• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

MY DESKTOP IS CHANGING

Now we come to 2011 and the Linux desktop horizon is changing with the rise of smartphones and tablets. As our data becomes more mobile, developers are working to synchronize everything we use and need across all platforms, from your phones and tablets to your laptop and desktop computers. It is believed that by having a unified interface, it will help users avoid confusion and create a productive synergy. As handheld platforms are quickly becoming the dominant tools for accessing data, computer operating systems are following suit.

18.5-inch panel PC offers capacitive multitouch

Desktop

• Take your Linux PC back to the future!

  Take your PC back to 1985 with a cool selection of tools and tricks that build a fully functioning desktop computer on the console!

  There are many reasons to use the console. Sometimes you need to run on older hardware. Or you may be stuck running remotely over a slow connection, where using an X11 desktop is just painfully slow. There are lots of articles that describe the tools and utilities available for the console.

  But how do you use them all together? This tutorial will look at one way that you can combine all of these programs together to give you a fully functional desktop. You’ll essentially end up with a console desktop where you can check email, surf the web, chat with people, catch up on the news, and more. We’ll use tmux to organise your desktop and make the most of your screen real estate.

• Why I Switched to Linux

  Since then I have used later versions of UBUNTU on both my home desktop system and my laptops. My newest laptop, an IBM ThinkPad T-42 is running Ubuntu 10.04 and – I’m writing this on that laptop. Linux has improved – 99% of the hardware on my T-42 “just worked” with the minor exception of the accelerometer chip (parks the harddrive when laptop is bumped)

Accumulations

• TLWIR 22: Red Hat, India’s Supreme Court, and More

• Goodbye, Dennis Ritchie

Kernel Space

• Pushing Reiser4 Is “Not Of High Priority”

  Edward Shishkin, the lone developer that took over development of the Reiser4 file-system following the conviction of Hans Reiser, has shared a new update with Phoronix regarding the efforts towards pushing Reiser4 into the mainline Linux kernel.

• Linux 3.0.7

  Note, I’ve had some boot problems with this kernel, and I can’t seem to narrow the issue down, but I think it’s due to something not related to the kernel itself, but am not positive. Please test to verify that I didn’t mess something up.

• Graphics Stack

  • The Linux 3.1 Kernel For Older Intel Graphics

    While there’s many ongoing improvements for Intel’s Sandy Bridge graphics and the next-generation Ivy Bridge graphics within the Linux kernel, Mesa, and xf86-video-intel (namely the SNA acceleration for the DDX), here’s some benchmarks from two older Intel systems using the latest Linux 3.1 kernel to see if there are any improvements there.

Applications

• Nautilus Terminal 1.0 Released With Support For Nautilus 3.x (Terminal Embedded Into Nautilus)

• The Farstream A/V Conferencing Framework

• Instructionals/Technical

  • C development on Linux – Introduction – I.

  • The Perfect Desktop – Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot)

  • Restricting remote commands over ssh

  • Using MySQL to manage your music collection on Amarok

  • Windows entry disappeared in Grub2 menu

  • Learn Linux, 302 (Mixed environments): Managing user accounts and groups

  • Create Slick Slideshows with digiKam

• Games

  • Tomes of Mephistopheles

  • 5 Open Source Games Come Together to Form ‘Free Game Alliance’

    Free Game Alliance is a collection five free and open source games spread across a variety of genres. All these games are cross platform and works on Linux, Mac and Windows. The initiative was started by Atomic Blue, makers of MMORPG PlaneShift. However, FGA is made by all the projects participating in it.

  • Postal 3, not yet, but maybe in the future

Desktop Environments

• GNOME Desktop

  • GNOME Shell 3.2.1 Released

    Owen Taylor announced earlier today, October 18th the immediate availability for download and upgrade of the GNOME Shell 3.2.1 user interface for the GNOME 3 desktop environment.

    The GNOME Shell package provides basic UI (User Interface) functions for the GNOME 3 desktop environment, such as launching applications and switching to windows.

Distributions

• New Releases

  • Puppy Linux 5.2 released

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat Green-lights a Behavior Modeling Platform for JBoss

    In a large organization, no single IT staffer will be able to observe all the millions of system events and glean from them a pattern worth paying attention to. It’s a problem with the level of knowledge decreasing in proportion to the rising amount of data.

    Back in 2007, Red Hat joined an effort to craft a system for automating the process of detecting actionable patterns from huge amounts of system data. Maybe one human being can’t detect the patterns in a trillion data points, but a rules engine could. This rules engine is called Complex Event Processing (CEP). Last week, the company announced it’s ready to integrate the results of its work into its business rules engine, JBoss Enterprise BRMS 5.2.

