger and Moveable Type. For those more serious bloggers the need for tools to make this job easier is at a prime. One such tool is that tool that allows the user to blog straight from the desktop, in both on and offline modes.

• 6 of the Best Free Linux Documentation Generators

• VLC 1.0 for Linux Released, Now with New HD Codecs

  Dubbed Goldeneye, VLC 1.0.0 brings some of the highly anticipated features, lots of bug fixes and many improvements. Among the new features we can notice support for some HD streams. Without further introduction, here are the highlights of VLC 1.0.0…

• Code Project: Use weather for wallpapers

  Not all information on the web is static, connected in a meaningful way, or even as cool as it should be. Which is why one of the post-web 2.0 movements of note is the mashup – the repurposing of data from the web into new and exciting forms. Welcome to the world of data punk.

• KOffice 2.0

  More than a year after KDE 4.0 unveiled a radically revised desktop, KOffice 2.0 is preparing to release an equally revised office suite, which should be released before this article is published (KOffice 2.0-RC-1 was released in April 2009).

Desktop Environments

• Gran Canaria Desktop Summit: KDE and Gnome Formulate Common Goals

  On the first day of the joint developer conference on Grand Canary, representatives of the desktop projects Gnome and KDE formulated common goals for their future development.

• Signals from the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit

  I think that nicely summarizes the atmosphere of the event. There certainly is some competition, but in the end it’s motivating and stimulating for both communities and leads to better solutions for all of us.

• Available Now: GNOME 2.26.3

  The GNOME developers, through Lucas Rocha, have announced early this morning in a press release that the last maintenance release of the popular GNOME 2.26 desktop environment is now available for download. Just like the previous maintenance releases, GNOME 2.26.3 is here mainly to fix many of the remaining bugs, but to also introduce a few interesting features.

• Gnome-Colors: Elegant, consistent and colourful GNOME desktop themes

  Gnome-Colors is looking like a very promising theme pack for GNOME and one of only a few that provide a PPA repository for regular updates. Whilst it may not be for everyone, I would certainly recommend that popular distributions such as Ubuntu and Fedora seriously consider including it as an option in their official releases as it really does enhance the Linux user experience and brings along a lot of eye candy to an operating system that has for quite some time fallen behind in the aesthetics department. I have to say a big thank you to the developers – and I look forward to seeing what else there is to come!

• KDE

  • Canonical Party Welcomes Gran Canaria Desktop Summit

  • Day 2 at Gran Canaria Desktop Summit

  • Qt Labs America and Other Akademy Talks & Sessions

  • KDE e.V. Elects New Board of Directors

    KDE e.V.’s Annual General Meeting was held today during the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain. The KDE e.V. is the association that provides representation, support and governance to the KDE community. After former board member Klaas Freitag and KDE e.V. president Aaron Seigo stepped down and vice president Adriaan de Groot’s term ended, three open positions had to be filled. Adriaan de Groot was re-elected as vice president of KDE e.V. and two new board members have been elected.

  • KDE 4.3.0 RC2 Codenamed “Canteras” Released

    The KDE Team has released another release candidate for KDE called “Canteras”. It contains only few changes compared to RC1 which suggests that the 4.3 is stabilizing and shaping up well for the 4.3.0 release on 28th of July. KDE 4.3.0 will be followed up by a series of monthly bugfix and translation updates. Testers are asked to report bugs in this release so 4.3.0 becomes a release as smooth as possible.

  • KDE 4.3 RC1 in Kubuntu 9.04 – Overview & Screenshots

    I took some time today to install and take for a spin the latest version of KDE4 today, release 4.3 RC1. I installed the packages from the Kubuntu backports repositories, as explained in this tutorial. All the screenshots were taken at 1280×1024 and desktop effects enabled.

  • Cooperation During the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit

    At the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit much cross-desktop work has been done. The days we have are being used for the Cross Desktop Tracks and during the talks there are KDE and Gnome developers mingling everywhere. Cross desktop sessions included bug triage, metadata sharing, instant messaging and sharing personal data cross-desktop with CouchDB. Read more about the results!

  • Akademy Awards 2009

    The Akademy Awards for 2009 have been announced, celebrating the best of KDE contributors. As always the winners are chosen by the winners from the previous year. Read on for the winners.

  • Gran Canaria Desktop Summit: KDE and Gnome Formulate Common Goals

    On the first day of the joint developer conference on Grand Canary, representatives of the desktop projects Gnome and KDE formulated common goals for their future development.

