I assured him that there indeed was no catch and that the computer was for his Daughter. I took a few minutes to explain the computer, OLPC and Linux.
He was grateful beyond expression and I began to feel just a bit uncomfortable. Men do that when emotional stuff happens. We like our emotional expressions infrequent and mostly bottled up. If it isn't a high-five moment, we're pretty much lost and confused by emotional expression.
I left and began my day...it wasn't until I got home to check my email that I found something I think I will put away. I will only take it out and look at during those times when I think the world sucks and 90 percent of the people in it do as well.
She's never seen Linux or an OLPC until now. She's 11 years old and she wants to study graphic art on her computer.
OK, now we're ready. We have the basic understanding of what forensics really means, compared to serious housekeeping. We also have our must-have toolkit ready.
The great thing about Linux is the vast number of software applications available. All a user need do is log into the repsitory, search for the progam, click, download, and install.
1. Install a bleeding edge 3d desktop environment on affordable hardware.
I've seen compiz running on extremely (from my view) low end hardware. With incredible results. I'm not saying this is something I would advice you to do, because it does eat resources. But it is possible there's a choice and if you like visual effects on the desktop, there's no match for it. If you would like something like this on windows you 're going to need bleeding edge hardware.
How did the students and teachers adapt to using Linux? "The students adapted very quickly," Scott told me. There were some comments here and there about OpenOffice as opposed to Microsoft Office, most of them in the vein of OO.'s Impress not being up to par with PowerPoint (I ditched PP for Impress a while back), but for the most part people adapted quite well. Teachers even went so far as to burn copies of OO.o for the students to use at home, so they wouldn't have file-format conversion issues when going from Word to OO.o and back again. Another major boon to the teachers came by way of Moodle, an open source package for courses and test automation.
Red Hat is not an exception to this rule, much as I'm a fan of Red Hat's model. If anything, Red Hat is an example of the rule and, I believe, the farther it gets from the complexity of the operating system, the more it will have to alter its model to make the proprietary components more obvious.
Veeam has upgraded its VMware disaster recovery software to allow customers to use it with ESX, ESXi and the free edition of ESXi. In addition, the software offers fast-file recovery for Linux.
Building on its reputation as the data protection leader of the open systems market, Arkeia Software is proud to announce support of its 100th Linux platform. With Oracle Enterprise Linux, Arkeia Software reiterates its leadership as the broadest supporter for open source operating systems and applications. In addition to Linux, Arkeia supports other open source operating systems including OpenSolaris and the BSD family.
Authors, Do Your Research
Most of these posts are written like notes with whatever the author was thinking at the time. In other words, almost no research goes in to these posts. Unfortunately, I admit, it is very hard to criticize Linux if you are not well informed. If you make a wrong claim or an apparently mis-informed claim, it will be jumped on, particularly if you used it to point out a flaw. Instead, I suggest authors keep these notes to themselves. After trying out Linux, or while you try out Linux, figure out the solutions to the problems you encounter and take the time to understand what the perspective of an advanced Linux user would be. Then, once you have done this, tell me the difference between the newbie’s perspective and the geek’s perspective.
NetworkManager, a free utility for Linux to manage wired, wireless and mobile broadband connections, is about to reach version 0.7.1. Dan Williams of Red Hat and his fellow developers are about to release the update to 0.7.0, originally released in the second half of 2008. The new version will include a large number of fixes, updated translations and new support, including for Internet connections over Bluetooth via GPRS devices.
I’ve never really had the need before, but a friend kindly gave me a dead laptop, to which I attached an old external LCD screen, keyboard and mouse and installed “crunchbang Linux” on a 4GB thumbdrive. This has given our house a new kitchen “info-station”.
So considering that compiz++ is now master and my patches haven’t been maintained in a while, a lot of you might be wondering what is going on with input redirection and MPX. Was that effort wasted? Is it made obsolete by com[iz++? Is it still doable? When is it coming? Etc.