  • KVM 2011 Forum Presentations Now Online

    KVM Forum 2011 took place in Vancouver from the 15th to 16th of August, but the videos are finally up. KVM Forum was co-located with LinuxCon North America 2011. Videos are now uploaded to YouTube (all the videos are at that link). Other details on this virtualization conference and the presentation slides are available from Linux-KVM.org.

• Debian Family

  • Back to OpenShot for video editing in Debian GNU/Linux

    Not entirely satisfied with my last effort in OpenShot, I wanted to try something else, and that something turned out to be Blender’s Video Sequence Editor feature. That was a resounding failure. I had no idea how to do just about anything, and I find the Blender UI extremely uninviting.

  • Debian GNU/Linux Live Images Updated

    I mentioned last week that there was a new Debian GNU/Linux release available (6.0.3). At that time the Live images had not been updated. As of today (or late yesterday), they have. So if you want to get an easy look at the latest Debian running on your hardware, or you prefer to (or must) install from a Live image rather than the normal netinst image, you’re good to go now.

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot Review: First Real Step in Its March Towards Mass Adoption

        Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot final release happened sometime ago. I have been using Ubuntu 11.10 as my default netbook OS ever since Oneiric Alpha 2 was released. So it’s not like I am installing Ubuntu 11.10 just for the sake of reviewing it. Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot has been the OS of choice in my netbook for sometime now.

      • Ubuntu Hardware Summit 2011 Announced

        Now that Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) has been released, Canonical proudly announced a few minutes ago the official place and date for the upcoming Ubuntu Hardware Summit 2011 event which takes place once a year.

      • Ubuntu 11.10

        So apparently Canonical decided to name this release after a cat that dreams and pees a lot. Were they trying to send some sort of message? Interesting, I wonder if this decision was made by a particular individual or some sort of committee? Some have said that Canonical is copying Apple too much (Lion anybody?) and perhaps they have a point or two in that regard. Aaah well, it is what it is.

      • Introducing Ubuntu 11.10 Without Unity

        Now that Ubuntu 11.10 was released, we are proud to announced today, Octomber 18th, the immediate availability for download of a new Linux operating system based on the newly released Ubuntu 11.10 distribution.

      • Canonical, Vodafone bring ARM-based Ubuntu netbook to South Africa

        Canonical and Vodacom, the South African subsidiary of Vodafone, have announced the launch of the Vodafone WebBook in South Africa. The ARM-based netbook runs the Ubuntu Linux operating system and is designed to “bring simplified, value-added internet access to thousands of South Africans, many of whom have until now had no access”.

Devices/Embedded

• Debian-based NAS OpenMediaVault released

  Following two years of development, OpenMediaVault (OMV) project founder and lead developer Volker Theile has announced the arrival of the first release of his open source NAS (network-attached storage) operating system, code-named “Ix”. Created by Theile – who is also a FreeNAS and Debian developer – OpenMediaVault is a Debian-based rewrite of the FreeBSD-based FreeNAS distribution.

• Phones

  • Android

    • Samsung, Google whip out Android 4.0 Nexus

    • What’s New In Android 4.0?

    • iPhone 4S vs Galaxy Nexus: The Better Hardware!

      Google and Samsung have announced the launch of the next superphone dubbed Galaxy Nexus. The phone arrives only a few days after the launch of ‘disappointing’ iPhone 4S. While the iPhone 4S has nothing new to offer (from hardware POV), Galaxy Nexus comes with the best of the breed hardware. We talked about soft aspect of Galaxy Nexus here, in this article we are talking about the hardware comparison of the ‘trying-to-catch-up’ iPhone 4S vs ‘rules-writing’ Galaxy Nexus.

    • Dual-display phone to star in texting championship

      T-Mobile and LG announced an oddball Android 2.3 phone that features both a 3.5-inch display and a secondary two-inch screen embedded in the middle of a split-QWERTY keypad. Designed for texting and social networking, the 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon-equipped LG DoublePlay will be featured in the fifth annual LG U.S. National Texting Championship on Oct. 26.

    • HTC Amaze 4G on T-Mobile: Great camera, but a battery vampire

      T-Mobile’s HTC Amaze 4G is worth considering by serious shutterbugs who want a phone that can replace their everyday point-and-shoot, according to this eWEEK review. But, reviewer Nicholas Kolawkowski adds, don’t expect its battery to hold out all day.

    • Motorola’s latter-day Razr is ‘thinnest 4G LTE smartphone’

      Motorola Mobility announced the Droid Razr, a high-end Android phone whose Kevlar-reinforced case is just 0.28 inches thick. Aimed at Verizon’s 4G LTE network, it features a dual-core, 1.2GHz processor, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of flash storage, a 4.3-inch screen packing 960 x 540 pixels, dual cameras, and accessories including a new 14-inch Lapdock 500 Pro.

    • Top Free Android Audio Players

      We often see Android devices being used as a music player. Android has a fairly capable stock audio player. However, that player has a number of deficiencies. For example the lack of gapless playback is a showstopper for anyone who likes to listen to classical music.

