GNU/Linux

• Death knell for television as we know it
  
  

  Japanese media reports say the new television, which is likely to run on the open source Linux operating system rather than Microsoft Windows to save boot-up time, could be on sale locally by next March.

  
  
  
• Review: Lightweight Linux distributions
• Linux up that Laptop!
• TinyMe 2008 | Small but Robust
• Package Management - Avoiding the Two Step
  
  

  See, the beauty is that even though things like apt-get and synaptic make installing programs as easy as double clicking on setup.exe -- the difference is that we have a choice as to whether or not we pick the convenience of package management. It's the freedom to choose that makes Linux and open source so great.

  
  
  
• Can System Builders Turn to Ubuntu?
  
  

  But, in the end it will all come down to the applications, if the necessary business applications are available under Linux, then the OS becomes that much more viable for business and home users. One thing is certain, Ubuntu gets better with every release. The OS becomes more stable, offers more point and click features, adds more compatible applications and will become that much harder to ignore.

  
  
  

F/OSS

• Test Latest Builds With KDE4Daily 4.1
  
  

  For the uninitiated, KDE4Daily aims to accomplish this goal using Qemu virtualisation technology (although with KDE4Daily 4.0, people kindly stepped up to provide a VirtualBox/ VMWare equivalent). A self-contained Qemu image with a Kubuntu 8.04 base and a comprehensive set of a self-compiled KDE4 modules (all at r810996, initially) is provided, along with an updater system inside the VM itself.

  
  
  
• OpenSolaris: nice try, pity about the licence
  
  

  The OpenSolaris community was set up three years ago with the stated intention of being an open development group that would not be under Sun's control. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions and it is now abundantly clear that Sun is just using the moniker of "open source" for marketing reasons. One still has to go through a requester/sponsor arrangement to submit a patch to the OpenSolaris project.

  
  
  
• Cisco Systems' New Client/Server Messaging Protocol Announced
  
  

  Are your developers using SOAP, CORBA or EJBs? You might want to take a look at Etch. It's language-, platform- and transport-agnostic, and Cisco is planning to release it as open source.

  
  
  
• Open source explained
• Broadband map released under open source policy
• Git Gets Down to Business
• Git to Manage Android Code

Commons and Copyrights

• “An Introduction to Health Commons” by John Wilbanks
• Oregon: our laws are copyrighted and you can't publish them
• Watch out for the copyright Gestapo
  
  

  And why is this agreement being thrashed out in such secrecy?
  
  If, as WikiLeaks suggests, NZ is party to this agreement, should we be asking why there's been no public consultation? Do we live in a democracy or not?

  
  
  

Virtualisation

• Wanted: Virtualization Coders
• Bringing down software margins with the cloud and open source
  
  

  Microsoft expects to lose margin as "cloud" competitors start to eat away at its core businesses. Kudos to Microsoft for calling out the obvious.