  • Gran Canaria Desktop Summit: Akonadi for the Integrated Desktop

    The Cross-Desktop Metadata track at this year’s Gran Canaria Summit highlighted developer activity targeting central storage of contact data, email and other personal information.

Distributions

• Tiny Core Linux 2.1

  They say that good things come in small packages and so it is with Tiny Core Linux, a diminutive but powerful distribution. TCL weighs in at an incredibly petite 11MB when you download it. Yes, it really is that tiny. Tiny Core Linux is based on Busybox, the Linux 2.6 kernel, JWM, Fltk and Tiny X.

• CDLinux 0.9.2 Community Edition Review

  Five weeks ago when I wrote an overview of Debris Linux I received a number of requests to review other mini distributions from DistroWatch Weekly readers. CDLinux is a minimalist distro from China which takes a different approach to small. Rather than cram as many application as possible onto a mini (3″/8cm) CD, the CDLinux Community Edition aims for excellent support of half a dozen languages (Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese and Russian), support for a wide variety of filesystems and excellent hardware support, including CUPS and XSane for printers and scanners, all of which are included in the 204MB iso. They also offer a “standard” edition, just 64MB in size, which includes a basic Xfce desktop and almost no applications at all. CDLinux “standard” does include popular rescue and admin tools, making it an excellent choice for a recovery CD. Finally, the 25MB “mini” edition is console only. I decided to take the most complete version, the Community Edition, and put it through its paces.

• Live Linux Gaming 0.9.5 (live.linuX-gamers.net)

  Lately I’ve been looking at different distributions but there’s another angle of desktop Linux that bears looking at from time to time too: gaming. Yes, there actually are Linux gamers out there and, despite some shortcomings, it is quite possible to play some games on your Linux system. Usually people would do it by installing games and running them via their preferred desktop distribution. But there’s another way:

  [....]

  “Games that are bold are only contained on the “big” release.

  * armagetronad
  * astromenace
  * blobby
  * chromium-bsu
  * extremetuxracer
  * foobillard

  [...]

• PCLinuxOS Minime 09.1 on my Thinkpad T61

  Now I have a beautiful, very fast, very mature and stable Linux installation to enjoy and do my work. The result is so nice that I am debating on whether I will want to install the KDE 4 packages that are supposed to be arriving to the repository soon. I will have to think about that. In the mean time, PCLinuxOS Minime is working great and looking very nice on my machine, and it most likely can do the same on yours. Why not give it a try?

• Red Hat

  • Cisco, Red Hat in the Cloud: Friends or Enemies?

    What is the operating system of the cloud? Linux vendor Red Hat would like it to be Linux. But networking giant Cisco, despite working closely with Red Hat in a number of areas, may be going another direction entirely.

    Both Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) and Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) were busy last week with their own respective cloud-related initiatives. Red Hat launched a new cloud certification program while Cisco outlined its go-to-market cloud strategy. Is there an intersection between the two vendors and their cloud initiatives?

• Ubuntu

  • Linux Mint 7 Gloria – Review

    I do agree in a controlled environment or for users who don’t need the “latest and greatest” Linux Mint is a great distribution, and I think it’s a step above Ubuntu (in both regular user, and enterprise user space).

  • Linux Mint 7 Is Glorious

    Linux Mint 7 “Gloria” was released a little while ago, so before it became too old of news, I thought I’d take a whack at experimenting with it for the sake of netbookers everywhere (and for myself, naturally). As I type this on gedit after about two weeks’ use, let’s just say that the system on my EeePC 1000 HE is, for the most part, rather glorious– pun intended. As a bonus, I also got Google’s Chromium browser to run on it, so keep on reading to find the section on that.

  • Top Cloud Computing Solutions People are Looking For in 2009

    6. Ubuntu Cloud Computing
    Ubuntu provides “Ubuntu Server Edition” for use on a public cloud and for building a own private cloud environment on servers, it offers “Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud”. Ubuntu help organizations to migrate to a cloud environment through Consultancy, Deployment services and Support

  • Koala will be ‘a definitive shift’ for Ubuntu Linux

    You may, by now, have heard of a little distribution called Ubuntu, unless you happen to have been in space for the past five years.

    For now all you need to know is that Ubuntu is a popular offshoot of Debian, and the man behind it, Mark Shuttleworth, is considered to be a veritable Linux titan.