    • No Need To Wait, The Motorola Droid RAZR Teaser Photo Was Hidden In Plain Sight

      Earlier today, the Droid RAZR teaser site went live, revealing bits and pieces of the upcoming device as specific bloggers input the codes sent to them directly from Motorola. There’s only one problem with that: we’re still waiting for most of the bloggers to enter said codes. Luckily, one of our readers starting digging through the teaser page’s source code and uncovered the full image.

    • Ice Cream Sandwich Official Video

    • Texas Instruments: “It’s Not the Number of Cores, It’s Sophistication”

      Texas Instruments is pretty darn proud to be powering the new Galaxy Nexus handset. While Samsung might have told us we were getting a dual-core 1.2GHz processor in the new hot phone, they didn’t elaborate on which particular brand or model. That’s probably why TI is sending out emails tonight, sharing the good news.

    • Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich SDK now Available for Download

      Are you a ROM developer? Tinkerer? Just a solid geek with a passion for Android? After tonight’s awesome Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and Samsung Galaxy Nexus announcements, the SDK is now available for download,

    • How Linuxy Is Android?

      The world of Android is growing increasingly complicated. Soon Amazon will begin shipping its Fire, which includes a highly modified version of an old Android release. How free is the heart of Android? How much does its share with its free-spirited cousin Linux? Is it heading into a future where proprietary versions exist?

    • Motorola’s New Razr: Cutting-Edge or Just Another Droid?

      Motorola is taking yet another shot at reviving the Razr brand’s glory with the Droid Razr, a new Android smartphone headed to the Verizon network. However, will its thinness be enough to differentiate it from other top-model Android phones out there? “They’ve all got dual-core processors, WiFi hotspot functionality and a wide display,” said ABI’s Michael Morgan.

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • Speedy Jetstream tablet carries some unwanted baggage, says review

    The HTC Jetstream lives up to its name with a fast, dual-core 1.5GHz processor, 4G LTE/HSPA service, a responsive, eight-megapixel camera, and a Scribe pen accessory. Yet with its $700 price, thick 0.51-inch profile, 25-ounce weight, and relative lack of ports, this tablet’s a tough purchase to justify compared to several other 10.1-inch Honeycomb devices, says this eWEEK review.

  • We saw Ice Cream Sandwich on a Phone, but What About a Tablet?

    You watched the announcement, read all the blogs, and drooled over the multitude of Android 4.0 sexiness. Screenshot after screenshot, we saw what the next generation of Android phones would look like — but what about tablets? We all known Ice Cream Sandwich is the new one-size-fits-all Android and is meant for both phones and tablets, so where’s the screenshots of ICS running on a tablet? Google and Samsung were understandably focused on the new Galaxy Nexus, but since Google was so kind to release the Android 4.0 SDK, others took it upon themselves to show us what we can expect ICS to look like running on a tablet.

Events

• ABLEconf 2012 Call for Participation

• SCALE 10X to host SCALE Kids Conference

  For the first time ever, the Southern California Linux Expo will host the SCALE Kids Conference, a free and open source event where the community leaders of tomorrow will be able to spotlight their talents and ideas.

  The goal of the conference is to be as “kid driven” as possible. The event offers a unique opportunity for kids 10 to 16 to see and experience the inner workings of planning, determine the content, and help to steer the direction that the conference will take.

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Walking with Dinosaurs – Mozilla’s Pascal Finette on WebFWD

    Rory MacDonald sits down with Mozilla’s Pascal Finette, former head of Mozilla Labs and now the man behind Mozilla’s new WebFWD initiative, an accelerator programme for exciting open source projects…

    “My path to Mozilla is probably a little bit leftfield,” says Pascal Finette, the man behind Mozilla’s new WebFWD programme. “When you look at my CV, my background is that I studied economics and psychology, then I founded a start-up straight out of college, I worked for eBay, I did mergers and acquisitions for a US software company, I did consulting for start-ups and then, the last thing I did before I joined Mozilla, I actually co-founded and ran a venture capital fund: an early stage seed-fund in Germany and UK.”

  • Firefox for Android Looks Promising

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• LibreOffice Will Be Ported to iOS and Android

• The Future of OpenOffice.org: How Not to Write a Press Release

• LibreOffice’s Mobile and Cloud Horizons Appear Strong

  Ever since LibreOffice, the productivity suite forked from OpenOffice, started to take shape, questions have arisen about how its trajectory might differ from OpenOffice’s. This week, the LibreOffice Conference is going on, and The Document Foundation is generating some buzz through the announcement that versions of the suite will arrive for iOS and Android devices, giving LibreOffice a strong mobile footprint. Susan covered the news here. It’s also very good news that the suite will arrive in a cloud-based version that could compete closely with Google Apps and other cloud-centric productivity tools.

