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Mark Shuttleworth recently outlined development goals for Ubuntu 9.10 ( ”Karmic Koala”) set to be released in October 2009 as the successor to Ubuntu 9.04 (”Jaunty Jackalope”). The innovations planned for the Ubuntu 9.10 desktop look nice enough. But is this the time to be placing looks before function? Here's some analysis from WorksWithU.

The fourth extended file system, or ext4, is the next generation of journaling file systems, retaining backward compatibility with the previous file system, ext3. Although ext4 is not currently the standard, it will be the next default file system for most Linux® distributions. Get to know ext4, and discover why it will be your new favorite file system.

Remember last month when DaniWeb reported how some 1400 jobs were to be lost at Microsoft? These losses forming the first part of a plan to trim costs which would see a total of 5000 Microsofties facing the axe. Well now, in the most bizarre of twists, it seems that the axe is not good enough and some of those laid off workers are feeling the twist of the Microsoft knife as well.

Word of mouth is the most powerful way forward Linux has. The key is just to keep in mind who you are talking to. Not everyone is as interested in computers as you are.

One of the biggest changes to this release of Coyote Linux is the use of C# as the primary development language used for most of the administration, configuration, and maintenance utilities.

This article shows how you can watch your hard drive activity with iotop on Ubuntu 8.10 and Debian Lenny. iotop watches I/O usage information output by the Linux kernel and displays a table of current I/O usage by processes or threads on the system. iotop displays columns for the I/O bandwidth read and written by each process/thread during the sampling period. It also displays the percentage of time the thread/process spent while swapping in and while waiting on I/O. In addition the total I/O bandwidth read and written during the sampling period is displayed at the top of the interface.

With the Debian Linux project officially designating "Lenny" as its new "stable" distribution, I decided to install it on an old Thinkpad to see how well it performs on a low-end machine. Without doubt, the results surpassed my wildest expectations!

Another week has passed and it’s time again for the weekly Distro Roundup. New versions this week include ArtistX 0.6, sidux 2009-01, Arch Linux 2009.02, DragonFly BSD 2.2, and more.

The final release of VectorLinux 6.0 (code name 'Voyager') is now available. This release is a major milestone in the ten year history of Vectorlinux.

In my review of the ASUS Eee PC 901 with Xandros Linux pre-installed, I received a comment which disturbed me. The part of the comment which disturbed me was in response to my negative views on modeling the Simple Mode icewm with Microsoft Windows XP themes. The response to my comment on this theme for the window manager was: “And what is the problem with that taking into the account the target user they had in mind? They just want to keep it somewhat familiar and simple. Fair enough.”

The Linux Cookbook is your guide to getting the most out of Linux. Organized by general task (such as working with text, managing files, and manipulating graphics), each section contains a series of step-by-step recipes that help you to get your work done quickly and efficiently, most often from the command line. Perfect as an introduction to Linux, or as a desktop reference for the seasoned user. Covers the major Linux distributions.

Many times people ask me about what keyword type they should use to declare a generic function pointer in C, or worse still, they don’t ask and steam ahead using “void *”. Well, C does not have a generic function pointer type but it does have a generic function pointer. We’ll see why void * cannot be used to denote generic function pointers and so how we can declare them

This tutorial shows how you can set up a Debian Lenny desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge.

The Obama Administration plans to spend over $20 billion of the stimulus bill on open and proprietary software to enable "electronic health records." Just because the money's there, though, doesn't meant that the standards for the technology are. This interview covers what's ready, what's not, and what needs to be done to close the gap.

We're at the native Linux desktop, moving towards the Android desktop (netbooks coming soon). What would bridge those two environments, is to offer a second Linux lightweight sandbox which runs along with Android. This would give native Linux application compatibility to Android, offering the best of both worlds.

A whole lot more comics for your weekend enjoyment

The media has made much of a Microsoft iPhone killer prototype handset being stolen during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. iTWire ponders if it all might just be a publicity stunt for the failing Windows Mobile OS?

After years of being a Windows user (since 2.0) and an administrator I've learned to ignore the marketing hype surrounding new Windows versions. But I tried out the Windows 7 beta just so I can settle arguments about what it can or can't do.

A new release for Pagico v3.2.2 on Ubuntu, bringing back two important features to the program.

Being worked on as part of Mandriva's next Linux distribution update is a technology they are referring to as Speedboot. Speedboot will be officially introduced with Mandriva Linux 2009.1, and compared to the normal boot process, it begins initializing some processes early on while it postpones other tasks until after the graphical display manager has shown. In essence, the user is logging into their Linux desktop even before the system is fully booted. We have some timed results of Mandriva's Speedboot along with videos showing the differences.