LXer Weekly Roundup for 19-Oct-2008

LXer Feature: 19-Oct-2008 Some of the big news this week included OpenOffice.org 3.0 coming out, Dell finally starts advertising their Ubuntu offerings and Cisco and Microsoft step up their courting of Linux developers. Also, Installing DSL on your hard drive, Linux gets a seat on all of Qantas's new Airbus A380's, Wikipedia moves over to Ubuntu servers, Russia's open source revolution and Carla Schroder shows us how to do professional level photography work on Linux without going to jail.

Some of the big news this week included OpenOffice.org 3.0 coming out, Dell finally starts advertising their Ubuntu offerings and Cisco and Microsoft step up their courting of Linux developers. Also, Installing DSL on your hard drive, Linux gets a seat on all of Qantas's new Airbus A380's, Wikipedia moves over to Ubuntu servers, Russia's open source revolution and Carla Schroder shows us how to do professional level photography work on Linux without going to jail.

Finally: Dell Launches Consumer Advertisements for Ubuntu Linux Systems: It's one small step for Dell and Consumer Linux. And one giant leap forward for Canonical's Ubuntu distribution. Specifically, Dell has launched advertising for the Mini 9 Netbook running Ubuntu. Here's the scoop from The VAR Guy.

In Defense of Piracy: How is it that sensible people, people no doubt educated at some of the best universities and law schools in the country, would come to think it a sane use of corporate resources to threaten the mother of a dancing 13-month-old? What is it that allows these lawyers and executives to take a case like this seriously, to believe there's some important social or corporate reason to deploy the federal scheme of regulation called copyright to stop the spread of these images and music? "Let's Go Crazy" indeed!

OpenOffice.org 3.0 officially out, site swamped by fans: The OpenOffice.org website was swamped today, shortly after the organisation announced the release of version 3.0 of its open source source office suite. The OpenOffice.org website returned multiple timeout errors early this afternoon as the site was presumably innundated by expectant downloaders. Today’s release was the official announcement of the new office suite version, although most of the major mirrors have had the latest version since Saturday evening.

Microsoft's second Silverlight courts open-source coders: Microsoft is courting open-source developers with Silverlight 2.0, as it strives for cross-platform uptake of the browser-based media plug in. Microsoft is delivering funds, architectural and technical guidance, and project management to help Soyatec, a team of former Java developers building an open-source rich-internet application (RIA) development environment for Eclipse - Eclipse4SL. An alpha technology preview was released today here, with plans for a "feature complete" offering in December and final release in Spring 2009.

Not Open Source, But Free: Four Must-Have Apps: While OStatic is dedicated to open source, one of the big attractions with open source applications for many users is that they're free. That's why when we see really outstanding freeware applications--even though they're not open source--we still call them out. In this post, I'll discuss four really outstanding freeware options. Windows and Mac users will find tools to like here, and the price is right.

Geode in Firefox 3.1: Lost in Linux: Firefox will soon integrate Geode (via the W3C geolocation API specification) into its browser, thereby exposing the user's current location. Meanwhile Linux users will have to forgo this service in that it involves proprietary software.

Kernel: Ext 4 Filesystem Moves Beyond Developer Status: Theodore Ts'o has renamed the Ext4 filesystem, for which he has been responsible for source and documentation, from extdev to ext4. Linus Torvalds has also incorporated the change into his personal source tree for the upcoming Kernel 2.6.28.

Cisco Targets Linux Developers: Cisco is asking developers to instead think "inside the box" to create applications that will run on the Linux based Cisco AXP module. It's tossing in $100,000 in prize money just to keep it interesting. Linux Application availability alone isn't the only thing Cisco is after. It's making sure the developer ecosystem has a revenue model that will keep Cisco and developers in the black.

Six Things I would Love to See in Windows 7: John Dvorak at PC Magazine, a grand old curmudgeon who never pulls any punches created a wish list for Windows 7. It got me thinking about my own wish list...

Ubuntu Server at Wikipedia: Where's the Revenue for Canonical?: The good news: Wikipedia seems to be standardizing its servers on Ubuntu. The bad news: Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, doesn't seem to be profiting from the Wikipedia deployment. Details at Works With U, the independent guide to Ubuntu.

Installing Darned Small Linux Onto Your Boot Drive: This Linux is so darned small, I can't believe the name ;) Today, we're going to walk though installing it on your bootable hard drive. Sure, sure, it defeats the principal of the whole thing, but you can always just slice up two tiny little partitions and have DSL as a backup for your other OS, which may or may not completely self-destruct at any moment. Plus, it's a great idea when all you've got to work with is an old machine that won't run anything else!

The Perfect Desktop - Mandriva One 2009.0 With GNOME: This tutorial shows how you can set up a Mandriva One 2009.0 desktop (with the GNOME desktop environment) that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge.

Linux takes a seat on Qantas' new superjumbo jet: Linux will be a passenger in every seat on Qantas' Airbus A380s airplanes. All of the airline's superjumbos -- the first of which will commence flying next week -- will have their in-flight entertainment systems powered by the operating system. The A380 is the first Qantas aircraft to utilize the Panasonic eX2 Inflight Entertainment System (IFE). All of Panasonic's X Series of IFE systems run on Linux.

Linux an equal Flash player: Welcome to the future. Linux is now a first-class desktop operating system citizen. Adobe today released version 10 of its Adobe Flash Player, available now in a variety of convenient packaging formats for Linux, as well as other popular desktop operating systems. Once upon a time, desktop Linux was a second-class citizen, where Flash was concerned. As recently as 2007, Linux users waited six months for Flash 9 to arrive.

Instant On for Windows 7: Microsoft is contemplating thinking about possibly implementing an 8 second boot feature in Windows 7. Maybe one of the developers has got a Linux netbook?

5 More Things I Wish Linux Had And One I Wish It Didn't: After posting 5 Things I Wish Linux Had, I did some mulling and gathered comments from readers and compiled this additional list of items that I wish Linux had. I've also included one thing that I wish Linux didn't have. These are part of my 2009 Wishlist and are more focused on the future direction of Linux. Most of them will move to my 2010 Wishlist but I think they're important enough to begin work on immediately.

Russia's Open Source Revolution: What does Microsoft do when someone says: No, sorry, we do not want to use your software any more. If that someone is a small business operating in an increasingly cut-throat world, a great deal of pressure can be brought to bear on them to fall into line. But what if that someone is a whole nation, and that whole nation happens to be a world superpower with the resources and will to forge its own, alternative route to technological competitiveness? This is what has happened to Microsoft in Russia, and it all started with a school teacher. Back in 2007, Aleksandr Ponosov (pictured below right), the headmaster of a village school in Sepych, in the Perm region of Russia, was arrested for running unlicensed copies of Microsoft software on his school's computers.

Professional-Level Photography With Linux, And Nobody Goes To Jail: Books, articles, and training courses mostly teach Photoshop as though it were photography itself. Me, I think giving so much as one devalued red cent to Adobe is equivalent to saying "Why yes, I am for corrupt corporate control of everything and vandalism of fundamental civil rights" because of what they did to Dmitry Sklyarov. To this day no one at Adobe has apologized or admitted error; they stubbornly cling to the "we must protect our precious IP" party line. Call me a moldy old hippie, but in my world due process, fairness, and civil rights trump Adobe's precious IP. Which wasn't so precious at all, but closer to laughable.

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