09.16.09

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers
• Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

GNU/Linux

• Switching to Linux: A Windows developer’s view

  Summary: In this particular case, the switch to Linux took me just a few hours, while the benefit for me was rather big: Improved performance, and less hassle with dependencies. The drawbacks — getting used to Linux, different tools — are out weighted by the advantages for me; and that’s the main point of this blog post. I was surprised how easy it was to switch from Windows to Linux completely on this project; as I expected a lot of problems (like for instance, not being able to get the stuff running at all!)

• Shh!!! HP sneaks Linux in on new laptops

  Except for Dell, the major PC vendors are reluctant to admit they actually sell and support Linux. For instance, HP supports Linux quite well on its servers but is very reluctant to support it on its desktops. They have trouble even admitting that they’re now shipping DeviceVM’s instant-on Splashtop Linux on their new notebook lines.

• Open Source Should Be Open To All

  Often the way is baby steps. If today you can convince someone to use some Open-Source software package – a document creator, a presentation tool, a web browser, or even a web server – you give yourself the wedge to start pushing for an Open Source operating system.

• LCA2010 Schedule is now available!

  LCA2010 Organisers are proud to announce the schedule of talks for linux.conf.au 2010!

  A full schedule of talks is now available for LCA2010. The conference brings together speakers from around the world presenting a variety of topics; from the strongly technical such as Linux kernel development, to social interaction within communities and issues relating to diverse and minority groups. linux.conf.au 2010 runs for a full week starting Monday 18th January, with more than 65 talk sessions, together with a number of Keynote presentations and 14 Miniconfs.

• Dreaming Again with One Laptop Per Child

  Predicting that a dream will vanish is cheap, getting consideration for what replaced the dream is priceless. OLPC is changing the world in ways that where not predictable when the dream started. So let’s first admit a few facts, then tackle the errors and misunderstandings of UNdispatch’s article.

• Desktop

  • Run Evernote in Ubuntu Linux with Wine

    I may even try running some other Windows programs in Wine at some point. Maybe. But there are so many excellent native Linux apps, I may not need to.

  • The State Of Linux Desktop Functionality

    The State Of Linux Desktop Functionality

  • 10 Reasons to use Linux for Enterprise Business

    For a year now the information technology sector has been suffering under the global economic recession. At this juncture, setting up a network system for any organization could be highly expensive. Linux is an open source OS and edges over it arch rival Windows in several instances when it comes to business. Apart from the fact that they are generally free, Linux is more secure, reliable and customizable than other proprietary counterparts. Some of the most renowned companies in the world, including the bigshots like Amazon, Google, and Yahoo, run their servers with Linux rather than Windows.

• Server

  • A Skeptical Look At The Linux Server Botnet

    When The Register ran news of a “Linux botnet” out in the wild, the bloviation did fly: See? Linux really isn’t that secure! But odds are this has nothing to do with Linux security per se, and everything to do with the biggest and most notorious security hole of all: bad system administration.

• Kernel Space

  • Torvalds on EFI

    Insightful quote of the day:

    Not that I’d ever claim that the BIOS is wonderful either, but at least everybody knows that the BIOS is just a bootloader, and doesn’t try to make it anything else.
    – Linus Torvalds (in reference to EFI)

• Distributions

  • LFS, Gentoo or XYZ distribution. Which one for you?

    Finally, if you really, really want to learn exactly how a Linux system is created. There are a couple of methods which I know of that compile a complete Linux system from nothing. In other words you start off with an empty partition and end up with a working Linux system. The most famous one is the Linux From Scratch book which is an online (downloadable) book for compiling a Linux system from, er, scratch. Another, from a thunder down under, is DIY Linux (Do It Yourself Linux). This is not for the faint of heart and only those with a technical bent and some knowledge of Linux can work on this. There is no package management and every single aspect of your Linux system is under your control. As an added bonus you will be able to understand and work on any Linux system with ease.