  • Finally — a Wireless Keyboard You Can Love

    I’ve been using the WKB-4100UB with our latest home-built client (perhaps eventually to be a Windows 7 client, or maybe a Ubuntu server, or something else entirely), known as Bissell because it’s an Atom-based Intel D945GCLF2D mini-ITX motherboard built into (really) an old Bissell Carpet Machine Special carpet-cleaner. I mean, the thing would have wound up in a landfill, so why not? I’m pretty sure it won’t pass FCC, but it was a fun diversion to assemble, save for drilling holes to mount the motherboard, power supply, and especially cutting openings for the VGA and power connectors. The keyboard USB dongle is completely inside the case. Installing Ubuntu 9.04 start to finish took less than 30 minutes – I used the UNetbootin tool to copy the Ubuntu ISO image to a thumb drive, booted from that (and, by the way, this a now completely portable bootable Ubuntu environment; no installation necessary), then clicked “install” to write everything to another memory stick installed in the Bissell. I plugged in my Linksys WUSB600N USB .11n adapter, and voila, no kidding, it just worked. I was on the net less than 30 minutes from initial power-on.

  • Kubuntu 9.04

    No writer is completely without bias. I do the best I can to be even-handed and objective when reviewing a distribution. I have to admit though that I’ve been far too biased toward covering Gnome-based distributions and haven’t nearly covered as many KDE-based counterparts. I’ll be trying in the future to have a more balanced selection of reviews that cover both desktops plus some other environments.

  • Eyecandy Themes for Ubuntu – Download via Launchpad PPA Repo and be safe

    Eventhough there is a number of good quality themes available for Ubuntu through various sites like gnome-look or deviantart, it is still a difficult job to find full set themes which include gdm themes(login window theme), wallapaper, metacity themes, icon set etc. But there is an option to download it from PPA launchpad repo itself, which is always the safer bet. Special thanks to the Zgegblog guys for contributing these out of the world themes for Ubuntu users.

• New Distributions

  • GeeXboX 1.2.3

  • Parted Magic 4.3

  • Astaro Security Gateway 7.470

  • ClarkConnect 5.0

  • MoLinux 5.0 (Edu)

  • CrunchBang Linux 9.04.01

  • IPCop 1.9.6

  • PC-BSD 7.1.1

  • Greenie 5.0.2j

  • RIPLinuX 9.3

  • Calculate 9.7

  • blackPanther 9.1

  • Sabayon 4.2 (GNOME)

  • Toorox 06.2009

  • Clonezilla 1.2.2-23

  • Debris 1.8.3

  • Rocks Cluster 5.2

  • linuX-gamers 0.9.5

  • MoLinux 5.0

  • IPLinuX 9.2

  • GoblinX 3.0 (g:Mini)

  • Guadalinex 6

  • Elive 1.9.33 development released

    The Elive Team is proud to announce the release of the development version 1.9.33

  • PCLinuxOS Quarterly ISO updates available.

    There has been an explosion of activity going on over here at PCLinuxOS. The quarterly ISO updates for PCLinuxOS 2009.2 and PCLinuxOS Gnome 2009.2 are now available featuring a fully updated iso with the latest applications from the PCLinuxOS repositories. Additional features include a notification-updater to let you know when there are updates available for your installation. Addlocale will localize your your PCLinuxOS into one of many various languages. GetOpenOffice allows you to install Open Office 3.1 in any of the 104 languages available. Thanks goes to Pinoc, Neal, Travis, Maik and the rest of the community for providing these well desired applications.

Devices/Embedded

• Nokia turning to Android for new phone?

  Nokia is breaking from Symbian and about to use Android for one of its next smartphones, according to industry sources. A touchscreen, smartphone-class device is claimed by the Guardian to be later in development and likely to be unveiled at Nokia World in September. Its features are unknown beyond the use of the Google platform.

• Sub-notebooks

  • Dell May Test Google’s Chrome OS

    Dell on Friday said it would consider testing Google’s upcoming Chrome operating system, but didn’t commit to offering the Linux-based OS in future products.

  • Intel cozying up to Google Chrome OS

    It’s official: Intel is working with Google on the development of the Mountain View ad broker’s new netbook operating system, Google Chrome OS.

