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Software developer Applidium have developed a version of the VLC open source media player for Apple's line of iOS-enabled devices. The app, which is built entirely on open source code, was submitted to Apple's approval board today. The developers are confident that the player will be available as soon as next week.

The Linux Foundation (LF) announced speakers for The Linux Foundation End User Summit, scheduled for Oct. 12-13 in Jersey City, New Jersey. The invitation-only event for end users and top Linux developers features keynotes from the LF's Jim Zemlin and British Telecom Chief Scientist JP Rangaswami.

Now that I am fully recovered from jet lag, I am able to reflect on how enjoyable the recent Copenhagen DrupalCon was. Before going any further, however, I have to gratefully acknowledge the team of Drupalers who organized the conference and related activities. They all did an amazing job ensuring that the event was a great success. Thank you!

Hugin is a wonderful and powerful photo panorama creator for Linux, but sometimes it gets confused and doesn't seem to know what to do. Akkana Peck offers some tips on getting Hugin back on track.

OpenIndiana is a continuation of the OpenSolaris operating system. It was conceived during the period of uncertainty following the Oracle takeover of Sun Microsystems, after several months passed with no binary updates made available to the public. The formation proved timely, as Oracle discontinued OpenSolaris soon after in favour of Solaris 11 Express, a binary distribution with a more closed development model to debut later this year.

Next week, I’ll be revealing some cool new hardware I am reviewing. Right now, I’m in the middle of running some tests and I am impressed with the amount of computing power I have in my basement. One component of the hardware I’m reviewing is a dual Intel Xeon Gulftown server (6 cores each, 12 cores total). Thus, I have a chance to see how well the latest Intel multi-core memory bandwidth is holding up.

Much attention goes toward mainline kernel releases, but relatively few users are actually running those kernels. Instead, they run kernels provided by their distributors, and those kernels, in turn, are based off the stable kernel series. The practice of releasing stable kernels has been going for well over five years now, so perhaps it's time to look back at how it has been going.

FSF has issued a statement about Oracle's patent infringement lawsuit against Google over Android. While Google could have avoided all this by using the GPL'd IcedTea and they have yet to take a stand against software patents, still nothing, FSF writes, can excuse Oracle's patent aggression. "Oracle is wrong to use its patents to attack Android," FSF concludes.

Man pages have been the primary source for UN*x documentation for a long time. Whenever I create a script that's going to be around for a while, I create documentation in the form of a section 1 man page. This stops my cell phone from ringing on the weekends when the junior sysadmins are looking for my notes.

For those using our Phoronix Test Suite for performance benchmarking, regression monitoring, or running other automated tests atop our open-source platform/framework, the 2.8.1 update to "Torsken" is out this morning. There's just a couple of small bug-fixes since the 2.8 release less than two weeks ago.

Eben Moglen's LinuxCon keynote was met with a standing ovation. Watch this to hear what he says it will take to defend FOSS against patents and how to protect freedom.

Launching a mobile application could be considered the latest get-rich-quick scheme. And I suppose for some it might be their best chance at riches and fame. Reality indicates that most developers don’t make back their investment by publishing an application to the App Store or Android Market. In fact, when you view some of the comments posted for a particular application it can be a bit depressing.

Wind River announced a series of Wind River Linux-ready development kits developed in partnership with eight different embedded board vendors. Embedded Development Kits are now available from Emerson Network Power, Eurotech, and Kontron, with more kits due in the fourth quarter from Advantech, Adlink, Curtiss-Wright, GE Intelligent Platforms, and RadiSys, says Wind River.

The Linux Foundation rolled out it's speaker lineup for its invitation-only 2010 End User Summit slated to be held October 12-12, 2010 in New Jersey. The event is designed to bring CTOs and other business executives together with high-level maintainers and developers in the Linux community to discuss critical issues surrounding using Linux in the enterprise. Presenters at this year's summit include IBM's Gerrit Huizenga talking about public and private clouds, a panel of key Linux kernel developers discussing storage and filesytems, and a keynote from British Telecom’s Chief Scientist JP Rangaswami on "Why the Cloud Rocks." Of course, Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation will be giving a keynote at the event as well. We caught up with him this week to hear what he has to say about the upcoming Summit, what message attendees will take away, and what he'll be talking about onstage this year.

Zenwalk Linux is a Slackware based distribution introduced in early 2004 that aims to be fast, easy, modern. Zenwalk tends to have a very loyal user-base in addition to leaving most distro hoppers and reviewers impressed. Most agree with Zenwalk's latest tagline: It just works.

Recent years have seen the Ubuntu Linux distribution, led by Canonical, experiencing rapid growth in both users and features. With the upcoming Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat release, set for October, Ubuntu developers will continue to push the boundaries further of both server and desktop Linux. Sitting at the upper rung of Ubuntu's engineering efforts is Matt Zimmerman, Canonical's CTO, who helps to lead Ubuntu's technical direction.

Videos and presentations from LinuxCon and the Embedded Linux Conference provide information about the development status of Btrfs and about problems between kernel hackers and the makers of Android. With the latest stable kernels, Linux 2.6.34 has reached the end of its life; furthermore, there are signs that maintenance of 2.4 and 2.6.27 will soon be discontinued or reduced.

KDE’s visual effects for windows and menus technically dates back to KDE 3. Experimental programs like kompmgr provided drop shadows and transparency for windows, and the KDE desktop itself had built-in support for basic menu transparency, shadows, and other effects. With the coming of KDE 4, the number of effects has multiplied, and KWin (KDE’s window manager) is now on par with Compiz (a window manager with numerous desktop effects). Moreover, KWin’s primary advantage over Compiz is that it is part of KDE and integrates perfectly with the rest of the desktop. While support for Compiz has been added, there are still some outstanding glitches when run on top of KDE.

OrangeHRM, the open source human resource management (HRM) software company, wants to join the million-dollar revenue club by 2011. To attain that goal, its CEO revealed that the company is focusing on delivering quality service and investing in mobile technologies.

Q: Thanks for your useful guide in Make Tech Easier, they are really very useful. Recently I have just switched to Ubuntu and I really love it. However, I can’t seem to find a way to input foreign language (Chinese) other than English. How can I do that in Ubuntu?

A: Assuming that you are using an English version of Ubuntu and you wish to input foreign language (eg. Chinese, Japanese, Korean) in your word document, web browser or text editor, the best way is via the IBus. IBus is the abrreviation for “Intelligent Input Bus” and it is the open source input framework for Linux/Unix OS. In Ubuntu Lucid, IBus is installed by default, so there is no need for you to reinstall again.