The hour grows late, so after installing the updates I restart my computer. I can’t help but wonder if Windows is okay. This time I select XP Pro from the menu options, and my breath catches in my throat. Soon enough, I am staring at the progress bar. Already I find myself aggravated by the time it takes for my system to load. Sure enough, Windows is still there, just how I left it. It has already lost some of its glamour. I grin as I shut it down, thinking that I’ve made a wise choice today.
ALL of its packages are installable from the official Debian GNU/Linux repositories. The BrDesktop difference is in the selection, default language, programs and security preconfigurations for home desktop users, a streamlined installation aided by preconfigurations, a Live-CD option, a unique desktop theme, and the participation of the Brazilian Debian community.
Even though Firefox is the default browser in most Linux distro, that doesn’t mean you have to confine yourselves to Firefox. While I love Firefox for its user friendliness and its marvelous library of extensions, there are times where I hate it when it becomes a memory hogs and causes my computer to crash.
Luckily, in Linux, there are plenty of great alternative browsers that you can use. So, check out 12 alternative browsers for Linux.
openc2e is a free and open-source game engine designed to be compatible with the various engines used in the Creatures series of artificial life games (Creatures, Creatures 2, Creatures 3, Creatures: Docking Station)
Ratpoison. It sounds like something that kills a rat. It sure does. Ratpoison is a WM (Window Manager) that runs on Linux that has one purpose: to kill your rat. Here we are referring to that disgusting little lump beside your keyboard that shoots lasers out of its arse.
IceWM is a very clean desktop and, even though it is not highly configurable, it is a fairly serviceable desktop. With that in mind let’s take a look at what most will consider a blast from the past.
Today the KPhotoAlbum team has launched a competition to create the coolest showcase video for the new KDE 4 version of KPhotoAlbum. Besides fame and glory participant also has the chance to win $100 for the coolest video.
Even the smallest amount if research into Linux will have illustrated the sheer range of distributions out there. They are all based on the original Linux kernel built by Linus Torvalds (the father of modern Linux) and can all inter-operate to varying degrees.
After long internal discussions, the Fedora Directory Server (FDS) developers have changed the name of their project to the 389 Directory Server (389DS). One of the main arguments for the name change is that the “Fedora” name, initially intended to be a generic brand for all of the Red Hat open source projects, turned out to be an obstacle preventing cooperation from other Linux distributions
Fedora 11 is less than two weeks away. The excitement is in the air and we all can’t wait to see the product of more than a few long months of hard work. It’s prime time to start talking about what users can expect to see, highlight new features and describe some of the enhancements that we can all look forward too.
Ubuntu is five years old. The release of Jaunty Jackalope coincided with the fifth anniversary of a meeting that Mark Shuttleworth called of a dozen or so Debian Developers in his London flat in April 2004 to map out his project to create a distribution that was capable of taking Linux to the masses. During the five years since that meeting Ubuntu has sprung from nothing to become the most popular Linux on the street.
According to the poll, conducted over the past three weeks:
* 71 percent of WorksWithU readers are already running Ubuntu 9.04
* 11 percent planned to upgrade sometime in April
* 11 percent planned to upgrade within three months
* 5 percent had no plans to use Ubuntu 9.04
* 2 percent planned to upgrade before the end of 2009
So during a break I showed him the Ubuntu website and we downloaded an ISO in the background and then later burned it on his XP system and booted from it. His face went something like this:
=D
Because suddenly he was staring at a fully graphical OS booted entirely from a CD… that didn’t have any malware issues… and that was free. And then I pointed out to him that Dell sells Ubuntu systems. And HP is now selling modified-Ubuntu-based systems.
Freescale Semiconductor and Flextronics are shipping a jointly developed reference design for an 802.11n WiFi access point. The MPC8377EWLAN 802.11N Access Point RDS is based on Freescale’s newly sampling PowerQUICC II Pro MPC8377E processor, offers 300Mbps throughput, and ships with a Linux BSP and open source applications, say the companies
It’s not exactly clear what that “industry hub” will do, and to what extent it will be involved with creating and nurturing a MySQL fork. But it’s good to see that Widenius is following up his words with some action.
