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Recently I have been pondering whether to buy the eee pc 1000 for university work. Being a massive Ubuntu fan the first thought that came into my mind was can I install Ubuntu on it. The answer is yes, however there are a few issues. But do not worry, some good people have come together to create eeeBuntu. This is a modified version of Ubuntu, more suited for the eee pc.

The number of machines shipped with Linux preloaded on them has multiplied a whopping 28 times since Microsoft launched its Vista operating system in January 2007. Sounds impressive, but Linux was starting from a rather small base in traditional sales channels: of all PCs sold in the UK last January through indirect channels, a feeble 0.1 per cent had Linux preloaded, according to numbers given to us by market research firm Context. The Linux share of this route to market has edged up ever since the Vista launch. Then it broke the two per cent barrier in May after the latest release of Ubuntu, the strain of Linux most capable of kicking Microsoft in the shins.

The darcs revision control system has all but lost out to git within the past few months. A rather large part of the reason is a rushed and very poorly worded release announcement, following a rather long (I'm told 4 years; I haven't been aware of it that long, which itself is perhaps ominous) post-1.0 silence from the darcs developers. The truth of the matter is only now becoming clear.

A couple of days ago, I read this on Matthew Garrette’s blog, where he tells us about a vendor’s BIOS trying to figure out the OS type/version and setting things around on deciding the OS it is running. The call in question was _OSI(“Linux”). He goes on to say that the action the firmware takes, on finding out if the OS is linux, was probably inaccurate and it was good that linux kernel DOES NOT identify itself as “Linux” and returns false for the _OSI(“Linux”) and instead returns true when probed for Windows. That got me thinking, the first thought being that isn’t this a BIG flaw in the kernel. But “Never make judgements straightaway”, I have learnt in the past. So, thought about reading it a bit more. After some googling around, I came to know the sound reasoning behind the decision.

In reading through Microsoft's annual report, I am struck by how far the company has come in appreciating the threat that open source brings to Redmond. I'm also shocked by just how ill-informed the company continues to be with regard to open source as a business strategy. Steve Ballmer has revealed this before in his quips about "Open source won't pay our bills," but here Microsoft has managed to enshrine its ignorance in a public document.

The leader of the Free Software movement, Richard Stallman, is calling New Zealand’s copyright laws unjust and plans to use an upcoming tour of the country to rouse opposition to them. Stallman, the founder of the GNU project and of the Free Software Foundation, says New Zealand’s copyright laws place restrictions on distributing certain free software packages. Specifically, these enable users to “escape from digital handcuffs (also known as Digital Restrictions Management or DRM)”, he says. “New Zealand’s law does not go as far as the DMCA in the US, but it is unjust nonetheless,” he says.

I've been struggling with various mail clients to deal with my huge IMAP mailbox which contains about 200k messages. I did't want to split it into more than one. It's not my job but an e-mail client's job; see what GMail does! Although Opera Mail does a great job on dealing with such a big IMAP mailbox, it lacks a couple critical features which make me have a difficulty in organizing my messages. I have missed Evolution virtual folders especially. Before I give up again and stick to Opera Mail, I decided to give a try to various IMAP-to-Maildir synchronization tools: isync and OfflineIMAP.

Users of Compiz, a window manager that provides pretty visual effects, know that a lot of those effects are just for fun. Things like drawing fire on the screen or folding up windows like a paper airplane to close them look cool but have little real value. Personally, I am most concerned with the Compiz plugins that add functionality to my desktop. There are plenty of those too. I am going to outline some of my favorites and most useful.

LXer Feature: 03-Aug-2008

This week we have Linus Torvalds on Linux Distributions, A Quick Look at OpenOffice.org Writer 3.0, It's not a clone, but it can run Mac OS X, Insanely Securing Your Unix or Linux Systems and several articles on KDE 4.1.

The 10th annual LinuxWorld Conference & Expo and its partner Next Generation Data Center Conference kick off today at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, where the open-source operating system will be the center of attention for enterprise users, vendors and IT enthusiasts.

I tested quite a few versions of Puppy Linux in recent days on my 1999-era Compaq Armada 7770dmt. The bad news is that version 3.01 wouldn't configure X properly. Any attempts to do so and then start X crashed the box. The other bad news is that while Puppy 4.00 loads fine and runs fine, for some reason the load time for Abiword went from 8 to 10 seconds in previous Puppy builds to 30 seconds. That's quite a rollback. On a more positive note, start times for Seamonkey were about the same.

A rage against MS, followed by some sysadmin humor.

The "kill" command can be an invaluable tool for stopping runaway services. Here's a plain-English guide to how it works.

Untangle, Canonical and Intel all are taking steps to get Linux installed on low-cost computers for school kids. But can Ubuntu Linux really close the digital divide? Before you answer, here's some perspective from The VAR Guy.

Nginx (pronounced â??engine xâ??) is a free, open-source, high-performance HTTP server and reverse proxy, as well as an IMAP/POP3 proxy server. Written by Igor Sysoev in 2005, Nginx now hosts between 1% and 4% of all domains worldwide. Although still in beta, Nginx is known for its stability, rich feature set, simple configuration, and low resource consumption.

Sun Microsystems last week said it will soon open source the core components of Sun Java System Web Proxy and Sun Java System Web Server 7.0 under the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) license....Jim Jagielski, co-founder, member and director of the Apache Software Foundation, said he thinks Sun's release of the Web and Proxy server code is"proof of their involvement and commitment to open source," according to a prepared statement. ...BSD-style licenses are"unrestricted," meaning they allow anyone to do anything with the code, including putting it into a proprietary product, without contributing anything back to the community.

We have been covering the Linux benchmarking scene since 2004, but one area we have never really been satisfied with have been the OpenGL tests that are available. There are now plenty of free software games that are available for benchmarking, but with most of them being based around the open-source Quake 3 engine, they aren't that demanding upon the graphics processor. The ones generally good with stressing the graphics capabilities of the system are the id Software games (Doom 3, Quake 4, and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars) with native Linux clients. Under the workstation umbrella, there is just SPECViewPerf. On the Windows side though there are a number of OpenGL and DirectX games, tech demos, and other benchmarks. Thanks in part to the Phoronix Test Suite, however, we are starting to see a new era of OpenGL benchmarking that are able to stress the graphics card and are visually pleasing.

Avant Window Navigator (Awn) is a dock-like bar which sits at the bottom of the screen on your Linux Distriution. It has support for launchers, task lists, and third party applets. The dock at the bottom of the screen gives a nice apple Mac like look for your openSUSE. There are a lot of Themes Plugins and Applets that can be added onto the dock.

Linux is beginning to find its legs as the foundation in many different technologies and in the process is fueling a feedback loop that is helping accelerate the operating system's popularity. As more and more people contribute from areas such as mobile, data center power management, and real-time technologies, innovations are coming rapid fire and when folded into the Linux kernel provide benefits across a wide spectrum.

Last week iTWire reported how HP, Intel and Yahoo! are joining forces to spearhead a global and open source test bed for the advancement of cloud computing. Now IBM has thrown a few hundred million into the technology as well. It would appear that IBM has its head in the clouds, along with its wallet. The company has announced it has plans to build a $360 million state-of-the-art cloud computing data centre in the Research Triangle Park facility, North Carolina.