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During the three and a half years I have spent using Linux I have tried every different type of desktop under the sun and of them all Enlightenment's E17 is my personal favorite. The following are a few reasons why it may be worth breaking out of your Gnome/KDE comfort zone to give E17 a try.

Every time you log into a Linux system, you’re using the Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) behind the scenes. PAM simplifies Linux authentication, and makes it possible for Linux systems to easily switch from local file authentication to directory based authentication in just a few steps. If you haven’t thought about PAM and the role it plays on the system, let’s take a look at what it is and what it does.

Nobody writes much about the Debian Live Project, which went from a bunch of stable images for Intel architectures to offering stable and testing images not just for i386 and amd64 but also for PowerPC, the latter in a time when many distributions (Fedora, Ubuntu) have abandoned the Power architecture almost entirely.

In 1996, Microsoft got together with a group of companies that included NCR, Epson, and Fujitisu to produce OLE for POS (abbreviated OPOS), which stands for Object Linking and Embedding for Point of Sale.

Will Linux ever become a major desktop operating system, the way that Windows XP was? My colleague over at PC World, Robert Strohmeyer, thinks that "The dream of Linux as a major desktop OS is now pretty much dead." I beg to differ. Many of his points make sense. Strohmeyer wrote, "Ultimately, Linux is doomed on the desktop because of a critical lack of content. And that lack of content owes its existence to two key factors: the fragmentation of the Linux platform, and the fierce ideology of the open-source community at large." But I disagree with his emphasis.

Wind River announced the fourth-generation of its commercial embedded Linux distribution, adding 95 packages. Based on Linux 2.6.34+ kernel, Wind River Linux 4 offers GCC 4.4, EGLIBC 2.11, and GDB 7 cross-compiling toolchains, and provides multiple virtualization options, PREEMPT RT real-time Linux, multi-team collaboration features, a new native x86 build environment, and support for the upcoming CGL 5.0, says the company.

Stephen Colebourne has proposed that Oracle split the Java Community Process into core and ecosystem organisations with Oracle retaining control of the core parts of Java while the surrounding JSR (Java Specification Requests) are handled by a newly independent body.

This year, my sixth grader was issued a laptop computer by our school district. Much to my chagrin, my daughter brought home a shiny new white MacBook. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a Mac user myself, but I make that choice knowing all of the pitfalls and risks associated with purchasing from the big Apple. Some might think that I’m biased against the Linux desktop, but that’s not true. There is a time and a place for proprietary systems, and a time and place for open source, and our American public education system is perfect for open source. What I didn’t expect was for our rural school district to fork over one million of our tax-payer dollars for these MacBooks, when the better, and more economical, choice would be to issue netbooks running Linux.

The magic SysRq is a key combination understood by the Linux kernel, which allows the user to perform various low level commands regardless of the system's state. It is often used to recover from freezes, or to reboot a computer without corrupting the filesystem. The key combination consists of Alt, SysRq and another key, which controls the command issued

Ubuntu uTouch multitouch support was one the most striking inclusion into the just released Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat. We had demo videos showcasing Ubuntu's new found multitouch capabilities before. But following is the best I have seen so far. Watch this beautiful Ubuntu 10.10 multitouch demo in an unknown Dell tablet.

LunarG, the consulting company providing professional services for Mesa / Gallium3D that's led by Jens Owens, the founder of Tungsten Graphics, is beginning to commence work on a new project: LunarGLASS. Last year, LunarG wanted to provided better Linux graphics documentation, but this new LunarGLASS initiative is much more ambitious and it's about providing a complete shader and kernel compiler stack.

Your editor's iRiver H340 music player attracts stares in the crowded confines of the economy class cabin; it is rather larger than many newer, more capable devices, contains a rotating disk drive, and looks like it should have a smokestack as well. But your editor has continued to nurse this gadget for a simple reason: it is no longer possible to buy anything else like it. The device is open, has a reasonable storage capacity, and is able to run Rockbox. It is, thus, not just running free software; it is far more functional and usable than any other music player your editor has ever encountered. These are not advantages to be given up lightly.

Free software advocate and Linux developer Rusty Russell sat down for an interview with Google’s Jeremy Allison when they were both in Japan for LinuxCon. They discuss Rusty’s role maintaining the Linux kernel (0:15), why Australia has produced so many top notch open source developers (3:13), and suggestions for people starting out in their careers and looking to get into open source (9:13). Enjoy!

Following Apple reporting its first-ever $20 billion quarter, CEO Steve Jobs made a surprise appearance on the company’s earnings call to not only field questions from analysts, but to also give his thoughts on Apple’s competitors in the smartphone and tablet market. Steve Jobs rarely makes appearances on these conference calls, allowing Tim Cook and Peter Oppenheimer to hold court. When he does show up however, listeners are usually in for a treat. ..When it came to Google, Jobs didn’t mince words. It’s clear he sees Android as a big competitor and admits that there’s a chance more Android-based units shipped than iOS units in the September quarter.

Angry Birds, the best-selling iPhone game, hit the Android Market over the weekend and has already surpassed 2 million downloads, and is quickly ticking toward 3 million, says publisher Rovio....The game will be ad-supported for the time being. So far, the only ads appearing are out of the way (under the game board) and fairly non-intrusive.

A group of key OpenOffice.org (OOo) contributors and community members recently decided to fork the project and establish The Document Foundation (TDF) in order to drive forward community-driven development of the open source office suite. Oracle has responded to the move by asking several members of TDF to step down from their positions as representatives on the OOo community council.

Microsoft Corp. Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, an executive once considered an heir to co- founder Bill Gates, will step down, becoming the third senior executive to announce his resignation in less than five months. Ozzie, who joined the company in 2005, won’t be replaced because the company has enough other leaders in place, Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer said today in an e-mail on Microsoft’s website. Ozzie, 54, will be “on board” for a while before departing, Ballmer said.

Apple cult leader Steve Jobs has hit back at Eric Schmidt over the Google boss' repeated claims that Google is "open" and Apple is "closed." During a surprise appearance on Apple's quarterly earnings call on Monday afternoon — "I couldn't help dropping by for our first $20bn quarter" — Jobs called Schmidt's characterization "disingenuous," a "smokescreen" meant to hide the real issues surrounding the companies' dueling mobile platforms. When you compare Apple's iOS to Google's Android, Jobs said, the question is not: Who's open and who's closed? The question is: Who's "fragmented" and who's "integrated"?

So, in an article at PCW, Robert Strohmeyer argues that the dream of desktop Linux is dead. I disagree. I strongly disagree. I don't disagree because I have some hope of Linux out-pacing Windows or Macintosh OSX. I don't disagree because there is some new distribution that is going to sweep the market. I don't disagree because of how easy to use Ubuntu, Mint, and Mandriva are. I disagree because the Linux community will never rest.

Using Mplayer without vdpau to play an HD video (H.264 - 720p used for this test), I had a 24-52% CPU usage while using Mplayer with vdpau, the CPU usage decreased to 0%! This may not be the case for everyone, but you should still see a huge improvement in playing HD videos.