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This guide explains how to set up an NFS server and an NFS client on Ubuntu 10.04. NFS stands for Network File System; through NFS, a client can access (read, write) a remote share on an NFS server as if it was on the local hard disk.

Command line weather app is example of why the cli is good. The command line is a great place to get weather information. Here, I discuss one cli-app for current conditions and forecasts, in the larger context of why you would ever want to use the command line anyway. There are several ways to use your computer to check the weather. One is to use the Nakob Weather Rock method. Suspend the computer using a rope from a tripod of sticks. If the computer is swaying, that means it is windy. If the computer is wet, that means it is raining.

Ok, I recognize and greatly appreciate the tremendous contributions of open source software. I really do. I use it every day, and have done so for many years. I’m a Linux person from the word go. But, I work for a Windows Shop. All Windows, All The Time. So, to fill out my time sheet in order to get paid, or to follow all the Track Changes in a Microsoft 2007 proposal document, I have to run Windows, because the company I work for uses 100% Windows software to run their business.

Gaming on the Linux platform is alive and well, thank you very much. In fact, there are more quality games available for Linux today than ever before. If you're using a recently released version of a distro, like Ubuntu, you'll find a wide range of game categories available right from the install menu. The options increase if you're not opposed to spending a little coin.

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the Verizon iPhone was all but a done deal. But what would this phone look like and what would it mean to Verizon's Android sales?

Besides Linux drivers for gaming peripherals (like mice and other things) being an area where Linux tends to struggle compared to the level of support and functionality offered under Windows, enthusiast-oriented programs for being able to overclock your CPU and RAM is another area where Linux really provides no suitable alternatives to the plethora of Windows utilities. There is though a new open-source program for manipulating certain AMD CPUs under Linux.

A Mini Review of Xubuntu 10.10 RC1. I downloaded Xubuntu 10.10 RC 1 just after it was announced, and I saved the ISO image on my external USB disk drive. Shortly thereafter I ran the image from Virtualbox OSE and I was very pleased with it. I figured that I would wait a little closer to release time, then install this software on one of my systems and upgrade it. Soon this will become released software. My initial impressions were that this was a fast, clean, reasonable balance between a full general purpose system and a light general purpose system. It is not the lightest, nor the fastest, nor the most complete, but it strikes a very good balance between all of these extremes. Moreover, it is just as easy in every way to install and use as its parent, Ubuntu, but instead of using GNOME on the desktop, it uses Xfce, and it provides a somewhat different set of default applications than Ubuntu.

People forget that the central purpose of patents is to encourage real innovation, not simply reward people for being the first to file for even obvious ideas with over-stretched patent offices that set incredibly low bars. The world of patents has become perverted in recent years: patents are seen as valuable things in themselves – the more the merrier – irrespective of whether they do, truly, promote innovation. Worse: in the world of software, they are actually brakes on that innovation, particularly as they begin to interact and form impenetrable patent thickets.

One of the most controversial freedoms of free software is the right to simply take the code and go make your own competing project — what is popularly called a “fork”. It’s controversial because it seems like a betrayal of the original developer; because it distributes resources into competing groups, which may waste effort; and because it may create confusion in the marketplace of ideas that is free software distribution. But it is a critical freedom to have, and the recent fork of LibreOffice from OpenOffice.org, like the fork of X.org from Xfree86 years ago, shows why it’s so important. Read the full article at Free Software Magazine.

When reviewing a lightweight distribution, the term Swiss Army knife is sometimes employed to indicate that it's packed with features despite a diminutive size. However, at 11MB for the ISO, Tiny Core is more of a blank-slate distribution, as when booted from a CDROM or a USB stick, it presents the user with a simple desktop consisting merely of a task launcher and a package manager. It contains some good ideas and it's already perfectly usable, but I think it needs a few more refinements in order to become great.

The Desktop Summit is a co-located event which features the yearly contributor conferences of the GNOME and KDE communities, GUADEC and Akademy. Next year the conference will take place from 6 to 12 August, 2011 in the city center of Berlin at the Humboldt University, Unter den Linden. The event will feature keynotes, talks, workshops and team building events.

Microsoft released an early developer version of an open source package manager, dubbed NuPack, for its .NET platform yesterday. Independent coders on the Nublar (NU) project worked with Microsoft on NuPack, and on Wednesday it was handed over to MS-sponsored Outercurve Foundation.

Within the next few weeks, Rackspace will announce key milestones for OpenStack, the open source cloud computing standard. But how will partners potentially benefit from OpenStack? The VAR Guy went straight to the source, interviewing Jim Curry, chief stacker for Rackspace’s OpenStack effort. Here's the conversation.

Its time for a new q4wine release tagged by the 0.120 version.

Most of us will install our GNU/Linux system once or twice and then use the excellent package management systems to upgrade when new releases of our chosen distribution come out. Users of Debian and Debian-based systems (such as Ubuntu) will be quite used to the idea that you only need to install it once. But what happens when you want to replicate one Debian system on another machine? Do you use cloning tools? Yes you can but only if the hardware is similar on the two machines. What if one has an Intel Pentium-based processor and the other has an AMD64? In that case what you need is some way to replicate the package selection but use the appropriate ones for the new architecture. Enter dpkg. Read the article at Free Software Magazine.

We can reveal today that Ubuntu One, Canonical’s cloud storage solution, will be updated in Maverick Meerkat to include Windows, Android & iPhone syncing and music streaming…

I challenge you to program a Open-Source DWF file viewer!!! I love Computing and Linux in particular, I even know some C++, Basic, Fortran Pascal, VBasic and Gambas, but beside "Hello World!", I'm rusty, very rusty.....

This is unbelievable: after suggesting extra taxes to fix (Windows!!!) computer viruses, now Microsoft says that, in order to prevent the same computers from spamming the whole Internet, governments should establish and enforce "health certificates" for computers as necessary prerequisites for Internet access. Why not just install Linux instead?

Two weeks left before Microsoft ends Windows XP sales. Windows XP no moreIt's been delayed more than once but now finally Microsoft is pulling the plug on Windows XP. From October 22, PC users will no longer be able to buy a PC with Windows XP pre-installed. Instead they will have to buy a Windows 7 version. It's the final call for what has been one of Microsoft's most popular operating systems.

The openSUSE Goblin Team, which was originally formed to bring the latest Moblin innovations into the openSUSE world and now are focusing upon pulling in MeeGo innovations after Moblin and Maemo merged, has a new announcement. This openSUSE team is now announcing the first public release of Smeegol, which combines MeeGo with openSUSE into one netbook-designed Linux distribution.