Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, speaking from a wheelchair, opened the 2011 Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit. This meeting Zemlin said, was for the “leaders of Linux.”
The Linux Foundation on Wednesday kicked off what will be several months of celebrations in honor of the 20th anniversary of the Linux operating system with a range of festivities and events as well as key news announcements from three of its working groups.
The very nearly almighty Ramon Miranda has finally released a huge update to his ever-in-demand GIMP Paint Studio pack of GIMP add-ons for digital artists. Over 200 brushes, new high resolution patterns that resemble artistic media, and much more is what you get.
Do you want to create your own promotional materials for your small business? Before you shell out big bucks for Adobe Creative Suite or another set of proprietary graphics software tools, you should think about what open source software has to offer. If you’d like to create professional work without breaking the bank, I’ve got five open source graphics apps that will get the job done.
If your business focuses entirely on graphics work of some kind (Web design, desktop publication, etc.) then you may want to invest in tools like Adobe Creative Suite. Even though I’m a big fan of open source software, there are some jobs that require or at least benefit greatly from proprietary tools — though in skilled hands I’ve seen free and open source tools produce results that rival proprietary tools.
Note in bold: no official plans here, however many continuously maintained software projects start with N+1 version development long before N version is discontinued. So yes, I really think the current works at UX level are “the” KDE 5 development.
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Ideas are rarely 100% original, and art is built on stealing.
After five years of planning and design, GNOME 3.0 has been officially released. The totally rewritten desktop has had its share of both praise and condemnation in recent months due to what the project describes as “its most significant redesign of the computer experience in nine years.” They further say, the “revolutionary new user interface and new features for developers make this a historic moment for the free and open source desktop.”
The developers behind the GNOME project have announced the official release of GNOME 3.0, a significant redesign of the open source desktop environment. The update introduces a new desktop shell that offers a streamlined window management workflow and a more modern look and feel. The new version also represents a major architectural overhaul, with many important enhancements to the GNOME platform’s technical underpinnings.
The effort to deliver GNOME 3.0 has a long history. It took the developers years to reach a consensus about how to proceed with the new version, and years more to implement it. The protracted development period has largely paid off in stability and coherence. It’s fit for duty out of the starting gate, though there is still plenty of room for further improvement.
“In the face of constant change, both in software technology itself and in people’s attitudes toward it, long-term software projects need to reinvent themselves in order to stay relevant. I’m encouraged to see the GNOME community taking up this challenge, responding to the evolving needs of users and questioning the status quo,” says Matt Zimmerman, Canonical CTO.
Nicolas Spalinger explains why Cantarell is more than just a font—it’s a symbol of a whole new design process. And he shows you how to tweak the font settings in GNOME 3.
Sumana Harihareswara interviews Tomeu Vizoso and John “J5” Palmieri about PyGTK, GObject, introspection and PyGObject. What’s new, what’s been hard, and what’s next?
Daf Harries continues his interview with Jon McCann and Jakub Steiner. Should we be treating code and design contributions the same, or differently? What pitfalls from GNOME 2 were designers trying to avoid? How do we deal with community indecisiveness?
Daf Harries asks Jon McCann and Jakub Steiner: what was the seed that got GNOME 3 going? How does modularity cause problems? And how do new contributors learn a project’s design philosophy?
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the release of Linux Mint 10 LXDE, the first of the lightweight desktop distributions in the current Mint series. Today they have released Linux Mint Debian Xfce, another lightweight desktop version. In addition to the obvious difference – Xfce / LXDE desktops – if you are familiar with the Linux Mint naming convention you will also have noticed the other major difference between these two lightweight distributions. The LXDE distribution is based on their Ubuntu-derived Mint 10, while this new Xfce distribution is based on their Mint Debian, which is derived directly from Debian without passing through Ubuntu along the way. The Release Notes list some of the advantages of this; the two big ones for end users are continuous updates (rolling release) and improved performance with reduced resource use.
As has been stated in the Mageia roadmap, Mageia 1 Beta1 is now available for tests. The first Mageia stable release is planned for 1st of June (which is now quite near!). Our focus is always on improving distribution content but also lots of work was done on localisation support (locales, main applications, Asian locales). Core packages versions include: kernel 2.6.38.2, KDE 4.6.1, GNOME 2.32, Firefox 4.0, … More information is available in the release notes and web announcement.
For years, Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux, has given away CDs of its Linux operating system to anyone who wanted them. That’s given away as in free, no cost, nada. But, all goods things must come to an end.
As Gerry Carr, Canonical’s Head of Platform Marketing, wrote on an Ubuntu blog, “It’s with some regret that we are announcing the end of the ShipIt Programme and the CD distributor programme. When we started ShipIt in 2005 broadband was still a marketing promise even in the most connected parts of the most developed nations. We knew that this represented a significant stumbling block to the adoption of a new technology like Ubuntu. So we invested in making the CDs free and freely delivered to anywhere in the world. Since then we have shipped millions of CDs to every country in the world and brought Ubuntu into the lives of millions of individuals, we hope making them a little better.”
I flirted with Ubuntu 11.04 yesterday and found it a bit annoying – a typical user experience when you see massive changes. After spending a night with Natty (and ‘she’ kept me awake all night) I now know more about this sexy beast.
80% of my complains faded as the dawn broke. One of my biggest complaints was my inability to customize the launcher panel. I installed compiz settings manager and was able to customise the launcher. There is an option (experimental) for Unity 3D which lets you do just that.
In the long run, switching our alternative desktops to a rolling base also simplifies their maintenance. To users, this means faster updates and synchronised releases. To us, this means more focus on the main edition.
