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I recently downloaded Ubuntu 9.04 alpha 5, “Jaunty Jackalope,” to see for myself what’s in the works for the next release of Ubuntu, set to come out in stable form on April 23. Here are some observations, with screenshots, from my post on WorksWithU, the independent guide to Ubuntu.

If you work with open source software, you have less to worry about in the current economic downturn, according to John Todd of Digium — the company behind the Asterisk telephony platform. Todd presented his ideas at SCALE in Los Angeles, arguing that many of the same factors that put jobs and revenue at risk in the proprietary software industry actually benefit open source projects and, by extension, provide job security for developers, implementers, and consultants who work with open source.

Tom Wickline pointed out that it has been 8 months since I had put out a road map. So I thought I'd take some time to review what we've accomplished in these past 8 months, and what we hope to accomplish through the rest of the year.

CUPS, the printer server project, was purchased by Apple but continues to be the main printer software in Linux and Unix systems. 5 of the 6 main Samba developers were employed by HP at one time, but only after HP agreed to leave the Samba copyrights in the developers’ names rather than HP's. Google, HP, IBM, and Red Hat no doubt have a strong participation in many Open Source projects, and more companies join that list every day. Because the motivations of the Linux distribution companies often differ from those of the folks producing the software, they walk a tightrope between maximizing their own profit by being more closed and alienating the communities that produce the software they sell. The falls from that rope have been colorful.

Acer recently announced it was getting into the smartphone business. It seems it is all Windows Mobile devices and that decision has drawn criticism from those that support Linux desktops. According to TechRadar, "Aymar de Lencquesaing, senior corporate VP of Acer, was asked why the new phones all used Windows, to which he replied that they gave the easiest option for synchronisation with its notebook and netbook install base." Other than a Linux option on a particular model of the Acer Aspire One netbook, Acer really focuses on Windows-based PCs for the desktop, so it makes sense that it would want to deliver phones to its customers that would easily connect to their PC.

I've been playing with one of many new systems that are hitting the market which allow the user to quickly boot the machine and go directly to a small version of Linux rather than wait to load Windows. If people are using Linux like this routinely, how long will it be before they can be convinced that Linux is just as good as Windows? And it's free.

Just as there are “classic” cars that never seem to go out of style, there are some classic pieces of software that remain useful long after most of their contemporaries. One of those programs is Xfig, a vector graphics editor hailing from the days of academic Unix workstations. Like the more famous TeX, Xfig hasn’t seen significant updates in several years—and for the same reason: it’s just about perfect like it is. It is showing its age in the style of its graphical interface, and it does have some fundamental limitations compared to more modern graphics tools, but for the simple technical diagrams it was intended for, it is still hard to beat.

LXer Feature: 10-Mar-2009

With the introduction of the EeePC and the Aspire One I was in love.. Originally I just had to have the Asus, but with the great deal Walmart was offering on Black Friday (yeah, I know but I bought the Acer at Wallyworld) I decided to buy an Aspire One as well. Let me tell you about 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly' of these two machines.

We took a look this week at the first official alpha release of the Maemo 5 SDK, which introduced the platform's new user interface framework and other components. Maemo 5, which is codenamed Fremantle, will be used on the next generation Nokia Internet Tablet. Fremantle will offer richer graphics capabilities than previous versions of the platform and will support OpenGL ES. This is opening the door for a lot of creativity and has made it possible to port a whole new class of applications that previously did not fit within the scope of the platform's capabilities. Developers have already started to experiment with the SDK and some of the results are quite impressive.

The KOffice developers have released their seventh beta for KOffice 2.0. This release may be the last of the many betas. A decision on whether there will be another beta or if the next version will be the first Release Candidates will be made next week. The list of changes is longer than ever. For this release we have concentrated on crashes, data loss bugs and ODF saving and loading. Take a look at the full announcement to find out more, or look at the changelog for the details.

