LXer Weekly Roundup for 23-Oct-2011

LXer Feature: 24-Oct-2011 Welcome to this week's collection of big stories from the LXer Newswire. Enjoy!

The Future of OpenOffice.org: With the Apache Foundation providing a new home, the question in many peoples' minds has been whether the bruised and abused remnant of the OpenOffice project would be able to get back on its feet, dust itself off, and regain its prior importance in the marketplace. Last week, the Apache Foundation put out a press release on this very subject.

Open source jobs: What's hot, where to look, what to learn: What does the future hold for eager, talented software developers, and people with related essential skill sets? The overriding trend, as in all industries, is you're on your own, chum. But free/open source software (FOSS) offers considerably more richness of opportunity than anything else. Let's peer into the crystal ball and see what the future holds.

FSF takes Win 8 Secure Boot fight to OEMs: PC makers are being lobbied to install Windows 8 on machines in a way that will afford users the freedom to boot Linux or any other operating system. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is urging PC users to sign a statement demanding that OEMs which implement Windows 8's UEFI Secure Boot do so in a way that allows individuals to disable it, or that the PC makers provide a "sure-fire way" to install and run an operating system of the user's choice.

My Desktop is Changing: Hello to everyone in Linux land. As you know by now, Ubuntu 11.10 codenamed Oneric Ocelot, has been released into the wild since October 13th. There have been many changes since 11.04 made it's controversial debut featuring Unity as the default desktop, instead of the standard Gnome. This has continued with Oneric, with the biggest factor being that the traditional Classic Gnome 2x will no longer be available, as the new fall back will be the newly refined and integrated Unity 2D.

Will your computer's "Secure Boot" turn out to be "Restricted Boot"?: Microsoft has announced that if computer makers wish to distribute machines with the Windows 8 compatibility logo, they will have to implement a measure called "Secure Boot." However, it is currently up for grabs whether this technology will live up to its name, or will instead earn the name Restricted Boot.

Linux Mint developers make GNOME 3 edition plans: Clement Lefebvre, Linux Mint Founder and lead developer, has announced that his project has started work on a GNOME 3 edition of its next major release, version 12. The new edition will initially be developed alongside the GNOME 2.32-based release which will remain as the default desktop environment of Mint. The developers had decided to stick with GNOME 2.32 because there had been "radical changes" in GNOME 3.x's desktop which had split the communities of GNOME and Mint users.

ownCloud 2: Your Personal Cloud Server: ownCloud is a free software alternative to some proprietary web services and it currently includes file management (with built-in file sharing), music streaming, calendar, contacts and more - all running on your computer or server..

KDE4 Tip: Turning Off Annoying Dynamic Systray Notifications: For some reason notifications are a big hairy deal to certain people in FOSS-land, like the fine KDE4 folks. And so we have all these popups, blinking icons, sound effects, and jumping systrays. The subject of notifications is a fine one for another day; for today I will share how to turn off the annoying blinking systray in KDE4.

Back to OpenShot for video editing in Debian GNU/Linux: I decided to give the OpenShot video editor for Linux another try. Not entirely satisfied with my last effort in OpenShot, I wanted to try something else, and that something turned out to be Blender's Video Sequence Editor feature. That was a resounding failure. I had no idea how to do just about anything, and I find the Blender UI extremely uninviting.

The Perfect Desktop - Kubuntu 11.10: This tutorial shows how you can set up a Kubuntu 11.10 desktop 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. Kubuntu 11.10 is derived from Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) and uses the KDE desktop instead of the GNOME desktop.

The Little Desktop That Could: Once upon a time, not so very long ago, the Elder Gods of the Digital Universe decreed that the Icon would rule the World of Desktops, just as it had dominated the Land of the Hand-held since the dawn of time. No matter that on a giant monitor the Firefox appeared at nearly life size, all desktop items were to be stripped of verbal clues to the nature of their meaning.

How I Learned to Love the KDE 4 Series: For nine years, my default desktop was GNOME. About the third of the time, I'd use another desktop or a shell, either for the purposes of review or just for a change, but I'd always return to GNOME. It was a no-fuss interface in which I could do my common tasks without any problem. But a glitch on my system that left GNOME unstartable coincided with the release of KDE 4.2, and -- not having the time to reinstall -- I switched to KDE. I haven't looked back since.