The MeeGo project released a pre-alpha version of its promised Tablet User Experience (UX), officially opening up development for the UI layer. Based on MeeGo v1.2 core and Linux 2.6.37, the preview version includes a touch-optimized user interface for tablets, as well as a new panel UI concept and a suite of built-in browser, personal information management, and media playback apps.
Let’s say you’re a mobile developer and you’re trying to decide whether to put your eggs in the Android or the iOS basket. Recent articles suggest that it’s not going to be an easy decision, and it’s not even clear if it’s an argument worth having.
There are a number of factors coming together that have triggered these arguments over the last couple of weeks. First of all, recent news reports like this one from Engadget suggest that Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) could be tightening control over Android, trying to restrict the fragmentation that has been a consistent criticism of the operating system.
Google has added Location History to Google Latitude in its latest Maps 5.3 for Android application. Users may also check-in from home and leave tips via the Hotpot recommendation engine, says the company.
It appears that Sony (NYSE: SNE) is definitely planning to join the tablet wars: Its CEO Howard Stringer told the Nikkei newspaper that the company was planning to deliver a Honeycomb-based tablet no later than the end of the year, and possibly, according to some versions of his comments, as soon as this summer.
One of the great ironies of computer security is that the computers aren’t as much of a security problem as people are. It’s well known in the anti-malware community that user apathy in protecting against malicious software is the largest security problem of all. The answer to this ongoing problem, though, is smart software that helps prevent users from downloading or exposing themselves to malware. Working with that premise, Google has implemented a new feature in its Chrome browser designed to warn users when malware is likely to be distributed to their computers on a drive-by basis. It’s a good idea, and hopefully it will be taken further.
The best thing about Firefox is that it’s incredibly customizable, but have you ever wondered how much of a price all those add-ons take? Here’s how to see which add-ons slow down Firefox startup time the most.
Thanks to @codinghorror for pointing it out on Twitter, we can now know for sure, thanks to Mozilla Add-ons list of slow-performing extensions during startup—this doesn’t mean they necessarily slow Firefox down once it’s loaded, of course.
Anyone who has ever looked for alternatives to Microsoft Office probably knows about OpenOffice.org, a full featured competitor that is completely free. It started out as a proprietary StarOffice suite developed by a German StarDivision company until it was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2000 which opened up the code to community oriented development that resulted in many improvements and two new major releases (OpenOffice.org 2 and 3).
Last year Sun Microsystems, and by that the OpenOffice.org project as well, was acquired by Oracle causing many to wonder what they intend to do with it. Not long after a group of developers left the project to form The Document Foundation and a LibreOffice project.
Charles H. Schulz has been with OpenOffice.org for many years and has intimate knowledge of what is going on. He was kind enough to answer some questions about the The Document Foundation, LibreOffice and their future.
Using GNU/Linux is a good layer of defence. Most malware is aimed at that other OS and GNU/Linux is simple and modular, much more easily and quickly patched. Being open source means many more people, also in layers, are testing/examining the code, and being Free Software, many more people, also in layers, are in a position to fix the problems.
Hackers have penetrated four major Bay Street law firms in the past seven months with highly sophisticated cyber attacks designed to destroy data or to steal sensitive documents relating to impending mergers and acquisitions.
Daniel Tobok, president of Toronto-based Digital Wyzdom Inc., who investigated the attacks, would not name the firms. The attacks, which he said appeared to originate from computers in China, show that Canadian law firms are a target for hackers and potentially, state-sponsored cyber espionage. They follow similar attacks on governments and major corporations in recent years.
Professor Outis Philalithopoulos was found dead in his home three days ago; the coroner’s report cited natural causes that were left unspecified. Unfortunately, all of the professor’s academic work has disappeared; the only trace left appears to be the following letter, which he sent to an admirer shortly before his death. The understandably concerned recipient of the letter has shared its contents with Naked Capitalism, and has insisted that her identity be protected.
Scott Walker’s administration is all about cutting costs, which is why it gave the largely unqualified son of a major campaign donor a $81,500 senior managerial job in the state Commerce Department. A state official confirmed that the young gentleman got his job after his daddy put in a good word for him. As ThinkProgress points out, Walker’s anti-union legislation allows him to directly appoint dozens more people for high-paying gubmint jobs.
A video featuring Conservative Leader Stephen Harper performing Imagine by John Lennon has been removed from YouTube for copyright reasons.
As of Wednesday morning, the video had been taken down and replaced with the message that said: “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Lenono Music.”
Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, owns the rights to Imagine through Lenono Music.
The Montreal Gazette ran a major story over the weekend focused on the costs for ISPs to transport a gigabyte of data (picked up by others as well). As those following the usage based billing issue will know, the ISP overage costs – which run as high $10 per GB in Canada – have attracted the ire of customers and raised questions about the actual costs for ISPs.
Developing a better understanding of actual network costs was a big part of the paper I posted last week on UBB. This post features part of the discussion on costs, though the complicated appendix that uses Bell’s submission on network costs as part of the deferral account proceeding must be accessed from the original paper.
As I type this article I have visions of flame wars, insults and bad feeling. I would hope that it is seen as an article which merely makes an observation and asks a question (with a little of my own opinion thrown in).
I have never supported or condoned the DDOS attacks and I believe the announcement from Anonymous and the subsequent downtime of the Playstation network with its family of websites, shows a rather interesting result.
Autodesk makes CAD software. By all reports it is good software and it is widely used. The licensing fees are substantial but many who use AutoCAD feel it is money well spent. However, other businesses wishing to provide CAD software have been persecuted for trying to make use of the files produced by AutoCAD (.dwg). One aspect of this is Autodesk seeking to obtain a trademark, DWG, to have leverage over competition. USPTO turned down that request but AutoDesk has made a 412-page reply asking the application to be granted for a trademark.
