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LXer Feature: 02-Nov-2008

In this week's Roundup we have a slew of articles about Ubuntu and Canonical, Linus learns to take personally, our own Sander Marechal reports on T-DOSE 2008, PC makers move closer to a post-Windows world and Carla Schroder asks if Linux does enough for small business.

Emulation refers to the duplication of functions of one system using a different system. Specifically, an emulator is software specifically written to emulate aspects of the original console or computer, primarily the CPU, I/O and memory system.

All last week, Microsoft was trying desperately to shift the spotlight from Vista, the OS that has become a major liability for the software giant. To that end, Microsoft made a flurry of announcements including Azure, the newly announced cloud platform, the Windows 7 Alpha and a preliminary view of the web-based version of Microsoft Office.

My former colleague, Joe Wilcox, observes that he doesn't think it's a big deal that Microsoft handed out laptops to bloggers, analysts and reviewers loaded with the Windows 7 alpha. He adds that "All week, I have watched for someone to raise a fuss and hoped that no one would." Wilcox then added that, last time around when Microsoft did this with Vista, that Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols "joined the chorus of critics calling the laptops bribes," while he had defended Microsoft's practice.

South African Internet billionaire Mark Shuttleworth has enough cash to pump into his software company, Canonical, saying he is being careful with his pennies but is willing to continue supporting a good investment. Shuttleworth founded Canonical in 2004 to develop free software for companies and private users around the world.

Yesterday evening, while I was at home in Freising, my brother called. He had some problems installing Ubuntu on our aunt’s computer, and asked for help. In the end, it was a success story. But it’s a quite lengthy one; it actually started years ago. Read on for more details…

Greg Kroah-Hartman is a longtime developer of the Linux kernel, known for his work maintaining USB drivers as well as for packaging the SUSE kernel at Novell. O'Reilly Media recently interviewed Greg about his claim that the Linux kernel now supports more devices than any other operating system ever has, as well as why binary-only drivers are illegal, and how the kernel development process works.

This tutorial shows how to set up an Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex (Ubuntu 8.10) server that offers all services needed by ISPs and hosters: Apache web server (SSL-capable), Postfix mail server with SMTP-AUTH and TLS, BIND DNS server, Proftpd FTP server, MySQL server, Courier POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc.

On October 25, 2008, the Linux Hater's Blog reached the "eof", or end of file. But if you've been hassled endlessly by Linux lovers and are sick to death of Linux this and Linux that, fear not - the Linux Hater's Redux is born, with plenty of eye-opening news on problems with Linux.

Since today is Halloween, I thought that an article discussing some of the scary things in the FOSS world would be a nice touch. Now obviously I don't celebrate Halloween myself, but I know a lot of people who do, so this article is right in keeping with the holiday. So the question boils down to this. What are the scariest things in Open Source? In a sort of tongue in cheek way, the scariest thing to Linux and FOSS users is proprietary software. Or at least that's what you'd think given the response from most of them. I for one am in that camp, as the more I've learned about proprietary software, the less I've found it desirable to use.

Linux has been making inroads into PC sales lately because it runs so well on lightweight netbooks with limited RAM and processing power. Windows 7, though, appears to run well on lightweight hardware as well, which could mean that it's Microsoft's Linux killer. At the recent PDC, where Windows 7 was unveiled, Windows and Windows Live senior vice president Steve Sinofsky claimed that Windows 7 used less than half of the 1 GB of RAM on his Lenovo S10 netbook. Making the new operating system lightweight has clearly been Microsoft's goal. In addition to light RAM use, Windows also strips out a variety of applications, including Windows Mail, among others.

I tested OpenSolaris earlier this year shortly after the developers announced the project's first official release. Although I was impressed with the ease of installation and several other aspects of the user experience, I also pointed out several areas where there was room for improvement. In order to compete with Linux on the desktop, I argued, OpenSolaris has to make its innovative features more accessible to regular end users. One particularly impressive enhancement that helps achieve that goal is the new ZFS snapshot visualization functionality that will be included in the next major release of OpenSolaris.

The Foreign Ministry is migrating all of its 11.000 desktops to GNU/Linux and other Open source applications. According to Schuster, this has drastically reduced maintenance costs in comparison with other ministries. "The Foreign Ministry is running desktops in many far away and some very difficult locations. Yet we invest only one thousand euro per desktop per year. That is far lower than other ministries, that on average invest more than 3000 euro per desktop per year."

DigiKam is an application to manage your digital photos professionally, with a claim of: “Manage your photographs like a professional, with the power of Open Source”. We'll check what's new in the KDE4 version of the program.

Thank God these folks had a place to vent ;) This end-of-the-weekend humor comes in the form of some funny (I'm hoping "intentionally funny" ;) bug reports that get out there into the mainstream. I'm sure the open source community (especially for successful and/or widely-used projects) can't be on top of everything all the time, and this is, in no way, a poke at them (they may, very well, be responsible for it. Just a bit of levity to help pass the time on a Sunday and (maybe, just maybe) make you forget that another work week is just around the corner.

This is WFTL Bytes!, your occasiodaily FOSS and Linux news show for Friday, October 31, 2008, with your host, Marcel Gagné. Today's scary stories include an Intrepid IBEX from Ubuntu, a netbook from HP, Canonical's finances, fast loading PCs courtesy of Linux, a Miro channel guide, and a DRM-free zone over at the BBC.

If there is one operating system that has a special place in my heart, it's QNX. This microkernel operating system served as my main desktop operating system for months and months back in the day, during the short-lived QNX Desktop scene - which died out due to a lack of interest from QNX' parent company, QNX Software Systems. The money is in the embedded and high reliability markets, and that's where QSS - understandably - focused its efforts. QNX was sort-of open sourced in September 2007, and today the company has announced the release of QNX 6.4, the first major release since 6.3 in 2004.

A groundbreaking training tool for the global energy industry which uses virtual worlds to simulate potential disasters is attracting significant interest within days of its launch. The technology has been developed by Second Places, which specializes in creating presences in online virtual worlds for corporate clients.

Ampache is a Web-based Audio file manager. It is implemented with MySQL, and PHP. It allows you to view, edit, and play your audio files via the web. It has support for playlists, artist and album views, album art, random play, playback via Http/On the Fly Transcoding and Downsampling, Vote based playback, Mpd and Icecast, Integrated Flash Player, as well as per user themes and song play tracking. You can also Link multiple Ampache servers togeather using XML-RPC. Ampache supports GETTEXT translations and has a full translation of many languages

I love using some the newer features on the Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex desktop. Guest session, wireless detection, improved assisted technologies, create encrypted folders, tabbed file browsing, cruft remover and more.