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The summer has finished, and it's about time I summarised how we got on. We had 9 Summer of Code students working for us, and we had a 100% success rate this year. Woo! Last year we only managed 6 successful projects out of 10, so that's a major improvement. So, how did the various projects pan out? The proof of the pudding is in the code, of course, and these projects are all available to use today, either packaged in Debian or installed on central servers providing services. Here's a quick overview.

Kino is a video editor that allows you to produce your own video masterpieces using only free and open source software. With it, you can capture and edit clips from your video camera, add titles, insert still images, create transitions between scenes, and output the result in a number of formats. Best of all, it's easy to learn to use. But don't rely on the version in your distro -- grab the 1.1.1 release from SourceForge.net and build it yourself.

Freedomware is not intended as a term to replace Free Software or Open Source Software aka FOSS, FLOSS. These terms have their niche and place in society. They are well established and we are all better for it. The Free Software movement was not created to have mass market appeal it was created to address a serious issue. The right for mankind to use technology and to improve upon it given that the progress is shared freely. Free of charge yes as the very nature of its progress depends on it. But more important is that it is free as in freedom. Open Source Software on the other hand does have a mass market appeal and was created as a means to maximize the inclusion of various interests professional and otherwise.

Novell today announced the availability of openSUSE 10.3, the newest version of the award-winning community Linux distribution. Available for free download or in a convenient packaged retail edition, openSUSE 10.3 provides everything a user needs to get started with Linux. To improve the user experience, openSUSE 10.3 includes a flexible Linux-Windows dual-boot configuration, improved user interface, Microsoft Office file compatibility with the latest OpenOffice.org office productivity suite, and enhanced multimedia support.

"Today I found an excellent small website about the gender imbalance in Free software. There's been a lot about the topic on the linux/free software news sites too. Large parts of the free software community are rather hostile towards women, as unfortunately is usual in communities with a huge male majority. Which then prevents the community from becoming balanced because it will be unattractive to women."

The KDE 4.0 Release Event Team is pleased to announce a contest for the KDE 4.0 Release Event. The winners of this contest will be flown out to Mountain View, California on January 17-19, 2008. Hotel and meals will be covered for them during the event.

Security expert Bruce Schneier today wrote about the “Storm Worm” again. Go and read it and become very afraid if you are running the Windows operating system. Become even more afraid if you are responsible for a bunch of them, like in a company. And then get a clue and morph them all into something better, like installing any of the Linux/Unix/BSD variants.

As you may recall, Corel announced last November that the next release of its flagship WordPerfect Office productivity suite would come out in "mid 2007," and would support both the ODF as well as the OOXML document formats. It's now out a bit late and in beta, not commercial form - but it's also available as a free download for evaluation purposes.

This article explains how to improve/optimize/speed up package installation with Yum, install packages with Yum Extender (a GUI for Yum with extensive features to manage packages), and manage different external package repositories - with focus on prevention of problems with different repositories - on Fedora 7.

LXer Feature: 04-Oct-2007

This was originally going to be a comment attached to Build 'em Right, Build 'em Strong, Build 'em Linux. Then it grew and grew, and I decided that Ken deserved his own feature. And then I realized that there are a lot of unsung heroes of FOSS, so watch this space for future installments. I encourage all of you fine LXers to write your own "Heroes" features- there are a lot of people out there who deserve some recognition.

So what does Linux offer for the ace digital photographer who doesn't want to splurge on a Mac? Carla Schroder offers a look at one great tool, Digikam.

Adobe has released its first version of Flex Builder to support Desktop Linux. This version of its internet application development tool was released early to get feedback from developers and their priorities for additional features.

There are plenty of different terminal programs out there for all different desktops. YaKuake is one such KDE-based terminal emulator with a difference. It basically gives you a Quake-style drop-down terminal at the top of the screen, which you can access with a single keystroke.

The new version Puppy Linux is released. Puppy is a distribution for low end PCs, designed to run from media like usb sticks. It's size is less than 100 MB. This Puppy is a massive upgrade from the previous (v2.17.1). It has close binary compatibility with Slackware 12, with the objective of being able to install Slackware packages and have all or most of the required dependencies already in place.

As some of you may remember, 2 distros signed pacts with Microsoft in a short time. Those were Linspire and Xandros. Since 2004 I have been a Linspire Insider. I was as upset about this deal as many others were. I even had a phone call with Kevin Carmony regarding the matter. Well, at one point on the forums, Kevin Carmony told some upset members that if they did not like the way things were, they can start their own distro and see how it goes. So, former Freespire Leadership Board member Chris Medico assembled a team, of which I was honored to be asked to be a part of, which he lovingly calls Freedom Force. Within weeks, this new project, based on Kubuntu, had an Alpha. The project is called KlikIt Linux.

Last month, just one week after IBM announced it would help with OpenOffice.org's development, the company released Lotus Symphony, an office suite based on OpenOffice.org code. I found a lot of slick features in Lotus Symphony, but I worry that Symphony could affect the OpenOffice.org community adversely. Lotus Symphony includes a word processor, a spreadsheet program, and a presentation tool. You'll have to register with IBM to download Symphony. Installing the office suite is a no-brainer, and requires 490.5MB of disk space.

LINUX runs the Google servers that manage billions of searches each day. It also runs the TiVo digital video recorder, the Motorola Razr cellphone and countless other electronic devices. But why would anyone want to use Linux, an open-source operating system, to run a PC? “For a lot of people,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, “Linux is a political idea — an idea of freedom. They don’t want to be tied to Microsoft or Apple. They want choice. To them it’s a greater cause.”

Got a very nice letter from the EFF and am trying to put together an appointment to discuss options. The dtsc situation is under control for the moment, May light up again later next month when they look over our proposed solutions. In addition the next waste board stakeholders meeting has re-use on the agenda.

The Linux Foundation has announced a new collaborative agreement with Japan's Information Technology Promotion Agency (IPA), a government research institute that promotes information technology development and broadly supports the use of open standards and open-source software. The collaborative agreement is part of a plan to mutually assist in promoting open standards and the acceleration of open-source software adoption in Asia. The Linux Foundation will be participating in the upcoming IPA Forum 2007 User Conference in Tokyo.

For years, violations of the General Public License, or GPL, have been met with quiet discussions to resolve compliance problems that can result when open-source software is used improperly. Now, however, the Software Freedom Law Center is taking a hard-line approach, filing a copyright infringement lawsuit against Monsoon Multimedia for allegedly failing to abide by requirements of the GPL. "Simply coming into compliance now is not sufficient to settle the matter, because that would mean anyone can violate the license until caught, because the only punishment would be to come into compliance," said Dan Ravicher, SFLC's attorney on the case.