Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

More than a year after KDE 4.0 unveiled a radically revised desktop, KOffice 2.0 is preparing to release an equally revised office suite, which should be released before this article is published (KOffice 2.0-RC-1 was released in April 2009).

LXer Feature: 07-Jul-2009

HTML 5 will no longer specify Ogg Theora as its video codec, the Google employee who maintains the burgeoning Web-coding standard has announced. Ian Hickson wrote last week that he was reluctantly dropping the open standard due to opposition from Apple and said the rival H.264 codec could also not be specified due to opposition from other browser vendors. This means HTML 5 will not specify a single codec for Web development.

It's easy to argue that Ubuntu's success is because there's an unlimited supply of investment from its super-rich parent company, Canonical. But Linux isn't like any ordinary software stack. People aren't forced to use it, and we can all choose something else at no extra cost. Ubuntu has to be doing something right. Ubuntu's biggest, and earliest, success has been in marketing itself. It's become a recognisable brand, not only in the Linux community, but in the wider non-technical world. For some, the word 'Ubuntu' has become synonymous with Linux. And that's a vital trick. These are people who would never have considered Linux as a viable alternative to their proprietary operating systems before the advent of Ubuntu.

Today the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit has started, bringing KDE and Gnome developers together in the biggest conference of its type. It is situated on the beautiful Atlantic island of Gran Canaria and housed in the spectacular Albert Kraus Auditorium which dominates the skyline of Las Palmas, capital of Gran Canaria. The conference was opened by a series of talks from various people in the Canaries local government and the organisation. After that the keynotes started with star speakers and impressive announcements including an Open PC developed by the community and Maemo switching to Qt. Read on for an impression of the GCDS!

For those of you not out celebrating the Independence Day / 4th of July in America, there is a new release candidate for the Linux 2.6.31 kernel that is now ready for testing. In this second release candidate there is a new DRM pull bringing various fixes and improvements, including Intel DisplayPort support for hardware with such new connectors.

While I'm still chipping away at my AmigaOS 4.1/sam440ep review (try writing a thesis and a large review at the same time), Cloanto released AmigaForever 2009. AmigaForever is a very full-featured AmigaOS emulation tool, packed with various different ROMs and AmigaOS versions (1.3-3.x), as well as tons and tons of included games, software, and demos. This new version comes with even more stuff.

Sure, Wikipedia still has a page for everything from Charlemagne to Chewbacca, but it seems more attention now is focused on kick-back-and-have-fun social networks, not hit-the-books-and-contribute-some-research wikis. Has the wiki well run dry?

It goes without saying that nobody wants to be in the hospital. Bland food, no privacy, and gowns that leave nothing to the imagination — not to mention the procedures being performed — don't exactly make ones visit a relaxing trip to the spa. We all know, however, that Linux can make anything better, and now, whether you're recovering from a lung transplant or liposuction, Linux is there to make your life in the infirmary just a little bit sunnier.

Tonight the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit was opened with a party sponsored by Kubuntu's very own Canonical. Stickers, t-shirts and beer were all given out to contributors and users of KDE, Gnome and any other free software environment. Some converts were made from the local Canary island population who were enthused by the spirit of freedom.

Embattled Mac cloner Psystar says it is ready to leave Chapter 11 protection. In a customer newsletter, Psystar officials say the company is ready to emerge from Chapter 11 protection, a provision of US bankruptcy law that allows a company to continue trading while it reorganises its affairs. "Although this [Chapter 11 protection] was critical to our continued daily operations, we are now ready to emerge and again battle Goliath.

Microsoft's, shall we say, cautious engagement with open-source could mean frameworks like Spring and Hibernate are the next projects tuned to Windows. Sam Ramji, director of the open-source development lab, in a recent interview pointed to the rise in what he called "micro frameworks" and their importance. "It's something we have to be a lot closer to," Ramji told The Reg, noting Microsoft had held talks with the SpringSource company and "a couple of their other folks."

The PostgreSQL project has released version 8.4 of the open source database management software, with more than 290 additions and changes to features. The most numerous updates are for administrators, with new or tweaked administration and monitoring tools and commands, the PostgreSQL Global Development Group said in its launch statement on Tuesday. The project spent 16 months working on the new version of the database software.

According to Mahatma Gandhi: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."* So by that reckoning, it must be pretty much 'job done' for free software. Over the past few months I have experienced the eerie sensation that no one is fighting us any more. Not only are audiences polite, enthusiastic and well informed at conferences, they are almost all using free software already.

Debian, the foundation of Ubuntu, has rejected claims that it's potentially holding Linux's future hostage to Microsoft by including an open-source implementation of .NET in its code. A project spokesman has said GPL daddy Richard Stallman was wrong to say Mono will be featured in Debian's default installation, adding Mono would be used by just a mall number of users.

Some of us rely heavily on our personal information managers for keeping our appointment calendars, contacts, reminders, and notes. Gnome offers Evolution, and KDE has Kontact. Which one is better? Bruce Byfield takes a detailed look at both.

In this tip, Juliet Kemp shows how to use xclip for copy-and-paste on the Linux command line-- without using the mouse.

Andrew Tridgell has published a patch that could make the Linux implementation of the FAT filesystem impervious to Microsoft patent claims of the kind that forced a settlement from TomTom. The patch alters the VFAT code so that it does not generate both short and long filenames, says Tridgell. The Microsoft FAT patent claims lay at the heart of its lawsuit against Dutch personal navigation device (PND) vendor TomTom earlier this year, which resulted in a TomTom settlement in late March.

Android smartphones are sending waves of excitement through the mobile community that they are a serious contender to knock iPhone off its smartphone perch. But, are they really a threat or have they already missed the boat?

The Mono discussion may be tiring, but the fact of the matter is that thanks to this discussion, various major Linux distributions are now making official statements detailing their position in the Mono/C# debate. The latest to do this is Ubuntu, which reiterated their position yesterday.