LXer Weekly Roundup for 30-Jan-2011

LXer Feature: 31-Jan-2011 In the LXWR this week it is all about the desktop environments. Bruce Byfield makes a case for running Xfce, Dr. Tony Young wrangles KDE4's window manager into shape and Carla Schroder wants to punt KDE altogether. The Fedora servers get hacked, Python for newbies, LibreOffice 3.3 hits the streets and Glyn Moody states why Android will win the tablet wars. Enjoy!

Forget GNOME and KDE, Xfce 4.8 Runs Simpler and Faster: A few times each month, I tire of the complexities of GNOME and KDE. Then I turn to a simpler, faster desktop for a couple of days or a week -- and that desktop, more often than not, is Xfce. No other desktop I’m aware of balances convenience and speed half so well.

Setting up public key authentication for SSH: If you're like me, you remote into a handful of servers using SSH all the time. The process is fairly simple: Get to a terminal, ssh username@hostname, Type password, Get to work.. No, it's not terribly difficult, but when you have to type that password fifty times per day, you begin to realize that it's time-consuming and repetitive. And there happens to be a way to eliminate that step from the process.

Fedora Hacked?: The Red Hat sponsored Fedora community Linux project has suffered a security incident in which its infrastructure was compromised. Long story short is that a Fedora contributor had his/her credentials stolen and then an attacker began to use those credentials to attempt to tamper with the Fedora infrastructure. Due to the limited privileges of the exploited account (and some good luck) it appears as though there has been no risk to Fedora's build or infrastructure. This story could have ended up far differently - just look at what happened to Fedora in 2008.

The Document Foundation launches LibreOffice 3.3: The first stable release of the free office suite is available for download. The Internet, January 25, 2011 - The Document Foundation launches LibreOffice 3.3, the first stable release of the free office suite developed by the community. In less than four months, the number of developers hacking LibreOffice has grown from less than twenty in late September 2010, to well over one hundred today. This has allowed us to release ahead of the aggressive schedule set by the project.

How a “Welded-to KDE3.5 User” Began a Move to KDE4.4 Part III “Konquering the Dolphin”: In this extension of his two part guest editorial and tutorial Dr. Tony Young (an Australian Mycologist by trade) goes into detail comparing the functions of Konquerer and Dolphin and along the way discovers that he might actually keep Dolphin as his file manager.

Oracle still welcome at LibreOffice as first release debuts: While the LibreOffice project is a fork of Oracle's Open Office, Meeks also noted that the door remains open for Oracle to become part of the effort. "I think that there is a very real and sincere offer for them to join the community, the only blocker is Oracle," he said. "They could become a leading light in the LibreOffice community. We'd love that. We'd love to have Oracle. This is not attempt to attack them, this an attempt to do something better."

Python for Newbies: A few months ago I posted a link to a site on which I had posted this tutorial. The site was related to Maemo and has since made some big changes, including the removal of all the old content. So, I decided to host the tutorial on my own site. I hope this becomes a more permanent location for it. So, if you or any one you know wants to learn Python, I think this is a good place to start

Why Android will win the tablet wars: The Apple iPad is a huge hit: 7.33 million of them were sold in the quarter ending in December. That's a pretty amazing achievement. But despite that, there are good reasons to believe that 2011 will mark the start of the ascent of Android as king of the tablet world.

A Cross-Distro Unified Installer Is On The Way: Developers from Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, Suse, and Mageia attended to a conference last week in which they've tried to find a way to make "installing and removing software on Linux suck less."

Replacing KDE4: Yes, I am one of those grumpy KDE 3.x fans who can't deal with KDE4. So I've been trying out different desktop environments and window managers to replace my beloved KDE, and it has been fun and enlightening.