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Released just in time for the holidays. SimplyMEPIS 7.0 arrived at ReviewLinux.Com so we thought we would take a quick look at this new Linux OS. Check out our flash video of SimplyMEPIS 7.0 in action.

LXer Feature: 23-Dec-2007

It looks like people are starting to get their hands on some OLPC's and the reviews have started coming in too. We also have a review of Carla Schroder's new book, KOffice takes a stand against OOXML, screenshots of the BBS's new iPlayer and Damn Small Linux 4.2, Open Source alternatives to Adobe, how to make a holiday slideshow and one of our readers has a Debian adventure of their own.

A report generator to visualize query results with gnuplot has been added. Exception handling has been improved. The Snellen Chart has been reactivated. KVK handling has officially been included. More hooks and an improved example hook script were added. Demographics handling has been extended to now really support multiple names, addresses, comm channels, and external IDs. Furthermore, there are lots of GUI-accessible configuration options that were always there in the backend but didn't have a frontend to them. File format handling in document management has seen improvements.

I may have said that part 3 would be the last one, but there were just so many good comments. This part highlights a few great comments along with my response to them.

Now that OpenOffice.org does make some splashes in the IT press for the achievement of having created a "portable" version that can run from a USB thumbdrive (for only the Windows version, that is) -- isn't it time for klik to get ready for gaining its own share of public fame sometime soon? That's because klik does not only turn OpenOffice.org, but many thousand Linux applications into "PortableApps". And klik does not need painstakingly recompiling modified source code into portable binaries, one by one. But will re-utilize the marvellous work and special knowledge of all the dedicated Debian, RPM and Slackware packaging heroes out there and repackage 95% of its supported klik bundles fully automatically, including dependency resolution...

[ From my own experience, I can tell KLIK1 is great already, it made the CLI-only program 'csound' work on my Gentoo system. Gentoo doesn't have a csound ebuild in portage, and compiling from source failed. KLIK1 however did the job fine. I read the KLIK2 plans, and I predict as HD-spaces becomes cheaper, this will be the future of package-management and the end of all your dependency problems! - hkwint ]

As always, KDE will have a presence at next year's FOSDEM in Belgium on 23-24 February 2008. FOSDEM is a European meeting of free software developers, to listen to a plethora of interesting talks about anything related to free software. We are looking for people to give a talk in the KDE or cross-desktop devroom.

[ Planning to be there to cover the event for LXer - hkwint ]

How did quite possibly the most boring video clip ever become the YouTube number one this Xmas?

Do you know why do I admire Microsoft’s marketing whizzes? They made a deity out of their corporation. No, seriously. No figurative speech. Not a metaphor nor a parallel. Those nameless heroes did it literally.

The next big frontier for Big Linux Build-out will be at a back end that's as close as anyone can get the front lines of big video production. That is, to consumers who are now also producers. And the parties in the best position to pioneer that frontier aren't in Seattle or Mountain view. They're in your home town.

Kicking off the 2008.1 development cycle in earnest, the first alpha is here. This alpha features X.Org 7.3, KDE 3.5.8, KDE 4.0 RC2 (in /contrib), GNOME 2.21, kernel 2.6.24, OpenOffice.org 2.3, new NVIDIA and ATI proprietary drivers, PulseAudio by default and more. Despite being a first alpha, it is also in a fairly stable and reliable state. Check out the Mandriva 2008.1 Alpha 1 screenshots by The Coding Studio.

For a few years now we've been reading about the urgency of adopting open document formats to preserve our written records and heritage. Now, a 74 page report from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences warns that digital films are as vulnerable to loss as digitized documents, but vastly more expensive to preserve - as much as $208,569 per year.

The Southern California Linux Expo has filled all available speaker slots.

[I will be there again this year covering it for LXer. - Scott]

People often talk about getting average home users to use Linux, but that may not be the best group of people for Linux to market itself to. Part 3 covers geeks, travelers, and schools.

Audio and video content are increasingly important components of the World Wide Web, which some of us remember, initially, as a text-only experience. Users of free software need not be told that the multimedia aspect of the net can be hard to access without recourse to proprietary tools. So the decisions which are made regarding multimedia support in the next version of the HTML specification are of more than passing interest. A current dispute over the recommended codecs for HTML5 shows just how hard maintaining an interoperable web may be.

Netgear has introduced five Linux-based networked attached storage (NAS) products. Targeted at "prosumers" and small to medium-sized businesses, Netgear's ReadyNAS NV+ systems offer higher capacities than previous Infrant models, and come in 1.5TB (terabyte), 2TB, 3TB, and 4TB versions, as well as a 4TB rackmount version.

Welcome to Hardy Heron Alpha-2, which will in time become Ubuntu 8.04. Alpha 2 is the second in a series of milestone CD images that will be released throughout the Hardy development cycle. Check out the Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Hardy Heron Alpha 2 screenshots by The Coding Studio.

The healthcare services company moved 50 of its 70 applications to Linux over the last two years and will complete the process with the remaining 20 within a year or two. Three years ago, McKesson's Acute Care Solutions offered its hospital and doctors' office applications to run under IBM's mainframe AIX or other larger server Unix. But customers were bringing smaller Intel-based servers into their hospitals and doctors offices. A small doctor's group had little use for an eight or 12-way Unix server, but a two-way Intel or AMD server was about right.

Researchers from Google have documented serious vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash content which leave tens of thousands websites susceptible to attacks that steal the personal details of visitors. The security bugs reside in Flash applets, the ubiquitous building blocks for movies and graphics that animate sites across the web. Also known as SWF files, they are vulnerable to attacks in which malicious strings are injected into the legitimate code through a technique known as cross-site scripting, or XSS. Currently there are no patches for the vulnerabilities, which are found in sites operated by financial institutions, government agencies and other organizations.

Years after the EU ruled that Microsoft needed to give over documentation that would allow Samba, an open-source file and printer sharing application, to be fully compatible with Microsoft software, Microsoft finally did it. Despite the delay, what matters now is that Samba has what they need to make Linux better.

I do not know... Is it me or is it every time a major update happens with Ubuntu something goes wrong. I do not think I am all alone on this one...