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GNU/Linux has come a long way since XXMS, the Winamp wannabe. The number of free media players has bloomed: Amarok, Banshee, Rhythmbox, Kaffeine, Kplayer and JuK. They have enough features to cater for every need a dedicated music lover could wish for. So Songbird, which is not even at version 1.0, would have its work cut out to rival those media players especially the ability to play video as well as music. But Songbird has one unique feature. It has a built-in browser, Mozilla, which allows it to extract maximum mileage from your music collection. Web integration leverages your music and allows you to do some really great stuff. This article will look at the features of Songbird that make it an essential addition to any installation. Read the complete article at Freesoftware Magazine.

Open source companies from A to Z (Alfresco to Zmanda) have lined up to endorse Sun's new Amber Road storage solutions. Is Sun finally starting to gain some momentum with open source advocates and the open source channel? Analysis from The VAR Guy.

Late last month we published system benchmarks of Ubuntu 7.04 through 8.10 and had found -- at least with the Intel notebook we were using -- that the performance had degraded with time. This article had then resulted in benchmarks of Fedora 7 through 10 and most recently were Mac OS X 10.5 vs. Ubuntu 8.10 benchmarks. In our original article we hadn't focused much upon the graphics tests and we were just using ATI's binary driver, but per a request from Canonical's Bryce Harrington, we have carried out some open-source graphics tests on Ubuntu 7.04 through 8.10 and we started with the ATI performance.

I've been doing some thinking since writing about kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman's statement that Linux supports more devices than any other operating system. Readers made some good comments, and after some time spent wrestling with my (yes, supported) webcam, I can venture an additional suggestion as to why it doesn't always seem that way, beyond Kroah-Hartman's theory of a non-supported device becoming "personal."

Outsourcing and open-source development may at first appear to be about as far apart as baseball and football. Both use a ball in a game, but that's about it. Yet a closer look from open-source software developers and industry analysts reveals that enterprises using outsourcing for their programming needs could stand to learn some management and process techniques from the open-source community.

So the election came to an end at last, and the people made their choice. All throughout the blogosphere, fireworks could be heard as Obama supporters reveled in their triumph. Long live the Internet, and the new political landscape it has produced! Things will never be the same again, that's for sure.

See your comments and suggestions for improvements in action ...for the most part ;) For this week's Monday Linux/Unix bash shell script, we're following up on our script from last week, with more user suggested improvements, that makes it so you can get your local TV listings from the command line with bash. This week's script is an update to include a lot of error checking and (from the suggestion I received the most often :) the ability to pick a time span.

Some 20 KOffice developers have gathered at the KDAB offices to discuss and prepare the upcoming release of KOffice 2.0. Read on to learn about what the meeting is for and what is on the agenda to be sorted before the big release.

Recently, there's been a lot of noise regarding Linux netbooks -- from how well the devices have sold to the return rates. Sam mentioned in a post that reasonable expectations need to be set for netbooks. I agree with Sam on this point (which applies to more than netbooks, when it's fully considered). These machines are designed for basic tasks, not to serve as a complete office substitute when traveling.

To say Sabre Holdings is a believer in open source technology is an understatement. Its IT department supports the Travelocity Web site, the Sabre Travel Network and Sabre Airline Solutions, and the company has been using open source tools for some 10 years, according to CTO Robert Wiseman. Cost certainly factors into the reason, but it's Sabre's ability to control its own destiny by making whatever changes it deems necessary that's the real motivation. Along with Kevin Bomar, Sabre's senior principal of middleware services, Wiseman explains how open source software and the community that supports it help Sabre deliver solutions that meet its demanding uptime requirements.

So, you’ve heard about Google’s free software release of its Gadgets server, and the new “Open Social API”. And gosh, wouldn’t it be nice if you could provide this technology to your users with your favorite free software Content Management System (CMS)? Since the documentation that comes bundled with Google’s release will probably give you simultaneous whiplash and vertigo (with a large side of frustration), here’s a breakdown of the problem so you’ll know what you’re up against, how to go about solving the problem, and plenty of free software resources to help you get there.

This document describes how to install a PureFTPd server that uses virtual users from a MySQL database instead of real system users. This is much more performant and allows to have thousands of ftp users on a single machine. In addition to that I will show the use of quota and upload/download bandwidth limits with this setup. Passwords will be stored encrypted as MD5 strings in the database.

Currently in late beta, the Sun Presenter Console (SPC) is Sun Microsystems' latest extension for OpenOffice.org and StarOffice. Other extensions from Sun in the last year, such as the Sun PDF Import Extension, Sun Presentation Minimizer, and Sun Weblog Publisher, have sometimes been lacking in design and sometimes buggy, but all of them are so invaluable that you might wonder why they are extensions instead of new features. SPC is no exception. It gives slide show presenters a separate view of their presentation and some tools to help them organize and deliver their talks, but includes no indication of how to set it up or use it.

Most developers are at least passingly familiar with the notion of code review - that having source code read over by another developer, or a group, is a good way to catch things that the original author missed. While code review started out as a physical meeting process, there's been increasing interest in supporting distributed code reviews via the web.

LXer Feature: 10-Nov-2008

Over the last week I've changed Internet service providers from Dodo to Pacific Internet and activated 2 domains I had registered with a web hosting company called Crazy Domains a Perth Western Australia based company.

Linux applications do not yet support the newest 2.x Apple firmware for the iPhone and iPod Touch. But if you want to copy images from the Pictures folder, all you need is SSH installed on the device

Adobe has issued updates for some of its older software to address critical security vulnerabilities. The updates are aimed at users of older systems that are unable to run the latest versions of Flash and Acrobat.

For a long time, Linux has been trying to convince most people (that is, mostly home and business users) that Linux on the desktop is a good alternative to Windows. Linux has already established an outstanding reputation in the server room, so system administrators are already convinced of the virtues of Linux. All that can be considered "Linux, open and above board". What about "Linux under the hood"? By that I mean, what about the virtues of embedded Linux systems? What about Linux running "in everything from cell phones to car ABS systems and water-filtration plants..."? That's what Yaghmour, et al proposes to teach you in this book.

In an effort to help proliferate the Linux Desktop, HeliOS Solutions has contacted a number of Big Box stores and smaller businesses throughout the Austin Metro Area and asked them if we could set up professional and attractive displays for Linux Live CD's. Three are in as long as the displays are professional. One of them is balking because they don't want Microsoft suing them for Intellectual Property violations. This IP business has begun to get tiresome. Here's how we can make them either show the code or shut the hell up.

Two additional tracks have been added to the Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE) for 2009. The upcoming 7th Annual So Cal Linux Expo will be expanded over last year's expo. Two additional tracks have been added to the weekend conference: a beginner's track has been added for the many newcomers to Open Source Software, and for the programmers among us, a developers track has also been added.

[Every year it gets bigger and bigger. I will be attending for the third straight year as well. - Scott]