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The X-Fi family of sound cards from Creative Labs has been around for over two years but through this time there has been no Linux support officially from Creative or from the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA). Among the Creative X-Fi solutions are the X-Fi XtremeGamer, X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Pro, X-Fi Platinum Fatal1ty Champion Series, and the X-Fi Elite Pro. However, Creative Labs is on the heals of finally releasing a new audio Linux driver that supports the X-Fi family. The driver that will be released any day now is considered beta software, but worst of all is that this sound driver will be closed-source.

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: A security fix developed for KDM, covering KDE 3.3.0 to 3.5.7. A KioBrowser data engine, HDD monitor applet, and general layout work in Plasma. More refinements in Parley (formerly KVocTrain). GeoData subproject in Marble to support popular geographic data formats. An AI player added to Kombination. Development renewed on the KPicross game. Basic printing support in Gwenview...

In the past, I have found myself hesitant to jump to the Macintosh platform. It was not because there is anything wrong with OS X per se, but the lack of an application called Evolution, among other Linux-only applications, that I would miss using Ubuntu.

Not only was this week marked by the Intel Developer Forum, but the final version of KateOS 3.6 was also released earlier in the week. KateOS 3.6 features a new LiveCD installer, hundreds of updates to packages, a software-powered hibernation system, a new version of update-notifier, and new internationalization support. KateOS is not nearly as popular as Ubuntu or Fedora, but we highly recommend checking it out if you're after a Xfce-powered desktop.

If you've been following the current rift in the Linux community between Linus Torvalds and his minions squaring off against Con Kolivas and the mainstream Linux fanatics, you probably know that it's getting quite heated.

This past week was marked by the release of the NVIDIA 100.14.19 display driver for Linux and Solaris, which was the first alternative OS driver release from this Santa Clara company in about three months. The public change-log is quite lengthy and finally delivered on fixing the GeForce 8 performance regression. In our GeForce 8800GTS Linux tests, the performance fix was very evident. However, now that we have had the time to run more extensive tests with the GeForce 8 series and this new driver, we have found not everything to be smooth sailing.

Computers in the European Union should be sold without a bundled operating system, according to this submission to the European Commission. It says that the bundling of Microsoft Windows with computers is not in the public interest, and prevents meaningful competition in the operating system market.

LXer Feature: 23-Sept-2007

Some of the big stories this week include: A non-profit that refurbishes computers with FOSS get hassled by the EPA, Microsoft wants in on the OLPC, SCO blames Linux for having to file for Chapter 11 and IBM joins up with OpenOffice.org and then releases its own free office suite. All this and more in the LXer Weekly Roundup.

This document describes how to set up Amanda (The Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver) on Debian Etch. For this tutorial I chose Ubuntu v7.04 as a backup-client. The resulting system provides a flexible backup system with many features. It will be able to back up multiple hosts via network to various devices. I chose the disk based backup for this howto.

Setup CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System) Server and Client in Debian

Sometimes I just gotta wonder about GNU/Linux and wi-fi...Maybe you can help.

Howto Set Flickr images as Ubuntu desktop wallpaper

Military tacticians often bewail the havoc that the "fog of war" (i.e., the inability to communicate effectively amid the chaos of the battlefield) wreaks on their carefully laid plans. About 10 days ago I tried to do a bit of fog cutting when I posed a few questions at Microsoft's Jason Matusow's blog .

We decide to take a fast ride on Mandriva 2008 RC2. We looked at the KDE version of this Linux distribution that was released on September 21 2007. Screenshots of KDE plus flash videos of both the KDE desktop as well as the GNOME.

Every Unix system offers several useful commands for finding files and searching them for strings. Together with programming techniques such as streams, pipes, redirections, and regular expressions they comprise very powerful tools ideal for administrative tasks.

JeOS is the latest buzz word in virtualization, however the concept itself is nothing new. Turns out that system administrators have been "hip" for awhile now, as juicing is something very similar to building a chroot environment!

Build an Eclipse plug-in that allows users to manipulate and navigate the content of an Eclipse Modeling Framework-based model.

Holonyx Inc. announced its Partner Program to provide Linux support and open source software support to Value Added Resellers and System Integrators. This program will allow Holonyx Partners to expand the technology solutions they offer to their customers by implementing fully supported open source solutions in their customer accounts.

The thinking seems to go something like this. Linux has to succeed broadly on the desktop as an alternative to Windows because:

* It’s a good way to support development of the OS and its attendant applications. People are more likely to invest in an existing success story than one that’s struggling.
* Linux is a technologically better system and it deserves to win.
* Someone has to stand up to bully-boy Microsoft

Remember Ubuntu Lite? The lighter-than-Xubuntu, more-graphical-than-Fluxbuntu variant of Ubuntu seemed about to get off the ground last year. Then it disappeared. In that time, Fluxbuntu has floundered, too. And while Xubuntu has never looked better and generally runs pretty well, I'd like to see Ubuntu play in the space occupied by Puppy, Damn Small Linux, DeLi and AntiX.