I learned this morning via #ubuntu-us that they’re now selling Ubuntu at Best Buy, and couldn’t help myself: during my lunch break I swung out to Best Buy to drop $20 on a copy.
She soon returned home, and I quickly forgot that I had switched her. Today, I had reason to drop her an email so I took the opportunity to ask if she was still on Ubuntu and how she was liking it. Her response: “I am still using Ubuntu. I like it. I couldn’t play encoded DVDs at first. I was going to call you or talk to our computer guy at school, but decided to research the issue myself on the community help site. I got it figured out and upgraded to the newest version at the same time. It was really very simple to work through. I’m very happy with it and I absolutely hate going to windows machines now, they suck.”
Almost two weeks after leaking details about its new line of Ming PDA phones, Motorola made it official with a formal launch. Shipping now in China, the line includes a Linux-based Ming A1600 model offering GPS, handwriting recognition, and a 3.2-megapixel camera with business card reader.
OpenOffice 3.0 is a major milestone for the project, there are tons of other new features. I also noticed a great improvement in speed, which has always a bane in previous OpenOffice.org versions.
For GIMP 2.6, the developers had a strong focus: the implementation of GEGL should replace the old GIMP core. These changes are mainly invisible to the common user, but besides that many other very useful things have been done to help users in the future.
Novell and Microsoft continue to fund development with the desired bias of using Microsoft APIs; Microsoft pays for its share of OSBC (again) and gets to set the tone with a keynote speech
Europe's policy on software patents and the ACTA factor; the MPEG patent pool turns out to be not much of a sleeping giant but an awake one; patents relating to cancer genes continue to needlessly cost lives
Intellectual Ventures is said to be attacking companies using its proxies and Microsoft suffers the wrath of the very practice it advocated with investments (patent trolling)
What Amazon does not want to tell us about software patents in its recent deal with Microsoft; more reasons to suspect that Dell pays Microsoft for Ubuntu GNU/Linux
Microsoft is trying to sneak patents-encumbered MPEG formats into the Web using Internet Explorer 9 (IE 9); Microsoft threatens (again) to go after Linux legally
Another legal attack against Free software comes in the form of a threat (issued against Sandy3D) and Apple's reason for suing Android seems like gradual iPhone defeat (Linux is winning)
A reader alleges that Microsoft is playing dirty on Windows in order to suppress the use of Google (assuming AVG agreed to reroute traffic to Microsoft via Yahoo!)
Lol said,
July 9, 2008 at 7:13 am
The new leader of GNOME is clueless about programming.
What kind of decision a leader will take who has not written a single line of GNOME program… sad
Its like making some HP Corporate drone the leader for Linux kernel rather than Linus. You know how this turns out in the future…a big mess.