Ear Candy is, as mentioned earlier, a sound level manager, written by Jason Taylor, that nicely fades applications in and out based on there profile and window focus. Let's say you are listing to music and suddenly a Skype call comes. Ear Candy will lower the music automatically for you until the Skype call is ended. A real win for user-experience. Of course the same is possible for movie-players, Firefox or whatever you want. It's about time we started feeling the benefits of PulseAudio.
Building on the Call of Duty 4 engine, Call of Duty: World at War thrusts players into the ruthless and gritty chaos of WWII combat like never been before, and challenges them to band together to survive the most harrowing and climactic battles of WWII that led to the demise of the Axis powers on the European and South Pacific fronts. The title re-defines WWII games by offering an uncensored experience with unique enemies and combat variety, including Kamikaze fighters, ambush attacks, Banzai charges and cunning cover tactics, as well as explosive on-screen action through all new cooperative gameplay.
Albeit an "Indie game", Caster is being ported to Linux. This announcement was made on our very own forums. This game will be available at the same price as the Windows and Mac OS X ports: $9.99 USD. More details will be made available soon.
We finally made it to another Friday so it's time to kick back with a cool free racing game! Tux Racer is a free game based on the Mario Kart concept, but features the Linux mascot Tux instead.
The Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit is the only conference designed to enhance collaboration between the Linux community, industry, end users and ISVs. Instead of the silo-ed developer conferences or trade shows that fill up the year’s calendar, we gather leaders from each of these communities together to share knowledge, decide the course of action and accelerate the Linux platform.
In this month's Linux Foundation newsletter:
* Collaboration Summit Agenda Announced * LinuxCon Call for Papers * New Style Connects Foundation Web Sites * "We're Linux" Video Contest Still Going Strong * Linux Foundation in the News * From The Director
This article will discuss the differences between the Linux and Windows operating softwares; we discuss some of the pros and cons of each system.
Yes, I’m back to Openbox. I liked KDE 4.2 an awful lot, I just realised that I don’t really need a desktop environment. I guess that’s why I always return to Openbox: I know my way around it well enough to configure it just the way I like, and it doesn’t get in my way.
KDE 4.1, launched at the end of July 2008, became the first release we could heartily recommend as a replacement for the ageing 3.5, and a solid nine months of updates to 4.1 has created a stable and innovative environment that can only get stronger as 4.2 beds itself into 2009.
[...]
Our top three new plasmoids
1. Web Browser As you might well have guessed from the name, this Plasmoid places a tiny web browser on to your desktop, complete with auto-update. Ideal for quick searches, getting the sports results and Twitter sites.
2. Paste Bin This seemingly unimportant new Plasmoid is quite the opposite. Drag and drop images and text from your destop, and they're automatically uploaded to a remote server. Perfect for collaboration
3. Google Widgets You can now add Google's own desktop Widgets to your KDE desktop, and you can even do this from within Plasma by selecting 'Google Gadgets' from the 'Install New Widgets' menu.
New system buttons
One of the first requested features, even before the Lancelot brainstorm thread on KDE forums was to change the system buttons from Lock Session, Log Out and Switch User to something else because some users don’t use some of the buttons. Radically changing the Lancelot behaviour this late in its age of existence is something that can not be considered. But the users should have some freedom.
After roughly two years of development, Qt Software has said it will stop working on Qt Jambi, a Java version of the Qt GUI library. Qt says this is "in order to focus resources on the Qt cross platform application and UI framework." Qt Jambi will soon be released under the Lesser General Public License (LPGL) as an open source project. Qt Software, originally Trolltech, is now a Nokia subsidiary after Nokia acquired them in June of 2008.
After KDE 4.2 was released, I have to say, I was hooked. The interface got cleaned up, everything is more elegant, practically bug-free, and not as sluggish as the original release (it's not as fast as GNOME yet, but it's been alright).
When I first wanted to try ELIVE 1.0 I had to go jump through hoops to get it. It was either use an unstable or donate. I finally decided to buy a CD from a vendor in France. I got it about a month later. Two days after I had probably put it down or given it to my friend Tom Dryer. So I decided that I was going to download it again… I finally gave up with looking for the unstable versions download as I find the site confusing. I finally “donated” $5 CAD so that I could use this software. It was either that or 5 USD, 5 EUROs or something like that. I really do not have that much money so I decided to go with the $5 CAD plus hey I live in Canada.
