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Who said Google doesn't contribute to Open Source? This summer they're pumping more money than ever, taking more students than ever and supporting more project then ever before.

Last week, I wrote about the `GLIBC_2.4′ not found errors your game might get when an application built on a new distribution is run on an older distribution, such as Debian Stable and Slackware 11. Judging from my search logs, this problem seems to be common enough to warrant a follow-up post. I have since solved the problem and have not added new dependencies, and it does not involve using strange, mysterious scripts or older compilers.

Thanks to a wonderful new open source tool called Wubi, downloading and installing the latest version of Ubuntu Linux is now a snap for Windows users. It’s a pity the Ubuntu development team still hasn’t taken the hint with its latest release, Hardy Heron.

All your phones, are belong to Google — a brief overview of Android, the new software stack created by Google for the Open Handset Alliance. The Open Handset Alliance (OHA) is an industry trade group comprising more than 30 technology and mobile companies. The focus of the OHA is to accelerate innovation in the mobile application and hardware space and to provide consumers with a more comprehensive and inexpensive mobile device experience. Android is a new, mobile application development framework developed by Google for the OHA that represents part of a greater promise from OHA members to make the open platform an industry success.

Ubuntu 8.04, dubbed Hardy Heron, is out this week and Linuxophiles worldwide are excited. It’s not hard to see why, but is this really the much-fabled year of the Linux desktop? Will the Heron match the unmet hype of predecessor Gutsy Gibbon? And let me tell you just how spectacular and cool Wubi is.

At Phoronix we have looked at a number of Gigabyte products from their motherboards to graphics cards and even wireless adapters. However, today is our first time looking at one of Gigabyte's barebone solutions. The Gigabyte STA Thin Client, specifically the GB-STA-C7V7, is a mini-ITX solution that ships with a VIA C7 1.0GHz processor, UniChrome PRO graphics, is completely fan-free, and it's all packed in a slim yet stylized chassis. However, does the Gigabyte STA Thin Client work with Linux? We'll let you know today.

You’ve always dreamt of making panoramas of your holidays pictures. You’ve never done it cause you’ve never found the good software into Ubuntu or it was too complicated to set up? Me too. Until recently and the discovery of Hugin. Let see how to achieve this.

Good systems administrators know that implementing a robust backup procedure is one of their most important duties. Unfortunately, it's also one of the most complex and least fun. When the phone rings and there's a panic-stricken user on the other end who has just lost a crucial document, you need to be confident that you can promptly recover his missing files. Failure to do so can bring about a speedy end to a promising career in systems administration. So what's a budding sysadmin to do? Download the latest release of Bacula and watch those backup woes disappear into the dark of night.

The best storage engine for MySQL is by far InnoDB (and yes some applications can live with MyISAM only, but that's not the point). InnoDB (now part of Oracle) is also dual-licensed and has had an agreement with MySQL for several years now. On the surface everything is looking smooth. n practice it doesn't work quite that way: First because InnoDB hot-backup feature for instance has never been open source released. So contrary to the recent brouhaha, MySQL has fostered proprietary components for a long time. Second because even so SUN at large has a good relationship with Oracle when it comes to selling Oracle DB on SUN servers, it is unlikely that SUN will let its pricey acquisition be driven (through InnoDB/Oracle) by an outsider. Conversely, the day Oracle perceives MySQL+InnoDB as a threat, the existing agreement won't be renewed.

Linux is expanding its influence outside of the world of smartphones, and is poised to take a significant share of the mid-range mobile phone market as well, according to a new study from ABI Research. The study, released this week, found that efforts to promote and standardize Linux on mobile phones are paying off, while problems relating to Linux's processor requirements are being alleviated.

GNOME 2.22.0 was only released last month, but being released tomorrow is the first development release in the path towards GNOME 2.24.0. This first development release will be dubbed GNOME 2.23.1, with GNOME 2.23 being the unstable branch. The tarballs for this first release were due last night, with new versions of gnome-applets, mousetweaks, gnome-control-center, cheese, and other packages already being checked-in. All of the checked-in packages can be found on the gnome-announce-list.

