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I've been hard on Ubuntu 10.04 over the life of the release. While the UI changes in 11.04 (GNOME giving way to Unity) are bigger, I thought the changes from 9.10 to 10.04 were too huge and unproven for an LTS release. My opinion was and is that 10.04 needed to be 9.10 with bug fixes and not a total reworking of the GNOME theme with buttons on the other side of the screen and lots of unproven, slightly broken Ubuntu-coded (or -ordered) enhancements.

Disk encryption is not something most personal computer users think of when they consider ways to boost the security profile of their computer. A firewall? Yes, that in the minds of most is what computer security is all about. However, a firewall is a network security tool, and it is useless if your computer is lost or stolen. That is when disk encryption comes into play. And if you truly care about guarding access to your data, encrypting the hard drive holding it is just as important as a firewall.

So, how does encrypting a hard drive, protect your data?

eCryptfs is a POSIX-compliant enterprise-class stacked cryptographic filesystem for Linux. You can use it to encrypt partitions and also directories that don't use a partition of their own, no matter the underlying filesystem, partition type, etc. This tutorial shows how to use eCryptfs to encrypt a directory on Debian Squeeze.

Canonical, promoter of Ubuntu Linux, has finally announced a new partner program called Ubuntu Advantage (UA). Ubuntu certainly has a strong following in certain niche PC markets. But can Canonical finally master the partner ecosystem? Here’s the update.

Keeping Red Hat out of Windows shops The SUSE division of Attachmate has managed to talk Microsoft into shelling out another chunk of change – $100m – to help prop up SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, the Linux distro formerly controlled by Novell, and to help drive Red Hat's rival distro from Windows shops.…

Habey announced a 12-inch panel PC with a 1.8GHz, dual-core Intel Atom D525 processor and Nvidia Ion GT218 graphics card. Ready for home theater applications, the PPC-6512 offers HDMI/VGA dual display capability, plus mini-PCIe, SATA, USB, serial, and Ethernet connections, according to the company....

The latest feature to be pulled into the Linux 3.1 kernel is support for OpenRISC, an open-source CPU architecture...

After an earlier quick look, it seemed Linvo GNU/Linux was worthy of a spotlight. Linvo is a Slackware-based distribution featuring GNOME 2.32 and is shipped as a live image. The desktop is pretty and features a handy set of applications. In addition, additional applications are available through a popular one-click format.

Sharing data is a very frequent activity in the computer world. There are many great ways and utilities to share data with other people on network. Python provides a very quick and simple way to share data with people on the network. To share the data within a directory, go to that directory (through cd command) and execute command python -­m SimpleHTTPServer <portnumber> .Please note that the above command is very case sensitive .

There are three ways to start applications when the Ubuntu server starts; upstart jobs, backward compatible system-V scripts and using rc.local. This article will provide examples of how to make it work.

It's been four years since Microsoft and Novell inked their controversial interoperability agreement and it still had a year left to run. Even though SUSE is under new management with Attachmate Group, Microsoft liked the agreement so much that it decided to re-up the deal for another four years and $100 million. Attachmate looked the $100 million in the face, and said yes.

Few programmers enjoy writing software documentation, though the quality of their lamentations on the subject indicates that many are talented writers. Good source code documentation takes time and effort, and it’s essential, so what’s an overworked coder to do? Look for tools to make it easier, like the Doxygen documentation system. Doxygen generates documentation directly from source code. It supports multiple output formats, such as HTML, PDF, RTF, man pages, and LaTeX. It works out-of-the-box with C++, C, Java, Objective-C, Python, IDL, Fortran, VHDL, PHP, C#, and D, and community members have written helpers for other languages such as Perl, JavaScript, Visual Basic, Object Pascal, VB.Net, and TCL.

This week's KDE Commit-Digest brings two featured articles: Milian Wolff writes about his work on C++2011 support in KDevelop and Dominik Haumann presents improvements in Kate Variable Editor. The changes review brings: Work on C++2011 support in KDevelop continues. KStars gains a program to write NOMAD data to MySQL, GSoC work on FOV export, speed optimizations and a fix in file seek. From the security-related changes, there is improved protection against spoofing attacks in URLs in KWebkitpart. Resource storage support is improved in KDE-Runtime. Karbon now supports moving objects between layers. User interface improvements can be seen in PublicTransport, including new alarm configuration and colors in filter menus. KMail and KGraphViewer, independently, see performance improvements in font handling. SSL support in Rekonq gets cleanup and improvements. Among the other changes, we can see bugfixes in KDE-PIM, KMyMoney, Calligra, K3B and PublicTransport. Read the rest of the Digest here. read more

The Desktop Summit is only 2 weeks away. Excitement builds! The program consists of 3 days of talks, followed by 4 days of workshops and BoFs. In these sessions, Free Desktop contributors and enthusiasts gather face-to-face to discuss and work on current topics. read more

Mikogo is a freeware, cross-platform desktop sharing tool. Starting with the latest version 4 - released a few days ago -, Mikogo is also available for Linux [...]

TODAY is Ubuntu Cloud Days #UCD. UCD is an IRC event where the Ubuntu Cloud Community gets together around tuition sessions and information sharing. During Cloud Days, you’ll learn lots of exciting stuff, you’ll interact with tons of smart people, and you’ll just have fun!

The Wine development release 1.3.25 is now available. The source is available now, Binary packages are in the process of being built, and will appear soon at their respective download locations.

From Android to iOS, Google and Apple have changed the rules of the game in mobile IT. But what if the rules of the game changed again? Specifically, what if Google made Chrome OS available for MacBook notebooks? Here’s the update.

Mozilla has announced a new experimental project called Boot to Gecko (B2G) with the aim of developing an operating system that emphasizes standards-based Web technologies. The initial focus will be on delivering a software environment for handheld devices such as smartphones.

Patent law in the United States has always been framed with the intent to promote innovation. Because there has generally been a large amount of capital required to produce such innovations as the railroad, the airplane...