So I downloaded the ISO image a couple of days later when the payment went through and I just decided I wanted to test it out rather then install it.
I've always like the first release of PCe17OS although at first, I had a slight problem with changing to my user login. It was beautiful and it was beautiful. However, I can't truly say the same for the second even though much of the bells and whistles were still intact. I am not saying it is PCe17OS rather the Enlightenment 17 project seemed to be going nowhere, and I really like that DE along with the PCLinuxOS-based E17 project.
New versions of Linux distributions are churned out at a remarkable pace.
See, the thing is, Linux is the Kernel, not the operating system. They all run the same commands the same way. All the differences? Those are just personal choices. Skins. Pacages, application. What you like and what works for you. That’s how to grok Linux. It’s not about the choices. It’s about what works for you.
Don’t worry, Linux is not dead yet. And the $TITLE is not about a new RIP implementation on Linux. The name stands for Recovery Is Possible and it’s in fact a Slackware-based Live OS.
It can be used for various tasks like maintenance, troubleshooting, rescuing an installed system, or even as a Live OS for browsing the Internet, chatting with friends, listening to music or watching movies. All that at a cost of a 90MB ISO image.
The final release of VectorLinux 6.0 (code name 'Voyager') is now available. This release is a major milestone in the ten year history of Vectorlinux. With the unbridled enthusiasm of a community gone wild, we have forged our very own stable GUI installer and our repository now hosts over a thousand packages. VectorLinux is the fastest Linux desktop in it's class. We have exceeded our original goals of VectorLinux 6.0 and produced a beautiful, full featured stable desktop for a rocket fueled experience.
Live CDs (and DVDs) are versatile tools, allowing you to boot into an operating system without installing anything to your hard drives. Let's take a closer look at the five most popular live CDs.
So what is my ultimate verdict for Slackware? On the one hand, stories of how hard it is to install Slackware are greatly exagerated. They may have been true in the past, but nowadays, it’s pretty darned easy to install.
For those of you not following Mandriva Linux development closely, we just released Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring Beta and this is our first release featuring speedboot feature, in its initial phase.
Being worked on as part of Mandriva's next Linux distribution update is a technology they are referring to as Speedboot. Speedboot will be officially introduced with Mandriva Linux 2009.1, and compared to the normal boot process, it begins initializing some processes early on while it postpones other tasks until after the graphical display manager has shown. In essence, the user is logging into their Linux desktop even before the system is fully booted. We have some timed results of Mandriva's Speedboot along with videos showing the differences.
After rebooting to PCLinuxOS, I mentioned to them about the upcoming 2009 release. And one of the guys was dumbfounded, querying if there'll be something better? I didn't answer but instead asked Marvin what he was using his laptop for, and explained to him that I wanted to install the programs he needed to get the most from his machine. Well, it was pretty much basic so within the hour (I have a local PCLinuxOS repository), I got much of what he needed; his system updated and loaded. Marvin was a bit baffled how he got GIMP, the latest Firefox, OpenOffice.org, digiKam, amarok, and a host of other goodies. Three points.
The set of products developed by ALT Linux in the school project, added a new distribution, released under the title "School Server 4.1 and based on code-based server distribution for small and medium-sized businesses - ALT Linux Office Server, adapted for the educational institutions. ãÃÂÃâðýþòþÃâ¡Ã½Ãâ¹Ã¹ þñÃâ¬Ã°Ã· øüõõÃâ Ãâ¬Ã°Ã·Ã¼ÃµÃ⬠670 ÃÅñ ø Ãâ¬Ã°ÃÂÿÃâ¬Ã¾ÃÂÃâÃâ¬Ã°Ã½ÃÂõÃâÃÂàÃÂòþñþôýþ. Set the image size is 670 MB and is distributed freely.
Thus we have this PDF, under the byline of Caroline Boyd, which states your government would save about $24 billion over three years by switching to open soruce, virtualization and cloud computing.