Microsoft published 30,000 pages of protocol documentation, and added another 14,000 pages in the beginning of April 2008. After the publication of these documents, the Gartner Group made a advisory to the effect that Open Source developers should avoid accessing this information unless they had “rigorous processes to keep track of applicable patents”. The big question, at the end of the day: How exactly was a developer to know which protocols and functionality were patented and which were not? A few weeks ago, during my own investigation into these issues, I contacted Centrify Corp’s CEO, Tom Kemp.

Sun Microsystems is stepping up efforts to boost Java usage in Linux shops by working to remove some final encumbrances in the open-source Java platform. By freeing these up, Java can be fully open-source and thus be packaged more easily with Linux distributions. In conjunction with this activity, Sun is talking with Linux distributors, including OpenSuse, Ubuntu and Fedora to have them offer an updated version of OpenJDK, which constitutes the open-source Java platform. Sun plans to offer the updated OpenJDK soon and clear the last few encumbrances later.

Yoggie, the company that just loves to take those pesky security duties off of your computer's plate, is offering up yet another Linux-based mini-computer designed specifically to safeguard your laptop (and keep it focused on more important duties).

Lately I’ve noticed an emerging trend of Ubuntu bashing. It seems that the Linux community has now included Ubuntu bashing as a extension of the Microsoft bashing fringe. It’s actually pretty sad because the Microsoft bashers, are at least being loyal to the concept of GNU/Linux even though they are a lot like our crazy uncle Freddie the everyone nods and whispers about at family reunion time. Microsoft bashing though enjoyed as a sport by many Linux enthusiasts is not productive behavior and most of us get a naughty twinge of pleasure from it. Most of us also realize that its not behavior that is conducive to the spread of GNU/Linux and refrain from being obsessive compulsive in the behavior. After all no one wants to be like uncle Freddy… they just want to tell Uncle Freddy stories.

MySQL's boss Marten Mickos gives the real story about adding proprietary elements to MySQL - what will and what won't be free - and why he is a pragmatist rather than dogmatist when it comes to open source licensing.

rPath has entered a pact with Novell that makes creating a virtual appliance easier for developers – and corporate lawyers. As part of the deal, which was announced yesterday, rPath will OEM Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Server beginning in August, said Bill Marshall, the company’s CEO, and former Red Hatter. rPath’s Appliance Builder has been running its own Linux since the company’s inception but it doesn’t come with the legal peace-of-mind guarantee offered by Novell, he said. Despite Linux’s widespread acceptance, potential legal issues still keep customers up at night, the former Red Hat sales exec said.

A new release of Ubuntu Server, version 8.04, is scheduled to be available for free download Thursday with more enterprise qualities than previous releases. The move puts Canonical's Ubuntu, heretofore a consumer-oriented, desktop version of Linux, on more of a collision course with Red Hat Enterprise andNovell Suse Linux Enterprise. Ubuntu Server 8.04 will be supported for five years, only the second version of Ubuntu to be guaranteed Long Term Support, with the previous 6.06 version also receiving the LTS designation.

I'm very pleased to report that with the post-Fedora 9 election, the Board composition will be a better reflection of the strides our community has made in self-organization and self-governance, and of our healthy partnership with Red Hat. Starting with this election, the Board will move to a composition of five (5) community-elected seats and four (4) Red Hat-appointed seats. This is an issue I've been advocating over the past couple of weeks, and I'm delighted to be able to make this change following my first release as Fedora Project Leader.

Nokia is on the side of openness in the mobile industry -- in fact, history says it's inevitable, according to, Bob Iannucci, chief technology officer of Nokia Corp. Openness seems paramount, but how to get there? The telecom world isn't the model, Iannucci said. "If we imagine the telecoms' way of doing that, you imagine these smoke-filled rooms where people make a decision, and seven years later, some outdated technology comes out. We can't do that," he said. But neither can mobile vendors realistically replicate what the computer industry keeps doing. The mainframe, minicomputer, and PC worlds each saw the value get sucked out of hardware and shifted first to software, then to services. Computers had dominant players that dictated some hardware standards, though; mobile phone vendors aren't likely to let one player decide everything, no matter how popular the iPhone gets.

[Read between the lines. It's yet another industry who's business model is threatened by openness and who's afraid of actually having to provide services to make money instead of peddling cheap hardware at too high prices. - Sander]