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The much anticipated Diaspora source code was released earlier this week. I followed the instruction at http://github.com/diaspora/diaspora but encountered an error when installing bundler. It appears that there was a slight problem with the RubyGems PPA on the instruction page.

dnsmasq is a lightweight, open-source DNS forwarder and DHCP server. In this article we go through how to prepare the system in order to run dnsmasq and also how to configure the latter as a caching-only DNS server. A configuration file is also provided as a drop-in replacement for the default dnsmasq.conf that ships with your system. dnsmasq is available in most Linux distributions.

Finch is a TUI (text user interface) IM client for Linux which uses libpurple, the same library on which the GNOME IM client Pidgin is based on. Usually, if you have Pidgin installed, you should have Finch too, unless Pidgin was compiled with the text interface option disabled. In addition to this, Finch supports every protocol that Pidgin supports, and even though it is a terminal-based application, it offers enough configuration options, and more can be done using the .gntrc configuration file, which is discussed later in this guide. If not, installing the latest Finch release, even from source, should be easy.

Dell responds to criticism by releasing code for Streak tablet. Dell, responding to complaints from users and open source advocates, has released the modified Android code used on its Streak tablet PC. When Dell first released the Streak it used a customised version of Google's Android operating system. But, because Android contains numerous open source-licensed components, Dell came in for a lot of criticism for not releasing the changes it had made.

A disk usage analyzer is a utility which helps users to visualize the disk space being used by each folder and files on a hard disk or other storage media. This type of application often generates a graphical chart to help the visualization process.

On September 9 the news of Broadcom's release of the code for some of its wireless Ethernet chip sets sent shockwaves throughout the Linux community. Broadcom owners, as well as distribution developers have a reason to celebrate.

One thing I think many users fail to consider (or perhaps don't care about) is the level of 3D performance their distro gets. You may think that your choice of distribution does not matter in this area, but you will soon see it very much does. Which distro do you think has the best 3D performance?

GNOME Shell is a window manager designed specifically for the upcoming GNOME 3 desktop, with the intention of offering a rather different way of interacting with the desktop, providing a workspace which hardly resembles the classic desktops.

Microsoft has jumped on Oracle's prosecution of Google to attack Android and promote Windows Phone 7, while revealing a limited US rollout for its mobile phone platform. Even before Android's day in court, the chief financial officer of Microsoft's mobile phone group is reported to have taken Android's patent infringements as a fact.

A perennial whinge is "Linux and FOSS have too many choices! It's confusing and scary!" So what's the answer, a single global dictator?

Today, Mark Shuttleworth’s blog was added into Planet Gnome after he made a request for it to be added. Why is this a controversy? Mainly because some people want blogs that are featured on Planet Gnome to be from authors that are active in the Gnome community and to actually blog about Gnome as a topic. If Canonical’s contributions to Gnome are being called into question (as evident from the links in closing thoughts below) then what results is a controversial decision for Mark’s blog to be added in.

PeaZip 3.3 is released, this release brings various fixes and an improved user interface focused in better integration with web search (optionally on multiple search engines at once) and in launching favorite applications, scripts or websites/web services from PeaZip.

We already introduced a beautiful collection of GIMP tutorials before, it's time for some more. But this time, they are a bunch of GIMP video tutorials and are solely meant for absolute beginners, those who only have the vaguest idea on what GIMP is and what it is capable of.

Dan Kegel released winetricks 20100917 today, new verbs crypt32, devenum, d3dx9_26, winhttp. Another fortnight, another Winetricks.

Canonical Ltd., the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, unveiled the a list of provisional tracks for the Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS) scheduled for October 25-29, 2010 in Orlando, Florida.

Chrome continues its upward climb. Can it eclipse Firefox? Google's Chrome browser is in the fast lane. And with the expected release of Chrome OS in the near future, there is every chance that the relative newcomer in the world of browsers could topple Firefox and become the second most popular browser.

The reason it caught my attention was not because I agree with him (I do), but because the idea of simple authentication, especially among disparate systems, has been the Holy Grail of IT, and every time we think we have it solved, the solution seems to fall apart in our hands. In fact, OpenID/OAUTH/OATH is only the most recent attempt at solving the authentication problem. The last attempt was a little standard called X.500, and Jan's tweet this morning reminded me, not only of x.500 and its promises, but how far the standard has failed, because of its complexity.

The Smart Book is an ultra-modular, ultra-mobile computing device, which integrates an IP phone, a tablet and a netbook into one, Linux based machine. Although, there is not enough information (yet) about the exact nature/working of the hardware/software components, the modularity of the device is stunning.

One of the first things to learn about programming is to check your ego at the door. It's a complicated craft, and even the most hardened pros are regularly amazed by what they don't know. "Programming is one of those things that humans are not quite smart enough to do," warned Slashdot blogger Thangodin.

iRedMail is a shell script that lets you quickly deploy a Open Source Mail Server solution in less than 2 minutes. This tutorial shows how to set up a mail server with Postfix, Dovecot, Amavisd, ClamAV, SpamAssassin, and RoundCube with the help of iRedMail on Ubuntu 10.04.