• Incubation, podling, IP Clearance, oh my!

  The Apache OpenOffice.org project is currently in the incubation phase. We’re a ‘podling’. It’s where all new Apache projects begin, regardless of how mature your source code base is. In this post I’ll attempt to explain a bit about incubation, and a bit about the ‘Apache Way’, and our current effort to meet the requirements for 3rd party code review and clearance. In future posts, I’ll attempt to tackle other aspects of the project. If we all have a better understanding of how the work is becoming organized, those of you interested to volunteer will have a better idea of where to start, and those who are interested to follow our progress will have an easier way to check up on things.

• Apache Disavows Team OpenOffice.org e.V.

  Thursday’s story about the future of OpenOffice.org garnered an interesting response from the Apache Software Foundation that, coupled with a broader statement on the ASF blog, disavows any notion of trouble within the OpenOffice.org project.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• FSF takes Win 8 Secure Boot fight to OEMs

  PC makers are being lobbied to install Windows 8 on machines in a way that will afford users the freedom to boot Linux or any other operating system.

  The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is urging PC users to sign a statement demanding that OEMs which implement Windows 8′s UEFI Secure Boot do so in a way that allows individuals to disable it, or that the PC makers provide a “sure-fire way” to install and run an operating system of the user’s choice.

• Free Software Foundation: Windows 8 secure boot requirement could lock out Linux

  The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has launched a campaign claiming that Windows 8-certified PCs might prevent users from booting into Linux. The mandatory “secure boot” facility in the systems’ Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) might better be called “restricted boot,” the organization claims.

• Stallman on Steve Jobs: Tasteless or Incisive?

Openness/Sharing

• Alcock shed light on federal government’s ‘culture of secrecy’

  Former Liberal cabinet minister Reg Alcock is remembered as a champion of open government and a tireless advocate for using technology to reform how Canadians are governed and departments are managed.

Programming

• Google Dumps Code Search – Should We Be Worried?

  Google does a lot of good for developers. At one time or another, I’d bet that many developers have played with a Google API at some point.

  Developers have also come to rely on Google’s Code Search over the years. It’s a service that I first wrote about when it launched five years ago. At the time, then Google product manager Tom Stocky was enthusiastic about the effort as a way to easily search for publicly accessible source code.

• Deploying web applications from Orion to Heroku

Cablegate

• This Week in the Press: 6 October – 12 October, 2011

  Corporate conduct

  The Deadly Microsoft Embrace: The government of India’s Tamil Nadu region is planning to purchase some 9 million computers, which will run Windows instead of free software. Cables shed light on how Microsoft has reached similar deals in other countries. In Vietnam, the U.S. government intervened to secure a large-scale contract for Microsoft. In Tunisia, Microsoft won a significant state contract only after the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had agreed to donate to a charity run by then president Ben Ali’s wife.

  US diplomat said ex-BP boss’s Turkish partner unethical: Cables say Turkish businessman Mehmet Karamehmet is known to have employed tactics including death threats to force favorable deals. Mr Karamehmet is the largest shareholder of Genel Energy, which was recently acquired by Vallares Plc.

  Richard Branson was ready to fund plan to persuade Mugabe to quit: Cables state that British businessman Richard Branson was to provide the funds for a large group of well-known African politicians, formed with the aim of persuading Mugabe to leave office. Zimbabwean politician Jonathan Moyo, who is alleged to have invited Branson to join the group, denies the allegations, saying that his own involvement was due to Branson, rather than the other way around.

Finance

• A Letter from Goldman Sachs Concerning Occupy Wall Street

  Please contact your Goldman representative for a full prospectus. As the world descends into a Darwinian free-for-all, the Goldman Sachs Rage Fund is a great way to tell the protesters, “Occupy this.” We haven’t felt so good about something we’ve sold since our souls.

• Canada Trade Deal With European Union: CETA May Benefit EU Over Canada, Officials Say

  As Canadian and European Union negotiators sit down Monday for the ninth round of talks on a sweeping and controversial trade agreement with the EU, The Huffington Post has learned European officials expect Canada will get the short end of the stick.

• The Work of the 1 Percent and the 0.1 Percent

  The Occupy Wall Street movement chants “We are the 99 percent, you are the 1 percent.” It’s a catchy refrain, and there are many excellent reasons to put the focus on Wall Street in the struggle for economic and political justice in the US. But even singling out one percent of the US means we are still talking about over 3 million people–are they Wall Street types? Where do they actually work?

Privacy

• Supreme Court to hear Facebook bullying case

  A Nova Scotia girl’s fight to have disparaging Facebook postings about her kept secret is going to the Supreme Court of Canada.

  The case could ultimately weigh the privacy of someone who has been tormented against the public’s right to transparency in the legal system.