Posted in Microsoft at 5:54 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Words from unknown or unverified entities make extraordinary claims
A TECHRIGHTS READER has brought a new comment from John Bilderback to our attention. John writes, “I get $10 USD for each 50 word comment I write. We have a site we log into where we point the auto script to check against our name and the comment”.
While this seems absurd, the reader believes Bilderback is serious. At least the name seems real, but we at TechRights are sceptical nonetheless. Consider this:
I get $10 USD for each 50 word comment I write. We have a site we log into where we point the auto script to check against our name and the comment.
A heuristics engine checks for certain words. For example, if we use the word “Microsoft”, it gets counted as 3 words. Punctuation doesn’t count.
We get bonus points (words) if we link back to Microsoft.
I currently make about $700 USD per month. It doesn’t quite pay for a living but it makes for extra spending money.
Fellowship of the Minds received an e-mail from Tony Whitcomb, a reader who’s asking for our help to publicize what he claims are Microsoft’s illegal campaign contributions to Obama. Mr. Whitcomb’s plight is heartbreaking and should disturb any American. For his whistleblowing, in three years he has gone from being the CEO of a multi-million dollar Internet start-up (that now is 49% owned by Microsoft) to being flat broke and homeless.
To what extent are these true? And how can one judge? These questions illustrate the difficulty involved when dealing with proprietary sources of all kinds.█
Posted in Google, Patents at 8:11 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Elements of the FFII, notably Benjamin Henrion (left), encourage Google to use its financial power to abolish — not acquire — software patents
THOSE who want to get rid of software patents need not compromise at the level of accepting them as an interim solution just as activists against nuclear weapons must not encourage more nations to acquire or develop nuclear weapons as a “deterrent”. The whole argument around deterrence is a weak one, it’s propaganda. The opinions of the president of the FFII are quite similar to ours, unlike others in the FFII who adopt a more “diplomatic” (arguably cowardly) approach. This division within the FFII is a subject we alluded to before and it is not of much relevance to this post (see Andre’s opening remarks in the video below for a better idea).
“There is not so much consent around the attitude of the OSI, the Linux Foundation, and OIN.”In any event and at any rate, there seems to be growing popularity and intensity for the argument that we must get rid of all software patents. There is not so much consent around the attitude of the OSI, the Linux Foundation, and OIN. The president of the FFII points to this older post and notes that EPO Judges argued “[c]omputer-implemented inventions and their protection in the US and under the EPC was the next agenda point” (why do they discuss it in the first place?). He also links to this post and notes this patent: “Downloader: A computer that retrieves web pages and embedded objects from the internet. 6,864,904 ”
Suffice to say, the cited item is a lawyers’ blog, so it has nothing to do with technology. These people who are not engineers. They are in fact patent lawyers who sue for a living and extort using pieces of paper (patent watchtroll in this case), so they worship patents as a whole and also defend patent number 6,411,947. They insult those who actually write code and understand the subject matter (pun not intended). My critics too should know that I wrote about 3,000 lines of code last month.
it’d be better if Google were pouring that $900 million into lobbying to get rid of software patents altogether http://ur1.ca/3s2px
Wishful thinking? No patents would be Utopian to Google, but this would not be beneficial to just Google (it’s like promoting the brand “Linux”), so how can this be justified to shareholders? Moreover, Google’s lawyers wish to justify their existence within the company. “Google not really against software patents,” concludes the president of the FFII who links to other critics of intellectual monopolies. This strategy which Google adopts does not help against trolls, but some would play along with Google and call it “patent armoury”. It’s not. Patents are like nuclear weapons; they are used for litigation, not so much for negotiation. We are better off without any of them. Just watch Sun’s “defensive” patents and what Oracle did to Android with them. ZFS, which is now owned by Oracle, is a famous victim of patents and we wrote about this for years. Patents change hands and with this change of “ownership” comes change in patent strategy, too.
Nortel will pay Google $25 million in break up fees, and a further $4 million to cover expenses if another party wins the auction, Bloomberg reports. Bids will go up in increments of at least $5 million, and bidding has been pegged to hit a minimum of $1 billion.
Today: Texas Instruments intends to buy NatSemi for $6.5 billion. Plus: Watch out for email “phishing” schemes. And: Google (GOOG), Pandora, Silicon Valley tech stocks.
$6.5 billion NatSemi deal
Texas Instruments intends to buy Santa Clara chip giant National Semiconductor in a cash deal worth $25 a share, or $6.5 billion, the two companies announced this afternoon.
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Google would be the “stalking horse” bid, but other companies also could make offers for the patents. Google is trying to buy the patents even as it argues for changes to the system, arguing that some software patents are stifling innovation rather than encouraging it.
Well, software patents are indeed stifling innovation rather than encouraging it. So what example is Google setting by its actions?
Here is a new article which suggests that universities should forget about patents:
Open source software licenses already offer university software creators an alternative to the university’s patent+license commercialization model. Open source hardware licenses are next. University intellectual property strategies will need to learn to peaceably learn to co-exist with open sourced hardware licenses. A centralized, enforcement-flavored intellectual property strategy is not going to work. Nor will university policies that blindly favor hardware patents at the expense of alternative methods of sharing design information.
Here is a new press release from some company which thinks it’s acceptable to get a thought monopoly on a product:
Tentatively called The Trade Marketplace, this patent-pending software was recently revealed in beta form to a group of Cleveland-area job shop owners, who said they would welcome a convenient, time-efficient means to quote new business, especially one that spotlights their core competencies, reduces the expense of processing an RFQ or an RFP and increases the opportunity to win new business.