* Download Day gets a Webby!
* Design Challenge “Best in Class” announced
* Prism 1.0 beta available
* Weaving identity into the browser
* Front-end performance in Firefox 3.5
* QMO: Introducing Test Dev Thursdays
* Multiprocess Firefox project underway
* Relicensing Wiki.mozilla.org to CC-BY-SA
* Mozilla as a data driven community
* The future of Add-ons
The Free Society Conference and Nordic Summit (FSCONS) is a meeting place for social change, focused on the future of free software and free society. The growing speed of new and innovative changes taking place within digital culture, as well as the pressing need for members of a marginalised society to gain access to important and updated information without financial or governmental barriers, means that the 2009 FSCONS will deal with an array of hot topics.
The fact that Megan Meier later committed suicide has nothing to do with what Lori Drew was actually convicted of doing. The only reason to allow them to speak at the sentencing is to push for an emotional reason for the sentencing rather than a legal one.
ISENGARD, Wapping, Monday (NNN) — Rupert Murdoch, speaking out on the news business, stated today that “the Internet free access model is clearly malfunctioning, as I don’t make enough money from it.”
In one of RIAA’s high profile cases the Free Software Foundation backed defendant Joel Tenenbaum, much to the dislike of the music industry lobby. John Sullivan, Operations Manager at the FSF explains in a guest post why they think these cases impact not just music, but also free software and its technology.
Yesterday the French parliament adopted a proposal to create a “three-strikes” system that would kick people off the Internet if they are accused of copyright infringement three times.
This is such a good idea that it should be applied to other media as well. Here is my modest proposal to extend three-strikes to the medium of print, that is, to words on paper.
Jacques Toubon – the MEP who pushed the copyright amendments in the Telecoms Package – is to quit the European Parliament after being dropped from the selection list by his own party. As a parting shot, he lashes out at the ‘terrorist tactics’ that led to Amendment 138 being carried in its original form.
The French National Assembly ignored a vote last week by the European Parliament and approved its “Création et Internet” three-strikes bill on Tuesday.
System and method for staggering the start time of scheduled actions for a group of networked computers, patent No. 7,533,188, invented by Thomas Greger of Lehi, assigned to Novell, Inc. of Provo.
That’s in the US, which as far as software patents are concerned is almost a lost cause (bar Bilski). Looking over at Europe, which is in a bad shape right now, Novell did not submit anything in opposition to software patents (even I did so as an individual). Novell simply does not care or does not oppose software patents (consent by silence for PR considerations), which it uses to its advantage. It’s a bit of a farce, even for a self-proclaimed mixed-source company. Here in the news we find others who are misusing the word “open” to characterise closed pools of monopolies with plenty of patents. There is nothing “open” about it.
There is actually a lot more to be concerned about at the moment. Also in Europe, we’re finding two good reports from IPJur.com, which warns about a new type of monster:
Recently WIPO has published Document PCT/WG/2/12 for the second session of the PCT Working Group to be held in Geneva from May 04 to 08, 2009.
The above-cited document contains a proposal by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for a comprehensive revision of the international patent system which would result in the establishment of a new Patent Cooperation Treaty, PCT II….According to the Document it is envisioned that applications receiving a positive report at the end of the international/national processing would essentially result in automatic patent grants in all member States.
With Document 9549/09, on May 08, 2009, the Czech EU Presidency has addressed the EU Permanent Representatives Committee COREPER (Part 1) concerning the preparation of the EU Competitiveness Council of May 28 – 29, 2009 with regard to the project titled Enhancing the patent system in Europe concerning:
* Proposal for a Regulation of the Council on the Community patent, and
* Draft Agreement creating a Unified Patent Litigation System.
