LXer Weekly Roundup for 25-Apr-2010

Posted by Scott_Ruecker on Apr 26, 2010 4:23 PM
LXer Linux News; By Scott Ruecker (Phoenix, U.S.)


LXer Feature: 26-Apr-2010

In this week's LXWR we have Oracle charging for Sun's ODF plug-in, Stallman reconsiders his existence, Steve Jobs tells people who want porn to buy an Android, a farewell to Songbird and much more. Enjoy!

Richard Stallman: "I Wished I Had Killed Myself" : Richard Stallman seems an unstoppable force of nature, constantly fighting for the things he believes in. And yet in a new interview he says: “I have certainly wished I had killed myself when I was born.”

Oracle start charging for Sun's Office ODF plug-in: In 2007, Sun released the Sun ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office, as a closed source but free application which allowed Microsoft Office users to export and import documents in Open Document Format. Although the Oracle site still, at the time of writing, offers the software for free with the tagline "Get it now: FREE", users clicking through will find that Oracle are now charging $90, per user, for a right-to-use license for the plug-in and offering support costing $19.80 per user for the first year. Oracle also requires a minimum order of 100 licenses, which means the minimum purchase is $9,000.

Steve Jobs: Folks who want porn can buy an Android: When questioned about Apple’s role as moral police in the App Store, Jobs responds that “we do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone.” Better, is what he said next: “Folks who want porn can buy and [sic] Android phone.“

Is The Linux Brand Poisoned?: I queried 109 people. People who either owned, managed or worked as Executive Assistants to those in small to medium-sized businesses. And for full disclosure, there were 144 businesses or people I approached that would not take part in this survey. Of that 109 that did, I asked each of them a few simple questions: The first one being..."What is Linux?"

Farewell Songbird, We Hardly Knew Ye: Songbird, the popular open source cross platform music player, has decided to dump support for Linux. Such a move could be fatal and here's why.

8 of the best tiny Linux distros: There are plenty of reasons for wanting a low-resource distro running on your computer. Maybe you have some ancient hardware that you need to breathe new life into. Perhaps you want something that will fit on a modestly sized memory stick. Or it might be that you want to run 200 virtual machines simultaneously on your desktop. The important things that we'll look at here are the amount of space needed, how much processing power is required to get the distro running at an acceptable level, and the effort required to get it to work.

A Linux Client at Work: If you didn't already know, I am in the computer repair business. Normally, people come in with either PCs or Macs, and request repairs that are really rather simple. Occasionally, I'm called on to do large installations, or set up servers, but that's rare. What's even more rare is having a Linux client. I did just happen to get one though. The first I've ever had.

Jon 'maddog' Hall's Picks for Today's Six Best OSS Projects: You would think that writing a blog entry on “Hot New OSS Projects” would not be that difficult. All you should have to do is go to SourceForge or Freshmeat and see what projects are being downloaded, or at least accessed, and write about them. Or, hangout on Slashdot or LinuxDevices.com and see what cool things are being shown and talked about. These days you can even read the mainstream media about Linux products and projects. And of course there is the Linux.com site with its news feeds, discussion groups and projects. All of these would have been “too easy” for maddog, so of course he had to do the unthinkable and ask his eclectic group of Linux User Group (LUG) members what they thought were “Hot, New OSS Projects.” The first message that came back from the “call for thoughts” was: “What do you mean by OSS project?” followed by “What do you mean by new?” and (of course) “

10 Linux commands for beginners: Most Linux distributions include attractive graphical interfaces, but you can do a lot more from the command line interface once you know your way around. For tasks like controlling and monitoring the distro's underlying system, the command line remains indispensable.

When Copyright Goes Bad - documentary: Ben Cato Clough and Luke Upchurch's "When Copyright Goes Bad" (from Consumers International) is a great, 15-minute mini-documentary on what copyright can do, what it is doing, and what it needs to stop doing. Appearances by Fred Von Lohmann - Electronic Frontier Foundation; Michael Geist - University of Ottawa Law School; Jim Killock - Open Rights Group; and Hank Shocklee - Co-founder of Public Enemy.

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