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Canonical demonstrated a prototype version of an execution environment for Ubuntu that lets it run Android apps, says an industry report. The environment acts like a simulator, and is based on the Xorg X Window environment, says the story. Ubuntu sponsor Canonical demonstrated the Android emulator at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Barcelona, Spain, according to a Ryan Paul story in ArsTechnica. Based on the Xorg open source implementation of X Window, the execution environment functions like a simulator, enabling Android apps to run alongside conventional Linux applications, writes Paul.

If proprietary software is the proverbial dam, Open Source is the raging torrent pushing to break through one might even continue the analogy to identify certain figures in the proprietary world as the little boy with his finger in the hole, with more nefarious intent, of course. More and more cities, countries, and even continents are embracing Open Source with open arms and, given the analogy above, snorkels and as of last Thursday, one more municipality has been fitted for fins.

If you've run older PowerPC-based Macs in your businesses you may be wondering what to do with them now that Apple has made the transition to Intel, and the G3, G4 and G5 processors are beginning to show their age. Paul Rubens suggests scrapping OS X, and turning the machines into servers or workstations running Linux.

Intel has worked hard and spent a lot of money over the years to shape its image: It is the company that celebrates its quest to make computer chips ever smaller, faster and cheaper with a quick five-note jingle at the end of its commercials. As Renee J. James of Intel puts it, “You can’t just throw hardware out there into the world” without accompanying software. But as Intel tries to expand beyond the personal computer chip business, it is changing in subtle ways. For the first time, its long unheralded software developers, more than 3,000 of them, have stolen some of the spotlight from its hardware engineers. These programmers find themselves at the center of Intel’s forays into areas like mobile phones and video games.

Mandriva, the Linux vendor, has announced "Click'n'Backup", its own web based backup system. The service, reminiscent of the recently launched Canonical's Ubuntu One, includes online secure storage space and a backup and restore tool. Unlike Ubuntu One, the backup and restore tools are available for non-Mandriva Linux systems, Windows and Mac OS X. The system can be configured for backup, or as a shared and synchronised file store, allowing users to keep files up to date on multiple machines.

A Survey done in Google Docs, See what others have to say about the burn rate on MS licenses becoming Linux and more..

A quick tutorial on managing directories, and files and subdirectories, on the fly, within those directories, using file access controls.

The Ubuntu Developer Summit, currently running in Barcelona, is reported to have three sessions dealing with Google's Android operating system, fuelling speculation over what Karmic Koala, Ubuntu 9.10, will offer in the way of Android compatibility. A specification page on the Unbuntu Wiki for the Android Execution Environment, suggest that the plan is to allow Android applications to execute in their own chroot'ed environment with the non-X11 graphics of the mobile operating system being modified to display either via the X server, or through some other display mechanism. To a user, this would probably appear as a desktop window which contains an Android desktop.

British market researchers took some lessons from a survey of 1,275 Linux migrators in organizations worldwide.

Earlier this year AMD launched the Phenom II series to succeed the original quad-core Phenom processors, with these newer desktop CPUs being built upon a 45nm process, tripling the amount of Level 3 cache to 6MB, and offering support for both DDR2 and DDR3 system memory. Prior to the launch of the Phenom II we had tested the AMD Shanghai Opterons on Linux and benchmarked these CPUs on OpenSolaris too, which were the server/workstation version of this new AMD 45nm core. With the Phenom II series there is the X3 and X4 line-up for triple-core and quad-core processors, respectively. In this article we are looking at how well the AMD Phenom II X3 710 performs under Ubuntu Linux.

OK...I think we can put the old wive's tale to bed that Linux Users just don't spend money. 2DBoy will be the first to punch a pin in that bubble. What has been proven is that Linux users will shell out a few bucks for what they want. We have another non-believer in our midst. NetFlix.

This tutorial shows how to set up a PXE (short for preboot execution environment) install server on Debian Lenny. A PXE install server allows your client computers to boot and install a Linux distribution over the network, without the need of burning Linux iso images onto a CD/DVD, boot floppy images, etc. This is handy if your client computers don't have CD or floppy drives, or if you want to set up multiple computers at the same time (e.g. in a large enterprise), or simply because you want to save the money for the CDs/DVDs. In this article I show how to configure a PXE server that allows you to boot multiple distributions (i386 and x86_64): Debian Lenny, Ubuntu 9.04, Fedora 10, CentOS 5.3, OpenSuSE 11.1, and Mandriva 2009.1.

Some days, like it or not, you need a lawyer. For most business purposes, picking the right law firm isn’t usually that big of a deal. Chances are you already have at least an idea of how to find a contract lawyer, a tax law specialist or a real-estate attorney. But what if your programmers are using open-source code that’s licensed under two different licenses? What if you’re concerned with how a patent might affect open-source software your company is already using? Or let’s say a company based in Utah decides that you’ve put its proprietary code into Linux, who do you turn to then? Now, what should you be looking for in a law firm?

A couple of kernel developers at Wine are upset about the current project leadership. Behind the dissatisfaction is so-called bug421 on the missing device-independent bitmap (DIB) engine.

At UDS Karmic, Ubuntu developers will be discussing the possibility of creating a system to allow Android applications to run on Ubuntu, including Ubuntu's mobile versions.

SourceForge, the open-source project host, has removed the pages of the rtmpdump stream-recording software from its network in response to a cease-and-desist notice from Adobe. The program uses the Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) to record not only streamed Flash media but also encrypted streams. Adobe added encryption to its proprietary protocol on introducing Flash Media Server 3 in order to prevent the recording of Flash content, and defined RTMPE (RMTP encrypted) for the purpose. Adobe takes the view that its copy protection can be circumvented by the RTMPE support incorporated in rtmpdump and, in its cease-and-desist notice, invokes the [Digital Millennium Copyright Act to prevent the distribution of the software.

As the global economic crisis deepens, companies are considering options they might once have rejected out of hand in order to cut costs. Open source vendors have long waved the lower-TCO banner, and the recession seems to fueling business in the sector. It's not quite clear, though, whether a switch to open source will result in cost savings in the long run.

One of the reasons I admire RMS is because of his complete integrity and consistency. He simply will not compromise on his principles, even if it leads to the loss of support from those who are not so rigorous. I'm also impressed by the steadfastness of his vision: he does not flit from one trendy idea to another, but sticks unswervingly to his core beliefs. But even I am astonished by this July 1986 interview with him, which could have been conducted yesterday..

Netbooks are really becoming a part of the market where all sorts of companies are trying out new things. For instance, earlier this week, we had a review of a MIPS-based Loongson-2 netbook from China, last Monday we reported on Acer implementing a Vmedia drive into a netbook, a while back we had a multitouch LCD touchpad netbook, and we've had more. Now we have one that uses an x86 SoC that doesn't come from AMD/Intel/VIA, and can run on... AA batteries.

BitTorrent is an open source peer-to-peer file protocol for sharing large software and media files. It is a well established protocol which accounts for a significant proportion of internet traffic.