Copyrights

• U.S. Copyright Czar Cozied Up to Content Industry, E-Mails Show

  op-ranking Obama administration officials, including the U.S. copyright czar, played an active role in secret negotiations between Hollywood, the recording industry and ISPs to disrupt internet access for users suspected of violating copyright law, according to internal White House e-mails.

  The e-mails, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, (.pdf) show the administration’s cozy relationship with Hollywood and the music industry’s lobbying arms and its early support for the copyright-violation crackdown system publicly announced in July.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Desktop

• Is Brazil The Most Linux-Friendly Country On Earth?

  Their best-selling desktop runs GNU/Linux.

  That other OS seems to dominate notebooks, however. All of the netbooks they sell run that other OS. Android/Linux dominates the tablets.

Server

• Point-and-Click your local Servers to the Cloud: Racemi

  As people are getting their heads around the economic benefits of cloud computing–pay just for what you use servers and services–I’ve been hearing a lot of people say they’d use the cloud if only they could move their existing servers to the cloud without a lot of blood, sweat, and toil. This is where Racemi, a cloud-services company, comes in with its easy server migration program.

Applications

• Instructionals/Technical

  • How To Disable Screen Lock In Ubuntu 11.10

  • Guest session and user management in Ubuntu 11.10

Desktop Environments

• BP’s Gulf of Mexico PR, One Year Later

  Finger-pointing over the Deepwater Horizon disaster resumed recently after the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Coast Guard issued a joint report (pdf) which concluded all three corporate participants in the calamity — BP, Transocean Ltd. and Halliburton — were at fault. The report concluded all three companies violated federal laws and safety regulations by “failing to take necessary precautions to keep the Macondo well under control at all times.” The report also found all three companies were “jointly and severally liable for the failure to comply with all applicable regulations.” That means all three companies are mutually responsible for the accident, and each can be held singly responsible for the entire debacle. The report parsed blame among the companies for sloppy materials and workmanship, inadequate training, failure to properly assess risk and conduct proper testing, failure to abide by stop-work work policies after multiple anomalies were discovered, and so on.

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • KDE rekonq 0.8 released

    The rekonq development team has released version 0.8 of rekonq, the KDE web browser. The browser is based on Qt’s QtWebKit, and, according the project’s home page, aims to be “light, fast & clean”, avoiding competing with KDE’s more feature-rich web browser, Konqueror. Rekonq is the default web browser in Kubuntu, and has been included with KDE’s Extragear collection since May 2010.

Distributions

• Take a Walk on the Zen Side

  Frequent readers of DistroWatch may recall the last time I tried Zenwalk I was quite happy with it. The medium-sized distro provided a polished and responsive desktop platform which ran like a cat with its tail on fire. Though armed with fewer resources than the big-name projects Zenwalk was a strong contender last year, making my Top Five list in 2010. With this in mind it should be no surprise I was eager to try Zenwalk 7 when it arrived in early 2011. So it would appear this review is coming out quite late, and there is a reason for that.

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Unity or Gnome Shell?

        Unity, which drew a lot of flak in its earlier reincarnation, seems to have matured with the latest Ubuntu release. Performance is snappier, and the Dash has received a major face lift that makes it look sleek and professional.

        On my old Acer Aspire One, I ran into occasional hiccups, probably because the built-in graphics on the netbook isn’t all that hot. Still, Unity was much more responsive than it was when I first tried it out some months ago.

      • Does the New Ubuntu 11.10 Prevent You From Changing Default Apps?

        A big definitive NO should be the answer. But I found this strange new bug with two brand new Ubuntu 11.10 installations of mine. When I tried to change the default application for AVI files from Totem to SMPlayer, an error came up with the warning that says, “Could not set as default. Error while setting “SMPlayer” as default application: Can’t create user application configuration folder /home/manu/.local/share/applications: Not a directory”.

      • Ubuntu 11.10 is a complete operating system available at no cost

      • Welcome to Ubuntu 11.10: Oneiric Ocelot

        Welcome to Ubuntu. Yes, that’s the new and improved Unity interface. If you want an old style GNOME interface, , look to Mint Linux. Want to try the new GNOME shell, see Fedora. Ubuntu’s default desktop is going to stay Unity.

      • Broken Windows? Ubuntu Linux Saves the Day

        Canonical has just released Ubuntu 11.10, it’s latest version of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution. It calls itself ‘Linux for Human Beings’ and it aims to be one of the most newbie friendly Linuxes. It’s innovative ‘Unity’ GUI (graphical user interface) is designed for simplicity and functionality.

      • Ubuntu 11.10, Back To Old Days Of Broken Linux

        I was extremely excited about Ubuntu 11.10. I was under impression that it will fix the issues with 11.04 and will further polish Unity. I have been using Ubuntu since 2007 and I have been an advocate of Ubuntu. This is one distro which had all the punches to lure any user to ditch Windows and move to Linux.

