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A good friend of mine, who is very computer savvy, recently bought a new computer and installed Ubuntu on it rather than Windows. Now, despite being a very smart guy when it comes to PCs and Windows, he was still a newbie to the world of Ubuntu, so he and I went through a series of questions and answers before, during, and after his Ubuntu install. I’ve turned those into a FAQ for Ubuntu noobs that should answer a fair amount of questions for the first 24 hours of a first-time Ubuntu installation.*

Booting, or "bootstrapping" for us older folk, is that deeply mysterious sequence of operations performed by your computer between the moment when you switch it on and the moment it's ready for you to log in. During this time, all kinds of incomprehensible messages scroll up the screen, but they're not something you usually take much notice of, and most linux distros cover them up with a pretty splash screen and a nice encouraging progress bar.

IPTraf is a console-based network statistics utility for Linux. It gathers a variety of figures such as TCP connection packet and byte counts, interface statistics and activity indicators, TCP/UDP traffic breakdowns, and LAN station packet and byte counts. IPTraf is an IP traffic monitor that shows information on the IP traffic passing over your network.

Your editor's adventure with the Android Developer Phone (ADP1) began just before the end of the year. This phone, remember, has the nearly unique selling point that it is lacking any sort of lockdown feature. It will happily run any software which is fed to it, from the kernel on up. It thus brings the promise of free software to a market which has traditionally gone out of its way to avoid enabling any sort of freedom. It's actually possible to control the software we run on our phones - but only if we buy the right phone.

Checking out the C stat() function and using it to interrogate files. Today's post loosely ties back to our post last week on Perl stat() basics for Linux and Unix, although this post is not a continuation of that one. Just trying to keep it confusing ;)

Last time, we advised you to use ditch the unsafe functions like strcpy and strcat, and use their safer replacements (strlcpy, strlcat) instead. However, there is a small problem with this that you might discover that your compiler (especially gcc) does not have these functions in their implementation of the c library (libc).

Is your company a victim of vendor lock-in? Who really owns your data, who really makes your procurement and infrasctructure decisions? Matt Hartley examines the problem of lock-in, and how it wastes your time and costs you real money.

I first came across Drupal almost five years ago. I recommended it for a project on politics, since abandoned. My experience was a nightmare. We were a commercial operation that needed professional programming. The launch of Acquia as Drupal’s commercial arm last year changed that. It turned out to change a lot more. Within months, Microsoft was distributing Drupal. Acquia is acquiring a host of new platinum partners. Commercial organizations have begun adopting it. So has the government.

Got Job? Get a Linux-related one. Polish up your resume and go to class in San Francisco next month.

Is free and open source software (FOSS) a way to cut business costs? As concern about recession - even depression - deepens, more and more companies are asking this question. However, many have trouble knowing how to begin to find an answer.

I think the most eagerly anticipated demo at Demo 09 here will be Always Innovating's Touch Book, slated for late Monday afternoon. It's yet another Netbook, granted, but it's got a cool detachable (and optional) keyboard, and a magnetic mount for sticking onto a refrigerator. I got a quick demo video (left) with the company's CEO, Gregoire Gentil, who is French. He couldn't show me the user interface on the prototype hardware he had with him, but says it will be easy to use with big, fat American fingers (he didn't actually say that). The product will run a Linux OS, Gentil said, and it's the first Netbook based on an ARM CPU, not the typical Atom found in most Netbooks. He says users can expect 10 to 15 hours of battery life. The product will be $299 without the keyboard, $399 with. It ships this spring, but you can preorder now.

Hard economic times have resulted in good economic news for makers of open source PBXs. In a study released by the Eastern Management Group based on a survey of 6,000 IT executives, open source-based PBX products and overall solutions now account for 18% of the private branch market

Celtx 2.0, an open source media pre-production and screenwriting application, has been released. Celtx is an XUL application writing tool that includes several built in project templates to help users develop their stories. The application helps users get their ideas from concept to production, using pre-visualisation tools, like storyboards. Version 2.0 includes several new features, changes and bug fixes. Celtx is released under the Celtx Public License Version 1.3 (CePL) which consists of the Mozilla Public License Version 1.2 with additional amendments.

Psion Teklogix has filed a counterclaim against Intel in response to the chip giant's attempt to get its Netbook trademark nixed in the US. The complaint - filed, like Intel's, with the US District Court for Northern California - wants Intel brought to book for allegedly infringing said trademark. "Intel has acted willfully and maliciously, has unlawfully attempted to trade on the tremendous commercial value, reputation and goodwill of the Netbook mark, and has deliberately and intentionally confused and deceived the public as to an affiliation, connection or association of Intel with Psion, and/or as to the origin, sponsorship or approval of Intel’s goods and/or services," the PDA pioneer alleges.

Even as the global server market contracts by 14 percent, and Linux server sales decline 7 percent (Windows dropped 17.8 percent), according to IDC, Red Hat's Linux server business is swimming against the current. A February 11 Piper Jaffray report ("Red Hat Inc.: Buy. Survey Shows Red Hat Will Be a Top Share Gainer") says its "survey of 89 domestic Oracle applications customers indicates that Red Hat is gaining IT budget share."

In the "Linux Rescues Windows From Itself In Yet Another Creative Way" category we have all these newfangled Linux-powered instant-on environments. Hit the on switch, and in a few seconds you're connected and Web-surfing. Phoenix Technologies HyperSpace stands apart from the herd; follow along as your faithful correspondent torture-tests it.

Due to the tough economic conditions around the world, Novell last month began slashing some of their workforce. With that reduction, a good percentage of the paid OpenSuSE developers were laid off. As a major blow to the development of the open-source ATI graphics stack, one of the key RadeonHD driver developers has been lost. The key xf86-video-radeonhd developers from the start of this driver have been Luc Verhaegen, Matthias Hopf, and Egbert Eich. Well, there are now just two key Novell developers left working on the RadeonHD project.

LXer Feature: 02-Mar-2009

In this week's LXer Weekly Roundup DeviceGuru talks about how Lenny brightened up an old laptop, Linux has a marketing problem, how RMS may be looking at the internet the wrong way, Microsoft sues TomTom and all the rest of the previous week's big stories.

If you believe the results of the first annual Fiasco Awards then the answer would appear to be an unequivocal yes considering that Vista got a rather staggering 86 percent of the vote for the worst performing IT product of the year.

Microsoft got things seriously wrong when it released Vista and the company knows it. In the past, the absolute market dominance of Windows on the desktop has allowed Redmond to get away with such mistakes. That may no longer be the case now that Google has entered the operating system market with its Linux-based Android platform.