Showing all newswire headlines

As a computer journalist for the last 25 years, I've received a lot of review copies of software. As something of an obsessive magpie, I've tended to keep most of it, “for reference”. Until yesterday, that is, when I finally threw out all those copies of OS/2, Lotus SmartSuite, and my entire collection of Microsoft software. This included Windows NT 3.5, Windows 2000, Microsoft Office and many, many more. What's makes this little spring-cleaning exercise particularly apt as well as cathartic is that all of us - and not just me - may finally be witnessing the end of the Windows era.

In this article I will show how to install and use QuickStart on an Ubuntu 8.04 desktop. QuickStart is like a Swiss army knife, it allows you to do various things on your Ubuntu desktop: creating and restoring backups, running scheduled backups, backing up configuration files, installing some common applications, installing DVD codecs, deleting unnecessary files, etc.

If you want to know how much disk space you have on a Windows machine, what do you do? There's a number of different ways of getting that information, but the way that I usually use is to go to Windows Explorer and right click on the drive letter and select Properties. This opens up a window which looks at the drive and tells me how many folders and items there are, how big it is and how much space is left. In Linux, how can I see how I get the same information?

Everyone knows about the infamous internet wars. Ranging from operating systems to text editors to code indentation style, these wars have wreaked havoc on the web for years. The topics range from serious topics like religion to serious geek topics like operating systems to just plain stupid topics like code indentation style. So today, I’m going to go through a list of some of the most famous topics and remind you of a few of the more, er, “famous” battles.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) have given the green light to publish the Microsoft-backed Office Open XML (OOXML) specification after organization leaders rejected appeals from four countries to protest the vote that approved OOXML as a standard.

The way he has gone about establishing Ubuntu as the desktop Linux distribution most in demand by enthusiasts is remarkable. And he is now quietly beginning to muscle in on the enterprise market. One trait has stood him in good stead and will continue to help him and his company, Canonical, make headway - patience. He has always shown himself willing and able to wait for the right moment to do something. Time appears to be of little importance to him; he has a goal and he intends to attain it.

This is the eighth article in a series on common usability and graphical user interface related terms [part I | part II | part III | part IV | part V | part VI | part VII]. On the internet, and especially in forum discussions like we all have here on OSNews, it is almost certain that in any given discussion, someone will most likely bring up usability and GUI related terms - things like spatial memory, widgets, consistency, Fitts' Law, and more. The aim of this series is to explain these terms, learn something about their origins, and finally rate their importance in the field of usability and (graphical) user interface design. In part VIII, we focus on the tab.

Hello boys and girls — That's me in the Debian T-shirt above. Ilene got it for me from AboutDebian.com. I don't think I need to tell any of you that I'm proud to be a Debian user. Sure I've had (and have) my problems getting Debian to do exactly what I want on every machine on which I have it installed, but I'd call Debian ultra-reliable, easily fixable and extremely useful. I've never mistakenly hosed a Debian installation, and I've never seen a machine on which Debian won't run — and run pretty well.

Are you a sysop? Or a fan of rap? Something here to amuse both of you ;)

A guide to the kernel development process aims to encourage participation by new programmers by explaining what's involved. Some developers and businesses attempting to submit changes to the Linux kernel find themselves tangled up with the processes used, according to the guide, which was written by Jonathan Corbet, executive editor of lwn.net and himself a Linux developer. "A developer who does not understand the kernel community's ways (or, worse, who tries to flout or circumvent them) will have a frustrating experience in store," Corbet warned.

Ever since I read Jeremy Allison’s blog post about why we need to hear criticisms from people who dislikes Linux, I have been thinking a lot about what he said and how it hits very close to my own philosophy about life: In order to improve, you need to be open to criticisms; even from your enemies. One of the (many) things that most people dislike about Microsoft is that they don’t have any real communication between the developers and the users; so when you discover a bug or have opinions about a feature that can be improved or added, there is no real easy way to directly (or indirectly) communicate with a developer. However, recently they have showed some improvement by opening up blogs for IE8 beta and Windows 7, where product developers actively communicate with users. So why should we turn a blind eye towards Linux critics?

Most Linux Distribution websites have been redesigned to sport a Web 2.0 look. To give credit to their talented web designers/developers, I’ll pick 10 Linux Distribution websites that I think stand out from the rest. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so you don’t have to agree with me. Anyway, you can always comment later on and share your views.

John Washburn takes public records seriously. Recently, the 45-year-old computer software tester from Wisconsin decided to take on Texas Gov. Rick Perry over his e-mail retention program -- or lack of one. Perry's office automatically deletes virtually all its e-mails every seven days, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Like all teenagers it can be temperamental, and always capable of annoying the middle-aged mainstream. As Debian turns 15 today, iTWire says HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

We have written about the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project many times, but we have yet to explain how to get started with it as a contributor. Since it is the vacation high season in the Northern Hemisphere and many more people will be hitting the maps, this is the perfect time. You can contribute a lot to the project even if you don't own a Global Positioning System (GPS) device -- or even a compass. This is not meant to be an authoritative guide to the project; OSM maintains a detailed wiki with extensive documentation for newbies and experts alike, in multiple languages.

Networking is a must-have on all levels of computing. Be it home or corporate, networking is the one aspect of computing that is, without a shadow of a doubt, a deal breaker. And with some help, the Linux operating system can be the king of networking, in both ease of use and security. But that doesn’t mean the average (and sometimes even the above-average) user can’t use some help. These tips should help make Linux networking go a little more smoothly.

Kernel wireless maintainer John Linville outlined the past, present, and future of the Linux wireless stack on the first day of this year's Ottawa Linux Symposium. In his presentation, he ranged from early efforts, which were "a sore spot for Linux" to the future where it is likely that Linux will have support for some features before "that other OS". Along the way, he looked at various issues that wireless support in Linux faces, including vendor participation, suspend and resume, and regulatory issues.

Great video, and actual website, of another BOFH :) This weekend's comedic gold is quite a bit older than I would have thought. I feel like I've missed out, although I'm glad that someone finally mailed this link to me :) This is a simple (although a bit long at around 10 minutes) video that is absolutely hilarious. If you've ever done any kind of computer administration (and maybe if you've been on the other end of this debacle) it's entertaining stuff. The voices have been "chipmunked," but not to protect the innocent/guilty, since there's a cast list during the credits at the end. I'm thinking this thing was probably twice as long and the distorted voices are from a speedup of the entire video. No matter how it plays, this is a killer humor :)

Earlier this year prior to the release of GNOME 2.22 we had shared eight interesting improvements in GNOME 2.22. Some of these improvements included Epiphany with the WebKit back-end (if built with the proper argument), Evince Document Viewing improvements, Cheese web-camera software, Mousetweaks, the Vinagre VNC client, and Totem enhancements. Now with the official GNOME 2.24 release due out next month, this time around we're sharing a few of the interesting highlights for this GNOME update.

It's not every day that the New York Times writes articles about the Domain Name System, but then again this DNS bug is anything but normal. It's been over five weeks now since Dan Kaminsky first announced the major flaw that he found in the DNS protocol. Although most of the details of the bug have been public for a few weeks now, it wasn't until last week at the Black Hat and Defcon conferences in Las Vegas that Kaminsky explained the depth of the issue. As I listened to him describe the ways this bug can be exploited my heart dropped down into my stomach and I felt a little sick. My friend was only half joking when he whispered to me "I'm thinking about transferring to accounting."