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It’s that time again. Time to plan for a new release of Ubuntu, I mean. There are some rather large things in this list and so I doubt all of them will be implemented in time but it is always better to dream big and get as much done as possible. Otherwise we’ll have everything done in a month and be left with nothing else to do (except fix bugs, of course). Before I start, let me remind you that none of this is official, I am not getting paid to do any of this, and this relies on other people getting things done too. If none of this happens, don’t be surprised.

Evans Data Corp. (EDC) has published the full result set from its annual survey of embedded systems developers. Priced at about $20,000, and entitled "Embedded Systems Development Survey 2007," the 180-page report addresses topics including embedded Linux platforms, working with multicore processors, and mobile development. EDC did not reveal any new results from the survey, beyond what it revealed in two summary finding reports from last Fall. In the first of those, CEO John F. Andrews alluded to "the growing move towards Linux" in embedded development. In the second, EDC noted that some 40 percent of the survey's 500 respondents were targeting embedded Linux.

In my post the other day about whether or not work in the ReiserFS file system would continue after Hans Reiser's murder conviction, I mentioned that this being an open source project, it wouldn't be hard for someone else to pick up where others leave off. And as it turns out, that's precisely what's happening: according to folks on the ReiserFS team, work on ReiserFS will continue.

In the beginning, we talked a bit about the holy war that wages onward between KDE and GNOME. Some of you aptly pointed out that there is a third desktop environment out there. It was never our intention to slight this desktop (we actually use it regularly). Like a mouse dodging to avoid the crashing footsteps of the desktop environment giants, Xfce is often included in discussions as an afterthought.

While I was in class, a professor tried to hammer Ubuntu and Open Source with comments that I have added below. Anyone want to help me with some ammo to put a foot in his proprietary mouth?

As a way of nurturing the developer community surrounding its open storage initiative, Sun Microsystems is putting together a cookbook of sorts. Sun has released a couple of recipes to help developers create storage units using its Solaris operating system.

I've been combing through Microsoft’s “get the facts” web site this last fortnight. Here Microsoft promise to reveal the “facts” on Windows vs Linux solutions. They cite company after company that abandoned Linux because it was slow and unreliable and generally hopeless, but opted for Microsoft servers and found unsurpassed profits, efficiency and general happiness. Yet, the headlines have little relevance to the case study. Microsoft’s PR department are insulting their audience. They are lacking in integrity. It’s time for the site to be pulled down. Here’s why.

A week ago Phoronix Test Suite 0.4.0 was released and today Phoronix Test Suite 0.5.0 has outdone that. This release of the Phoronix Test Suite incorporates more than 40 major changes to this open-source Linux benchmarking platform! Among the changes are new test profiles, various clean up work, sensor monitoring support, and an improved PTS Results Viewer. Development of the Phoronix Test Suite is coming along quite nicely and by early June, the public should have its hands on version 1.0.

"I believe it is worth a special mention that gNewSense 2.0 has just been released. It is based off Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron which was released just a week ago, so this is a brand new thing for everyone who wishes to run a pure Free Software system. However, there is much more to it than being a system for uncompromising Freedomware enthusiasts."

I'D like to start by asking you a series of seemingly unrelated questions. Have you watched Shrek or Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone? Have you flown on Continental, Virgin America or Singapore Airlines? Do you drive a BMW, Fiat or Renault car? Are you serving in the United States Army? Have you ever bought anything online using Paypal? Have you ever stayed in a Sheraton hotel? Or travelled by train in Canada? Don't worry, I'm not about to try to sell you something; rather, my aim is to enlighten you. Unless you're a self-confessed geek like me, you probably don't care how all these things, and many more, are created, run or maintained. You just want to know that your car will start, your movie will play in synch with the sound, your hotel room is ready and your flight or train will arrive on time. That's perfectly understandable, but here's the thing.

Metro Health Hospital, a healthcare system serving 130,000 patients across Michigan, is already using what some consider the desktop of the future. The hospital has rolled out server-hosted virtual desktops to every employee no matter where they are or what client device they use.

Adobe Systems is throwing open its Flash and AIR file formats to speed delivery of Rich Internet Applications to billions of mobile devices with its tools and players. The company is expected to announce that - as of today - all restrictions on SWF for multi-media and vector graphics and FLV/F4V, for video on Flash, have been removed. Adobe is also publishing the device porting layer APIs for its Flash Player, the Flash Cast protocol and AMF protocol for the exchange data between a Flash application and database.

The OpenBSD team traditionally makes available a new song with each new release of its software. The songs, though often of dubious lyrical quality, typically embody the current thinking of the development team, in particular that of team leader Theo de Raadt. In the past the songs have railed against proprietary software developers and corporates and the challenges they throw in the way of free software. This time, however, the target is the Free Software Foundation’s Richard Stallman.

With all the Linux distributions available, trying out more than one can be tempting. By installing a virtual environment, you can run several operating systems on your machine, keeping them completely isolated from each other in their own sandboxes. Here's a look at how get started with three popular virtualization environments: VMware, VirtualBox, and QEMU. In a virtual ecosystem, a host operating system runs one or more guest virtual machines in a simulated environment. Each guest believes it has all of the host's physical hardware at its disposal.

This tutorial shows how you can set up a Kubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge. Kubuntu 8.04 is derived from Ubuntu 8.04 LTS and uses the KDE desktop instead of the GNOME desktop.

Discover a tool that enables developers of Java EE applications to migrate from WebSphere Application Server, Community Edition, to the more advanced WebSphere Application Server family of products. Remove a lot of the manual intervention involved in migrating the specific deployment descriptors.

Tony Mobily at Freesoftware Magazine interviews the developers of Ekiga, the free sfotware for making free 'phone call across the internet. By the time you have finished reading this epic article you will know a hell of a lot about Ekiga and VOIP in general. Catch these great guys here

These days, effective document management means accessibility from anywhere on the planet, electronic storage, reliable backup, and instant document modification updates. KnowledgeTree offers all that and more. It's available in several editions, including an open source community version (which we reviewed last year) that businesses can tailor to their individual needs.

"We are pleased to announce the official release of OpenBSD 4.3," began OpenBSD creator Theo de Raadt. "This is our 23nd release on CD-ROM (and 24rd via FTP). We remain proud of OpenBSD's record of more than ten years with only two remote holes in the default install." He added, "as in our previous releases, 4.3 provides significant improvements, including new features, in nearly all areas of the system". Four platforms were listed as new or extended, including: sparc64 gained SMP support, "this should work on all supported systems, with the exception of the Sun Enterprise 10000"; hppa K-class servers are now supported; mvme88k gained SMP support on a couple of systems, and support for the 88110 processor was added.

Qumranet, a rather small software company, wants to make a very large play in the virtualization market with a new product. It's looking for Solid ICE to go up against the desktop virtulization wares from VMware, Citrix, Microsoft and a host of start-ups. Those of you in the open source kingdom will know Qumranet best as the corporate sponsor of KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine), which had made its way into major Linux operating systems as the default server virtualization package. Canonical, the, er, corporate sponsor of Ubuntu, is perhaps the most vocal backer of KVM.