Google's decision to launch an open-source mobile platform may be key to Android phone sales overtaking the iPhone's by 2012, according to estimates by Informa. Researcher Gavin Byrne predicts that phones like the T-Mobile G1 will eventually outrun Apple as a new focus on software over hardware will reportedly favor Android's open development system versus closed systems like Apple's. Other open-source platforms like LiMo and the eventual Symbian update should also benefit, Byrne says.

Every week I read a new blog post giving 10 – 25 or even 100 reasons you should switch to Linux right now. I say bah humbug to them. If you need someone to give you 100 reasons to switch your current OS of choice, you are better of sticking with it. As someone who is literally forced to use windows for work-related task, use a Mac just because I have money to blow and runs an obscure Linux distro to prove my point about my anti conformist views; I know a thing or two about why you shouldn’t switch to Linux.

Every so often I take a stab at Linux, to see exactly what I like and do not like about the OS. Many of its problems, for me, stem from its inability to run on my overloaded hardware, or the occasional driver that makes the OS impossible to use without hand-tweaking something or other. That said, I seriously like the Ubuntu 8.10 implementation and will now install it permanently on my latest machines. It's a winner.

The Linux Foundation’s user-generated “We’re Linux” video contest enters its final week today. Final submissions for the contest that began in January are due this Sunday, March 15 at midnight ET. Contest winner(s) will be revealed at the Linux Foundation’s Collaboration Summit on April 8, 2009, in San Francisco. More than 35 videos have been submitted so far for the contest that seeks to find the best user-generated videos that demonstrate what Linux means to those who use it and inspire others to try it. The winner of the contest will receive a free trip to Tokyo, Japan to participate in the Linux Foundation Japan Linux Symposium in October 2009.

The Debian distribution of Linux is one of the most well established of the Linux distributions and is used as the basis of several other more recent projects, perhaps the most famous of which is of course the Ubuntu family of distributions. Our German language associate site, heise Open recently spoke to Steve McIntyre, (at the time of this interview) the current Debian Project Leader about the present state of the Debian project and and about his hopes for its future.

Everywhere we turn these days, we see evidence of open source developers trading their time and hard work for little more than the hope of benefiting the ever-growing open source community. While there are many companies world-wide enjoying the benefits of a number of Linux and open source products, there are instances where creating sustainable employment for these talented individuals is problematic at best. Then I came across the The Development Cloud. This is a company that has found it mutually beneficial to share fifty percent of its profit – which is derived from closed source software – to reward developers of associated open source software projects. (See details here.) I think this is fantastic.

[A Matt Hartley piece that makes sense. I'm as flabbergasted as you are. - Sander]

Microsoft has brought a lawsuit against car navigation system manufacturer TomTom. The products in question incorporate Linux, and at least one of the seven patents involved concerns a Linux kernel implementation rather than TomTom's own software. Is this Microsoft's first direct salvo against Linux? There are other striking features of this suit: the technologies claimed in the 8 patents involved are so old and obvious that it's fair to say they have a high "Duh!" factor. There's an anti-trust angle to this suit that could blow up in Microsoft's face. And there's a high probability that some or all of the patents involved are invalid, due to recent court decisions. Let's take a look at what is happening.

OSPERT (Operating Systems Platforms for Embedded Real-Time Applications) is now seeking papers for its fifth annual workshop. OSPERT'09 is co-located with the Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems's ECRTS'09 academic real-time conference. This move, along with the naming of Red Hat Linux kernel hacker Peter Zijlstra as OSPERT co-chair, is billed as an attempt better integrate the academic real-time community with the Linux real-time embedded community.

The iPod may have won the popularity war for PMPs in many markets, but that hasn’t stopped a healthy ecosystem of unknown-brand media players that are usually cheap and, in varying degrees, cheerful. Such players just got a little more useful, with a hack to run Linux on PMPs using the common Ingenic JZ4732 chipset, such as the Onda VX747.

Best racing game ever runs on linux! Disclaimer: I'm not a racing game fan, in general I don't like racing games at all. So if I say something is the best racing game ever, it's not based on the usual things most racing fans would think make up the best racing game.