Showing all newswire headlines

In the past, ITWire has been less than flattering over Microsoft’s OpenXML document format. Make no mistake, an open file format is definitely a must-have. Nevertheless, it exists so let’s be pragmatic: OpenXML can greatly bridge the gap between Windows and Linux. In fact, it can open up whole new opportunities for Linux coders to produce documents in a Microsoft-friendly format.

There are many implications to be considered here. Let us begin with the fact that Novell has awoken the sleeping giant which is software patents. The deal gave credibility to an argument that Linux infringes on Microsoft patents and is therefore required to license Microsoft technologies. Another important issue is the exclusionary nature of the deal with Microsoft. Novell gains access to and develops various bits of software that other Linux distributors cannot have. This undermines the principles and spirit of Free software which — among several other things — thrives in collaboration and sharing. The relationship should be reciprocal in order for progress of Linux as a whole to be fast.

A European Union court upheld most of a landmark 2004 European Commission antitrust decision against Microsoft on Monday in a crucial victory for the European competition regulator against the U.S. software giant. The EU's Court of First Instance dismissed Microsoft's appeal on all substantive points but one.

Update: A more detailed story is available on Reuters UK.

[Not directly Linux related, but definately of interest here – Sander]

As recently reported on Slashdot, Apple, in its infinite wisdom, has added a checksum to the iPod database apparently to restrict non-iTunes products (like Amarok via libgpod) from having the ability to add music. To me this sounds pretty familiar. This is the same thing they did to iTunes 4.5 to make it harder for other apps to read off their DAAP shares, they changed it again in iTunes 7; open source apps are still unable to read iTunes 7 DAAP shares. But there's better news on this iPod front. The guys from #gtkpod reverse engineered the hashes.

[Site is being slashdotter and dugg, so may take a while to load – Sander]

We all know how far open source software has progressed, but has it come so far to not only challenge Windows, but replace it? Can you really install Linux and open source software in place of Windows, and want for nothing? In the first of this multi-part series we send in Ashton Mills to take on the challenge of using nothing but Linux and open source software... for absolutely everything. Will he find nirvana in the process, or lose all his hair in frustration? Follow him in and find out.

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Continued work in Plasma, including a KMLDonkey data engine, a RSS data engine and news feed applet, and a Virtual Desktop switcher applet. More interface work for Amarok 2.0, with progress on alternate music service integration. Support for webseeding in KTorrent. Support for network access of colour palettes in KolourPaint. An Akonadi resource for the del.icio.us bookmarking service. CMake support for PyKDE4 applications. Wider logging support in KSystemLog. SVG caching optimises usage, resulting in speed gains in many applications. KTeaTime rewritten for KDE 4, KPlayer ported to KDE 4. New game based on "Deal or No Deal" arrives in playground/games. More code reorganisation in KDE SVN. KAider translation utility moves to kdereview.

Review of two of the most featured terminal emulators, for both Gnome and KDE. Multi-Gnome-Terminal and QuadKonsole, both of them let you open multiple terminal windows, on the same screen.

Let's imagine that you set up a non-profit to recycle electronics and divert computers from going directly into landfills or otherwise being destroyed by a grinder. You look for ways to refurbish these components and possibly recombine them into functional computers that go out to areas and institutions that have difficulty obtaining computers. You might even collect some of the vintage electronics that comes through the door and hang on to this stuff because you think it's cool and somebody may want it someday.

Patents are making trouble again. This time the upcoming wireless network standard 802.11n is the victim, its finalisation potentially blocked because of a patent held by an Australian research institution.

Open Source Systems Management Leader to Support Worldwide Education and Awareness Event

Over this past week end I have posted three Microsoft Office on Linux with Wine articles.

As the Atheros driver issue continues to simmer on the OpenBSD -misc mailing list and the Linux Kernel mailing list, with debate continuing over when the license of source code can be altered or added to, Eben Moglen made a statement for the Software Freedom Law Center. He began by defending their own actions, "it might be useful to recall the first stage of this process, when OpenBSD developers were accused of misappropriating Atheros code, and SFLC investigated and proved that no such misappropriation had occurred? Wild accusations about our motives are even more silly than they are false." He went on to acknowledge, "we understand that attribution issues are critically important to free software developers; we are accustomed to the strong feelings that are involved in such situations. In the fifteen years I have spent giving free legal help to developers throughout the community, attribution disputes have been, always, the most emotionally charged."

Bad URLs, every Web site's bane, generate the infamous 404 error. Make your 404s useful by customizing redirects based on your site's content. This article shows you how to create your own 404 error-message intelligent CGI handler to provide useful links and 404 error page redirects for the contents of your site.

This is the third article in the “CLI tricks” series. This time we are going to cover UNIX-specific pipes, streams and redirections, explaining what they are for and how they can help us in every day console tasks.

openSUSE News is running a "Sneak Peeks at openSUSE 10.3" article which takes a look at KDE 4 in the upcoming release. In this version openSUSE will be providing a 1-CD KDE installation ISO that comes complete with some KDE 4 games, KRDC and KRFB. It also features an interview with KDE core developer Dirk Müller. He discusses KDE 4 development, plans for KDE applications developed by openSUSE, and general targets of the openSUSE KDE team in the future.

A few days ago one of the Vino developers, Jonh Wendell, released a new public build of Vinagre. Vinagre is designed to be a VNC client for the GNOME desktop and while it is still under development, in our testing thus far we found it to be an excellent VNC client. In this article, we'll be offering a brief preview of Vinagre 0.3.

LXer Feature: 16-Sept-2007

Some of the big stories this week, SCO files for chapter 11, Microsoft pushes through another shadow update, IBM finally decides to officially support OpenOffice and Apple modifies their new iPods to not work with Linux.

This guide shows how to install and configure Smokeping on Debian Etch to monitor network latency. From the Smokeping web site: "SmokePing is a deluxe latency measurement tool. It can measure, store and display latency, latency distribution and packet loss. SmokePing uses RRDtool to maintain a longterm data-store and to draw pretty graphs, giving up to the minute information on the state of each network connection."

When Walt Mossberg talks, people listen. He's the big tech writer at the Wall Street Journal, and for those who don't know, he's generally regarded as being in the Apple camp. Here he gives Ubuntu a try. Having the WSJ report on Linux and Ubuntu is huge. There will be a whole lot more downloads of Ubuntu than usual as the result of this kind of exposure, and one major-media piece generally begats more than a few others.

Mount a remote file system through ssh Using sshfs