At its meeting on December 01, 2008, the EU Competitiveness Council had taken note of a progress report prepared by the French Presidency (Document 16006/08) and instructed the Working Party to continue work on the patent litigation system and the Community patent with a view to finding solutions and reaching agreement in both areas as soon as possible. In line with this Council mandate, the Czech Presidency has convened six Working Party meetings so far, with about equal time having been devoted to the unified patent litigation system and the Community patent.
The “Community patent” is an ongoing problem which is a threat to the real community (Free software community). A euphemisms-filled language is very deceiving, and it’s intended to be so. As this one person put it some days ago:
I think European government should be aware of this wolf in sheep’s clothing that patents may be for medium and little companies and they should avoid software patents to be approved.
To recommend some other new write-ups on this subject, here is an academic paper about patent trolls.
While each patent dispute is unique, most fit the profile of one of a limited number of patent litigation stories. A dispute between an independent inventor and a large company, for instance, is often cast in “David v. Goliath” terms. When two large companies fight over patents, in contrast, they are said to be playing the “sport of kings.” Some corporations engage in “defensive patenting” in order to deter others from suing them. Patent licensing and enforcement entities who sue have been labeled “trolls.” Finally, observers of the patent system call the use of patent litigation to impose or exploit financial distress “patent predation.”
Last Saturday night there was a star laced event which included all of the big wigs of Silicon Valley. The guest speaker was a the former CEO of Intel, Andrew Grove, who painted a picture that Silicon Valley could be heading the way of Wall Street.
That comparison to Wall Street would probably be suitable. We wish to recommend the following famous documentary called “Money As Debt”. It is a must-see for everyone because it explores an important subject which remains a taboo. █
Summary: Motley Fool considers takeovers as an option for Novell
THERE have been several speculations and jokes about Novell getting acquired this year [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. The most recent situation involved the possibility that Microsoft would be a suitor. Microsoft affinity makes it a good match, but for many other reasons it’s more of a mismatch, so while Novell called it unlikely, its Microsoft affinity does not rule this out of a future possibility. Moreover, a writer at CRN thinks that it might make sense for Dell to buy Novell. It’s a complementary relationship.
Now we find the Microsoft-friendly Motley Fool suggesting that one of the cash-richest technology companies out there, namely Cisco, could be a buyer of Novell. The Microsoft relationships and the connection to networking might provide a technical link and there is almost no overlap resulting in redundancy upon merger.
The Linux field is hot, no question about it. But I’d be less surprised to see IBM or an ultrarich and very acquisitive Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) snap up rival Linux dealer Novell (Nasdaq: NOVL) for a song.
Imagine a trailer hooked on to the back of an Indy car – the effect on performance would be similar to what happens when you hook up hard drives to a server. That’s because a hard drive is a slow, delicate, mechanical component attached to a computer system that is otherwise made up of solid-state electronics built for speed.
What is winning? It’s not “world domination”. Winning is changing the rules of the game so that a dirty convicted monopolist does not control the industry, and Linux/FOSS can thrive without constantly having to fight just for the right to exist.
Whether you’re new to Linux or looking to become a more advanced user, there are a lot of free online books and manuals that can give you guidance. We’ve covered a few of these, but there are many more good titles that are just a few clicks away. In this post, you’ll find three good resources for Linux reference guides online–all available at no cost.
There’s one little domain name out there that’s had a wild ride this year. In January, a rather cryptic post went up on Linux.com, a SourceForge web property, that said updates had been slowing — and were as of that point ceasing — because changes were in the works. Then came the silence on the wire.
Microsoft dedicated itself to putting Netscape out of business in the nineties precisely because Netscape was dedicated to turning the web browser into the new desktop computing platform, and bringing developers of small-time apps over from developing for Windows to developing for Netscape. A decade later, Microsoft’s worst fears have come to pass. With every major software-as-a-service innovation, the underlying operating system becomes less and less central to the computing experience.
Q: I am using Ubuntu 9.04 as my primary OS. The reason I switched is because Windows Vista is so slow. But my question is: Is Linux really a good choice for an OS, or is it just a matter of personal opinion?