It is not about winning new business but about obstructing rivals, as this new story about Mosaid Technologies helps remind us. Companies which do not abolish software patents and part of the problem; conformism is not an excuse. Aim high, achieve much. Aim low, achieve nothing. █
Posted in Patents at 7:43 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A close look at some new examples of patents that kill people rather than save their lives
TECHRIGHTS has been covering ethical problems with patents since about 2007. Glyn Moody has done so too, even at a time when Groklaw, for example, was somewhat of an apologist for these (living and working among lawyers is an experience that takes its toll). Moody currently points to a new example which he says shows “how gene patents cause suffering”. To quote Nature:
The website of the Alzheimer’s Institute of America (AIA) doesn’t reveal much about the organization, but portrays it as committed to supporting research and patients. Among people who study Alzheimer’s disease, however, the AIA, based in St Louis, Missouri, is best known for filing lawsuits against companies and researchers — a practice that scientists say could hamper the progress of research into combating the dreaded disease.
Groklaw too is currently covering a new example of unethical patents that cause death:
Here’s the MP3 [some are having trouble with that url, so try this one] of today’s oral argument in the appeal before the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit of Association for Molecular Pathology et al v. USPTO , Appeal No. 2010-1406. This is the case about whether human genes should be patentable, specifically genes for identifying the risk of breast and ovarian cancer.
Previously, renowned economist Joseph Stiglitz explained why TRIPS (patents) is like murder. This is no longer some extreme point of view, it’s just progressive and it becomes more widely accepted in the age of the Internet, which fosters communication and sharing. It’s time to modernise (or abolish) patent law just as it is time to redo copyright law. Even Groklaw changed its stance regarding patents. █
Summary: As Microsoft has championed tactics for winning without really winning (but by changing the rules and distorting the game), there is this niche left for Microsoft to target when it no longer manages to sell or bundle products, let alone make money from pushy patent deals and litigation
MICROSOFT was never a technology company, unlike Google for example. Microsoft was not created by technologists, or at least did not focus on them. Microsoft knew how to leverage other people’s work, how to crush competitors, how to strike deals (nepotism helped), and how to get away from law enforcement after it had repeatedly broken the law (also thanks to nepotism).
To Microsoft, subversion of the law has been instrumental in growing the business. To this date, Microsoft relies on subverting the law, doing whatever is necessary (e.g. software patenting) to make its competition illegal [1, 2] and every buyer of a new computer obliged to pay Microsoft a tax (Microsoft tries to do the same with every phone sold).
Microsoft has lobbied state legislators in the US to introduce a law which would prevent a business selling goods and services if one of its suppliers was found to be using pirated Microsoft software.
It would enable Microsoft to pursue losses resulting from piracy in foreign lands, such as China, where it may be more difficult to bring direct action against the actual user of the pirated software.
Since providing this confidential information to the FBI, over one a year ago, I have now been completely, as well as thoroughly, retaliated against by both the Obama Administration, as well as Microsoft, so I am now sincerely hoping that the Political Fail Blog, would now be willing to provide me with any type of help and/or assistance, in getting all of this extremely important information out to the American People and to all of our fellow American Citizens, who presently maybe living and/or fighting for our Country abroad and I sincerely thank all of you in advance, for all of your time and for your immediate considerations into these extremely serious matters and I truly wish all of you nothing but continued peace, prosperity, blessings and success, in all of your current and future endeavors!
The payments made to Obama by Microsoft (with expectation of favours like this one being returned) are probably less interesting than payments made by Microsoft to other companies, with the expectation that these companies would attack Linux. Recall the situation of SCO and Norris [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9] and also recall vulture fund like Elliot and Icahn, who worked with Microsoft. What we know for a fact is that SCO received millions from Microsoft after its Linux lawsuit, then got $30 million from a Microsoft-backed proxy (Baystar), and later on Bill Gates’ father had his firm come over to SCO to deal with financial issues. This is how “business” is done at Microsoft. It’s shady, it’s secretive, it’s corrupt. And right now the Bill Gates-funded Intellectual Ventures is extorting Microsoft’s rivals.
Trading in SCO shares has been suspended. Here’s the SEC press release. It seems not filing anything for a couple of years gets the SEC’s attention eventually, even if nothing else does:
The Commission temporarily suspended trading in the securities of these fourteen issuers due to a lack of current and accurate information about the companies because they have not filed periodic reports with the Commission in over two years.
So a temporary suspension. Meanwhile, one presumes the sale of substantially all of SCO’s assets to unXis has happened. The judge on March 7 gave Novell 14 days to appeal, if they chose to, and they chose not to.
It’s interesting enough that Novell did not appeal and given that Novell is helping Microsoft these days, e.g. by giving it patents, it’s not entirely shocking (Groklaw expected Novell to appeal). Microsoft is doing “business” by picking companies like SCO and Novell for their own battles and bidding. Poor “puppy”. Maybe it should enter the vulture fund and lobbying business. That’s something Microsoft has mastered for decades. █
The UNIX vs. Linux debate continues to rage on especially when it comes to applications that require high availability. As I watch the market, I see more and more evidence that Linux is ready to handle the demands for mission-critical computing.
The desktop is changing. No longer do folks need a big case on their desks to do the job. Notebooks have taken over. No longer do they even need a thick/heavy/hot notebook. Netbooks, smart phones, tablets and some hybrids have taken over. When the dust settles, some kind of thin client probably running GNU/Linux on ARM will have evolved. It’s survival of the fittest, not the fattest, in IT. That other OS has a severe disadvantage, that Zemlin points out. GNU/Linux just works better on everything. When the conventional desktop with huge local resources goes the way of the DoDo bird, GNU/Linux will be there on whatever results.
