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I have trolled my Twitter feeds looking for something exciting or provocative related to Open Source, but nothing, other than the release of Fedora 11 and Firefox 3.5 is jumping out at me and frankly neither is particularly news worth, despite the large number of people that are supposedly downloading both code sets. Has Open Source lost its mojo? Has it become so common place that there are no real innovations to talk about? Or is it simply the summer lull?

Linux Journal's Shawn Powers shows us how to use nice and renice to change the priority level of your processes.

One of the benefits of moving the different graphics hardware drivers over to using kernel mode-setting, an in-kernel GPU memory manager (whether it be GEM or TTM), and other newer X innovations is the possibility of now running the X Server without root privileges. By doing so, this of course improves the security since this very large chunk of code is no longer running with all of these high-privileged rights.

Due to now living in a KMS-enabled world, at least on the Intel and ATI side (the NVIDIA side is still slowly but surely coming via Nouveau), it's rather easy to get the X Server running without any special rights...

Adobe AIR is a technology that lets you run Internet applications on the desktop. With AIR you do not need a browser to run such desktop applications. This tutorial explains how you can install Adobe AIR 1.5.1 for Linux on an Ubuntu 9.04 desktop and how you can install AIR applications.

The typical download manager at a minimum provides means to recover from errors without losing the work already completed, and can optionally split the file to be downloaded (or uploaded) into 2 or more segments, which are then moved in parallel, potentially making the process faster within the limits of the available bandwidth. So what is the perfect download manager i should use in Linux ?

When it comes time to move from Windows to Linux, one of the first things you want to consider is what software you rely on in the Windows world, and what you're going to use in Linux.

VirtualBox 3.0, with its improved 3D support, can ensure that some users won't need to boot Windows even when gaming. With its version 3.0 of VirtualBox, Innotek/Sun/Oracle made a significant step forward. End users will probably like the 3D graphics support the most: you can now run Ubuntu with Compiz. The new version brings enhancements and support for OpenGL 2.0.

Release candidate #1 for Slackware 13.0. Hi folks -- the TODO isn't entirely empty here, but it's pretty much down to minor nits, and so we're going to call this release candidate #1 and (mostly) freeze further updates unless they happen to fix problems.

A while ago I put up this article, reviewing 5 so-called 'essential' add-ons for Firefox. To continue in the same manner in this second part, here are 5 add-ons updated for Firefox 3.5 which can prove useful. Maybe not the most popular, but they definitely deserve a try.

The Ubuntu Technical Board has been asked for a position statement on the use of C#, specifically the Mono implementation, by applications in Ubuntu.

Happy Canada Day to all my Canadian friends, both at home and abroad. June was a very busy month for me, which is why there were so few postings and I wanted to jump on July with a really big bang, but I am having trouble finding a topic worth discussing. I could talk about my new netbook, an ASUS Eee PC that I picked up for a song, but it is still running Windows and while I have downloaded the Ubuntu Netbook Remix, I have not had time to unspool it and begin the install process. I have trolled my Twitter feeds looking for something exciting or provocative related to Open Source, but nothing, other than the release of Fedora 11 and Firefox 3.5 is jumping out at me and frankly neither is particularly news worth, despite the large number of people that are supposedly downloading both code sets.

While StarDict touts itself as "the best dictionary program for Linux and Windows," it has a serious challenger to the title called GoldenDict.

As the Debian project releases a second update of its Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 ("Lenny") distribution, a controversy has broken out over the next version, "Squeeze." GNU guru Richard Stallman has warned that by including a Mono-based note-taking application called Tomboy, Debian runs the risk of Microsoft litigation over C# patents. Debian forms the basis for a number of desktop and embedded Linux distributions, including Ubuntu and Xandros. The second stable release, made available this week, is said to include numerous security fixes, as well as "a few adjustments to serious problems." But, the upcoming Squeeze release appears to have some serious problems, according to Debian insiders.

In total, PostgreSQL 8.4 includes 293 enhancements from the previous 8.3 release, an update that was primarily centered around performance. "There is no performance change [that] affects all users equally across the board," PostgreSQL project core team member Josh Berkus told InternetNews.com. "However, there are several changes with dramatically improve performance for several specific common use cases."

In many parts of the world, the power grid is shoddy, computers are scarce, and connectivity is even rarer. Thus, as with many other modern practices and technologies, populations are increasingly bifurcated into the "computing haves" and the "computing have-nots." But many are addressing the divide. SolarNetOne is a turnkey Internet hotspot—power, computers, and satellite uplink—you can install virtually anywhere, for less than the cost of a subcompact car.

The PostgreSQL developers have released version 8.4 of the open source database saying it is "Now easier to use than ever". The release, which comes after sixteen months of development by the PostgeSQL Global Development Group, adds a number of new features such as per-column permissions which gives more control over which users can see which columns in a database.

The Triple Crown of Linux conferences — if there is one — is surely the Linux Symposium, the Linux Kongress, and linux.conf.au. It was just a month ago that we passed on the message to LinuxJournal.com readers that the time to get their name on the Kongress program was nigh, and now it is time to do the same for the southernmost jewel in the crown.

In June of 2007, after many months delay, the Free Software Software Foundation released GPLv3. Since that time, the license has been gaining an increased following, but without much threat to GPLv2 in first place.

Canonical has launched Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud Services, an effort to help customers build and support cloud infrastructures that live behind corporate firewalls. The announcement, leveraging Ubuntu Server Edition, caught The VAR Guy’s attention for two key reasons.

"What ever happened to chunkfs?" This is a question I hear every few months, and I always answer the same way, "Chunkfs works, the overhead is reasonable, and it is only practical if it is part of the file system design from the beginning, not tacked on after the fact. I just need to write up the paper summarizing all the data." Thanks to your benevolent LWN editor, you are now reading that paper.