      • Which Ubuntu Should I Use?

        When we asked Cameron how he found Ubuntu in comparison with Windows, he said
        1: I found it’s layout much easier to understand
        2: The Quick access side docks are awesome
        3: I like the idea of multiple workspaces, keeps your screen tidier
        4: Easy to access power options on screen
        5: I found it much faster than windows at, a) starting up and b) opening programmes.

      • Is Ubuntu Becoming a Poor Man’s OS X?

        Canonical actually hired the people behind the original concept of CNR to help them develop a similar marketplace. It’s great to see that everything worked out and that this software marketplace legacy was able to find a new home.

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Linux Mint developers make GNOME 3 edition plans

          Clement Lefebvre, Linux Mint Founder and lead developer, has announced that his project has started work on a GNOME 3 edition of its next major release, version 12. The new edition will initially be developed alongside the GNOME 2.32-based release which will remain as the default desktop environment of Mint. The developers had decided to stick with GNOME 2.32 because there had been “radical changes” in GNOME 3.x’s desktop which had split the communities of GNOME and Mint users.

        • Puppy Linux 5.2 (Wary) optimized for older PCs

          The Puppy Linux project announced version 5.2 of the legacy-PC friendly “Wary” version of its small-footprint Linux distribution. Puppy Linux 5.2 (“Wary”) features an SMP-optimized version of the Linux 2.6.32.45 kernel, an upgrade path to Xorg 7.6, an updated PuppyPhone 1.1 VoIP app, and a new PupCamera app for automatically detecting digital cameras, says the project.

        • Linux Mint Will Adopt Gnome 3, To Be Released In November

          One of the reasons for the increasing popularity of Linux Mint is the ease of use. But as Ubuntu moved to Unity, instead of enhancing Gnome 3 Shell, it created a divide. Unity/Gnome 3 Shell offers a new interface, which was heavily criticized by Linus Torvalds, the father of Linux. This new interface not only demand relearning everything but also takes away a lot of functionality and customization.

Devices/Embedded

• Phones

  • Android

    • 12 Reasons Why Apple iPhone 4S Will Lose to Motorola Droid Bionic

      Other changes for the Droid Bionic includes higher RAM capacity, change in chipset from the Tegra 2 AP20H to the Texas Instruments’ OMAP4430 and surprisingly the inclusion of lesser battery capacity compared to the one introduced in the beginning.

      Droid Bionic, which runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread OS, comes with a 4.3-inch HD screen featuring the Corning Gorilla scratch-free glass, a front-facing camera for video chat, an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera, Adobe Flash preloaded, 32 GB of memory and a slim frame. It has a dual-core 1 GHz processor and 1 GB of RAM.

    • Motorola Unveils The DROID RAZR for Verizon – Faster. Thinner. Smarter. Stronger.

      Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha took the stage just moments ago to announce their new pride and joy, the DROID RAZR. The device boasts the world’s thinnest profile measuring in at just 7.1mm thin and weighing only 127 grams. It’s not only thin and light but it’s also built to take a beating thanks to its stainless steel core, laser-cut kevlar fiber outer body, tough Gorilla Glass display, water resistance with Splash-guard technology and carbon fiber accents.

    • Samsung and Google Android Event Moved to October 19

      Ice Cream Sandwich, or Android 4.0 for those of you not familiar with the code name, will unify the disparate smartphone (Android 2.x) and tablet (Android 3.x) versions of its mobile OS with a consistent UI and app framework. This will hopefully enable developers to more easily port their apps to all of the many screen sizes and resolutions that Android devices sport. As is normal with new Android launches, Samsung is expected to reveal a new phone that will show off the new operating system’s capabilities and serve as a baseline for other Android partners’ devices.

    • Galaxy Nexus rumours: what you need to know

    • Motorola’s RAZR Makes iPhone 4S Look Like A Toy!

    • Live Blog: Ice Cream Sandwich Party with Google/Samsung

Going From “Ow” To “Wow” In Open Source

Venkat Mangudi, an open source evangelist and OSI Days speaker, recalls how his 10-year-old kid made him realise that Linux should be made compulsory in schools. He also explains how FOSS came to the rescue of small businesses, the new open technologies revolutionalising the world and how to overcome the ‘Ow’ of discomfort in open source to get a ‘Wow’ of admiration!

Google’s open source search to end

Open Source Platforms Lead the Machine Translation Charge

At a surprisingly rapid pace, machine language translation is now moving into high gear on devices that we already use, and open source platforms are leading the charge. Ten years ago, futurists such as Ray Kurzweil predicted that the devices we carry with us would become fast and efficient at translating languages, and it’s happening now. If you haven’t tried the translation tools in platforms such as Google Chrome and on Android, you’re missing out.

