LXer Weekly Roundup for 21-Aug-2011

LXer Feature: 21-Aug-2011 This week's installment of the LXer Weekly Roundup. Enjoy!

Classic Gnome Panel vs Unity: Let's compare the number of clicks you need to start an application that you haven't created a shortcut for and haven't used recently...

KDE 5.0 roadmap announced: The KDE desktop is about to take a major step forward, with the announcement today of the roadmap for KDE Frameworks 5.0. Most eyes in the Linux desktop world are on the Berlin Desktop Summit this week, as members of the GNOME and KDE camps come together for a joint technical conference running from August 6-12 at Humboldt University in Berlin. Currently, KDE seems to be making the most strides in the joint event, with the surprise announcement of the KDE 5.0 roadmap, which was revealed by KDE developer Aaron Seigo in his blog Sunday.

Google SHOCK! Snaps up Motorola phone biz for $12.5bn: Are you a Droid handset maker? You were Google has made its largest-ever acquisition, and biggest corporate gamble, by splashing out $12.5bn for Motorola's phone division, Motorola Mobility. The deal puts Google into the hardware business in a serious way – and into direct competition with licensees of its Android operating system, who woke up this morning thinking they were Google's business partners.…

10 Great Free Open-Source Software Advancements In The Past Year: Tons of attention over the past year have gone to tablet platforms and cloud platforms, but open source platforms may just have contributed the most important advances in technology since 2010.

Has Microsoft defeated Linux?: Apparently, Microsoft thinks it has defeated Linux. At least, they deleted it from their list of competitors. I won't repeat all the places that Linux holds large amounts of market share, but , with regard to the desktop, I will say this: not winning is not the same as losing. Sure Windows runs way more personal computers than Linux, but it's been that way for twenty years. Linux hasn't lost the desktop because it never had it.

Will Android Be Crushed for GPL Violations?: When I first wrote on this story on April 5th, I expected that pressure would be put on Google and that Android would quickly be brought back into compliance with the GPL. That hasn’t happened. Pressure might have been placed on Google, I don’t know, but if so it’s done no good. Four months have passed and Android still isn’t compliant. Thankfully, it seems that era is now over, and the organizations that enforce the GPL are going to have to go after Google and all Android vendors for these violations.

All Your BASH Are Belong To Us: Many Linux/Unix programmers are not aware that a battle over Bash scripts is currently raging in a US (Kansas) courtroom this week. A Linux cluster vendor, Atipa Technologies is claiming all the Bash scripts they shipped to customers contain trade secrets and were stolen by former employees. Should this issue be decided in Atipa's favor, the fundamental idea of shared and open software could be blanketed by the simple claim of trade secrets.

Red Hat: Where recessions are good news: While Silicon Valley is still bubbling like it's 1999, tech investor Mark Suster thinks the flailing job market and imploding stock market is a warning to entrepreneurs: raise what money you can as fast as you can, because life is about to get much harder, even for web companies. But at least one company must be looking at the impending doom and smiling ear to ear: Red Hat. Quarter after quarter, through good times and bad, Red Hat delivers excellent performance.

A Conversation with Linus Torvalds: While Torvalds is famously reluctant to speak, he did take the stage at LinuxCon North America 2011 for a conversation with Greg Kroah-Hartman.

GNOME-Designer Jon McCann about the future of GNOME3: Also talks about the split with Ubuntu, outspoken criticism and why KDE and GNOME are different operating systems After years of focusing on stability and non-disruptive improvements, the GNOME desktop recently took a big chance: With the release of GNOME 3.0 a fresh user experience was introduced, breaking with many of the old concepts. One of the driving forces behind the vision and concepts of GNOME3 has been Red Hat developer William Jon McCann. During the recent Desktop Summit in Berlin Andreas Proschofsky had the chance to talk to McCann about the way ahead for GNOME3, how the project deals with criticism and the importance of GNOME3-optimized app development.

HP Says Farewell to WebOS, Tablets & PCs: Evidently this move comes because company execs see a need for HP to reinvent itself as a services and software company, much the way that IBM did when they spun their consumer PC business off to Lenovo a few years back. In hindsight, this shouldn’t be entirely a surprise, as Apotheker was chosen as CEO last August partly because of his software experience with SAP, where he had an eight year history, two as CEO.