A: Old Dilbert cartoon: The Unix guy is portrayed as a bearded, coverall-wearing, independent thinker. He tells the title character to go buy a real operating system.
Here in the 21st century, Linux is an excellent choice for a primary operating system. It’s inexpensive, fast and need not be ashamed by slick-looking graphical user interfaces. I’ve seen some Linux desktop schemes that knocked my socks off.
Most of the popular software titles — Word, Excel, Photoshop, etc. — have their Linux equivalents, so you’re not giving up anything in terms of productivity.
Two British IT workers are planning to spend a month without Windows, using GNU/Linux instead in a project designed to see whether “the Linux operating system is capable of delivering the function and style of delivery that an established Windows user can adapt to easily.”
I’m a Mac user. I gave up on Windows a while ago. The term “gave up” should say it all. From time to time I still use Windows and I’m still amazed it’s not better than it is. I don’t want to make this about Windows but about options.
For some, jumping to Mac is not an option. It’s not like switching from an incandescent to compact fluorescent bulb. It’s not inexpensive – you have to buy a new computer and new software.
Linux is an option. In fact it is “the” option and a fine one. I’ve explored Ubuntu and OpenSUSE on an old, underpowered, past-it Windows laptop. This old thing was a horror on XP but runs very nicely on either Linux. Cost = zero. Not one function was given up in the transition from one OS to the other. It did all the same things running Linux that it did running XP, just faster. It booted up faster, it shut down faster, apps launched faster, etc.
Specifically, CME is tapping into the ‘core-boot’ project, an open source Free Software project aimed at replacing the proprietary Bios(firmware) that is found in most of today’s computers, to instead embed Linux on the motherboard. “We’re trying to work with our vendors to generate a next generation platform which has Linux embedded on the motherboard of the server itself and it would replace the proprietary Bios,” says Vinod Kutty, associate director and head of distributed computing R&D at CME Group.
VirtualBox will not only let you run XP on top of Windows 7, it will also let you run Win 7 on top of XP, or Linux, or Mac OS X. or what-have you. It also won’t cost you a single red-cent, it runs great, and it’s not half-as-annoying to set up as XP Mode is.
While the interview doesn’t delve into the many questions surrounding what Oracle will do with Sun’s open source products and initiatives, it does make very clear that Oracle will retain and extend Sun’s hardware business, focusing on “designing hardware and software to work together.” That’s going to be a complicated proposition for Oracle, and, as one observer notes, it may be good news for Linux.
Talking to Reuters last week, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison outlined his plans for the hardware side of Sun’s business. They come down to making a SPARC Solaris equivalent of Oracle’s Database Machine, which is built on HP hardware, Intel processors and Linux.
Egan Ford, Linux cluster architect for advanced technical support with Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM Corp., said a systems administrator with a proactive, inquisitive attitude can run big Linux clusters with confidence in the results, provided the system is well designed and tested and he/she takes advantage of the excellent open source tools available.
Penguin Computing, experts in high performance computing solutions, today announced that the University of Florida’s new High-Performance Computing (HPC) Center Phase III expansion is powered by a fully-integrated Penguin HPC Linux Cluster. The University of Florida, which unveiled a major HPC expansion last week, adds to the growing list of top educational institutions that have selected Penguin’s Linux clusters to enable high performance computational academic research.
As I mentioned in an earlier article about Moneydance, I am an admitted software junkie. I like software programs that work as designed and do the job I want. Personal finance managers have always been a favorite of mine, especially if they work correctly. In the comments following the Moneydance article, I promised to write an article about KMyMoney, which is the other personal finance manager I use, so here you go.
I spend a lot of time looking at other people’s computers, and I see Audacity installed on a lot of them. Not many software programs deserve the adverb “versatile”, but Audacity is one of them. It is the Swiss Army knife of audio applications.
Audacity is used for all sorts of audio tasks. There may be more specialized applications in each category, but Audacity does a great job. If you have anything to do with audio, this program deserves to be in your toolbox.