  • Under-$300 CrunchPad Tablet Expected This Summer

    The Linux-based CrunchPad boots directly into a WebKit browser and has no hard drive or keyboard. Arrington said the CrunchPad will cost less than a tablet device rumored under development by Apple, Inc. geared toward iPhone apps.

  • Why Google Chrome OS will turn GNU/Linux into a desktop winner

    Exciting times. I have just bought a Dell netbook, and would be totally happy to install the very first beta version of Google Chrome OS on it.

Want to volunteer?

This is the reason why I am creating this article is because they are users of FOSS (as well as being a good cause).

One of the best things FOSS users have is IMO a sense of “community” , afterall we are alone in a world of proprietary software with massive advertising bugets yet still we are able to form communities and help each other. I am sending my list of skills to this charity as well as finding out their requirements for help for referall to others , I would urge you to do the same. What better way to do something you enjoy whilst helping a charity? – Its win, win.

Sun xVM VirtualBox 3.0: Virtual Developer’s Delight

With little fanfare, Sun Microsystems released version 3.0 of xVM VirtualBox, the Open Source and multi-platform desktop virtualization tool for Unix, Linux, Windows and Mac. The new release represents a culmination of hundreds of bugfixes and significant performance enhancements, including the ability for the product to permit guest OSes to use up to 32 virtual CPUs each. Under previous versions of the product, only one CPU core per guest OS was permitted.

Brazilian President Lula da Silva brings attention to Free Software

In a symbolic show of support for Free Open Source Software and the OpenDocument Format, Brazilian President Lula da Silva recently attended the Linux-related FISL 10 conference in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where he gave an address underscoring the importance of Free Open Source Software to Brazilian national interests. He appears here wearing a hat with the ODF logo (the OpenDocument Format is a legally unencumbered document format upon which any company or community project can easily build.)

bashreduce: A Bare-Bones MapReduce

In late 2004, Google surprised the world of computing with the release of the paper MapReduce: Simplified Data Processing on Large Clusters. That paper ushered in a new model for data processing across clusters of machines that had the benefit of being simple to understand and incredibly flexible. Once you adopt a MapReduce way of thinking, dozens of previously difficult or long-running tasks suddenly start to seem approachable–if you have sufficient hardware.

[...]

In fact, the MapReduce model has proven so useful that the Apache Hadoop project (an Open Source implementation of the infrastructure described in the Google paper) has become very popular in the last few years. Yahoo, which employs numerous Hadoop committers, recently hosted their annual Hadoop Summit which attracted over 500 users and developers.

Operating Systems

• My First FreeBSD Fling

  I like FreeBSD now. I have fell in love with Ports. Compiling from source has its own advantages as you can specify several compile time options and the compiled program is better optimized for your particular system. And it feels so damn geeky! I love it.

• First open source Symbian software released

  The Symbian Foundation has released its first open source software package, the first step in the organization’s plan to eventually open source the entire Symbian mobile operating system.

• Off and Running: Symbian Security Package Becomes Open Source

  The Symbian Foundation, established under a Nokia initiative, has released the first part of its Symbian Platform Security package under the free Eclipse Public License (EPL).

Freedom

• Freedom is Not Embarrassing

  This may seem like reading apocalyptic meaning into Free Software, and I think it does have nearly-apocalyptic importance. Openness, accountability, honesty, success based on merit, community—hey, call me a nasty red Commie, but that sure sounds like the fundamentals of democracy. Who in the proprietary world is looking out for us? If it weren’t for Free Software we’d be shorn skinless. Tor, OpenSSL, OpenSSH, PGP, open standards, formats, code, protocols, free intellectual inquiry and sharing, a culture of stubborn resistance– they’re more important than ever. Technology is part of the foundation of modern life, and it’s too important to let the greedy exploiters control it.

• Freedom is not Free for Countries nor Computer Users

  Today is the day that the United States of America celebrates Independence Day. We declared ourselves free from England’s rule and started a Revolution to create a country based on truly revolutionary ideals. The ideal that all people are created equal in the sight of God and no one is above another in God’s eyes. The ideal that people have unalienable rights given to them from God, not from government. The ideal that people have the right to abolish an out of control, despotic government to replace it with one more amenable to the people. These unprecedented ideals had never been set forth in writing to form any other nation until the beginning of the United States of America. Yes, we did win our freedom but it was not freely given to us. Men pledged “… to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” and went to war to win this freedom.

