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This is the Moscow-based outfit’s desktop distribution that uses the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment, a low-resource usage desktop environment that the release announcement states “is guaranteed to work on machines with 256 MB of RAM and will likely work even with less amount of memory.”

Do not take that literally, because a base installation with nothing running uses that amount of RAM. With Firefox running (two tabs open), usage jumps to over 350 MB of RAM.

Fedora 17 GNOME beta, as well as the beta of the KDE, LXDE and Xfce Spins, were released yesterday – almost two weeks past due date. This, however, is not highly unusual for the Fedora project. Unlike Ubuntu, their release schedule is not cast in concrete. They are more interested in getting stuff that works out the door, instead of shoving something out to meet a set deadline. Even for a beta release.

Can you imagine yourself in any of these situations? You sit in front of your computer, whether a laptop or desktop, look at the screen, move your mouse and … wait until the computer is ready to take your commands. But, the computer is too busy doing other operations to respond to your commands …

The Oracle v. Google trial is kind of hard to miss this week, and it's dragging out all kinds of nuggets of information. One of the best this week? Oracle's CEO unintentionally taking a jab at his own company's enterprise Linux strategy.

I can tell you all manner of good things about languages I avoid, and all manner of bad things about languages I enjoy. PHP is the lone exception. Virtually every feature in PHP is broken somehow. The language, the framework, the ecosystem, are all just bad. And I can’t even point out any single damning thing, because the damage is so systemic. Every time I try to compile a list of PHP gripes, I get stuck in this depth-first search discovering more and more appalling trivia. (Hence, fractal.) [found via LWN]

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison showed his trademark brashness on the witness stand, as the trial over Google's use of Java code in Android began in earnest. However, his testimony was less than smooth, at times, and may have abetted the enemy. It wasn't just the gift he handed to opposing counsel with his admission of an interest in the smartphone market, said tech analyst Rob Enderle. "He also stumbled about certain aspects of Java."

"This is a small manual of iptables, I’ll show some basic commands, you may need to know to keep your computer secure." This article is a small compendium of my most used iptables command, and a compilation of some of my previous posts about iptables.

I was surprised by the beginning of the Economist's article "Error Message" (based on the IADB study) that says the Peruvian Una Laptop por Niño project "did not accomplish anything in particular". The IADB study clearly stated that the project "substantially increased use of computers both at school and at home", "positive effects were found in general cognitive skills" and improved "competence in operating laptops in tasks related to core applications (like a word processor) and searching for information on the computer".

Programs and services are different kinds of entities. A program is a work that you can execute; a service is an activity that you might interact with. For programs, we make a distinction between free and nonfree (proprietary). More precisely, this distinction applies to a program that you have a copy of: either you have the four freedoms for your copy or you don't. An activity (such as a service) doesn't exist in the form of copies, so it's not possible to have a copy or to make copies. As a result, the four freedoms that define free software don't make sense for services.

The last few days have seen a depressing flurry of forum topics and blog posts about the supposed death of Slackware, evidenced (primarily) by the fact that Slackware.com has been down quite a bit recently (indeed, it is down at the time of this writing)...

Nokuntu (Nokia+Ubuntu) is Simply and User-friendly Apps for managing Nokia phones for Ubuntu and debian based distributions.

For my debian respin named "Terrible Linux" I'm developing a start/intro screen called "Terrible Start". I have released a test version which you can download an try out. I would like to get some feedback on how and if it works, and maybe feature suggestions and related comments you have about it.

MATE has come of age, with version 1.2 removing remaining GNOME references in this major update

Netflix has announced it's open sourcing its set of "Monkey" web site fault testing tools and you would be foolish to not at least check them out. These tools let you test your site under worst-case scenario conditions.

Regardless of how good they are, some Linux applications have very little appeal to all but users with specialized needs. That is not the case with Xournal. Even if you do not use a tablet for inputing notes, this app still lets you create with style. If you are looking for a very handy note-taking application, check out Xournal.

Nadim Kobeissi, master hacker, summoned for interrogation multiple times as a teenager by cyber-intelligence authorities in Beirut, Lebanon, sat in the backyard of a restaurant in Brooklyn, astounded that he was being treated to lunch..

KDE China User meeting On March 30th, a grand meeting called KDE China User was held in Beijing. This meeting provided KDE users, community members and technophiles with a nice "face-to-face" opportunity to discuss KDE's latest and cutting edge technology trends. Read on to find out what transpired at the meeting and what the future might hold for KDE in China. read more

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Precise pangolin in a few days will soon be released and new and cool apps keep being added to the Ubuntu Software Centre. Check out last month’s most downloaded free and paid apps.

The writer Toby Young tells a story about how the modern 100m race is run in primary schools. At the starting pistol, everyone runs like mad. At the 50m point, the fastest children stop and wait for the heavier kids to catch up. Then all the youngsters walk across the finishing line together, holding hands. I have no idea if this is true, but the media class’s newly acquired enthusiasm for teaching all children computer programming is very similar.

In the past I have written several howtos for remotely unlocking fully encrypted Debian installations. With the advent of Debian Squeeze, the developers have integrated a simple way to do so. Most stuff is provided directly by Debian itself - meaning you don't need 3rd party scripts anymore. However it still involves a few steps which I describe below. Also I provide you with a bash script that will do all the steps automatically.