[...]
Microsoft loves white papers done by others, making claims which benefit it. It’s a key marketing strategy. The fact that Red Hat is engaging here is a positive sign. The fact that Red Hat is competing actively for government business is another positive sign.
Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #130 for the week February 15th - February 21st, 2009. In this issue we cover : Ubuntu 9.10 - Karmic Koala, Announcing the Karmic Koala UDS, Jaunty feature freeze - Alpha 5 freeze ahead, Kubuntu 8.04.2 released, New Ubuntu Members - Americas Board, A Call for US LoCo Team Mentors, Next Ubuntu Hug Day, Soon: Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter in Spanish, Global Bug Jams - Michigan-South Africa-Chicago-Berlin-Florida, New Notifications for Jaunty, Meet Martin Albisetti, AJAX in Launchpad, Canonical's April Surprise - More than Ubuntu 9.04, Barcelona - Canonical discusses Ubuntu Mobile Internet Devices, Meeting Summaries - Technical Board-QA Team-US Teams, Just for Fun, and much, much more!
Thanks to the concerted efforts of Martin Pitt, Sebastien Bacher and several others, notify-osd and several related components landed in Jaunty last week. Thanks very much to all involved! And thanks to David Barth, Mirco Muller and Ted Gould who lead the development of notify-osd and the related messaging indicator.
Long-awaited “Lenny” has finally been out! After 22 months of development, Debian development team announced the official release of Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 on 14th of February as planned (well, at least in American Samoa, which happens to be located in UTC-11.) and the very same day I installed and tested it on my laptop.
After buying my Asus EEE PC 1000HA, I initially installed Ubuntu Netbook Remix on it. After learning more about (#!) CrunchBang Linux and seeing that they had released an optimized version for the EEE PC called CrunchEEE. I’ve been using CrunchEEE on my EEE PC for the last week and decided to do a review.
CrunchEEE uses an optimized version of the Ubuntu kernel called the lean kernel that loads fewer kernel modules by default and is more optimized for speed. I could tell a difference in the boot speed from the Ubuntu Netbook Remix and CrunchEEE with CrunchEEE being faster. CrunchEEE (and Ubuntu) had no problems loading all of the necessary wireless, ethernet, IDE, etc. drivers.
How important is this for the future of cloud computing? Only time will tell. There are already other open-source projects with "baked in" images on Amazon (RedHat not being the least of them), and Eucalyptus is a research project that its founder readily admits is not intended for production use without much further work.
Press shots of the Motorola ZN300 have leaked, showing the Linux-based slider in all its squared-off glory. According to the limited specs we have now, the ZN300 - which also goes by the name MotoZine ZN300 - has a 3-megapixel camera, QVGA display and a standard 3.5mm headphone jack.
For the first time in recent memory, Microsoft has a real operating system competitor for PCs. And Vista is not up to the challenge because MSFT wants to sell it for full price and it’s too resource intensive for low powered netbooks . So MSFT is relying on its two year outdated OS, Windows XP to take on Linux. Vista runs on a neglible 1.5% of Netbooks.
Bruce may well have a point and, as much as Intel would have us believe its platform is a winner, simply owing to the multitude of apps already written and compatible with it, ARM can just as easily point to Ubuntu and Xandros Linux, both of which have been specially optimised for the ARM platform. Also, as any one worth their sauce knows, for every closed source programme like Microsoft Office out there, there is an almost-as-good open source substitute like Open Office available.
Ultimately, if Intel can continue driving power usage down, it may stand a chance in ARM's mobile dominated arena, but Chipzilla should watch its back, because if Linux championing ARM continues innovating to the extent it's currently doing, it could well give rival Wintel a hard slap.
Taipei, Taiwan-based Good OS was formed as an operating system software company whose first product, gOS, is built on the Linux platform.
Touted as "Linux for the rest of us," gOS had its beginnings a little more than a year ago as the operating system on the widely publicized Everex gPC, which sold for $199 in Wal-Mart stores. Currently in its third version, called gOS 3.0 Gadgets, the OS now heavily features widgets from Google Gadgets for many of the included applications.
