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Linux doesn't have much in the way of advertising. While Apple's wonderful "I'm a Mac" TV ad campaign is famous, and Microsoft's Bill Gates/Jerry Seinfeld ads are infamous, Linux really doesn't have anything. Now, the Linux Foundation is trying to change that with it's "We're Linux" Video Contest. The winning designer will get a free trip to Tokyo, Japan to participate in the Linux Foundation Japan Linux Symposium in October 2009. The Linux Foundation doesn't have the money for a major or even minor for that matter, television advertising campaign. But, at the very least, the winning ad will get some news and online exposure for both the winner and Linux.

Recently Red Hat has decided to go on the offensive with their patent strategy. With this patent Red Hat is attempting to patent “Method and apparatus to deliver messages between applications”. To me this smacks of the way Microsoft deals with patents. They patent “ideas” or “the framework of an idea” in case someone happens to get the same idea or a similar idea. This “offensive patent” strategy is very much in line with the Microsoft way of business. Of course Red Hat does have a different twist. What they have promised is these “offensive patents” will not be enforced against open source development.

LXer Feature: 15-Mar-2009

I figured I would start the Roundup this week with a good play on words with Michael Tiemann's, From the End of the Beginning to the Beginning of the End. Caitlyn Martin gives us a review the very different results in testing the performance of different Linux distributions. Mozilla starts to contemplate a future without Google and Derek Knowlton shows us The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of the The EeePC and Aspire One. Oh and by the way Happy 15th Birthday, Linux!

My trusty Oxford Dictionary defines a kernel as "a softer, usually edible part of a nut" but offers as a second meaning: "The central or most important part of something." (Incidentally, it's this first definition that gives rise to the contrasting name 'shell', meaning, in Linux-speak, a command interpreter.) In case you're a bit hazy on what a kernel actually does, we'll start with a bit of theory. The kernel is a piece of software that, roughly speaking, provides a layer between the hardware and the application programs running on a computer. In a strict, computer-science sense, the term 'Linux' refers only to the kernel - the bit that Linus Torvalds wrote in the early 90s.

It's that time of the year again - the Debian GNU/Linux project is in election mode with the process for electing a leader for 2009-10 having begun. The campaigning period goes on till March 28 and the online voting process will be conducted between March 29 and April 11. The new leader will begin his term on April 17. This year there are just two people contesting, the lowest since elections began in 1999. One is the current DPL, Steve McIntyre. The other is Stefano Zacchiroli, developer since 2001. Only two developers, Wichert Akkerman and Martin Michlmayr, have been re-elected to the post.

There's been a certain amount of discussion about behavioural differences between ext3 and ext4[1], most notably due to ext4's increased window of opportunity for files to end up empty due to both a longer commit window and delayed allocation of blocks in order to obtain a more pleasing on-disk layout. The applications that failed hardest were doing open("foo", O_TRUNC), write(), close() and then being surprised when they got zero length files back after a crash.

Recently, I blogged that every good IT technician really needs Linux in their toolkit – even if you're strictly a Windows shop. Here are more good reasons why a bootable Linux CD can really save your bacon including indispensable tools you must have.

There are many, many Linux distributions, and a lot of unique reasons to like them. Read on to see which open-source operating systems inspired our readers to provide our biggest Hive Five response to date. In the call for contenders, we asked not only which Linux distribution was your favorite, but a note on why, with the hope that readers new to Linux would learn a thing or two. You responded in force. This was the most popular Hive Five to date, with over 800 votes and many helpful comments.

During the 1970s, the Palo Alto Research Center was the hotspot for computer technology, with various important technological advances in computing coming from these Xerox labs. One of those advances was a humble cable and associated protocols: ethernet was born. El Reg interviewed one of the inventors and the driving force behind ethernet, Bob Metcalfe.

15th birthday Linux. For a teenager, you're pretty well traveled. In fact, you've gone to some pretty weird-arse places. Places I probably wouldn't go myself, and not just for sanitary reasons.

Thanks to a message to the grassroots mailing-list by Yama I discovered hat OLPC is looking for people for the following job opportunities which are also an indication of where OLPC might be heading in the forseeable future..

It's nearly 15 years since the first version of the Linux kernel, and our friends over at TuxRadar have posted the original comp.os.linux.announce announcement. On 14 Mar 1994 at 12:51:16 GMT, Linus Torvalds posted the message to announce Linux 1.0. It was late, though Torvalds shrugged this off. "Almost on time (being just two years late is peanuts in the OS industry), and better than ever."

I used to be one of PCLinuxOS' fans and I especially enjoyed the GNOME flavor so hearing that the team was ready to finally launch a new version sparkled a lot of interest in me. And what better way to express that interest than sharing my first impressions on this popular distribution? Being a GNOME person I went straight to the PCLOS GNOME page and got the 2009.1 ISO from there. 694 MegaBytes later and I was ready to dive into this new experience.

The Jaiku developers have announced that Jaiku is now being served from the Google App Engine, which is the first step at making it "a federated, open source microblogging platform." The customisable platform is a part of Google and is maintained by volunteer Google engineers in their spare time.

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

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.

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.