The KDE Community today announced the immediate availability of KDE 4.3 Beta 1, the first preview of the 3rd iteration over the KDE 4 desktop, applications and development platform.
KDE 4.3 focuses on polishing and completing the user experience by providing a modern and beautiful Free working environment. KDE’s award-winning tools and applications are available in more than 50 languages. The KDE team is now in bugfixing mode in order to provide a smooth KDE 4.3.0 to end users in late July.
When I look back at each installation of our annual global conference, Akademy, the purpose for attending was pretty obvious.
There are the generic reasons, which make not only Akademy but all KDE face-to-face events worth attending: building personal bonds with people in our community, working out answers for the hard questions that can take hours (or even minutes) in person instead of weeks or months (or never) by email and irc, trying new ideas out in a collaborative environment, pushing hard to put polish, finish and completion at the end of a long push of development.
Canonical is preparing to launch Ubuntu One, a new Web service that will offer cloud synchronization and collaboration features. Ars gives you a detailed hands-on look at the service and some of the underlying technology.
WLAN player shifts to the LAN with major new rollout of remote access gear with Linux at its core.
[...]
Powering Aruba’s RAP is a Linux-based operating system.
“It’s embedded Linux and it has been highly modified by us to do what we need it to do,” Logan said. “It is running our code and the services that we need to run. We use parts of the Linux kernel and we use the drivers, but it’s in a limited way, as most of the software was written in house and is custom-built.”
The default installation for the web-enabled Protege touchscreens is Windows XP Embedded. Fortunately, however, Borg Displays does not demand assimilation into the Microsoft collective. The company also offers a URL-locked version that runs “a skinned Firefox and Linux.” This version is said to boot up to establish a URL, and then runs in full screen mode.
Germany-based ROAD has upgraded its multifunction, Linux-based mobile phone. Based on a 512MHz Marvell PXA270, the Handy-PC Officer S101 can act as both a GSM cellular phone and a WiFi-driven PDA and web browser, and it offers a dual SIM-card option, says the company.
As far as the GNU/Linux-based offerings for the latter are concerned, there’s already one platform from the LiMo Foundation, together with Google’s Android (and maybe Moblin if you include other kinds of mobile internet devices.) On top of that, there are also open source platforms that are not built on top of Linux, for example that from Symbian.
I am not really sure whether it’s a big deal or not, but an interesting new mobile open source project, called Ofono, has been quietly announced today.
[...]
It seems that Nokia and Intel are trying to create a new Linux based telephony software stack for smartphones/mobile internet devices.
On the topic of Android netbooks, Brodman says: “We have seen multiple partners talking about building Android-based netbooks. I’ve seen devices working, but I won’t go any further than that.”
That reminds me. Dell is now offering the newer Ubuntu 8.10 on its Inspiron 15n laptop. In the past, they were only offering the LTS (Long Term Service) Ubuntu 7.04. Check it out. You see, Dell is taking desktop Linux seriously.
All the other big vendors, including Lenovo, make it almost impossible to find their desktop Linux offerings. You’d almost think they want desktop Linux to fail, and they’re only offering it because those darn, pesky customers keep asking for it.
The previous model ran on a Via C7M ULV CPU clocked at 1GHz, and ran Linpus Linux, whereas the EduBook runs Ubuntu Linux, and is also said to support Windows XP and Windows CE.
It’s powered by Moblin v.2, which is the mobile Linux version that Intel has backed. With Ubuntu 9.04 looking so good on a netbook these days, I’m not yet sure that Intel will be able to make a big dent in the netbook OS war.
To aid in software development, NASA created CoLab, a blend of virtual and physical coworking environments. Since community members are spread out all over the globe, a lot of collaboration activity takes place on a private island in Second Life, a virtual world built around an open source framework. NASA even has its own OSI-approved software license, the NASA Open Source Agreement, to apply to software created for the agency.
NASA’s Ames Research Center recently developed a bug tracker written with open source Bugzilla tools. The Problem Reporting Analysis and Corrective Action (PRACA) system provides a single trouble ticket database that’s available to everyone involved in the Shuttle program, clearly a better solution than the 40 different databases it has amassed over the last 30 years.
