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On a free software desktop, printing is rarely a problem, because significant work has gone into making CUPS, Foomatic, and other parts of the printing tool chain work well. There are still a few things the average user can do to enhance the quality of prints from graphics applications like GIMP.

Filesystem block size rarely enters the sparkling dialog at your noontime geekfest where movie one-liners and song lyrics replace actual conversation but today is different. The ticking of thumbs halts in mid-text when someone at the table opens up an intellectual volley with, “Have you ever seen the error that there isn’t enough space on the filesystem for the selected operation in Virtual Center?” The puzzled faces stare back as if someone had just announced that iPads are on sale for half price. But, before you, or they, have a chance to react to this obviously simple problem of insufficient disk space, the problem isn’t insufficient disk space.

Many non-profit, non government organizations (NGO), use pirated Microsoft software for their activities, because they have no money. Therefore, charging these organizations for software piracy is an effective way to shut down disturbing voices. Microsoft is giving such NGOs free licenses to invalidate such tactics, because it abhors any attempt to leverage intellectual property rights to stifle political advocacy or pursue improper personal gain. Good. Problem is, if NGOs aren't careful, they may end up spending even more money than with licenses or locking into Microsoft software... all the people they try to serve.

The big social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn all use open source software to power their services. Eric Geier rounds up a batch of open source social networking projects that you can deploy in your own organization.

SkySQL Ab , the alternative source for software, services and support for the MySQL database, today formally launched operations with the release of SkySQL™ Enterprise. The company, which is founded by former MySQL AB executives, personnel, and investors, is committed to furthering the future development of MySQL database technologies, while delivering cost-effective database solutions and exceptional customer service.

Ubuntu 10.10 developer and Community Leader Dave Walker reflects on Maverick Meerkat’s release cycle. Celebrating with a 10/10/10 release date meant a compressed development period. Many said it couldn’t (or wouldn’t) be done. They were wrong…

There was a lot of excitement when Intel and Nokia joined forces earlier this year to create MeeGo, a Linux-based operating system for mobile devices. The blending of Nokia's Maemo and Intel's Moblin operating systems had all the signs of being a big player in the mobile market, not only because of the backing of two industry heavyweights but also because the open nature of the OS opened up opportunities.

This tutorial is very easy and the end result is all about what you prefer, so have fun playing around with colour and texture!

As was reported recently, the Debian GNU/kFreeBSD port now has limited support for handling ZFS file-systems and its stock kernel has been upgraded against that of FreeBSD 8.1. Due to the upgraded kernel we ran a quick set of benchmarks to see how the performance of Debian GNU/kFreeBSD to that of Debian Linux.

When Nokia acquired Trolltech, there was a question mark over Nokia's long term strategy for the Qt framework. Qt for many, is the toolkit behind the KDE desktop and it's associated applications, so what would a phone company do with it. Over the past years, the strategy has steadily crystallised, and at this years Qt Dev Day, Rich Green, the new CTO at Nokia and first Nokia CTO to speak at the annual Qt developer conference, confirmed that Qt is core to all of Nokia's plans for mobile applications; "We're betting the whole company and smartphones on Qt" Green told the audience at the opening keynote.

This tutorial shows how to set up an Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat (Ubuntu 10.10) server that offers all services needed by ISPs and hosters: Apache web server (SSL-capable), Postfix mail server with SMTP-AUTH and TLS, BIND DNS server, Proftpd FTP server, MySQL server, Courier POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc. In the end you should have a system that works reliably, and if you like you can install the free webhosting control panel ISPConfig 2 (i.e., ISPConfig runs on it out of the box).

The Wine development release 1.3.5 is now available. The source is available now, Binary packages are in the process of being built, and will appear soon at their respective download locations.

Following post is a brief instruction of port 2.6.34.7 xenified aka Suse kernel to Ubuntu 10.10 desktop , to support Dom0 under Xen 4.0.1. Vanilla 2.6.34.7 gets patched via Andrew Lyon’s rebased patch set xen-patches-2.6.34-5.tar.bz2.

I've written before about my deep skepticism regarding the true motives of Canonical, Ltd.'s advocacy and demand of for-profit corporate copyright assignment without promises to adhere to copyleft. I've often asked Canonical employees, including Jono Bacon, Amanda Brock, Jane Silber, Mark Shuttleworth himself, and — in the comments of this very blog post — Matt Asay to explain (a) why exactly they demand copyright assignment on their projects, rather than merely having contributors agree to the GNU GPL formally (like projects such as Linux do), and (b) why, having received a contributor's copyright assignment, Canonical, Ltd. refuses to promise to keep the software copylefted and never proprietarize it (FSF, for example, has always done the latter in assignments). When I ask these questions of Canonical, Ltd. employees, they invariably artfully change the subject.

Oracle will never grant a license to Project Harmony, the open source Java implementation. According to a source familiar with the situation, Oracle has told a closed meeting of Java's leaders from major companies and organizations that it will never grant Harmony a license, claiming this would damage the future of Java. The meeting took place in Bonn, Germany, between October 5 and 6 and was hosted by T-Mobile.

nny September weekend in Cambridge, England, ten KDE and Telepathy developers met in the Collabora office to plan the future of Instant Messaging in KDE software. Once everyone had arrived, our host George Goldberg gave us an overview of the current state of the codebase, which parts are usable, which parts still need writing, and which parts were written years ago and need revision. This turned into a project management session to determine the order for getting things done, and a discussion about a release schedule that will make the project visible without tying it prematurely into compatibility guarantees that slow down development.

In this article by Jonathan Bennett, author of the book OpenStreetMap, we'll look at some of the following tools you can use to check OpenStreetMap data in a particular area, and what problems they can and can't tell you about..

LXer Feature: 17-Oct-2010

In the Roundup this week we have news of IBM deciding to back Oracle's OpenJDK instead of Harmony, Phoronix releases the 2010 Linux graphics survey results, 5 mistakes Linux newcomers make and lastly John E. Dunn gets the crazy idea to ditch Windows for Ubuntu. Enjoy!

Tiny Core Linux 3.2 is released. This release comes with many updates and improvements, Updated busybox, adding mouse "select for copy" to several GUIs, better internationalization suport, and improved Onboot and OnDemand handling.

The NEW PCLinuxOS Magazine staff is pleased to announce the release of the Command Line Interface Intro Special Edition of the PCLinuxOS Magazine.