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Conflicts in the Open Source world — as in the proprietary world — are hardly a surprising phenomenon. Indeed, our community can't even agree over what to call one of its most popular projects — a fight we have no interest in entering, particularly not here. What is perhaps more surprising is when these disputes escalate like a deleted scene from Fatal Attraction — escalate so far that the powers-that-be must intervene.

We have the pleasure to announce the third edition of one of the most important Open Source and Free Software conferences in Eastern Europe: eLiberatica 2009 that will take place on 22nd- 23rd of May, in Bucharest, Romania.

Astro_Mike's tweets from space may be few and far between, but astronauts are known for saying a lot in a few words. Fans of Astro_Mike are hanging onto every character, it seems -- his feed was the fifth most popular on the the microblogging site on Thursday. His latest gem: "From orbit: Rendezvous and grapple were great, getting ready for our first spacewalk."

At first glance, Google Android is set to take over the world — with one research firm predicting a 900 percent growth rate for the mobile operating system, far higher than growth rates for Apple’s iPhone. That’s amazing. Or is it? Let's take a closer look at the numbers.

aTunes is a full-featured audio player and manager, developed in Java programming language, so it can be executed on different platforms: Windows, Linux and Unix-like systems.

The first alpha release for Ubuntu 9.10 was made available yesterday and while it does net yet integrate Plymouth or any other new features, it has picked up a few new packages. Most prominently, Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 1 features the Linux 2.6.30 kernel and GCC 4.4. There are also other updated packages from Debian like GNOME 2.27, but most notable are the kernel and compiler updates. We have tested out Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 1 and compared its performance to Ubuntu 9.04. While this is very early within the Ubuntu 9.10 development cycle, the results already may come as a surprise.

Amazingly, this is a "how to program" book that doesn't use JavaScript as the first programming language the newbie experiences. I'm intrigued. Of course, it's a second edition, so using Ruby isn't exactly new for the new person. I never read the first edition, so I'll have to rely completely on the text I have in my hand (uh...sitting beside me, since I'm keyboarding with my hands). Just looking at the TOC, I already like the book, since the "Getting Started" chapter includes how to get started using Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Truly an equal opportunity author.

There is a lot of demand for making Google's App Engine web application hosting platform accessible to more programming languages and frameworks. Originally launched supporting only the Python language, Google recently announced that App Engine would also support Java programs. Now, developers are adding support for that platform to their JVM based languages and frameworks. The developers of the Grails web framework have announced that the framework's latest version 1.1.1 officially supports the hosting platform.

The tit for tat going on between Microsoft and Apple feels a bit like a reality TV show, but looks like Apple got the upper hand with its latest Get a Mac ad.

It’s official: Windows 7 will be on the shelves just in time for the Christmas season. From an Open Source perspective, this is nothing ground-breaking: It’s just the same old Windows.

Several of the best-funded and most-publicized tech launches of the last ten years have ended in failure. Many large technology companies which had significant market share and product advantages in large industries lost those advantages. Vista and Zune made the list.

This tutorial explains the installation of a Samba fileserver on Debian Lenny and how to configure it to share files over the SMB protocol as well as how to add users. Samba is configured as a standalone server, not as a domain controller. In the resulting setup, every user has his own home directory accessible via the SMB protocol and all users have a shared directory with read-/write access.

The next Ubuntu should see improved video performance, along with updates to the underlying Linux and open-source infrastructure. A change in the video architecture has been revealed as the Ubuntu development team released alpha code for the next, planned edition: Ubuntu 9.10, codenamed Karmic Koala.

A report by the Washington Post claims China is equipping all of its government and military PCs with a version of the Kylin operating system to make hacking attempts by foreign intelligence services more difficult. The information about the highly secure operating system was made public during a US China Economic and Security Review Commission hearing in late April. In addition to the secure operating system, the computers will also contain a special microprocessor to prevent attacks.

Does FOSS need a common packaging framework? It's an unnecessary waste of time, argued opponents. It will save developers loads of time, insisted proponents. It's irrelevant, chimed in Slashdot blogger hairyfeet: "The problem with Linux is NOT the packages, it is the fact that trying to develop for Linux is like trying to hit a dartboard with a live bumblebee."

The date and location for the 8th Annual Southern California Linux Expo have been set.

Time changes many things; but it seems as though gaming on Linux is still pretty basic. At least, the good stuff still is. Take a look at how much has changed in the last 2 years on this top 10 chart from 2006.

The last time I looked at Ubuntu in depth was 12 months ago with the 8.04 release. I found it to be a solid enough but somehow lacking in ambition. Would Jaunty jump forward with exciting new features? I decided to find out…

cutmp3, as the name implies is a simple command line tool to edit and cut MP3 files without loosing any quality. cutmp3 can edit the mp3 files interactively or selection (start time and end time) can be provided from the command line or even better can be used with a timetable fiile specifiying different start/end times from the same MP3 files.

I have always tried to focus my blog posts on Guides and Howtos as they relate to my experiences in free and open source software. Today however i take an Exception and i will like to speak let out on my opinion about the Ubuntu One issue. First to set some things straight. Am not saying that canonical should not make proprietary software i have never complained about launchpad or Landscape And my issue with ubuntu-one has nothing to do with the fact its not been free of cost. I am a bit