• As the TOYA Boy Turns…

  Linux (Gnu/Linux for my brethren who prefer) exists as much as a philosophy as it does a system.

  Microsoft Windows is a product. Redmond cannot even spell philosophy.

Business

• How Open Source Can be SMB Friendlier

  What a typical open source vendor today will do, he said, is try to sell their product based on it being cheaper than a Microsoft Windows deployment, for example. But where that goes wrong is how it is viewed by the tech-wary SMB user who doesn’t have a big IT shop to do the work. “From their view, it would be more expensive because they would need training to do it” using open source, rather than sticking with Windows and what they already know and are familiar with, he said.

FSF/GNU

• SFLC challenges Black Duck to open source code

  A recent report from Black Duck Software suggests there has been a five per cent decline in the use of GPL licences since 2008. The Software Freedom Law Center’s Aaron Williamson has called the figure “meaningless” pointing out that the methodology and mechanisms behind Black Duck’s statistics are not available for scrutiny.

Programming

• GitX Clone Gitg Moves to 0.0.4

  The young Gitg project, which visualizes a graphical representation of git data for Mac OS X under Gtk+/GNOME, allows check-ins and merges in its newest release 0.0.4, among other things.

Standards/Consortia

• Apple Wary of Ogg Theora: No Agreement Yet on HTML5 Video Standard

  Firefox 3.5 and Chrome already support the new video tag of the HTML5 specification. Before it can become a standard, though, more browsers makers have to agree on the codec.

• Software SmackDown: SoftMaker Comes Out on Top

  The funny thing is, though, that the quality of the result, and even the ability to interoperate in a world dominated by Microsoft’s Office, doesn’t necessarily equate to the depth of the resources of the developer. Now isn’t that an interesting observation?

Why The New Webcasting Rates Are A Death Sentence For Webcasters

Meanwhile, small webcasters don’t get much of a break either. Live365 is pointing out that these rates will basically kill off every webcaster it hosts by requiring a $25,000 fee. As the company notes, the guy running the Armenian folk music station for $10/month isn’t going to pay $25,000 and certainly isn’t going to make enough revenue to pay up.

Shepard Fairey Case Gets More Complex: Mannie Garcia Claims The Photo Is His, Not The AP’s

The Shepard Fairey case continues to get more and more bizarre. You may recall that, back in January, someone figured out which photo Shepard Fairey had used as the basis of his iconic Barack Obama poster.

From Russia, With Stupidity: Band Must Pay Fines To Itself

Reader Wesha sends in the news that the band Deep Purple has been fined for performing its own songs in Russia without first getting a license from the Russian Authors’ Society (NGO). And it wasn’t a small fine either, approximately $1,000 per song. Oh, but wait, it gets better. According to one news organization, the money will be passed along to the victim, a band called… Deep Purple. Yes, that’s right.

Swedish Copyright Group Wants $5,000 p/yr Permit for Workplace Music

“Perhaps someone has the radio on or is listening to a CD and if so, you need to have a permit that allows for music to be played the workplace,” said Susanne Bodin, a STIM spokesperson, to the Sweden-based DN newspaper. “A workplace isn’t private and therefore you should have a licence for music to be played so that the copyright holders get paid.”

Warning to all copyright enforcers: Three strikes and you’re out

I think we should permanently cut off the internet access of any company that sends out three erroneous copyright notices. Three strikes and you’re out, mate.

Having been disconnected, your customers can only find out about your product offerings by ringing you up and asking, or by requesting a printed brochure. Perhaps you could give all your salespeople fax machines so they can fax urgent information up and down the supply chain. And there’s always the phone – just make sure you’ve got a bunch of phone books in the office, because you’ll never Google another phone number.

Call it a modest proposal in the Swiftian sense if you must, but I’m deadly serious.

You see, the big copyright companies – record labels, broadcasters, film studios, software companies – are lobbying in the halls of power around the world (including Westminster) for a three strikes rule for copyright infringers. They want to oblige internet service providers (ISPs) to sever the broadband links of any customer who has been thrice accused of downloading infringing material, and to oblige web-hosting companies to terminate the accounts of anyone accused of sticking infringing material on a web server three times.

ASCAP Makes Outlandish Copyright Claims on Cell Phone Ringtones

New York – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged a federal court Wednesday to reject bogus copyright claims in a ringtone royalty battle that could raise costs for consumers, jeopardize consumer rights, and curtail new technological innovation.