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Beagle and Tracker are projects that allow you to index your files so you can quickly search filesystems. Both projects started out with the intention of being used with the GNOME desktop, but have recently made a push to be desktop-independent and work with KDE and other desktop environments. Over two days, we'll compare their usability and performance. Both projects are not only standalone tools, but often incorporated in other utilities. If you are interested in which applications use them, you can read the lists for Beagle and Tracker. Depending on how your distribution packages Beagle support, you might find that an extension for Firefox is available so that Beagle can index every Web page you view.

LXer Feature: 06-Aug-2008

More news, notes and a well deserved rant from LinuxWorld 08', the .org Pavillion booths, installfest and proof of my actual physical presence at the show. :-)

What is really satisfying is getting sufficiently involved in a project to be able to have a direct influence on it, as I am with"Joomla!". It's great to be able to identify a minor irritation, to fix it, and to get it to a production release. This has been my experience twice in recent weeks. I've implemented small changes to the system that make it just a little easier to use. Not only will I enjoy the product more as a result, I'll have the satisfaction of knowing that thousands of systems administrators out there might think just for a moment,"oh, they fixed that - great!"

Welcome to the The Digital Tipping Point (DTP) collection. The DTP crew describes their project as a Point-of-View (POV) documentary film about the rapidly growing global shift to open source software, and the effects that massive wave of technological change will have on literacy, art, and culture around the world.

Welcome to this year's 8th issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian community. Some of the topics covered in this issue include: Lenny frozen, Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 updated to include support for newer hardware, Schedule for 8th annual Debian Conference announced, Debian Days around the world and much more.

In this video interview, Aaron Fulkerson talks about MindTouch, the company he founded, and its DekiWiki product, which he helped create. In the first half of the conversation, Aaron says Deki is downloaded by about 3,000 people every day, that the open source project has "thousands" of developers, and that his company is profitable after only two years in business. In the second half, Fulkerson talks about the need for a strong personality at the head of an open source project, and has other advice for both charitable and commercial open source project leaders. If you either lead or hope to lead an open source project, or you plan to build a company based on open source software, this video is full of valuable advice for you.

The 7th Annual So Cal Linux Expo will be February 20-22, 2009. And for 2009, the Expo will return to the Westin LAX Hotel, site of the 6th Expo.

This year the show seems a little smaller although it is hard to know for sure without comparing numbers (which I don't have handy). My only point of reference being the exhibit floor which appears to have fewer exhibitors, wider isles... and this year there is an "Installfest" section that takes up a bit of room... that makes one wonder if they decided to add it to eliminate a big chunk of empty space.

Open source software topped the list of business "risk factors" outlined in Microsoft's annual 10-K report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, published last week. The emphasis seems a little surprising. For instance, global open source Linux use currently trails at 0.82 percent, while Microsoft Windows dominates the operating system market at 91 percent, according to stats from Net Applications' Market Share.

The Network Time Protocol (NTP) is a protocol for synchronizing the clocks of computer systems over packet-switched, variable-latency data networks. NTP uses UDP port 123 as its transport layer. It is designed particularly to resist the effects of variable latency (Jitter).

How to feed command output to a while loop in bash without using pipes.

This article walks you through a simple Linux installation on the PS3 and your first program in C which utilizes the Cell BE architecture's Power Processing Element and Synergistic Processing Elements.

IBM fired the opening salvo at this year's LinuxWorld Conference and Expo, and to the surprise of no one, it was aimed squarely at Microsoft. Sure, it was the low-hanging fruit -- Microsoft's an easy target. It's kind of like taking pot shots at John McCain at an Obama fund-raiser. But here, the ammunition was more notable than the target.

If there was one solid message to come from the opening keynotes at LinuxWorld in San Francisco, it is this: Now is the time. Illustrated through the lenses of two large, mainstream industries -- financial services and health care -- the first two presenters talked about ways that investments in new technology might help the bottom lines.

During a press briefing at LinuxWorld today in San Francisco, IBM announced a new partnership with Red Hat, Novell, and Canonical to offer "Microsoft-free" personal computers with IBM's Lotus Notes and Lotus Symphony software. The goal is to provide a preintegrated stack that can serve as a complete alternative to Windows and Microsoft Office.

Let me introduce to you, my sister. She likes coach bags, her little pug, time with her family, and drinking Miller Lite at country festivals. She likes trendy bars and trendy clothes. She likes to watch Friends and Sex in the City. She majored in Criminal Justice. Her radio habits are Top 40 and/or country. Needless to say, she's the furtherest thing from a geek anyone in our generation can be. And she hates computers. I had a spare computer laying around. 1.7Ghz Pentium 4, 512 MB of RAM, DVD-Burner and I figured it was time she got rid of her old Celeron HP. I got a copy of Xubuntu 8.04 and began my install...

OpenOffice.org 2.4.0 is a free, open source alternative to Microsoft's Office application suite. It is fantastic if you need basic office applications -- such as a word processor or spreadsheet -- at no cost. However, large organisations and power users may be disappointed by its lack of features and support.

Since the release of the Quake 3 engine source code in summer 2005 a lot of modifications and spin-offs have emerged. One such spin-off, Smokin' Guns (formerly known as Western Quake 3), is all about classical Wild West themes: big rifles and revolvers, wailing steel guitars, bank robberies, and smooth talking. It's a game you don't want to miss.

The nasty taste which has always 'ever-so-slightly' tainted my use of Ubuntu is that Mono is there only to support applications written in languages and for platforms which are basically Microsoft's. It encourages software development using systems that are based on technologies almost certainly encumbered by a whole raft of M$ patents. To my mind, there are many great non M$ languages and architectures out there which are almost part-and-parcel of Linux programming and I see no need to bring .NET, ASP or even Visual Basic to my desktop. If I want to write an application, I could use PHP, Python, PERL, C, C++, Java and, of course, many others. Why do I need to endorse and encourage the proliferation of non-free software by relying on M$'s IP and the smell of their stinky patents? Well, I figured I don't. So, I thought I'd see what happened if I removed Mono from Ubuntu.

A vendor of Linux-based WiFi arrays is finally releasing a version of its WiFi Monitor utility for Linux desktops. The open source, widget-like Xirrus WiFi Monitor for Linux enables users to monitor, secure, and troubleshoot WiFi networks, says Xirrus. The company refers to the software as a "desklet," a widget-like applet that provides quick access to information and functions. Developed under the gDesklets framework using the Python language, the utility is being made available under the GPL (General Public License). Users have access to complete source code of the application, says Xirrus.