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We’ve turned off comments on the original post; there were about 200 already and there’s only so much that can be said before people stop adding anything new. I wanted to let you know that I received a private response from Mark Shuttleworth, in which he says that he has no intention of apologising for his comment. I know that a number of other people have approached him in person and by email, both before and after I posted my open letter, to ask him to consider the effects of what he said, and I’m still hoping that he will come around. (Despite numerous assertions to the contrary, I do prefer to see the glass as half full when it comes to these issues.)

This tutorial shows how you can boot Linux over HTTP with netboot.me. All that users need is Internet connectivity and a small program (gpxe) to boot the machine. This gpxe program provides network booting facility. netboot.me allows you to boot into the following distributions: Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE, and Ubuntu. netboot.me provides gpxe images for USB sticks, CDs, and also for floppies, i.e., you can boot from a USB sticks, a CD, or a floppy.

OpenStreetMap Founder Steve Coast has announced that the main OpenStreetMap (OSM) website is now available in 26 additional languages, bringing the current language choice to 51 in total. OpenStreetMap is an open source project run by the OpenStreetMap Foundation, that is building free online maps, not based on any copyright or licensed map data. While the project was started in August of 2004 it has become increasingly popular in recent months.

It’s simply stunning some of the terrific instrument and effect plug-ins available that are now free and open source – yes, free as in freedom, not just freeware. I had commented in the past something along the lines of, “boy, wouldn’t it be great if this now meant, say, a Linux port?” and then went on the business of my daily life, which tends not to include re-compiling plug-ins. But now, the folks of JUCETICE have been busy doing just that, serving up delicious instrument and effect goodness, running native on Linux. Translation: fire up that netbook and make some music.

The administration of the Danish municipality of Lyngby-Taarbæk is installing OpenOffice on some 1700 school desktop PCs, the administration announced yesterday. The first school where OpenOffice will be installed is the Lindegård school. At the school earlier today mayor Rolf Aagaard-Svendsen showed the first desktop running the open source suite of productivity tools.

As with our Ubuntu wishlist, we can't actually tell everyone contributing to Google's open source Android mobile phone software what to do. All we can do is suggest five things that would make its smartphones even smarter.

Among the countless announcements in the Intel Developer Forum regarding Moblin was a joint press release from Intel and Microsoft. In it is announced that Microsoft wants to port Silverlight to Moblin.

On the Noisebridge hacker mailing list, security specialist Jacob Appelbaum has published an SSL certificate and pertinent private key that together allow web servers to avoid triggering an alert in vulnerable browsers - irrespective of the domain for which the certificate is submitted. Phishers, for example, could use the certificate to disguise their servers as legitimate banking servers – which would only be detectable by subjecting the certificate to closer scrutiny.

Last week we talked about a new X.Org release process proposal for improving the consistency and quality of X Server releases through taking a number of relatively simple steps. Well, this week from XDS2009, a revised proposal has been agreed upon now making it policy for X Server 1.8 / X.Org 7.6 and later.

When you say "log-structured file system," most storage developers will immediately think of Ousterhout and Rosenblum's classic paper, The Design and Implementation of a Log-structured File System - and the nearly two decades of subsequent work attempting to solve the nasty segment cleaner problem (see below) that came with it. Linux developers might think of JFFS2, NILFS, or LogFS, three of several modern log-structured file systems specialized for use with solid state devices (SSDs). Few people, however, will think of SSD firmware. The flash translation layer in a modern, full-featured SSD resembles a log-structured file system in several important ways. Extrapolating from log-structured file systems research lets us predict how to get the best performance out of an SSD. In particular, full support for the TRIM command, at both the SSD and file system levels, will be key for sustaining long-term peak performance for most SSDs.

The Pathscale compiler, a favorite of those using AMD (Opteron) clusters has been purchased by Cray and will be open sourced.

There are a plethora of opportunities for geeks to meet and greet one another throughout the year: linux.conf.au, Linux Congress, OSCON, Linux Plumber's Conference, LinuxCon, the list goes on. There is one, however, where the focus is purely on the customer, so-to-speak — the end user. The conference in question, aptly named the End User Summit, is quickly drawing near, and the Linux Foundation is wondering who wants to be there.

Jason Perlow has written an article about Richard Stallman, Watch Out for That Meteor, Stallman. There are some factual errors in the article, so let me step up to the plate and fix them. Here's Perlow's theme in a nutshell, as published in an extended caption under a disrespectful cartoon of Stallman: "Richard M. Stallman (RMS) the founder of the Free Software Foundation, has labeled prominent Open Source software developer Miguel De Icaza a “Traitor” for joining the Board of Directors of Microsoft’s CodePlex Foundation as well as for his creation of the Microsoft .NET-compatible Mono software development framework. While RMS’s hatred of all things proprietary has fueled the FSF’s and GNU’s mission to create Free software alternatives for what seems like eons, the overwhelming desire for interoperability between open and proprietary systems makes this narrow-minded Cretaceous world view ripe for extinction." I have some news for you. The GPL ensures that Free Software will never be extinct. Thank you, Mr. Stallman, for inventing it. For that alone, he will go down in history. Perlow will not. And Miguel will not. You and I will not. But Stallman will. Do you know why? Because with just his brain, he changed the world for the better.

Openshot is a video editor for linux, is one of the best ones existing actually for linux. The news is that now has a PPA this mean easy install for Ubuntu users, but the big news is that the new version come with 30 new effects. See the video demonstration what you can do with Openshot. and follow the installation instauctions for Ubuntu Jaunty and Karmic Koala

Your Linux computer may have hundreds of applications installed. How can any system menu be organized sanely? How can anyone find anything? Bruce Byfield examines the different approaches taken by the Gnome and KDE teams to deal with this.

With just a few modifications and some experimentation, your Ubuntu box can realise its untapped potential. We have identified 8 tips to help you achieve this. Most of the tips are really easy to implement, and are perfectly safe.

What the heck is happening in Redmond? Is Microsoft really giving away antivirus software? Yes, friends, it appears that they are. Come on Microsoft, we really want to hate you. I've carried this Microsoft voodoo doll* around with me for years--stabbing it every time I have to pay money for one of your products on a new laptop or desktop computer. I cringe when I see "Vista Ready." And, I almost hurl penguin when I have to activate my software. So, somebody please pinch me, wake me up, take the needle out of my arm and tell me it's all been a bad trip.

A group from the ETH technical institute in Zurich is working together with software giant Microsoft on a new kind of operating system called Barrelfish. The first results are now available under an open source license.

A new wave of women's liberation is crashing on an unexpected shore, the world of free and open source developers. The FOSS communities might pride themselves with being the promoters of free, open and transparant. It is a world where a meritocracy rules, where you are judged by your skills and not by who you are of who you know. Right? Wrong!

Hot on the heels of Android 1.6 (code name Donut), the Android development team has now released version 1.6 rel 1 of the Android NDK (Native Development Kit). The NDK is a toolkit comparable with the standard Android Software Development Kit (SDK), which allows Android developers to write parts of their applications in native code languages such as C and C++.