  • The Netbook World Summit, a major IT event

    The Netbook World Summit 2009 will be held on the 8th of December 2009 in Paris.

    ABI’s Research forecasts worldwide shipments of nearly 35 million netbooks in 2009, rising to an estimated 139 million in 2013.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Trademarks – The dinosaur in the room

      Branding is just as vital to the success of FOSS projects as it is to proprietary software. This article explores the importance of trademarks for open source.

    • Oracle

      • Oracle Enterprise Linux updated

        Oracle has updated its Linux distribution for enterprise deployment. Oracle Enterprise Linux Release 5 Update 4 is now in step with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 which was released earlier this month.

      • Oracle updates Berkeley DB

      • Oracle *could* kill off MySQL as a commercial product, but probably won’t

        Before I even start this post I am going to repeat our view that Oracle is well aware that it has little to gain from killing off MySQL and that we expect MySQL to become the scale-out database for non-transactional web applications and to compete with SQL Server in departmental deployments.

        [...]

        Q. This is all very theoretical.

        A. Yes it is, but it highlights the importance of thinking through the long-term implications of licensing and copyright assignment. If you don’t want to end up in the situation faced by Monty Program, don’t go GPL with full copyright assignment.

  • Debian Family

    • 5 Exciting 2D Graphics Design tools for Ubuntu Linux

      Ubuntu linux is rich with exciting graphics utilities, Here you can see simple but very useful 2D Graphics Design tools for Ubuntu Linux. Yes welcome to the fantastic world of ubuntu graphics.

    • Launchpad Bug Filing Changes for Ubuntu

      As a part of the Increase Apport Adoption specification we are going to kick off an experiment and redirect all of Ubuntu’s /+filebug links in Launchpad to https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs. This change has been tested on staging.launchpad.net already and will be landing shortly on edge.launchpad.net (There will be a +filebug?no-redirect if you really really need it).

    • Ubuntu Artwork team starts delivering – Four cool themes and two icon sets to start with!

      Ubuntu Artwork team finally starts delivering. Although Ubuntu have been the most popular distro for a pretty long time now, it really need to put in a lot of work on enhancing look and feel. Though a number of high quality third party themes are available like the bisigi-project, one thing where Ubuntu lacked was the absence of good quality themes by default. That is all going to change now.

    • Ubuntu 9.10 Home Encryption Performance

      There is certainly a performance cost to having the home directory encrypted along with the SWAP partition, as you can see from these results. Though a normal user not running disk benchmarks all day will not notice as severe of a change, depending upon the task it may be apparent. Is encrypting the data on your netbook worth it? Well, yours truly will not even travel without a netbook that has a fully encrypted disk running Ubuntu. What we had not compared in this article was how the home encryption performance change compared to Ubuntu 9.04 (without an encrypted SWAP and with an EXT3 file-system) or how it compares on Ubuntu 9.04 to a disk with a fully encrypted LVM, but we may have those results in a future article.

    • Ubuntu help: Finding answers fast

      Just before I finish I will mention a few paper resources: The Official Ubuntu Book, of which I am a co-author, or the Official Ubuntu Server Book are just two of dozens of books about Ubuntu on the market. You can also purchase paper copies of the official help at Lulu.com. Hopefully I have given you some good information about where to find help. Good luck and have fun with Ubuntu.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Linux-ready mini-PC powers up

    Linutop announced the third generation of its compact Linux-based PC. Larger and with twice the memory of previous models, the Linutop 3 has a 1GHz Via C7 CPU, gigabit Ethernet, dual SATA ports, and PCIe expansion, the company says.

  • Android 1.6 is out

    GOOGLE HAS RELEASED the next version of its Android operating system for mobile phones, “Donut”.

    Having a look at the promo video, Android 1.6 brings support for CDMA phones, more screen resolutions, more APIs, better camera software and improved search.