System 76 has done a fantastic job with the Gazelle Professional. It’s very well put together and runs everything as it should out of the box. If you need a high performing Linux laptop, the Gazelle Pro should make your short list. At $1877 for the reviewed configuration, it sounds pricey but the extra ram and processor really help if you are planning on doing a lot of multimedia work or running a lot of virtual machines. Also, there isn’t a MacBook that Apple sells that can hold 16 GB of ram. Take the reviewed configuration and add another 8 GB of RAM for a total of 16 GB, and you are still under a similarly configured MacBook’s price except you have 8 GB more ram than ANY MacBook. No – it’s not near as pretty as a MacBook, but it’s just as powerful in an experienced Linux user’s hands.
The openness of Android seems to have paid off for Google and the various makers of Android devices. On Friday, comScore announced that Android’s share of the mobile market grew by 7% between November and February, compared with a 0.2% gain for iOS, with RIM’s Blackberry actually seeing a 0.2% drop in usage. According to the report, one out of ever three mobile devices in use is running some implementation of Android.
There’s been a lot of talk about how big Facebook has become, and with its 600 million users (!) it has certainly become a force to be reckoned with. But there is still one player out there that dwarfs Facebook, and that is Google.
The problem is that it’s extremely difficult to estimate just how big Google actually is. But we’re going to try anyway.
The Samsung Galaxy Prevail was officially announced at a Boost Mobile and Samsung Mobile press event in New York City. But someone at Boost decided it would be better to simply unveil the Prevail early and list the device on the Boost Mobile phone selection page.
Broken schedule or not, we can now confirm that the Samsung Galaxy Prevail is Boost Mobile’s second Android phone, joining the Motorola i1 to double the carrier’s Android offerings. Packed into the Galaxy Prevail’s 3.8-ounce body are a 3.2-inch touchscreen, Android 2.2, and a 2 megapixel camera. Similar to its Sprint brethren, the Prevail also ships with unlimited usage of TeleNav map and voice navigation, and has the following apps pre-loaded on the phone: Facebook, Hookt, Poynt, SCVNGR, ThinkFree Office, and Twidroyd.
When Mark Shuttleworth announced last year that Ubuntu will eventually deploy Wayland instead of an X.Org Server with their new Unity Desktop, there were many mixed reactions. There were many Phoronix enthusiasts excited since this means replacing ancient X11 code with a brand new code-base designed around modern graphics technologies that takes advantage of KMS, OpenGL, etc. Others, however, were less excited since Wayland is still a work-in-progress. While Wayland has come a long way in recent months, it’s still not as full-featured as an X.Org Server, but the features coming are beginning to trump the current capabilities of the X stack.
All across the geek communities there’s always been an adage about Linux, saying that it’s an operating system more for fun, and less for work. However, Linux has been receiving plenty of attention lately, and you can now do things with Linux that you might’ve thought would only work in Windows. Let’s take a look at some of those things.
Zim is a graphical text editor used to maintain a collection of wiki pages. Each page can contain links to other pages, simple formatting and images. Pages are stored in a folder structure, like in an outliner, and can have attachments. Creating a new page is as easy as linking to a nonexistent page. All data is stored in plain text files with wiki formatting. Various plugins provide additional functionality, like a task list manager, an equation editor, a tray icon, and support for version control.
Grep is one of the most important tools for a shell user. When it comes to retrieving required data from a bulk of text, grep is your best bet. Its very flexible, powerful and as I came to know today, has an interesting story too.
Most free software users have long ago made their decision about whether they prefer the GNOME or KDE desktop. However, with the release of GNOME 3 this week, the choice requires a new answer. Now, both GNOME and KDE have versions that are radically different from those each had a few years ago.
The difference is not in the software. The choice of applications designed for each desktop has not altered: in most cases, the utilities have identical features, but GNOME still lacks a font installer and a fully-featured music player, while KDE could use better accessibility and network connection tools.
I’ve been interested in Telepathy for some time now. And every time it was mentioned on PlanetKDE, I wanted to test it. Some things worked, some not. Now, that the important ones are functional – system settings module, contact list, chat window – I decided to start the preparations for Lancelot to switch from Kopete to Telepathy.
On a side note, don’t confuse KDE and Qt. I still have Qt on my system because of Skype and VLC, both of which I use regularly. I’m not getting rid of those.
GNOME 3.0 will be officially released tomorrow to what will almost assuredly be a bunch of fanfare. It’s been five years in the making with contributions from over 3,500 developers. It’s had quite a bit of press and blog coverage already and opinions will most likely multiply in the days ahead. But how do regular users feel about the upcoming GNOME 3.0 against the backdrop of the debates over the good and bad points?
A year ago I started a poll on my Website to gauge excitement over GNOME 3.0 which was just starting to get some buzz and included early screenshots. Then in February of this year I asked again after quite a bit of coverage had been circulating forming a more complete picture of just how the new desktop would look and operate.
If you’ve been following the Gnome Shell development, you probably know that it doesn’t provide a GUI tool to tweak some basic settings like changing the GTK, Gnome Shell theme or icon theme, re-enable the minimize and maximize buttons, and so on.
oresight is a distribution I thought had “died” and gone to tux heaven. But it seems that the developers decided to bring it back to life. Given that, I hoped that the developers would have taken more time to bring every aspect of the distribution up to date.
The magazine is lead by Paul Arnote, Chief Editor, and Assistant Editors Andrew Strick and Meemaw. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license, and some rights are reserved.
The new office will be located in Auckland and will focus on driving adoption of Red Hat’s Linux, middleware and cloud computing offerings through its partners.
Red Hat solutions are distributed through Ingram New Zealand; Datacom, Gen-i, OSS and Solnet; and OEM Partners IBM, HP, Dell, and Cisco.
So, I’m a bit surprised how much people liked my spider diagrams to update folks on my perception of the state of Unity. It’s been hard to update that last few months, just because Unity has been changing so fast. However, those changes have slowed down, and I’ve gotten some requests, so here is my post-beta 1 spider diagram for Unity.
