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What sucks more than the force that keeps Texas attached to the rest of the US? The iPad.

For those from the Mandriva camp, you'll want to head on over to your favorite mirror to check out the freshly released beta of Mandriva Linux 2010.1. Mandriva 2010.1 Beta 1 is running with GNOME 2.30 that was released just this past week, provides a preview of GNOME Shell for a glimpse of what is coming with GNOME 3.0 later this year, and there is a wealth of other package updates too.

The Plasma Javascript Jam Session is a friendly competition that aims to reward creators of original, interesting and beautiful Plasma widgets written in Javascript with some great prizes and community recognition. The competion concluded on March 31st with 11 successful submissions making the deadline. Judging has commenced, and it will not be easy: many excellent submissions were sent in ranging from the entertaining to the highly useful. Ranging in size from a few dozen lines to a few thousand lines of Javascript code, the submissions showcase a variety of ideas and possibilities.

Many computer users have an insatiable appetite to deepen their understanding of computer operating systems and computer software. Linux users are no different in that respect. At the same time as developing a huge range of open source software, the Linux community fortunately has also written a vast range of documentation in the form of books, guides, tutorials, HOWTOs, man pages, and other help to aid the learning process. Some of this documentation is intended specifically for a newcomer to Linux, or those that are seeking to move away from a proprietary world and embrace freedom.

Faced with disappointing sales, HP and Dell are scaling back investments in 10-inch netbooks, with HP possibly quitting the format entirely, according to DigiTimes. Other motivators were said to include expectations for re-invigorated sales of larger, more expensive notebooks fueled by a recovering economy.

The developers of Songbird, the open source and cross platform media player, have announced they are dropping Linux support. In an announcement on the company blog, VP of Engineering Georges Auberger said that "After careful consideration, we’ve come to the painful conclusion that we should discontinue support for the Linux version of Songbird". Auberger cited prioritisation issues for the small engineering team which have meant that the Linux version of Songbird has fallen behind the other versions on Windows and Mac. The company has therefore decided to focus on the Windows and Mac versions and delivering new features and device support on those versions.

As long as I am using Kopete, sending messages, etc. everything is as it should be. No connection problems at all. As soon as I let the program go idle, it starts disconnecting every ten minutes, giving an Error 17 message, like clockwork. It always reconnects on it’s own, but as you can see from the screenshot, you could set your watch by when it disconnects from the Yahoo server.

Final Demand. Dear Linux, We own you. Pay up or else. Love, SCO - Merc Crimperman, Bizarre Cathedral

Ubuntu just released the beta 1 version of their new LTS (Long Term Support) Distribution, Lucid 10.04. The theme is based on "light" and it looks great. Here's what to expect and what not to expect when you first install this new flavor of Ubuntu: The first thing you notice when you launch the live CD is Ubuntu's new logo. Don't worry, they still have the basic logo but they added some new typography and use the logo like a registration mark. They went with the black desktop theme for their default which is fine, but they moved something around. The window manager buttons went from the right side to the left, which is difficult at first if you are not used to it.

Mel Gorman posted the seventh version of his Memory Compaction patches asking, "are there any further obstacles to merging?" The patches, first posted in May of 2007, provide a mechanism for moving GFP_MOVABLE pages into a smaller number of pageblocks, reducing externally fragmented memory. Mel explains that 'compaction' is another method of defragmenting memory, "for example, lumpy reclaim is a form of defragmentation as was slub 'defragmentation' (really a form of targeted reclaim). Hence, this is called 'compaction' to distinguish it from other forms of defragmentation."

Gnome 2.30 was released a few days ago which means the next version will be (or should be) Gnome 3 (which will come with Gnome Shell). I recently came across some Notification Area mockups which might become reality. Gnome 3 might start using monochrome colors in the System Status Area - Ubuntu style (or we could call it Mac OSX style):

From February 20th to the 21st, Linux enthusiasts from the greater Los Angeles area converged at the Westin Hotel near Los Angeles Airport to celebrate Linux and Free Software at the annual Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE8X). KDE was there once again showing attendees the work of the KDE community. The team was showing off Plasma Desktop and a prototype of the Plasma Netbook workspace. There were four new volunteers who did a great job representing KDE for the first time - Jonathan Prien, Wayne Speir, Aaron Reichman, and Barrington Daltrey. A special mention goes also to Gary Greene, who shipped out the KDE booth box for use at SCALE. Aaron Johnson gave a talk "A Basic Introduction to KDE", attended by about thirty people, that was well recieved.

Canonical, IBM and Simmtronics release low-cost Ubuntu netbook for emerging markets

System Administrators who remember the day when they did not have a graphics display rarely think about wanting to time travel for the pure joy of using a terminal. It is possible, however, to virtually do so by using either all or mostly text only utilities and perhaps a retro looking X windows desktop. In this text a look at a small experiment to see how well that went in one particular instance.

Miro 3 is released! For starters, Miro is widely popular open source internet television application. Miro can automatically download videos from RSS-based channels, manage them and play them.

The fine people at Canonical are experts at keeping Ubuntu in the news, and keeping a lot of buzz alive. That is a good thing; still, it is easy to get the impression that Ubuntu is Linux. But we know there is a whole world outside of Canonical, so here are some of my favorite Linuxes.

There is no doubt that Linux will be the dominant player in the mobile market by the end of 2010. Google's Android operating system is currently top dog among mobile Linux - however how does it compare to the Debian based Maemo?

MicroOLAP Database Designer for PostgreSQL is an easy CASE tool with intuitive graphical interface allowing you to build a clear and effective database structure visually, see the complete picture (diagram) representing all the tables, references between them, views, stored procedures and other objects.

A while ago, I reviewed the jQuery 1.3 and PHP and Zend Framework 1.8 books. These books are published by Packt Publishing (who just had a redesign on their site) and they asked me to review another book for them. This book, written by Brian Bondari, is called WordPress 2.9 E-Commerce. As you could have guessed by the title of the book, it shares great information about WordPress combined with the WP e-Commerce plugin. This book was an eye opener for myself too, since I'm a Joomla! user myself (combined with VirtueMart) and new in the WordPress scene.

There is a classic bit of computer wisdom that states “If you’ve got a problem, and decide to solve it with regular expressions, now you’ve got two problems.” This of course stems from the perception that regular expressions are a complicated mix of magic characters and Voodoo. Regular expressions can allow you to achieve elegant and concise program logic quickly and easily, but only once you’ve learned to understand how they work and why. Just about any Linux or Mac system comes with a powerful regex tool call grep and learning grep is an essential task for any power user or system administrator. Today, we’ll explore some of what you can do with grep and how it can be one of the most powerful tools in your geek arsenal.