Open source data integration tools can provide the cost advantages of hand‐coding with the productivity advantages of traditional data integration software. They are established in the developer tools market which has been the traditional stronghold of open source software. Expect open source to be a key component of data integration (and especially of operational data integration) in the near future, similar to the way it is a key component of application development environments today.
Open source has become big business, suggests an article in the Investors Business Daily, but it has done so by becoming more like the proprietary-software world it purports to leave behind.
Economics is often linked with a rationale of understanding the flow of money. This can be considered analogous to amateurs linking open source paradigm to free software! Both economics and open source software have a wider horizon.
[...]
The Open Source movement is here to stay for long. It has acted as a serious value creator and resulted in revenue generation mechanisms for businesses, both – small and big.
With the financial meltdown eroding IT budgets, large investment banks, hedge funds and other financial institutions have been forced to rethink their attitudes toward open source technology. Use of open source technology is quietly booming in the capital markets because of increased cost pressures, and analysts predict the current economic conditions will drive further industry adoption.
The Mule FIX transport is based on QuickFIX/J — a full featured messaging engine for the FIX protocol that is a 100% Java open source implementation of the popular C++ QuickFIX engine. This transport allows users to read and write messages over FIX endpoints and have Mule ESB route, transform and filter messages accordingly.
The Traffic Squeezer project has presented an alpha version of the identically named program for accelerating backbone data transfer over WANs (Wide Area Networks) and released the relevant sources under a GPLv2 at the same time.
With Drools 5, JBoss and the open source community have delivered a true business rules management system for the first time. Using Drools, organizations can take control of the logic that drives their operational decisions using an open source platform. Some time ago I wrote a little forward for Paul Browne and now his book on JBoss Drools is available.
Startup Pogoplug is well aware of this and has prepared an answer that many will like: if for some reason, Pogoplug was to go away, the source code of its back-end services would be uploaded on SourceForge, allowing others to keep it running. It’s not 100% guaranteed that someone would, but that’s about as close as you can get to certainty in this situation. Of course, this is just a worst case scenario.
The first steps are being taken in Central America to network free software groups in the region and develop collaborative relationships with each other. The first Central America Free Software Gathering (ECSL) is being organized for June 17 – 21 in Nicaragua.
Apparently I’m not the only one fed up with the vocabulary wars that seem to be part for the course in the open source world. To wit: is free software the same as open source in all but the terminology? The problem is, the terminology does seem to make all the difference — because we allow it to.
Working jointly with Harman International, has developed an Ethernet audio-video bridging (AVB) reference platform. The platform is suited for the development of a broad range of professional and consumer networked audio and video applications, automotive entertainment systems, and home networking systems.
This Gallic experiment is sure to attract global attention, as governments and media moguls in the UK, the US, and elsewhere hve been wrangling about a three-strikes policy for some time.
Still, the thing that is most amusing about this is how supporters of such three strikes rules somehow seem to think that this will suddenly make people buy again. There’s no evidence that this is true, whatsoever. But the main backer of this bill in France claims that this is:
“an important step toward preserving cultural diversity and the industries threatened by piracy.”
How? By kicking fans of the work offline? The most telling part of this statement is that it’s about preserving the industries “threatened” by piracy, not the actual creators of content.
While some claim it’s just hypocrisy, I think it actually represents one of the fundamental flaws of copyright itself (or, really, any monopoly system). Monopolies aren’t being used to create incentives to create. They’re used to stifle others and to “protect.” These days, almost everyone uses them and views them as tools of protection rather than an incentive to create. When you get so far away from the entire purpose of copyright law, you have a system ripe for widespread abuse.
Fireworks exploded last week as the government’s four days of hearings on possible DMCA exemptions wrapped up. Rightsholders “insult us by treating us as potential infringers who can’t be trusted to use a technology any 12-year old can download from the Internet,” said one lawyer.
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