As you can see, the orange line, Unity, almost overlaps the yellow line, our target for Natty. Obviously, this is a major accomplish for many teams involved in this project. I’ve been using Unity and my netbook and on my desktop for months now. Over the last few weeks it has crisped up into a very tight experience. Of all the desktop environments I have ever used, Unity is by far my favorite.
It looks like the Dell USA website has been updated and is now selling 2 models of Ubuntu laptop. The first is a 10 inch almost netbook which ships with Ubuntu 10.10 (so it’s likely to be a recent addition) and an older Latitude 13-N which comes with Ubuntu 9.10 (which shows it’s likely to be an older model that might not have been properly advertised on the website previously)
The Unity interface works for me. It is tidy and simple enough for any newbie to figure out. It is not as easily configured as GNOME normally is but about the same as XFCE4 which I often use.
Today it was announced that ShipIt, the free CD service that Canonical has been running since the inception of Ubuntu will be discontinued. I know some LoCo Teams may be worried about this, so I wanted to clarify some details right away.
9 hours later, after installing the Kubuntu Desktop Environment alongside Ubuntu along with many updates, upgrades and software packages, I have discovered I can have a taskbar at the bottom of my Ubuntu 11.04 desktop. To get Natty Ubuntu looking somewhat similar to Maverick you must change your desktop environment to “Ubuntu Classic” when you log in by clicking your username then changing “Ubuntu” (in the dropdown box) at the bottom of the screen to “Ubuntu Classic”. I would never have realized this had I not installed KDE (Kubuntu).
Starting last Friday (1st of April) I’m now working for Canonical Ltd. as a member of the Ubuntu Foundations team !
I’ll mostly be working on network related stuff, though my TODO list will probably be a lot clearer after the upcoming Ubuntu Developer Summit in Budapest, Hungary.
Long story short, Elementary OS was a bitter disappointment for me. I think the concept is there, and it could be a successful one with the right implementation, but I don’t see that happening in Jupiter. Moon OS, Zorin OS, Linux Mint… The list of Ubuntu forks that do better is long and I don’t see that changing as long as the Elementary project does not realize that Linux without flexibility is hardly an option.
US market researcher comScore reports that 69.5 million US citizens own a smartphone, and that one third of these phones run Google’s open source Android mobile operating system. On the popularity scale, RIM and Apple are next with 29% and 25% of users, leaving Microsoft (8%) and Palm (3%) far behind. According to market researcher Nielsen, the US sales figures for Android phones have already been above those for RIM and Apple since July 2010, but this is the first time that Android is also leading in terms of devices in use. comScore said that last November, RIM was in the lead with 34%, followed by Android and Apple with an almost identical share each of 25% of users.
Here is a real budget tablet for Mr Scrooge. For $199 you can pick up this Sylvania Magni 10 inch tablet with 1Ghz Arm 11.1GHz chip, 257 MB of Internal Memory and 2GB of space. It does have a MicroSD Card so you can up extend the memory up to 16GB. For connectivity it has WiFi, 2 Mini USB ports and HDMI. It also has a 1.3 megapixel camera and 1400mah battery. Sylvania Magni runs on Android 2.2. Sylvania Magni has an obsolete 800 x 480 pixel display on 10 inches. Needless to say, a bit more money can get you a much better tablet. At least when it comes to the resolution. Someone had slept in I think, but the price is right. Can’t have it all, can we? JR sells it for $199.
The powers that be that manage the development of the MeeGo Linux software for netbooks, tablets, smartphones, and other mobile devices have released the source code for the first tablet version of the operating system. The software developer kit and source code for MeeGo Tablet are now available for download.
MeeGo still describes the tablet software as a “preview” version and a work in progress. But by making the source code available, MeeGo will encourage third party developers to write apps for the software platform, and possibly to help find bugs or areas that can be improved.
Who’d have predicted that overpriced slivers of silicon, covered in oleophobic glass trying its best to repel your sticky fingers, would become the first great technological innovation of the 21st century?
Frequently, Datamation publishes lists of free Linux and open source software. This time, we’re doing something a little different: we’re highlighting outstanding commercial open source software.
Before we go any farther, we should define what we mean by “commercial open source software.” As with many topics in the open source world, different people have very different opinions about what that phrase means.
The future of Firefox’s add-ons arrived in Firefox 4 with the introduction of “restartless add-ons.” Based on the new Jetpack API and Add-on SDK, restartless add-ons–also known as bootstrapped add-ons–don’t require a restart to be used or removed. Not coincidentally, they also provide Firefox with a venue for competing directly with other browsers, which use add-on frameworks that were created after the technology that supports restartless add-ons was created.
Mozilla’s disclosure of slow performing add-ons is admirable, but let’s not forget that browsers are one of the most competitive application categories, and the open source Chrome browser from Google is breathing down Firefox’s neck in terms of market share. Chrome is widely lauded for performance, while Firefox 4 is taking criticism precisely on the performance front.
In the rapidly emerging cloud computing arena, providers of platforms and solutions tend to fall into two camps. In the first camp, players such as Amazon and Microsoft pitch their cloud computing platforms as end-to-end solutions that provide one-stop shopping for all things cloud. In the other camp, there are players such as Red Hat, focusing on allowing many open source projects to be weaved together into patchwork quilts of cloud computing solutions, offering optimal flexibility to those deploying or enabling cloud applications. There are ever more reasons to believe that the second camp has cloud computing right.
I just listened to this (audio and video available from Hacker Public Radio).
It’s all about rethinking our “relationship” with services such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft and the like — and what we can do about it to reclaim our freedom from a technological standpoint.