We're at the native Linux desktop, moving towards the Android desktop (netbooks coming soon). What would bridge those two environments, is to offer a second Linux sandbox which runs along with Android.
It seems like everywhere you turn these days someone has one of those cute little netbooks under their arm or taking up a tiny corner of the table at Starbucks. Chances are pretty good you'll find a Linux operating system on a least a fair share of those netbooks as well. The real question for every prospective buyer without one currently in their possession has to be "but will it do everything I need it to do?" It all depends on what you want to do.
I was inspired by Paul Ferrill's excellent article over at LinuxPlanet, Linux Mobile Tools for the Business Traveler. He describes a perfectly functional mobile kit that consists of a netbook, 3G modem, and an Outlets to Go 3 with USB universal electrical and USB charger. It all fits into a small bag and weighs maybe five pounds, depending on the bag. My usual laptop travel pack weighs in at over eleven pounds, including the bag and big ole Thinkpad, extra battery, and other accessories.
Indiana University today announces the release of open source software to create a digital music library system. The software, called Variations, provides online access to streaming audio and scanned score images in support of teaching, learning, and research.
We’re excited to let you know that a new release (revision 625) for Pagico v3.2.2 is now available for all the supported platforms: Windows, Mac, and Ubuntu (8.04 and 8.10).
I like Miro quite a bit. It does a decent job of pulling together the functionality of a lot of separate application and combining them into a media center with a clean UI.
A few additions, perhaps collected in an "Advanced" tab under Options would allow the user to control database updating, add/edit/delete search engine sites, select an external player application, control browser privacy, etc.
The European Commission CIP-ICT Policy Support Programme has allocated 25 million euros for digital libraries in 2009.
Like most of you, I have invested some of my savings in several investment products managed by a particular asset management company. They regularly send me a ton of promotional materials on their various schemes and new products from time to time. More than 90% of what they send me is of no interest to me. In other words, a bulk of the money these companies spend on their marketing campaigns simply goes down the drain. However, it does not have to be this way.
Companies such as these already have in their possession all the relevant data needed to create a unique ‘buyer profile’ answering questions such as ‘what is my risk appetite’, ‘what kinds of investment products do I prefer buying’, ‘what my annual expenditure is’, ‘what months of the year am I most likely to have surplus funds to invest’ and so on. All of this should allow them to send focused information to all of their customers/prospects and cut down on a considerable amount of wasteful expenditure.
For some time, we (the Thunderbird release-drivers) have been exploring how to best integrate calendar functionality into Thunderbird. Time for an update.
I’ve put up slides from my talk at SCALE 2009. Lots of people were interested in the slides. There’s the .pdf I’ve linked to above and the original .odp format. It covers most of the interesting new technical features that we’re going to include in Firefox 3.1.
As I’ve said before, Firefox web browser has become so popular that it has a lot of passionate users from around world. These people will do everything to help spread Firefox. --Like some of them have created great desktop wallpapers that even non-Firefox users will surely be attracted to.
Some strong OSS activists might attribute it to the fact that both Firefox and Chrome are open source or at least have underlying open source projects. And while i believe that to be a part of it, there is a lot more there. Both Chrome and Firefox are fast, but the average end user doesn't notice the difference. I feel that Chrome has gained market share through aggressive marketing and a technical user base jumping from Firefox to Chrome ( due to speed and the fact that tabs run in separate process threads ). And, in my opinion, Firefox is still gaining market share due to every security vulnerability found in IE. Yes, my implication is that Firefox is become the Corporate desktop browser of choice. It's a dream to manage on the network ( due to the built in updater ) and it is more secure than IE, so IT managers are more likely to recommend it. This is my general feeling on the browser market at the moment, so where does Opera factor in, and how can they take their rightful place?
The availability of open-source code, offshore talent and cheap hardware have lowered the bar for Internet and software companies, McCullen said.
In a more global environment, the US government can learn from the experiences, both positive and less so, from other countries that have paved the way for healthcare information interoperability. In many instances, other government agencies have cooperated with and benefited from the expertise of the HL7 rank and file. While the technology may not be immediately transferable, the experience on many fronts certainly is.
