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In order to attract some interest for certain slow, but extremely important projects I’ve picked out a few attractive apps which could become powerful contributors to the widespread adoption of the Linux desktop.

Lately I've been reading a lot of bad news about Ubuntu. Saying that they aren't giving back to the community, and how they are going to be charging for non free software. I don't know specifics here but I know the Debian community is pissed off with Ubuntu because they don't give back to the community as much as other distros do. The truth is though. Ubuntu has given a lot back to the Linux community as a whole. They are helping set a new standard of sub par distros. There is a reason why they are number one in the community right now. The huge reason is that Ubuntu is user friendly. Although a bit constricting at times, but still much more customizable and user friendly for the first time user.

First there was Compiz, a compositing window manager that brought very interesting desktop effects to Linux, and then Beryl came about as a fork of Compiz before it ultimately turned into Compiz Fusion. Today though, on Christmas eve, the world can now meet Compiz++.

Compiz++ is a branch of Compiz that brings several new features to the table and there are huge changes...

I was pleased as the proverbial punch to receive a link in the latest Distrowatch Weekly, and I didn't even have to stoop to my usual begging. (Thanks Caitlyn!) What I also saw in the column was the announcement of a new distribution, CentServer, which is based on CentOS. For those who might not know, CentOS is itself a free clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

A new center aimed at speeding the development of mobile computing devices around the Linux-based Moblin OS opened in Taipei on Tuesday. The idea is for Taiwanese companies to use the center as a testing ground for new netbooks and mobile Internet devices (MIDs), as well as develop more applications around Moblin. The Taiwan government teamed up on the center with U.S. chip maker Intel, which developed Moblin. Intel plans to support the new center by further development of Moblin, which includes open source software with an OS, a user interface, a browser, developer tools and other software. Intel created Moblin software to run on devices that use its Atom microprocessors.

A Sun Microsystems executive has provided a glimpse into the company's future plans for open sourcing JavaFX, its recently released technology for building RIAs (rich Internet applications) for the desktop, mobile devices and other platforms. Sun's corporate image is grounded in its embrace of open-source software and some components of JavaFX, including the JavaFX compiler and elements of graphic libraries, are now available under the GPLv2 open-source license, according to the official JavaFX FAQ.

Tux is no mere drone -- he likes having fun every now and then. When it comes to gaming, open source tools and applications have a lot to offer developers, but that's not where it stops. Open source games themselves can be had for little or no cost, and a lot of them offer just as much baddy-blasting entertainment as proprietary titles.

I am pleased to announce the availability of LSB 4.0 Release Candidate 1. This version of LSB 4.0 has been put in the normal release directories, but IS ONLY A RELEASE CANDIDATE! In particular, certification is not yet open for LSB 4.0. We are continuing to use the previously-announced beta page for accessing information on LSB 4.0 prereleases.

GroundWork Open Source and Roaring Penguin Software Inc. are preparing a technology alliance to jointly serve VARs and managed service providers starting in January 2009, MSPmentor has learned. From my perspective, the anticipated deal will further legitimize open source in the managed services market. And it could accelerate GroundWork Open Source’s push into the IT channel. On the flip side, Roaring Penguin gains a growing partner that has been disrupting the corporate IT management market previously dominated by Hewlett-Packard OpenView, among others.

Video acceleration APIs for Linux has been a hot topic recently with NVIDIA having introduced VDPAU last month (the Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix) that brings PureVideo-like features to Linux with great results while it's already finding its way into MPlayer, FFmpeg, MythTV, Xine, and VLC. AMD has been working hard on XvBA (X-Video Bitstream Acceleration), but that has yet to be officially introduced. In the open-source realm there has been talk of extending XvMC to support video formats besides MPEG-2, but that hasn't yet amounted to anything. Today though another video API is now on scene with VA-API finally being implemented in MPlayer and FFmpeg.

Seasons greetings to one and all :)

You know, we were hoping for a Nokia knock-off to poke fun at this morning, but what we got instead was a comprehensive five page review of a vaguely N810-ish, Linux-based handheld called the MID-2008. The 4.3-inch, 800 x 480 touchscreen phone / media player features a 628MHz processor, 128MB RAM and supports a 16GB expansion card, WiFi and Bluetooth.

This post is more of an expansion, than a follow-up, to our May 2008 post on using who to find out what and when on Linux and Unix (picking only the options that appeared in most distro's version of "who"). It's also a bit more restrictive than our previous post, as we're restricting the discussion to newer Solaris' (8/9/10) implementation of the classic command.

I’ve been using Jungle Disk to do offsite backups of my data. Jungle Disk uses Amazon’s cheap online storage service, Amazon S3, to host backups. (15 cents a gig!) I don’t like Jungle Disk because it’s not open source and because the app is a little clunky, at least on Linux. I recently found that s3cmd could do an rsync-like sync of a directory. That’s cool, but it doesn’t do encrypted backups like Jungle Disk did. In this post, I’ll demonstrate how to make an encrypted backup of locally unencrypted data using EncFS, Amazon S3, and s3cmd.

Twhirl is a popular desktop twitter client based on the Adobe AIR platform. Adobe Labs have recently released an alpha version of the AIR platform for Linux. Linux users is now able to install the Twhirl easily.

Arduino is an inexpensive, easy-to-use electronics platform. The entire platform, both the hardware and the software, is completely open source, and the language is loosely based on C/C++. Arduino was built for makers, tinkerers, and artists who want to take the plunge into creating interactive physical objects. This three-part series starts with basic Arduino hardware and uses it to create an interactive laser game called "'Duino tag," where players can play tag using devices built nearly from scratch.

This morning I went to find the name of a piece of software through Add/Remove programs, only to find that there was only one category (”All”) and there were no applications listed at all. It took me less than 10 minutes to find and implement the solution, but I shouldn’t have to deal with this stuff. Worse, I find that these sorts of little problems are almost common. They don’t take long to fix, but they happen way too often. Not every day by any means, but still often enough to be annoying.

Electronics manufacturer Round Solutions presents the AarLogic C10/3, a breadboard which contains a complete Linux PC on a surface of just 104mm x 63mm. A Quad-band GPRS module and SiRF3 GPS module are also on board, as well as interfaces for USB, RS232 and Ethernet components. An SD-card reader enables the trouble-free expansion of the 4 Mb of RAM which comes as standard.

Intel has announced that the OpenSolaris variant of Unix is now better supported on its Atom processors. The Atom support is being positioned to bring the joys of x64 computing to netbooks and other low-power computing devices, and it offers some of the best performance/watt in processing these days. Sun Microsystems, which largely steers the OpenSolaris effort and will use the distro as the basis of the next generation of Solaris, wants to be among the greenest of IT vendors. It also wants to find a new niche for Solaris, as Linux has done superbly on netbooks this year.

Ext4 is the evolution of the most used Linux filesystem, Ext3. In many ways, Ext4 is a deeper improvement over Ext3 than Ext3 was over Ext2. Ext3 was mostly about adding journaling to Ext2, but Ext4 modifies important data structures of the filesystem such as the ones destined to store the file data. The result is a filesystem with an improved design, better performance, reliability and features .

[I found the link to this article on LWN in the thread talking about the new 2.6.28 kernel that Linus just released. Interesting stuff, 48bit addressing and a maximum filesystem size of 1 EB. 1 Exabyte? Wow! - Scott]