Open source jobs: What’s hot, where to look, what to learn

What does the future hold for eager, talented software developers, and people with related essential skill sets? The overriding trend, as in all industries, is you’re on your own, chum. But free/open source software (FOSS) offers considerably more richness of opportunity than anything else. Let’s peer into the crystal ball and see what the future holds.

What Are Open Source Ideals? Just “Giving Away”? Or Are Things More Complex?

An open source ideal is not to be branded mechanical. It’s not to be deemed irrelevant to the world. Instead it’s to be understood as any philosophy that employs collaborative thinking, evolving mantras and a refusal of traditional notions. It’s a methodology of progress – and even religion can’t escape it.

Events

• OpenGeo’s Eddie Pickle Joins Open Source Panel at 2011 GEOINT Symposium

  Eddie Pickle, Senior Vice President of OpenGeo, the open source geospatial software company behind the OpenGeo Suite will participate on a panel discussing open source technologies at the GEOINT 2011 Symposium. The panel, Demonstration of Military Relevant Open Source Geospatial Software, will be hosted by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OpenGEO), Military Open Source Software Working Group (MIL-OSS), and the USGIF Tradecraft Subcommittee.

• Open Source Search takes Centre Stage at Apache Lucene EMEA Conference

  Lucid Imagination, the commercial company for Apache Lucene and Apache Solr search technology today announced record registration numbers for its second Apache Lucene EuroCon EMEA Conference. More than 300 developers, IT professionals and decision makers will convene in Barcelona this week; double the number of delegates from last year’s event and a testament to the industry’s focus on open source search. This interest in an open source path to search applications follows a turbulent 12 months in the proprietary search market and the emergence of Big Data as one of the biggest challenges and opportunities for today’s businesses.

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Native Android GUI developing for Firefox

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• ASF says OpenOffice.org is in good health

  Four months after the transition from Oracle to the ASF, the Apache Software Foundation has made it clear that it considers OpenOffice.org (OOo) to be heading in the right direction. It believes that the presence of more than 70 active committers – ten times the number involved in other projects in the Apache Incubator – illustrates the level of interest in the project. Although it has been six months since the last new OpenOffice release, this is, says Apache, a matter for each individual project. Intensive work on adapting OpenOffice.org to the Apache Way is apparently under way.

• Office Suites: LibreOffice or OpenOffice.org?

  The office suite has occupied a very strange position in the world of open source. As a key software tool used by practically everyone on a daily basis, it was vital for free software to be able to offer one. And yet what came to be the leading office suite – OpenOffice.org – was widely recognised as deeply unsatisfactory. Its early versions were barely usable, and even in its later incarnations it was hard to get enthusiastic about it.

  That was largely a function of the way that it had come into being, starting as the closed-source application StarOffice, and then being open-sourced by Sun, which had bought the product, largely in an attempt to irritate Microsoft. Licensing issues meant that OpenOffice.org never really became a true community project. As a result, there was no real passion behind its development, and it showed.

• Redefining Community Relationships

  Following yesterday’s post that asked specific questions about the goals and objectives of Team OpenOffice.org e.V., members of the broader OpenOffice.org community pointed out that as far back as August 13, Apache OpenOffice.org leaders were calling for the cessation of outside fundraising activities specifically aimed at OpenOffice.org.

Education

• Free software testing on USB for students to web developers

  A bit of semi-random open source software searching is generally beneficial for the soul and spirit at least once a month. My most recent expedition in this vein led me to find Mantra, an open source browser-based security framework for penetration testing and security assessments.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• Worried About Win 8 Secure Boot? So Is the Free Software Foundation

  The secure boot mechanism planned for Microsoft’s Windows 8 has already provoked considerable outcry from Linux users worried that the technology will make it impossible to install their favorite free and open source operating system on Windows 8 certified PCs.

Project Releases

• Apache Cassandra reaches foretold version 1.0

  The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has announced the release of version 1.0 of the open source, highly scalable, column-oriented, distributed “NoSQL” database, Cassandra. The release comes just under five months after the release of the previous version, 0.8.0, and since then the developers have added support for data compression to reduce the volume of data on disk on Cassandra nodes and have improved the memory and disk space management with off-heap storage of the row cache and self tuning memory tables.

Public Services/Government

• Levers of Government

  I believe we are at a stage where governments around the world are going to put aside FUD and look at the facts in choosing/purchasing IT. Any OS can function. GNU/Linux costs less to do the job. The FUD that no applications are available for certain specific tasks is nonsense. Governments are larger than the corporations producing non-free software so they can produce their own software at much lower cost especially if it is shared amongst governments.

Programming

• Classy Methods, a Sense of Self (Classes Part 2)

• It’s Not Too Late to Learn How to Code

Standards/Consortia

• What you can do with HTML 5 and Canvas

  HTML 5 is becoming more and more popular. This stems from the controversy over the late Steve Jobs objecting to using Flash technology, explaining that it is outdated, and HTML 5 is the future. While this is still debatable, HTML 5 has some huge backing by some major companies. Companies like Google, Apple, and Mozilla. HTML 5 brings new tags along such as header, footer, article, video, and audio.