Memcached is one of the technologies that holds the modern Internet together, but do you know what it actually does? Brian Aker has certainly earned the title of Memcached guru, and below he offers a peek under the hood. He’ll also provide a deeper dive into Memcached in a tutorial at the upcoming 2011 MySQL Conference.
Methyl iodide is a nasty chemical. It is a known neurotoxin and endocrine disruptor, and scientists in labs handle only small amounts using special protective equipment because it is so toxic. But do you know where else it is used? As a pesticide on strawberries and other food crops.
The battle against methyl iodide is being fought on several fronts. Last summer, Washington state banned the use of the pesticide. Unfortunately, the pendulum swung the other way in California, when despite more than 53,000 public comments submitted by CREDO activists and our allies, the state’s Department of Pesticide Regulation approved the chemical for agricultural use last December.
Dru Lavigne is a network and systems administrator, IT instructor, author and international speaker. She has over a decade of experience administering and teaching Netware, Microsoft, Cisco, Checkpoint, SCO, Solaris, Linux and BSD systems. She is author of BSD Hacks, The Best of FreeBSD Basics, and The Definitive Guide to PCBSD.
There is no named source for the reports, but if these sites are indeed shutting down it is evidence that the push toward open initiatives–including many open source technology initiatives–in the U.S. government may need to be refined and better targeted. Kundra has done a remarkable job shifting important aspects of the U.S. government toward open practices and open source tools. It takes money to run some of these projects at the federal level, though.
Leaders and legislators often wonder how to keep up with the fast-moving world of ICT. But we know at the same time that there is significant public interest in play, so we are keen to have a role. With that thought in mind, I’m pleased that the European Union and the United States have found a way to make a constructive difference to ICT-related trade – through a series of principles that we will each apply to our respective trade negotiations with third countries.
The Perl community has long laid claim to the motto “There’s more than one way to do it”. As a long time member of the PHP community, I often wonder whether our motto should be, “There’s more than ten ways to do it.” The number of competing PHP projects can be staggering at times, as is evidenced by the ten lightweight frameworks I introduced in last year’s article, Top 10 Lightweight Frameworks for PHP Development. While sorting through such a broad selection of solutions can at times be overwhelming, the advantage is that with some patience you will eventually come across a solution which perfectly suits your particular tastes.
A quick trip to the Debian repository revealed “smartmontools”, the package with the basic text-mode tools, and “gsmartcontrol”, a GUI front-end. I installed these back in December, and ran the routine tests on the drives. And while my old /dev/hda passed with flying colors, the newly-acquired used /dev/hdb threw up a lot of warning flags. So I was expecting trouble.
This, by the way, is why you want to install both packages. The text-mode tool dumps a load of numeric data, for which you need some knowledge of hard drives to interpret. The GUI tool, however, does the interpretation for you, highlights problems in red, and has useful help information.
As promised on Monday, Commodore USA has unleashed the eagerly-awaited Commodore 64 keyboard PC. For the uninitiated, this isn’t a re-release of the ancient AIO that initially depended on cassette tapes to load up software. This is a modernized version packed with Intel’s dual-core Atom 525 CPU, Nvidia Ion2 graphics, 2 GB of DDR3 memory (expandable to 4 GB), an optical drive, and more. It may not be ideal for running Crysis 2, but it sure beats the dinosaur 8-bit technology from the 1980s.
In a letter raising “concerns” to Washington over the pre-trial treatment of alleged military whistleblower Bradley Manning, the U.K. government asserted that he is “British by descent” after campaigners lobbied for the U.S. to allow his mother (who is from Wales) to visit him.
WikiLeaks has claimed another WikiLoser: U.S. Ambassador Heather Hodges, who was kicked out of Ecuador today over a cable detailing alleged corruption in President Rafael Correa’s government. “It is unfortunate that the published documents on WikiLeaks have made it impossible to continue collaborating with the current ambassador to Quito, but we hope to work with a new ambassador,” Ecuador’s Washington embassy said in a statement today, according to the Associated Press.
When Republicans talk about how the American health care system should be reformed, they typically mention two things: allowing insurance firms to sell policies across state lines, which I wrote about last week; and malpractice reform.
David Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity conventions in Wisconsin over the past two years may have helped lay the groundwork for the state’s controversial battle over labor rights and budget cuts. The conventions featured leading figures in the right-wing’s attack on workers, and may also have skirted disclosure rules in the process. Governor Scott Walker and Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen appeared when they were running for office, and both conventions featured Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David T. Prosser, Jr., whose race with challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg will come to an end with Tuesday’s state-wide election.
The Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity is behind a mailer criticizing Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Joanne Kloppenburg for prosecutions that were trumpeted by her boss Wisconsin’s Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, who is defending Governor Walker’s union-busting bill in court.
In a bizarre yet brilliant example of how messed up the current copyright restrictions are, six major movie studios have filed a new lawsuit against the quasi DVD-rental outfit Zediva. Under the flag of the MPAA, the studios label the new business as a “sham,” because it uses a clever way to bypass a licensing roadblock.
Zediva is a recently launched movie streaming service which allows customers to rent and view physical DVDs remotely. It is the result of the movie industry’s set of strict copyright rules, but also a service that bypasses them at the same time.
The government’s code to clamp down on illegal filesharing will not come into force for another six months as the Digital Economy Act is held up by a high court challenge.
However, plans to send thousands of warning letters to alleged copyright infringers are still on track to begin in the first half of next year, the government said on Tuesday.
Resumen: La administración de Obama se dice a considerar una “re-evaluación fundamental de las patentes de software”, mientras que Microsoft simplemente apuesta pesadamente en las patentes de software.
