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Google has sent one of the most prolific independent developers for the Android phone a letter demanding he stop distributing software that greatly expands the capabilities of the fledgling smartphone operating system. Neither Google nor the developer, who goes by the handle Cyanogen, is saying much about the cease and desist letter. In a short chat transcript posted here, the developer says only that the demand centers around closed-source applications such as Google Maps and Gmail, which are bundled with CyanogenMOD, an Android modification program he maintains and offers for free.

It is no secret that the equation editor in OpenOffice sucks (well, there are a few folks out there that think it is great, but not many). What I always wanted was an equation editor of OpenOffice that used Latex as the backend. Then, I found it, and boy is it awesome: Ekee.

Yep, I used wireless to upgrade from Ubuntu 8.04 to 8.10 and finally 9.04, and NetworkManager lost control of my wired Ethernet interface in the transition from 8.04 to 8.10. I did manage to find a fix very quickly, and I can confirm that it does indeed work.

FOSS is still a geekbeard ghetto, and it's going to stay that way until some serious attention is paid to community-building, and actively recruiting new people from all walks of life. It's not good enough to leave it at "Whoever wants in badly enough, and to heck with the rest."

Moblin.org shipped the final version of the Moblin v2.0 netbook distribution, and released early-preview versions of a Moblin app store, Moblin installer, and Moblin v2.1. Meanwhile, Moblin v2.0 is now available on Dell's Mini 10v netbook, as part of an "Ubuntu Moblin Remix Developer Edition" option.

It's always hard to believe pre-release hype where Microsoft is concerned, but if Windows 7 is as stable as early reports suggest, it could mean more companies bent on using Microsoft anyway, will make the switch, and when they do chances are they'll need to upgrade their hardware. And that could be an economic boost.

Google is taking action against the CyanogenMod project for offering customised Android firmware. The search giant primarily objects to CyanogenMod distributing proprietary Google applications like Google Talk and Android Market without a licence and has ordered the developer to discontinue his work immediately. The CyanogenMods contain several customised graphical elements and already offer a range of features which will be part of the forthcoming Android version 1.6 (code name Donut).

Here is a nice collection of themes for Gnome and ubuntu for September 2009, most of these themes are just updated in this month or just published, so you will find themes that you see for the first time.

This will be NOOSS's fourth year doing this live webcast from OLF

Improvements in the new Ubuntu Karmic koala includes updated splash screen, login window, latest Gnome 2.28 and many more. Here is a quick list of improvements that you need to know about the Karmic release.

Brutelock is an open source program that actively monitors various system logs and immediately blocks malicious IPs trying to attack your server. Brutelock not only protects against ssh attacks but also other common systems such as ftp, pop and imap. It has an extendible rules format that allows you to monitor an unlimited number of other services by simply supplying the log file and a simple regex search pattern.

While it can't make you an instant Asterisk expert, Digium's Asterisk Fast Start training course will give you a grounding in this popular open source PBX running on Linux.

A few hours ago we talked about the Moblin 2.0 release, the launch of the Moblin Garage and Moblin Application Installer, and the next Moblin 2.1 release. Intel has provided an early development preview of the Moblin 2.1 operating system, which we briefly tested out on a Samsung NC10 netbook. Here are the screenshots and a few more details.

There are some people who do not believe that the Linux desktop will ever be a major force in the global IT market. Mark Shuttleworth isn't one of them. Speaking at the LinuxCon conference late Wednesday, the Canonical founder pitched his approach for expanding Linux to provide a better user experience and broadening its appeal. The approach involves having a degree of cadence and coordination between projects and distributions, as well as improving quality and design.

Recently Linus Torvalds referred to the Linux Kernel as bloated and scary. So what is next?

If you haven't played with Slackware within the past couple of years, you may still believe that the word “easy” doesn't go well with the words “update” and “package management”. But, two fairly new utilities, “slackpkg” and “sbopkg”, may help to change your mind.

There's three important announcements coming out of Intel's Developer Forum today as it relates to their Moblin Linux distribution that launched two years ago: Moblin 2.0 final has been released, Moblin 2.1 is under development, and Moblin Garage and the Moblin Application Installer have been introduced.

I have just finished up three days at LinuxCon in Portland, put on by the Linux Foundation. As you might expect from such an event, there were discussions on a wide range of topics, some to get you thinking, some to excite you and some to challenge your notions. The levels of presentation varied by presenter and, overall, I would say it was a great success. One topic that was discussed quite a bit was the Linux Desktop - the state of the desktop, the future of the desktop and the direction the desktop is taking. It was so popular a topic that it was mentioned in no less than three keynotes, and not always positively.

GNOME 2.28 is released now, just a week after the release of the release candidate. This release includes several bugfixes & enhancements for included components.

The Ubuntu Software Store debuted last month in the latest alpha release of Ubuntu 9.10. Since its announcement, however, there has been more than a little debate over the application’s name, if not the concept behind it, with many commentators questioning the implication of the word “store.”