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Finally, after almost two years in the making, the latest version of PCLinuxOS has been unleashed. Although released without much fanfare, I was excited enough to download PCLinuxOS 2009 immediately after it is available. I was able to test drive PCLOS 2009, took some screenshots for you all to see, and wrote my first impressions about this latest version which you will about to read later on. But before anything else, allow me to introduce PCLinuxOS to some of our new-to-Linux readers.

The repository system is a great strength of open-source operating systems, but some people want the latest-and-greatest of a particular application while keeping the core system unchanged. There is also the situation where non-free applications aren't available from within the standard repositories. In these two cases, adding outside repos can help you get the functionality you want.

There are growing concerns in the open source community that has many Linux developers worried. And some system integrators feel the same way. Overall, technical support and licensing policies managing many open source projects are an afterthought, and this is exactly what has the Linux and open source community worried. Some say it's time for some major changes in the way support and FOSS (free and open source software) licensing are managed in the enterprise segment.

While you can create and save documents in the OpenDocument format using OpenOffice.org, KWord, or AbiWord, there are other ways to generate ODF files.

The BBC have responded to suggestions that the acquisition and use of a botnet as part of a programme on internet security could have been illegal. The H asked if any costs were involved in acquiring the botnet; a BBC spokesperson replied "We would never discuss costs, but this demonstration was very much in the public interest". As suggested by other sources, the public interest defence is incorporated in the OFCOM regulations on how broadcasters should deal with criminals. Rule 3.3 states

Building software from source - that's a bit old-school, isn't it? Who wants to wrestle with the command line, hunting down dependencies and coaxing the GCC compiler into running properly? Well, it does sound like a strange thing to do in this world of binary packages and online repositories. We have thousands of packages available via the internet, all neatly compiled for our distros, thereby usually nullifying the need to get down and dirty with a Makefile. As great as they are, binary packages have a lot of limitations that can only be overcome by compiling a program from its source code. To prove that it's not quite as difficult as it sounds, let's see how this works. We're going to take a stock, unmodified Ubuntu 8.04 installation and install the Audacity sound editor, enabling some extra features along the way.

Pop quiz: How many commercial open source business models can you think of? Most people would probably say two or three. How about 10?

The Open Source Initiative (OSI), custodian of the Open Source Definition (OSD), has certified the European Union Public Licence (EUPL) as complying with the OSD. Karel De Vriendt, head of the European Commission's eGovernment programme, says this certification will make it easier to persuade European governments to place their own self-developed open source software under the EUPL.

Sometimes our best intentions give way to our worst, for a wide variety of reasons. This is as true of corporate amalgamations of individuals as it is of those individuals on their own, and it's as true for open-source companies as it is for proprietary companies. Community is the tonic that keeps corporate aspirations in line, just as community helps to keep individuals walking the straight and narrow of societal norms. As The Economist recently highlighted, new research suggests that "having a crowd around often makes things better."

If you have set your Ubuntu machine to auto-login everytime you start your computer, you will find that as soon as you reach your desktop, the keyring manager will automatically pop up and ask you for the password to unlock itself and retrieve the key to connect to the wireless connection. The keyring manager is integrated with Gnome such that when you login from the main screen, it will automatically unlock itself as well. However, if you use the auto-login function, Gnome will skip the keyring manager process and log the user in without unlocking the keyring manger.

Creating even a short movie can become very complex very quickly, so it’s important to keep in mind what you are doing and how it all fits into the bigger picture of making your movie. Kino is a primarily a simple storyboard non-linear video editing program with some compositing capabilities, as opposed to tape-to-tape linear editing or more complex non-linear compositing software such as Cinelerra, The Open Movie Editor, or KDEnlive.

Your a Linux user and you want to convert videos from DVD to iPhone or convert video files in flash format to stream online, what are you choices? A few years back you were stuck with command line only utilities like FFmpeg, which works great but doesn’t offer the ease of use found in GUI applications. Now with the popularity of Linux, you have 3 great GUI applications that can easily handle all your video converting needs.

If only the machines could fix themselves and everyone knew how to use Linux... oh, yeah. I'd be out of a job ;)

Almost two years ago, your editor sat on an Open Source Business Conference panel with Microsoft's Sam Ramji, who made the point that Microsoft had only launched patent infringement lawsuits twice in its existence. Given that, worries about the Microsoft/Novell patent deal were, in his opinion, misplaced. Last week, it was revealed that the count has gone up to three: Microsoft has filed a lawsuit against TomTom, a maker of Linux-based navigation devices. There is much speculation and uncertainty on the net as to just what this action means. Your editor means to add to it by saying that Microsoft's intentions would appear to be relatively clear.

OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte has revealed that the project could switch to ARM processors for its next-gen XO laptop. This move is odd in light of the organization's increasingly Microsoft-centric software strategy, but Negroponte says he is hopeful that Microsoft will port Windows XP to ARM.

This happy meeting of GNU and Linux is why Richard Stallman insists that the proper name is GNU/Linux, rather than plain old Linux. Another popular debating point is "Linux is a kernel, not an operating system!" What would FOSS be without arguments?

Truth be told. I started using GNU/Linux as early as 2002 with Red Hat 7.3. I was coming off of FreeBSD at the time, so I had some experience with a UNIX-like operating system. So when I say “a trip down memory lane”, from experience I can only go as far back sd the Linux kernel 2.4.18-3, which was the kernel in the release candidate of Red Hat 7.3.

A group called The Open ISES Project (openises.sourceforge.net) created an open source medical dispatch system called Cards 911, a document for use by emergency dispatchers. It gave them a script to follow when an emergency call came in. The answers would lead the dispatcher to different parts of the document using hyperlinks. The entire document was created in OpenOffice Writer. This was a document with hyperlinks in it that helped a dispatcher help the caller as quickly as possible. It was open source and available for free. Lawyers for a company called Priority Dispatch Corporation sent a legal nastygram listing out ten patents that the company held, which the lawyers implied the Cards 911 project violated. The lawyers demanded that all physical and electronic copies of the documents be destroyed.

Computers are not intuitive. Computers are abstract, and trying to tie abstract concepts like directories, files, and interfaces to paper folders and files, and physical desktops creates more confusion. I prefer a direct approach: show me. Which "Ubuntu For Non-Geeks, 3rd Edition: A Pain-Free, Project-Based, Get-Things-Done Guidebook" does in a most excellent fashion.

Go to the Fedora Project Wiki and search for "uninstall Fedora." You won't find anything. Try "remove Fedora." Nothing. Go to Ubuntu's official documentation site and search for "uninstall Ubuntu." You won't find anything in the "official" documentation but in the "community" section you find two entries that state "Wubi allows you to install and uninstall Ubuntu...." In an installed Ubuntu distribution, clicking on Help and searching for uninstalling or removing Ubuntu finds nothing. A link “repeat the search online at the Ubuntu help pages” brings up a 404 – page not found. If you look hard enough on the real community support pages you'll find a post from July 2007 titled "HowTo: Remove Ubuntu (& Restore Windows)" .