Finance

• Wall Street sees no exit from financial woes

  Wall Street executives, facing demonstrators camped for a fourth week in New York’s financial district, said they were anxious and angry for other reasons.

  An era of decline and disappointment for bankers may not end for years, according to interviews with more than two dozen executives and investors. Blaming government interference and persecution, they said there was not enough global stability, leverage or risk appetite to triumph in the current slump.

• Citigroup earnings rise 74 percent, to $3.8 bln

  Citigroup Inc.’s earnings rose 74 percent in the third quarter as more of its customers paid their bills on time, leading to lower losses from loans. An accounting gain also boosted income.

  It was the seventh straight quarter of income growth for Citi, the nation’s third-largest bank by assets. Citigroup was one of the biggest recipients of taxpayer support during the financial crisis. It received $45 billion in bailouts funds and was partly owned by the government until December 2010.

  The New York bank’s net income rose 74 percent, to $3.8 billion, due to lower losses from loans and an accounting gain related to the valuation of the bank’s own debt. Citi’s stock fell 1.7 percent to close at $27.93, less than other banks stocks.

• Credit card late payments edge higher in September

  In what may be an early sign that credit card users are again having trouble paying their bills, five of the nation’s top six credit card issuers said Monday that late payments rose in September.

  That’s the first month since February 2009 that so many major companies reported upticks in payments late by 30 days or more.

• Poll: Dim outlook on Obama’s policies

  A majority of Americans want President Barack Obama’s agenda to succeed, but ultimately believe it won’t, according to a new poll out Monday.

  Asked whether it seemed more likely that Obama’s policies will succeed or fail, 59 percent of those surveyed in a CNN/ORC International poll said they believed they will fail, while 36 percent said they believed Obama’s policies will succeed.

• Occupy Wall Street and the Diversity of Objections to Inequality

  Right now Occupy Wall Street has favorable polling. So did the Tea Party at its beginning. As Seth Ackerman pointed out to me, once people saw that the Tea Party wasn’t a new thing but this old, arch-conservative thing, one that wants to take our global historical moment and wage total war against public sector workers and uteri, they turned against it. One symptom that it was an old thing was the books that it circulated: from Hayek’s underwhelming Road to Serfdom to Bircher Cold War tracts from the types who thought Eisenhower was a member of the communist conspiracy.

• The Most Important Facts about the Global Debt Crisis

• Germany Lowers Expectations for E.U. Summit

  At the start of a crucial week for the euro, Germany sought Monday to play down expectations of a decisive breakthrough at a summit meeting of European Union leaders this weekend, indicating that an emerging five-point plan designed to end the euro zone’s sovereign debt crisis could take months to implement.

• Obama: Occupy Wall Street ‘Not That Different’ From Tea Party Protests

• Rep. Cantor – Bought and Paid for by Wall Street Investors

  So while Rep. Cantor may believe the Occupy Wall Street movement is “the pitting of Americans against Americans,” the reality is the movement is pitting Americans against his campaign contributors.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Gaming American Democracy: A Perfect Storm in Which Republicans Disenfranchise Voters While Giving Corporations Unchecked Powers

  The American Legislative Exchange Council, known as ALEC — like countless other such 501(c)(3) and (4) non-profit conservative charitable organizations — has an intentionally dull-sounding name, for conservatives prefer to operate behind closed doors, secretly, without attracting attention. I first noticed ALEC during the Bush II years when I read a Mother Jones article about what was described as “one of the nation’s most powerful — and least known — corporate lobbies.” Even then, ALEC had already been “ghost writing” state laws for nearly a decade. Yet I’d not heard of ALEC before. It had no website, and I could find little reported information about its work.

• Recall On: Scott Walker’s Campaign Coffers “Open for Business”

• ALEC Ties Bring Down British Defense Secretary, Threaten Prime Minister David Cameron

  British Defense Secretary Liam Fox has stepped down in the midst of an escalating scandal tied to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The ALEC connections have led opposition party leaders and the British press to question whether British Prime Minister David Cameron has been “allowing a secret rightwing agenda to flourish at the heart of the Conservative party.”

Privacy

• CMD Demands Investigation of Facebook’s Impact on Privacy

  CMD has signed onto a letter with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and seven other pro-privacy groups requesting that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigate changes Facebook has made to user accounts that undermine the privacy rights of millions of users.

  The letter focuses on two recent policies implemented by Facebook called “frictionless sharing” and “post-log out tracking.” According to the letter,“frictionless sharing and post-log-out tracking harms consumers throughout the United States by invading their privacy and allowing for disclosure and use of information in ways and for purposes other than those to which users have consent and relied upon.”