LXer Weekly Roundup for 11-Oct-2009

Posted by Scott_Ruecker on Oct 12, 2009 3:37 PM EDT
LXer Linux News; By Scott Ruecker (Phoenix, U.S.)
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LXer Feature: 12-Oct-2009

My Upgrade to Karmic Koala: I've upgraded ever since Gutsy: to Hardy, Intrepid and Jaunty. But this time, I did a fresh install of Karmic Koala, given the new Grub, ext4 and so on. Here are some things (bugs I mean - with potential fixes) I've experienced running Ubuntu Karmic Koala as my main OS (for about 2 days now):

The Grand Experiment - Linux Ads on Radio: For those that are not aware, two radio ads introducing people to Linux and our services/non profit recently ran on KLBJ AM radio in Austin Texas. The results were surprising in part...some of them confirmed wide-held suspicions about computer users in general. Some of them fostered thoughts of running knitting needles through my eyes... often.

Open core, closed heart?: When is an open source license not an open source license? The recent rush to "Open Core Licensing" as defined by Andrew Lampitt, the business development director of JasperSoft, raises many questions as to the meaning and purpose of free and open source software. The terms "open source" and "free software" are often confused by companies who want to gain the benefits of a wider developer community. More often than not this has arisen from a misunderstanding of the full implications of "open source" and "free software", and how free software licensing works to the advantage of developers and the companies that are formed to market the software.

Google Begins Test Phase for Wave: Four months have gone by since Google announced their new, innovative communication solution, Wave. Last week was the beginning of its test phase.

Palm Pre Linux-Based Smartphone Reviewed: The Linux-based Palm Pre is a sleek smartphone full of features-- but is it feature-ful enough? Gerry Blackwell gives a detailed report on this new entry in the smartphone marketplace.

Upgrading a Motherboard in Linux: Kernel Panic: Replacing a motherboard on a Linux system is usually a 30-minute chore, but sometimes things go haywire. Carla Schroder tells a tale of kernel panics and kernel transplants.

Open Source Makes Big Gains at the London Stock Exchange: At first sight, news that the London Stock Exchange (LSE) is moving from the Microsoft .Net-based TradElect to the GNU/Linux-based MillenniumIT system, is just another win for free software. But the details provide some fascinating insights into the world of very high performance – and very expensive – enterprise systems.

The Day The Netbook Died: ... On that Friday, with no warning, the little netbook failed to boot up. I couldn't even get to the BIOS. For the third time a Sylvania netbook I owned had suffered a premature hardware failure. The netbook had a one year warranty and it was only seven months old so I expected to send it in for repair at no charge.

The Ubuntu obsession of Tanner Helland: I've been looking in on Tanner Helland's Ubuntu-rich blog for some time, and today I found a virtual motherlode of well-researched and -reasoned opinion on where Ubuntu should be headed. Helland hits it right on the head: While there's a whole lot right with open-source software, specifically the Linux operating system and the wildly popular (in an obscure, cultish kind of way) Ubuntu distribution, there's quite a bit that's not so right and needs both minor and major improvement before a free, open-source, Unix-based operating environment can really challenge Windows and Macintosh for significant share on the desktops of non-geeks and geeks alike.

Where In the World Are the Most Debian Developers?: Christian Perrier (Bubulle) issued statistics in his blog that show which countries of the world have the largest per capita Debian developers. First place goes to Finland.

Study: Windows 7 doesn't boot faster: Although Windows 7 has been praised for loading and shutting down faster than prior versions of Windows, one software company says that, in many cases, the new operating system can take longer to get started than Windows Vista. The results are also fairly similar to what CNET found in its testing of the operating system. A Microsoft representative was not immediately able to comment on Iolo's findings.

Open Core: The worst of both worlds: A lot has been written recently about so called “Open Core” software ever since Andrew Lampitt coined the term back in August of 2008. Many analysts have been critical about it, such as Richard Hillesley from The H Open in his recent article “Open core, closed heart?”. Many are also very positive about it such as Matt Aslett from The 451 Group. However, I think that most them are missing the elephant in the room: Open core is not sustainable in the long term because it represents the worst of both worlds. Open core tries to find a middle ground between proprietary software and free software, but it reaps the benefits of neither and inherits the problems of both.Let me show you by example. SugarCRM is one of the more popular open core software products available. The company offers the Community Edition for free under a GPLv3 license but also offers a Professional and Enterprise edition under a proprietary license. SugarCRM has been around since 2004 but it is already showing many signs of not being sustainable.

Gnome 3.0 Stealth Preview: Will Anyone Notice?: The introduction of KDE 4.0 was met with such an avalanche of outrage and criticism that Gnome developers can be forgiven for being a bit gun-shy. Gnome 2.28 appears to be almost a stealth introduction of Gnome 3.0; will anyone notice?

5 Useful Tools to Access Linux Partition from Windows: How to access Linux partitions from Windows. If you currently have Windows OS running and you need some files for your work which you have stored on the Linux installation, you no longer have to shut down Windows and boot Linux! Explore2fs is a GUI explorer tool for accessing ext2 and ext3 filesystems. It runs under all versions of Windows and can read almost any ext2 and ext3 filesystem.

Microsoft reveals time-based licensing model: Microsoft has filed for a patent for ‘Time-Based Licenses’ and the application abstract reveals this to be a method and system for “issuing a number of different types of time-based licenses associated with software products”.

How to turn a spare Linux machine into a media server: Linux is brilliant at serving files. It's this ability that keeps the enterprise world turning to Linux for its heavy lifting jobs and that keeps the world Googling 24/7. But it's just as good at serving files from a computer tucked away under the stairs or stuck in the loft, and a server in your house is now becoming an essential accessory. Mobile phones, games consoles and even televisions are rapidly developing the ability to read, display and play files held on a media centre PC, and Linux is the perfect free software solution. All you need is a relatively low-powered PC, a decent amount of storage and somewhere safe to hide it.

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» Read more about: Story Type: LXer Features, Roundups; Groups: Community, Debian, GNOME, GNU, KDE, Kernel, Linux, Microsoft, PHP, Ubuntu

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