Now that OpenGL 3.0 is well on its way to a desktop nearby, you may be curious about what types of changes to expect from your favorite 3D applications. There are two main categories of improvements for OpenGL 3.0, changes that introduce new tools and changes that allow for performance enhancements. Well, let’s take a look!
The Polish Ministry of Inferior and Administration is considering to weaken the definition of open standards in its new Information Technology Development Act (ITDA). 'Open source standards' is to be replaced by a vague concept of 'technological neutrality', Polish open source news sites report.
Sun Microsystems has released what it claims is the world's first generic communication protocol between a Key Manager and an encrypting device into an open source community. The protocol is implemented as a complete toolkit and is downloadable from the OpenSolaris website.
Governments, finance, healthcare, retail and other vertical markets need to comply with current regulatory laws that create mandates to protect sensitive stored data. To support these requirements, this protocol is available to customers using the Sun StorageTek KMS 2.0 Key Manager and Sun StorageTek T9840D, T10000A, T10000B Enterprise Drives, as well as Sun StorageTek HP LTO4 drives shipped in Sun libraries. A number of additional partners are developing products based on this protocol, including EMC, whose RSA security division has talked about releasing it as an option on their RKM Key Manager.
Really? Federal Government--you think you can just go saving billions of dollars by using open source software--really? That's shocking because it's only been around for about 20 years. Really.
The European Ombudsman yesterday (17 February) expressed his conviction that the incoming Swedish EU Presidency would make progress on making the EU more transparent and accountable to its citizens. Meanwhile, MEPs insisted that "no legislative documents should be kept secret" under a reformed access to documents policy.
Inside U.S. Trade reports (sub required) that the next round of ACTA negotiations, which had been scheduled for next month in Morocco, has been delayed at the request of U.S. officials. While this does not signal a change in perspective on ACTA, the U.S. did want to provide incoming USTR officials time to review ACTA before continuing with the negotiations. No new meeting has been established.
Let's be clear: though the Stasi headline is irresistible, such Stasi-nark methods do not yet make a Stasi state. The political context is very different. We don't live in a one-party dictatorship. But nor is this just "an isolated case", as ministers always protest. Almost every week brings some new revelation of the way in which our government has taken a further small slice of our liberty, always in the name of another real or alleged good: national security, safety from crime, community cohesion, efficiency (ha ha), or our "special relationship" with the United States.
La Quadrature du Net welcomes the confirmation that the Medina Report, the most ridiculous text about Copyright seen in years in the European Parliament, got kicked out. This dogmatic text got rejected thanks to awareness raised by massive citizen mobilization. Everyone shall remember this event as a proof that citizens can obtain from the European Parliament the protection they deserve, provided they remain aware and speak their voice out loud against copyright extremism.
The government could be planning to up the ante when it comes to material it doesn't approve of - it may become illegal to even look at images, not merely possess them.
This song has been released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 New Zealand License, which means that it is FREE for you to download, share, copy, distribute, sell, remix, and sample provided that you:
1. Attribute the work to the Creative Freedom Foundation including the url http://creativefreedom.org.nz 2. Share Alike: If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work but remember that other people get to remix your work too!
In true community spirit, the Copywrong Song has been released encouraging participation from one and all, so if you're an established or budding musician join in!
Grab the lyrics and chords and then the music.
The Conservative Party is demanding that the government publishes the Trading Funds Review, while also giving its backing to the concept of free data - although it hasn’t quite gone as far as backing the entire principles of the Free Our Data campaign.
Faced with the potential of crippling legal fees and an unsympathetic judge, Internet startup BlockShopper has settled with massive Chicago law firm Jones Day over how, exactly, to craft its links to the firm. Goliath wins this round.
The trial of The Pirate Bay has not gone by unnoticed in Sweden’s neighbor country, Norway. The IFPI has ordered the largest ISP in the country to block the site, while on the other hand Norway’s Minister of Education is critical of the music industry, and wants to legalize (illegal) file-sharing
