LXer Weekly Roundup for 16-Nov-2008

LXer Feature: 16-Nov-2008 We have a slew of big stories from the previous week that include OpenOffice 3.0 downloads hit over 10 Million, Mark Shuttleworth talks about Dell, one of our readers tries to get Linux support from a Domain Hosting company, a list of 50 Open Source security tools, getting Linux to boot in 2.97 seconds, Novell decides to go after Red Hat's customers instead of getting their own and one writer's take on why we'll all be buying netbooks on Black Friday.

We have a slew of big stories from the previous week that include OpenOffice 3.0 downloads hit over 10 Million, Mark Shuttleworth talks about Dell, one of our readers tries to get Linux support from a Domain Hosting company, a list of 50 Open Source security tools, getting Linux to boot in 2.97 seconds, Novell decides to go after Red Hat's customers instead of getting their own and one writer's take on why we'll all be buying netbooks on Black Friday.

I'm So Annoyed I Could Spit: Over the last week I've changed Internet service providers from Dodo to Pacific Internet and activated 2 domains I had registered with a web hosting company called Crazy Domains a Perth Western Australia based company.

Are Consumers Getting Mixed Messages About Linux Netbooks?: Recently, there's been a lot of noise regarding Linux netbooks -- from how well the devices have sold to the return rates. Sam mentioned in a post that reasonable expectations need to be set for netbooks. I agree with Sam on this point (which applies to more than netbooks, when it's fully considered). These machines are designed for basic tasks, not to serve as a complete office substitute when traveling.

Windows 7 "no threat" to netbook Linux: I've been nonplussed the last few weeks as ordinarily sane compu-journalists opine that Windows 7 will somehow kill Linux on netbooks. This weekend, I had a chance to actually see XP running on an EEE 900, and I can tell you, Linux has nothing to fear from Redmond.

Shuttleworth on Dell, Greg KH, More: Last week, during Ubuntu's OpenWeek, Mark Shuttleworth joined in for a two hour Q&A session, where he answered a wide range of questions regarding Ubuntu and its parent company, Canonical. They ranged from questions regarding Canonical's relationship with Dell, all the way up to Shuttleworth's response to Greg Kroah-Hartman's criticism of Canonical.

OpenOffice 3.0 Downloads Reach 10 Million: At the 6th Annual OpenOffice.org Convention in Peking November 5-7, the project could celebrate a new milestone in their 3.0 release: downloads of their office package have reached 10 million.

Linux boots in 2.97 seconds: Japanese embedded Linux house Lineo has announced a quick-start technology that it claims can boot Linux in 2.97 seconds on a low-powered system. The technology appears similar to but much faster than Linux's existing "suspend-to-disk" capability. Warp 2 comprises a bootloader, Linux kernel, and a "hibernation driver," says the company. The driver takes a snapshot of RAM when hibernation is launched, saving the contents into flash memory, optionally compressing the data. On start-up, the contents are quickly returned to RAM, so that the system resumes its previous running state.

Microsoft Office for Linux: Well, Indirectly: Microsoft has announced they will be launching an online version of Microsoft Office. While their intention is certainly not to port Office to Linux, that will likely be the effect of putting it online. The question is: what effect will this have on Linux?

Microsoft denies paying contractor to abandon Linux: Microsoft has denied paying a Nigerian contractor US$400,000 in a bid to battle Linux's movement into the government sector. Media reports alleged that Microsoft had proposed paying the sum to a government contractor under a joint marketing agreement last year in order to persuade the contractor to replace Linux OS with Windows OS on thousands of school laptops.

50 Essential Open Source Security Tools: Cynthia Harvey takes us on a tour of fifty popular and powerful FOSS and FOSS-based security utilities: firewall, IDS, anti-malware, encryption, secure delete, forensics, and more. Some cost money, many are free, and all are excellent.

Linux Printing: A Curious Mix of Yuck and Excellence, part 1: The printer interfaces in Gnome and KDE are useless duplications of effort that don't offer much that is really helpful, and the KDE printer manager has long been notoriously buggy, though it has improved a lot over time. We miss out on a lot of CUPS' useful functionality, such as printing over the Internet and connecting Windows clients without Samba, because the interface and documentation skip over the gnarly bits of how to actually set these up.

How 10 famous tech products got their names: Coming up with a great technology product or service is only half the battle these days. Creating a name for said product that is at once cool but not too cool or exclusionary, marketable to both early adopters and a broader audience, and, of course, isn't already in use and protected by various trademarks and copyright laws is difficult--to say the least. The makers of these 10 tech products--the iPod, BlackBerry, Firefox, Twitter, Windows 7, ThinkPad, Android, Wikipedia, Mac OS X and the "Big Cats," and Red Hat Linux--all have displayed certain amounts marketing savvy, common sense and fun-loving spirit in settling on their products' names. Here are the intriguing, surprising and sometimes predictable accounts of their creation.

Novell makes itself even harder to trust: What is it about Novell? It's almost as if the company is determined to make itself unpopular with Linux users. The latest big announcement from Novell is that it has a new programme in place to lure Red Hat and Cent OS users across to its Suse Linux Enterprise Server. The company says it is planning on offering a three year subscription to its own Linux product for customers who make the switch.

Windows App Alternatives For Linux: MSPaint: I didn’t go for GIMP / Inkscape etc because they were overkill for what I wanted to do. Many a times, I just wanted to touch up a screenshot or make a simple flow image by drawing a few boxes, use a few pointing arrows, and add some text here and there. All this could be done with the previous mentioned programs as well but took a bit more steps than I wanted (stroking the selections / paths for lines, boxes, circles, and even then, no arrows).

Why You'll Buy a Netbook On Black Friday: What's different this year is that Black Friday will be dominated by netbook deals. Here's why: First, unless the Grinch finds a way to keep Christmas from coming, the holidays will soon be upon us. Netbooks make perfect gifts because the cost is low, the value is high, and everybody wants one. Unlike other gadgets, netbooks are popular among all age groups, from 9 to 99. They're even great gifts for people who already own desktop, laptop and other netbook computers. You can never be too rich, too thin or have too many netbooks.