  • CrunchEee — the bad-ass netbook Linux for snobs that doesn’t give a rat’s ass whether you like it or not.

    CrunchEee is based on the Ubuntu 8.10 kernel — there’s a new version of CrunchBang, with 9.04 but without the Array.org customization for my Eee’s WiFi needs. I tried to install the Array.org kernel myself once and it didn’t take. I guess I’m still a Linux n00b after all… Just don’t tell anyone, okay?

Free Software/Open Source

• Citrix gooses XenApp with virtualization

  With XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2, which debuts today, the product formerly known as Presentation Server (and embodying the terminal services method of giving PC users access to server variants of PC applications hosted on servers) gets a third way to stream applications down to end users.

• Software Livre : OOo4Kids, um OpenOffice para crianças

  OOo4Kids, (pronuncia-se “OpenOffice for Kids”), é um projeto em andamento, focado em crianças entre 7 e 12 anos. Baseado no código do OpenOffice.org, mas bastante simplificado. Isto significa, que o OpenOffice.org tem características que o OOo4Kids não terá.

• Open source – no question of quality

  There are two simple principles which drive the potential for high quality in OSS. The first is the fact that open source software generally builds on the success of upstream projects. Second is the impact testing has on the lifecycle, not to be confused with the “many eyes” concept though it is orthogonal.

  [...]

  Open source projects do extremely well to ensure that quality is a rising element by using good, sound software development practices – because they have to.

• [The Software Freedom Law Show] The Software Freedom Law Show: Episode 0×16: Documentation Licensing and the Google Books Settlement Objection and the Google Books Settlement Objection

  Karen and Bradley discuss issues surrounding the licensing of software documentation, and FSF’s objection to the Google Books Proposed Settlement.

• 10 important Security and privacy addons for Firefox

  Security while surfing on the net is inportant, with firefox you can get more security by using security addons, bellow a list of 10 security and privacy addons.

Leftovers

• Dell Settles New York Fraud Case For $4 Million

  New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has announced that Dell and its subsidiary, Dell Financial Services (DFS), have agreed to pay his office $4 million in restitution, penalties and costs to settle charges of fraudulent and deceptive business practices that scammed consumers in the state.

• Denmark pulls ‘promiscuous’ video

  The three-minute clip shows a young blonde woman, trying to find a man whom she had a one night stand with, who fathered her child “August”.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Taiwan government aims at 80% global market share for Taiwan-made e-book readers in 2013

    Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) will be implementing a 5-year project with a total budget of NT$2.134 billion (US$65 million) to boost development of digital publication industries in Taiwan, with the goal being to make Taiwan-produced e-book readers reach a global market share of 80% with sales of NT$50 billion in 2013, according to the agency.

  • Cracks show in music industry over P2P enforcement

    Divisions inside the music business have prompted its umbrella trade organisation to issue a statement today denying any serious rift, while dodging the issue of whether it will urge the government to cut off persistent pirates from the net.

    The ructions were provoked by last week’s statement from the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC), a group of managers and big-selling artists including Radiohead, Billy Bragg and davefromblur. The FAC was sharply critical of Lord Mandelson’s proposed anti-copyright infringement measures, especially suspension of internet access.

  • Stunned film, music sectors react to Veoh decision

    In the cafes along Sunset Boulevard and the high-rises on Fifth Avenue, executives and lawyers at powerful entertainment conglomerates were talking about Veoh on Tuesday morning.

    They were not joyful discussions. Copyright owners in the film and music sectors were stunned Monday by the news that U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz ruled that Veoh, an online-video service, is protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s safe-harbor provision and cannot be held liable for acts of copyright infringement committed by users. This was the most significant court victory that the tech sector has won against copyright owners in some time.

  • WIPO Once Again Sides With Trademark Holder Over Common Sense

    The phrase “ta ta” is a well known way of saying goodbye. So, it was a cute idea for an Indian online travel site to use the domain name OkTaTaByeBye.com.