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The KDE e.V. and GNOME Foundation today announced that they will hold their yearly conferences, Akademy and GUADEC in 2009 in Gran Canaria. The conferences will be separate events, but co-located and hosted by the same organizers, the Cabildo of Gran Canaria and its Secretary of Tourism, Technological Innovation and Foreign Trade.

It's been a little while since my last report on how Ubuntu 8.04 LTS has been doing on the $0 Laptop. In short, all continues to go very, very well. At this point I could see ratcheting down my use of Debian on this machine and pretty much devoting it to Ubuntu all the way. Why? Everything in Ubuntu works with as little effort as possible.

OpenLogic Inc., a provider of enterprise open source software, wants other open source software developers to shake hands over a partnership program that will give it control over an alliance of support services for other vendors' products. OpenLogic, which already supports 400 open source packages in its certified library, announced its new vendor partnership program on July 8. The partnership program is designed to let commercial open source software vendors share in the revenue OpenLogic receives from its customers for providing support for the commercial software. EnterpriseDB, which sells a relational database based on PostgreSQL, and JasperSoft, which develops an open source business intelligence platform, are among the first to share in the revenue-sharing venture.

Linux opportunities in the South African market are increasing but skills are still a significant stumbling block. This is according to Michelle Beetar, country manager for Novell South Africa. Beetar, who took over as Novell SA head in January, says that South African market has been a little slower in its uptake of Linux than expected but growth in the sector is constant. “There is still significant insecurity about skills in the market,” she says.

Today is Brian Proffitt's last day as Managing Editor of LinuxToday - he's now moving to a new position at the Linux Foundation. Over the years I have written for Brian (LinuxPlanet), been linked by him (LinuxToday) and sat next to him at events in Toronto, Boston and San Francisco. I have always been amazed by Brian's clear understanding of what he writes about/edits/links too and how much he cares about the writers that work with him and the community they serve.

Beginning Monday, I will begin my role as community manager for the Linux Developer Network for the Linux Foundation. In that position, I will begin by helping to re-launch the LDN effort, turning that site in what should become the premier development and technical resource for anyone interested in coding for Linux. The Network will feature in-depth technical articles, white papers, community forums, and wiki-based content that will provide the most up-to-date information about the technology behind Linux. When I leave, LT will be left in the more than capable hands of author and Linux expert Carla Schroder, which means it will continue its editorial charter of providing links to the broadest range of Linux and open source news, opinion, and tutorials.

Software as a service (SaaS) and open source continue to converge. The latest example involves Apatar bridging the gap between Salesforce.com and QuickBooks. Here's the scoop from MSPmentor, which covers SaaS and managed services.

Specifications have been released for two new models of the Asus Eee PC, the ultra-popular, ultra-mobile PC that runs Linux, as well as Windows.

The ability to run both console and graphical programs securely on a remote system using SSH brings you a great deal of freedom. When the communications link to that remote system has high latency, however, running interactive programs such as a text editor on the remote machine can become a real test of your patience. The bcvi project lets you edit files on a remote system using gvim (or another editor) on your local desktop machine to avoid the latency. Even without latency issues, bcvi is a handy tool when you want to use gvim to edit a file on a server that does not have gvim or the X libraries installed.

There has been a bit of a dustup about KDE 4.0. A lot of opinions have been expressed, but I thought you might like to hear from KDE. So I wrote to them and asked if they'd be willing to explain their choices and answer the main complaints. They graciously agreed. I was a bit puzzled at some of the complaints, because I use KDE, and when I didn't like something, I would just change it. For example, if I didn't like the new menu, I could right click on the menu icon and it gave me an immediate choice to go back to the old one. How hard is that? Could it be that at least some of what we are seeing is our old friend Stick in the Mud?

Ryan Cartwright wrote an excellent article, Don't compare GNU/Linux with Windows or MacOS, they are not in the same game. I ran across the same blog he is referring to, while gathering potential stories for FSD and my reaction was very similar. Ryan questions, "I mean how can you tell how many Ubuntu installs came of a single CD"

One way to evaluate the security of a Web browser is to determine what percentage of its users are using the latest version. In a study released on Tuesday by S. Frei et al, it was found that Firefox users are most likely to be up to date. Keeping the browser updated to the latest version these days is paramount.

4 applications for ripping DVDs or DVD ISO images on Linux: K9Copy, dvd::rip, acidrip and Thoggen.

Whether you are online or offline, freedom matters. Like good health you never think about it or miss it until it is under threat or actually gone. If you love freedom, you probably love free software and it has given us some terrific tools with which to defend freedom. In this article I will give an overview of some of the available resources (Freenet, Wikileaks and Tor) to protect dissident opinion, facilitate whistle blowing and promote the safe and anonymous development of free software.

Last October we had looked at the ASUS P5E3 Deluxe motherboard that was designed around the Intel X38 Chipset and it had arrived with its share of ASUS innovations such as ASUS AI Lifestyle, Crystal Sound, and EZ DIY. In addition, this was the first motherboard on the market to feature DeviceVM's SplashTop, or Express Gate as it's called on the ASUS motherboards. Today at Phoronix we are looking at the updated version of the P5E3 Deluxe, which is now called the P5E3 Premium. The ASUS P5E3 Premium is similar to the earlier Deluxe model but is now engineered around Intel's newer X48 Chipset.

Sapphire supplied us with one of their initial Radeon HD4850 videocards, which features 512MB of GDDR3 memory, CrossFireX support, and is probably one of the fastest cards we've looked at yet.

Are you still using a web browser to access your favourite online applications? Why not do things the easy way, and make those applications part of your desktop with Prism. Scott Nesbitt at Freesoftware Magazine tells you what Prism can do to boost you experience of the web on your desktop -and more importantly, how to do it.

AP is reporting this morning that Eric Schmidt, he being CEO of the great and almighty Google, thinks it would better if Yahoo! remained independent. Nothing too self-serving there, is there?

Our colleague Joe Barr sometimes described himself as a doddering old geek. Many knew him as a Linux evangelist; others knew him from his ham radio activities. And those of us who worked with Joe knew him in all of his sometime irascible, often funny moods. Joe was always one of our favorite people, and we are devastated to report that he died at home, unexpectedly, last night.

[We lost one of our own last night. - Scott]

SliTaz is a new micro GNU/Linux live distribution designed to run from RAM (a recommended minimum of 128MB) and installable to a hard drive or USB device. The current version, SliTaz 1.0, weighs in at a light 24.8MB and provides a nice selection of applications that run on a lightweight desktop. You can store user data and settings on persistent media, and support for more than 400 additional download packages is available.