Showing all newswire headlines

During the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit Frank Karlitschek announced the open-pc initiative. The aim of this ambitious project is to cooperatively design a Free Software based computer by and for the community. Read on for more information about this initiative from the team.

I, like most Linux advocates, have demonstrated the power of Linux to people who had no idea such power existed in technology, much less in free technology. When I help them set it up, they get frustrated and quit. These are the problems faced by many a Linux demonstrator.

Computer monitoring systems are used to gather data for the purpose of real-time incident notification, performance analysis, and system health verification. Without such a tool, a system administrator would have to login to each machine to collect information on a regular basis. This kind of repetitive task can be automated using a system monitoring tool.

CMus (C* Music Player) is an ncurses-based audio player which can be run in a shell, with no need for an X server which is very configurable with Vi-like commands, multiple views and keyboard shortcuts. It supports various audio formats, including Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, MP3, WAV, AAC or WMA. CMus comes with everything you need: playlist support, queue system, seek, Last.fm (if compiled from source and then apply a patch - see below) and well, basically every feature you see in a fully-featured audio player.

Peek presents the community a challenge to get Linux running on their small handhelds, without much fanfare.

Microsoft's monopoly is being threatened from all sides. In the past, Microsoft used to be untouchable. Today, things seem to be shifting drastically. Microsoft still has a monopoly on the desktop computer market but it is being threatened from numerous sides. The latest threat is coming from Google who is creating their own operating system and competing head on with Microsoft Windows.

With the announcement of Google's Chrome OS this week many have been wondering what this means for Ubuntu. It goes without saying that Canonical does not have the resources available to it that Google has. Or does it?

A small revolution in the IT world is about to happen, and we are about to witness it. Microsoft Windows’ domination has been challenged many times: first by OS/2 (failed), then Apple (failed), then Java and network computing (failed), then GNU/Linux and Ubuntu (failed, so far). And now, Google’s Chrome OS. After such a long list of failures, what makes me think that this latest attempt will actually succeed? There is a list of factors. Let’s have a look. Why is Tony Mobily so optimistic? Read the full article at Free Software Magazine.

The young Gitg project, which visualizes a graphical representation of git data for Mac OS X under Gtk+/GNOME, allows check-ins and merges in its newest release 0.0.4, among other things.

One of the best things about a Linux system is its flexibility. Even though I’ve been a heavy Linux user for years, I still come across features in the OS a related applications that surprise me. A while back I learned to run multiple desktop environments at the same time, using nothing but the features of the software already built in to my distribution, and it’s been very useful for me. It may not sound like much, but it can be VERY useful to be able to run Gnome, KDE, Window Maker, and any other desktops all at the same time. You can flip from Gnome to Window Maker in seconds without having to log out or stop applications or use any kind of virtualization software. X already has everything you need.

The Symbian Foundation, established under a Nokia initiative, has released the first part of its Symbian Platform Security package under the free Eclipse Public License (EPL).

What happens when One Laptop Per Child has an international internship program but without the deep funding from a One Here One There donation scheme? You get the forgotten South America internships of Peru and Uruguay.

Many of you who did not come to Akademy might be wondering how this meeting compares to the previous years' conferences. After all, aside from being in a sunny location, there are many different animals around here besides the usual trolls and dragons. Gnomes might be small, but they are noticable and they certainly make for interesting company. Read on for an impresson of Akademy at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit.

There are a number of simple games I like to play when waiting for a package to download or compile. Often the available themes don’t really suit me, and in any case I like to make themes or skins when I can. One of the easier packages to create an alternate theme for is KDE Mahjongg (kmahjongg), which I will demonstrate here using Inkscape and Gimp. With the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing coming up, a space exploration theme seems appropriate. Read the full howto at Free Software Magazine.

"Author’s Choice of Terminology License. Rationale, hardly, but a few points I’d like to write about. I originally thought it was all about restricting the user to call the operating system GNU/Linux. ... I found interesting. Because section 4 of the GNU GPL version 3 doesn’t restrict sub-licensing with the GPL."

This was a real breakthrough, because for the first time little notebooks were actually priced small. Put Linux on them and you had an inexpensive, acceptably-performing, very portable machine plus the vast world of Free and free-of-cost software at your fingertips. But then the rot set in, as it so often does in the commercial, proprietary computer world, and especially when Microsoft is involved...

Back in May, the proposed "no long file names" patch got a hostile reception on the linux-kernel mailing list. This patch, presumably aimed at working around Microsoft's VFAT patents, made the kernel unable to create long file names on VFAT filesystems. It was seen by many as a reduction in functionality without any sort of well-explained justification, and it was not merged. Now there is a new patch which takes a different approach on both the technical and political fronts. Its fate remains to be seen, but it demonstrates a method for dealing with patents which is worthy of wider consideration.

Linux Mint 7 "Gloria" was released a little while ago, so before it became too old of news, I thought I'd take a whack at experimenting with it for the sake of netbookers everywhere (and for myself, naturally). As I type this on gedit after about two weeks' use, let's just say that the system on my EeePC 1000 HE is, for the most part, rather glorious-- pun intended. As a bonus, I also got Google's Chromium browser to run on it, so keep on reading to find the section on that.

There's always next year, right? If you're eager for the day of the Linux desktop to dawn, and you don't have the patience of a Cubs fan, here are some suggestions for community action that might be worth consideration. With Microsoft stumbling, the time just might be ripe to make an audacious move into the mainstream.

Ubuntu Release Manager Steve Langasek has announced that Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (code named Dapper Drake) Desktop Edition will reach its end-of-life on Tuesday the 14th of July, 2009. Ubuntu 6.06 LTS was originally launched on the 1st of June, 2006 and included the 2.6.15 Linux kernel.