CCUANDO Linux fué atacado por SCO que no pasó mucho tiempo para que todos descubran que Microsoft había pagado solapadamente a SCO. La gente ha sabido generalmente que desde entonces (y de antemano) que conforme a los documentos de Halloween, Microsoft hará cualquier cosa que pueda para conseguir que los distribuidores de Linux sean demandados. Sigue usando las mismas estrategias, pero los tipos de monopolios imaginarios cambian y también las códigos de pleito. Motorola demuestra los límites del precipitada estrategia de Microsoft[http://techrights.org/wiki/index.php/Motorola] ; Microsoft no puede apenas completar un ciclo a través de cada scompañía que venda Linux porque tarde o temprano sus productos como el Xbox 360 tienen riesgo de sufrir una interdicción del mercado. Si Microsoft está dispuesto a ir abajo en este carril, después es seguro una muestra de la desesperación y Groklaw tenía un buen artículo acerca de eso ayer, diciendo bastante de lo mismo porque Microsoft ahora está recurriendo incluso a los reguladores anticompetitivos, esperando que también puedan rescatar su moribundo monopolio[http://techrights.org/2011/04/01/46845/] (NADIE HA VIOLADO LA LEGISLACION ANTIMONOPOLIO TANTO COMO MICROSOFT).
Sabemos afortunadamente que el FUD académico de esta semana de hecho es financiado secretamente por Microsoft[http://techrights.org/2011/04/01/avoiding-microsoft-funded-fud/]. El MF, Microsoft Florian[http://techrights.org/wiki/index.php/Florian_M%C3%BCller], quien admite ser un paladín de alquiler (él intenta evitar de la palabra “cabildero”), repite mecánicamente lo que dice su patrón Steve Ballmer hoy, en respuesta a las abolladuras que hice en Identica. Esto está diciendo que incluso no es divertido y el grupo 451 pregunta[http://blogs.the451group.com/opensource/2011/03/30/is-android-fud-a-forebearer-of-linux-like-success/], es la campaña FUD en contra de Android el anuncio del éxito de Linux?
He visto algunas críticas de Android y de Google indicando que está claro o que debe estar claro cuál es código abierto y cuál no lo es. Discutiría, sin embargo, que ha llegado a ser absolutamente confuso cuál es código abierto y cuál no lo es en todas las circunstancias y particularmente en smartphones, como cubrimos en nuestro informe especial Materias de Movilidad de hace dos años y medio. No hay negación de la presión constante para el Android y Google y de otros en el ecosistema para ser verdad al puño y letra del código abierto y sus licencias, aunque dolorosos, sirver para consolidar sus aspectos de código abierto. Sin embargo, las declaraciones y el foul del griterío de las señales contra de Android son absolutamente similares a las quejas, amenazas y, sí, FUD que vimos girar alrededor de Linux hace una década. Y no olvidemos la lección de bastante abierta, que se convierte aún más significativa dada la computación en la nube y las capacidades que se están extendiendo a los smartphones y a otros dispositivos móviles.
En el fondo, lo revelador, los fabricantes y los consumidores se centran pesadamente más en nuevos lanzamientos cada seis meses en vez de que quién está demandando a quién, en el sistema del juego de patentes y de la demanda de software, de la infracción del IP (propiedad intelectual). Para predecir donde se dirige el Android y qué probable va a suceder como resultado del FUD, podemos mirar a Linux, que emergió más fuerte, más competitivo y más listo para las empresas después de las amenazas infames y de los pleitos causados por SCO.
Microsoft ha puesto demasiados huevos en una sóla cesta porque en vez de crear nuevos productos mantiene ocupados a sus trabajadores escribiendo solicitudes de patentes – patentes que son apenas otro paradigma monopolístico que confía en trozos de papel en vez de construir el canal. El gobierno podría, en principio, tirar de la alfombra por debajo de los pies de Microsoft pasando una reforma de patentes que es mejor que la que hemos mencionado mucho recientemente. Obama planea re-evaluar fundamental las patentes del software[http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/silicon-valley-sleuth-blog/2031942/obama-plans-fundamental-rethink-software-patents] según un nuevo informe y más artículos que se están publicando ahora proporcionan justificaciones para tal movimiento[http://blogcritics.org/scitech/article/deep-fryers-green-robots-and-patent/]:
De acuerdo con el estado actual, usted esencialmente no puede escribir un aplicación que no infrinja de alguna manera en algún otra patente. Uno pudo pensar que esto es una exageración, pero hechemos una ojeada la lista siguiente de no-no legales:
1) Nota móvil
Sí, la patente para un viejo anuncio sobre el movimiento del ratón, usada por la mayoría de aplicaciones, fue concedida a Microsoft. Si usted quisiera que su aplicación sea legal, usted no puede utilizarlo.
2) Mensajería del En-juego
Ése es díficil para los desarrolladores de juegos – Yahoo tiene una patente que cubra básicamente el envío de mensajes en-juego. Y no tienen miedo de utilizarla.
3) Juegos onlines
¿Por qué no prohíbir todos los juegos masivos de multijugadores (MMO) en línea? Eso es lo que podría hacer Sheldon Goodberg, como él tiene una patente muy amplia para el sistema del juego de establecimiento de juegos en red. Él tubo bastante sentido de no ir detrás de Mundo de Warcraft, y él está apuntando al Solitario en línea para comenzar. ¿Quién sabe qué sucederá si tiene éxito?
4) Barra del progreso
¡Parece que IBM es el único niño en el barrio bien chévere para usar una barra de progreso!
5) Pagar en línea
Éste va a Amazon, porque la idea de almacenar la información del cliente es tan innovadora. Sin embargo, no le debe importar a usted, porque no se le va a permitir hacer ventas en el Internet de todos modos. Apenas compruebe el punto siguiente.
Cúando/si las patentes de software se invalidan en masa, la casa de tarjetas de Microsoft caerá. Así que esparzamos el mensaje sobre patentes del software un poco más lejos es la labor de todos. █
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