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The first pre-release of Kaffeine 1.0 was released yesterday so I decided to give it a spin and see how it behaves. Since this is a pre-release, it is not intended for general use and currently lacks many features and functionality from Kaffeine 0.7. This is first KDE4 port of Kaffeine for KDE3, which was one of the most powerful players for KDE, including support for DVD menus, subtitles, video effects, and supporting a huge number of video and audio formats via the Xine engine.

Ubuntu's Jaunty Jackalope has bounded onto desktops, and reaction in the Linux blogosphere is mostly thumbs up. There are some who wish the Ubuntu distros didn't come in such quick succession, however, arguing that there's not enough time to stabilize them and get into serious application development. Still, if it's all part of a hellbent for leather effort to compete with Microsoft, it may just be working.

Cassatt Corporation, my employer for the past 5 years, is out of cash. Now that we finally have solid Linux-based (but, sadly, not Open Source) software which powers internal clouds, we don't have the capital to continue. Anyone who wants disruptive technology for pennies on the dollar, now is you opportunity to jump in. Otherwise, it's the end of a neat, but bumpy, ride.

The openSUSE developers have announced the release of Milestone 1 of the upcoming openSUSE 11.2. The release includes the latest 2.6.29 Linux kernel and version 2.4 of Mono, an open source alternative to Microsoft's .NET framework. Milestone 1 includes the KDE 4.2.2, GNOME 2.26 and Xfce 4.6 desktop environments.

There are just about a ton of web design books on the market. Better make that two tons. What makes this one so different that yet another book on the topic graces the shelves of our local bookstores...I mean, besides the fact that it's "sexy"? In terms of design (and a lot of other things), the term "sexy" doesn't quite mean a scantily clad curvy woman or buff man (although I suppose it could). It means a design that is highly attractive and appealing to the eye. Erotic imagery is used to sell everything from cars to sunglasses because it attracts attention. Anything that attracts (positive) attention to your web site design can be considered "sexy". Is this book "sexy"? Does it teach "sexy" design? Let's find out.

In part 2 of this interview, Linus talks about the process of managing kernel developer commits, selecting a revision control system and how he personally uses git.

Sugar Labs, the maker of the software for the XO laptop from the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative, has announced the release of a first beta of Sugar on a Stick. Sugar on a Stick is a version of the free open source Sugar Learning Platform that can be installed to, and booted from, a USB flash drive on a conventional desktop, notebook or netbook computer. Walter Bender, Executive Director of Sugar Labs says "Sugar on a Stick lets you start a computer with Sugar and store a child’s data on the stick without touching the host computer’s hard disk,".

I found this old code while I was going through my war chest. It still works on some older boxes if you still have a system that uses the old-fashioned inetd. It may require some modification to work on your machine, but it's pretty straightforward and easy to compile. It also does it's job; it kills inetd.

On April 23, the new Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) was released. This guide shows how you can upgrade your Ubuntu 8.10 desktop and server installations to Ubuntu 9.04.

In this article I will debate on several major advantages and disadvantages for using the command-line in Linux. When I think it's 'better' to use CLI, when not, and how can this can impact the work speed.

Take it as you will, but a group of interested Linux gamers have launched the Ubuntu Gaming Team. The mission of this newest Ubuntu focus group is "to give the open source gaming world a boost!" They intend to promote gaming on Ubuntu, connect free software gamers together on Ubuntu, address barriers to the development of free and open-source games, promote such games, and to organize gaming events.

More on the Ubuntu Gaming Team can be found on their Wiki page or on Launchpad...

Not too many releases this week, but we do have the big Jaunty release that resulted in quite a few other releases.

Linux Fund has expanded its partnership with the Gnash media player team to bring OpenStreetMap editing support to the open source Flash® player, Gnash. This work will also improve YouTube compatibility and joins Linux Fund's existing effort to bring the Real Time Messaging Protocol support to Gnash. OpenStreetMap. the free wiki world map, is an editable map of the whole world built by community contributions. To contribute and donate towards the Gnash OSM support see the Linux Fund website.

With Windows 7 ready to roll, and a world which really could care less, is Microsoft banking on XP to save the day?

Over time K3b got its reputation as one of the most powerful burning applications not only for KDE, but for Linux in general. Development at the KDE4 release evolved rapidly in the last couple of months and the first usable alpha of the KDE4 port was put up for testing a few days ago, on April 22. Earlier today I made a brief review of this release, which you can read here (nothing is new, K3b 1.65.0 comes with the same features of 1.0.5, the only major difference is that it was ported to use the KDE4 libraries).

The purpose of this Ubuntu 9.04 tutorial is to show you the steps to setting up a kernel that is highly tuned for your CPU, in this case a Pentium 4 with hyperthreading for a workstation.

X.Org 7.5 with the X Server 1.7 release was planned for release at the start of this month, but sadly they far from made it -- no test releases of the new X Server are even available yet. Though after reading Phoronix, Daniel Stone remembered this release schedule and has decided to give another try at X.Org 7.5...

I was pleased to hear a while ago that K3b got two new developers assigned by the Mandriva project and that work at the KDE4 port is going well now. Although K3b was inactive for a pretty long time (the last stable release was 1.0.5 for KDE3 on May 27, 2008), it looks like development goes at a fast pace and the first alpha of the KDE4 port was put up a little earlier this month.

CMus is a very powerful audio player for the console with a ncurses-based interface, support for themes and highly configurable. Although (at least in Debian) CMus does not come with Last.fm song submission support by default, there is a script available here as a patch, which you can apply to the source, compile CMus again and enable Last.fm support.

In OpenBSD, Flash support isn't exactly something to crow about. Flash Player 7 is all that works due to subsequent Linux Flash players needing ALSA sound support, a feature none of the BSD projects possess. And that player only works in the Opera Web browser — and only on i386. But it turns out that you can watch Flash video in OpenBSD on any platform that runs Mplayer. And this clever hack is something that even Linux, Windows and Mac users can benefit from.