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FTP is a very insecure protocol because all passwords and all data are transferred in clear text. By using TLS, the whole communication can be encrypted, thus making FTP much more secure. This article explains how to set up ProFTPd with TLS on an Ubuntu 10.04 server.

Multi-touch is the future of computing – from phones to tablets. And the future is almost here — or, maybe, it’s already here. But what free software platforms can provide a viable alternative to catch up with and rival Apple? Since 2001, Microsoft has been trying to sell Tablet PCs running the same Windows XP user interface as ordinary computers but they never really took off. What Apple has shown us with the iPhone and iPad is that only a user interface designed from the ground up for touch screens can live up to the expectations we have of tablets: intuitive, fast and fun. But a couple of free software platforms are shaping up to become viable alternatives to Apple’s walled garden. I’m going to look at Android, Ubuntu’s Unity and MeeGo. Read the article at Free Software Magazine.

Canonical’s announcement that it would not adopt GNOME Shell for Ubuntu 11.04 has not been universally loved. But is Unity divisive or just a typical development decision being given too much weight?

One Laptop per Child (OLPC) Project Founder and Chairman Dr. Nicholas Negroponte has confirmed that the launch of the next-generation OLPC XO tablet computer, the XO-3, has been delayed. In an interview at the MIT Media Lab, Negroponte said that, while the OLPC Project wanted to show the XO-3 at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, at the beginning of January they will miss CES by 45 days. Negroponte says that the delay has to do with "finding an unbreakable material" for the device's display, noting that it may end up as glass rather than plastic.

Pardus Linux, a popular independent distribution funded and developed by the Scientific & Technological Research Council of Turkey, will be releasing version 2011 in the coming weeks and with it lots of nice updates and improvements.

Last week Mark Shuttleworth dropped the bomb that the next release of Ubuntu, 11.04, would ship with Unity as the default window manager. This caused a lot of concern throughout the community, but most were getting used to the idea, appeased by the knowledge that GNOME Shell would be but a few clicks away. But yesterday he went even further - he announced that Ubuntu would be moving to the Wayland graphical server as well. Has Shuttleworth lost his mind? Or does he know something we don't?

Despite growing anticipation for Firefox 4, developers have delayed its release until next year. In a move that will both disappoint fans and potentially undermine its claim on the browser market, the Mozilla Foundation has said it will delay the release of Firefox 4 until 2011.

Though Transmission is good, Deluge has always been my favorite bit torrent client in Ubuntu. It is nice and simple to use and feature packed as well. Deluge hit version 1.3.1 few days ago. Here is what you need to do install latest Deluge in Ubuntu.

The team at Adafruit Industries is offering a bounty for the first open source drivers for Microsoft's Kinect hardware for its Xbox 360 gaming console. According to a post on the Adafruit blog, the first person or group to upload their code, examples and documentation to the GitHub project hosting service will win the team's first ever "X prize" project bounty.

I guess everybody has heard that a majority of the key developers in the OpenOffice.org community decided to set up the Document Foundation: an independent foundation to continue and manage work on the Openoffice.org codebase. If you’ve not, then I can recommend Terry Hancock’s piece as a starting point (and a good summary of why forking is vital). To recap: Oracle are not behind the move so the foundation temporarily named their product LibreOffice. It was not, we were told, a fork. Oracle were invited to the party and asked if they would consider donating the OpenOffice.org brand to the foundation. After the mess with MySQL, here was an opportunity for Oracle to vastly improve relations with the free software community and their own reputation. In short Oracle missed their chance like an English footballer taking a penalty.

Just one year ago, I posted a piece on O'Reilly Radar about an unlikely group working happily together to vastly increase the amount of U.S. Patent information available at no charge on the Internet. I've done no heavy lifting whatsoever on this project, so it has been a pleasure to watch the U.S. Patent Office, the White House, and Jon Orwant at Google plow through this rather daunting task. The system is now in full production including all the current feeds that were previously only available for big bucks by subscription. Also available for the first time is the Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) data, which is the full "wrapper" for a patent application. PAIR data was only available previously on a rate-limited query-only service.

Intel and Nokia last week rolled out MeeGo 1.1, which is now officially available for Intel Atom netbooks, the N900 handset, and in-vehicle "infotainment" systems. The netbook spin of MeeGo 1.1 is out there to compete with the likes of Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition, which was released just shy of a month ago. While nothing radically has changed with MeeGo 1.1 compared to the initial MeeGo 1.0 release from earlier this year, the software stack is updated so for the past few days we have begun conducting a performance comparison between MeeGo 1.1 and Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook. Here are some of our initial findings.

The next major transition for Unity will be to deliver it on Wayland, the OpenGL-based display management system. We’d like to embrace Wayland early, as much of the work we’re doing on uTouch and other input systems will be relevant for Wayland and it’s an area we can make a useful contribution to the project.

The world’s largest mobile enterprise has just joined the Linux Foundation as a Gold Member. The company in question is China Mobile, the largest and most valuable nationwide telecom enterprise in the world. With 570 million subscribers, it also has the largest user base of any such company.

Younger people online are more willing to share info. Must they give up safeguards? Last week hundreds of privacy regulators, corporate officers and activists gathered in Jerusalem, Israel for the annual Data Protection and Privacy Commissioner Conference. The conference theme focused on the perception of a growing privacy divide between generations, with older and younger demographics seemingly adopting sharply different views on the importance of privacy.

[I figure if I can Google myself, why try hiding.. - Scott]

This is going to be short as I have another flight to catch to San Diego for the next week [if anyone wants to meet-up to discuss Linux, Phoronix, or the Phoronix Test Suite in the area, contact me]. Anyhow, Mark Shuttleworth just sent over an email saying that they will be deploying the Wayland Display Server with their Unity Desktop -- that's replacing the GNOME Shell by default -- in a future Ubuntu release!.

In an effort to continue our efforts to promote and educate the public on Free/Open Source Software projects, the Southern California Linux Expo SCALE 9x invites you to share your work with the rest of the FOSS community by submitting a talk for the first-of-the-year Linux expo.

Linux Virtual Server, LVS is an advanced load balancing solution for Linux systems. It is an open source project started by Wensong Zhang in May 1998. The mission of the project is to build a high-performance and highly available server for Linux using clustering technology, which provides good scalability, reliability and serviceability. The major work of the LVS project is now to develop advanced IP load balancing software (IPVS), application-level load balancing software (KTCPVS), and cluster management components.

According to Buytaert is it critically important to build a commercial ecosystem around open source projects. In his view, it is the fact that people are making money that gives them and their companies the incentive to contribute back to the project. Though money is a good thing in open source, it shouldn't be the primary driving factor for a project. "Money shouldn't make the decisions," Buytaert said. "If you look at Drupal, all of the technical decisions are made based on technical merits and are made by the people that build trust." "Trust is the currency of open source -- it is the currency of Drupal."

I have no doubt that Linux-based tablets will eventually be winners. I've been unimpressed though at how slowly the Linux tablet OEMs have been about getting their products to market. Those that have made it tp store shelves, like the Augen GenTouch78, haven't been much good. Things are about to change. The forthcoming Nook Color and the rumored Amazon Kindle Tablet will bring good Linux-powered tablets to users this year after all.