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An electronic book (commonly abbreviated e-book) is a text and image-based publication which can be read on a computer or other digital devices such as an e-book reader.

Talking about Podbuntu, Conky, WTF Desktop Environments: GNOME, KDE, and More Explained, Gnome Shell 3 - GNOME Shell is the defining technology of the GNOME 3 desktop user experience, The FreedomBox Foundation, 20 New User Misconceptions about Linux: 1) Linux will behave like Windows. 2) Windows software looks better than Linux software. 3) You have to be a geek to operate Linux. And much more!

We first glimpsed the CR-48 prototype Google Chrome OS netbook at CES in January and they've finally appeared in the UK courtesy of the Big G. Our Chrome OS netbook has arrived in the office today, so we've ignored the big hot sun to bring you more in-depth thoughts on Google's Windows basher than we were able to put together in a few minutes on a baking show floor at CES.

Microsoft seems to be trying to get its own personal unfair competition laws passed state by state, so it can sue US companies who get parts from overseas companies who used pirated Microsoft software anywhere in their business. The laws allow Microsoft to block the US company from selling the finished product in the state and compel them to pay damages for what the overseas supplier did. You heard me right. If a company overseas uses a pirated version of Excel, let's say, keeping track of how many parts it has shipped or whatever, and then sends some parts to General Motors or any large company to incorporate into the finished product, Microsoft can sue *not the overseas supplier* but General Motors, for unfair competition.

The Ubuntu Technical Board has decided that the Ubuntu will not enable the installation of restricted third-party software, such as Adobe's Flash Player, by default. When installing Ubuntu a checkbox offers option to "Install third-party software" from the restricted extras repository automatically.

In an effort to revolutionize the world of open source, a free software advocate has submitted a new license to the Open Source Initiative. The document is two years in the making, and it's known as the CDL, short for Chicken Dance License.

Sparkpad has begun selling customizable display computers at sizes ranging from eight to 15 inches, complete with a touch-ready, Lua-based Linux SDK and promised Android support. Sparkpad's Wi-Fi enabled tablets and panel PCs run on ARM11-based Telechips 8902 processors, and are touted as enabling customers to develop and deploy their own touch panels, digital signage systems, and tablets quickly.

"Jobs and Events are the primary Upstart concepts," writes James Hunt Ubuntu Upstart maintainer at Canonical. "The version of Upstart provided with Ubuntu Natty provides a new “initctl” command “show-config” which when coupled with a new tool “initctl2dot” allows these interactions to be understood visually."

Even though I wrote about where and how to get Firefox/Iceweasel 4 for Debian, I’m sticking with 3.5.6 for now. The same goes for GNOME 3.

For those who weren't about to make it the CeBIT Open Source Forum 2011 in Hamburg, Germany earlier this month, video of the presentations are now available to the general public free of change.

Rootkits are a way attackers hide their tracks and keep access to the machines they control. The good rootkits are very hard to detect and remove. They can be running on ones computer and no one can even know they have been running. Read more to learn how to detect them on your system.

"With record bookings and billings in the fourth quarter, we are on a run rate to become the first pure-play open source company to achieve a billion dollars in revenues next fiscal year, a milestone achievement for Red Hat and the open source community," stated Jim Whitehurst, President and Chief Executive Officer of Red Hat.

So I was reading a review of the latest Zorin OS posted over at the Dark Duck blog and the title of it is rather interesting: "Tux Which Does Not Exist..." The reason Dark Duck gives for his curious title is the fact that Zorin OS does not exist on what is respected by many as the one stop shop for most all information on the internet - Wikipedia

Unity is the new improved Ubuntu interface which is all set to debut in another month or so when Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" is officially released. A lot of ideas keeps coming in from users on how to improve Unity interface even further. Tweak Center and Launchpad + Ubuntu Sowftare Center integration mockups set the tone and now here is another one. Idea is to have a Firefox 4.0's Panorama kind of an interface as workspace manager for Ubuntu Unity.

I came across this Ubuntu Development Guide by Daniel Holback while looking through Planet Ubuntu. It tells you all the things you need to do technically to get set up for development, as in creation and modification of packages for Ubuntu GNU/Linux.

Every now and then, a question like this pops up on some email server management forum:"I’d like to be able to reject connections from remote IP addresses if they’re from certain countries." I have reformatted some tips on how to do this on this page. Feedback is very welcome.

As a former technical writer and a sometime reviewer of software, I don't need anyone to tell me how important documentation is -- nor how often it is the last part of a project if it is considered at all. But recently, I had a frustrating reminder.

During a keynote presentation at Google's IO developer conference last year, Google VP of engineering Vic Gundotra proclaimed that the search giant created Android in order to bring freedom to the masses and avoid a "draconian future" in which one company controlled the mobile industry. Looking past the self-congratulatory rhetoric, Android's poor track record on openness is becoming harder to ignore.

Announced by the openSUSE project about seventeen months ago, the openSUSE 11.2 operating system will reache end of life (EOL) on May 12th, 2011.

Unlike OpenOffice.org of yore, LibreOffice developers have been pumping out the updates at a rapid pace. Since the inaugural release two months ago, LibreOffice has seen two minor version updates as well as associated developmental releases. The latest, LibreOffice 3.3.2, was released just a couple of days ago.