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Ubuntu Software Center is something we all overlooked for long. Even while writing tutorials about installing different applications in this blog, I prefer to provide command line instructions only. But a lot of Ubuntu users are new comers and Software Center means a lot to them. Ubuntu is gradually waking up to this fact and have finally started focusing on bringing a lot of polish and usability to Software Center.

You may think that the last thing on earth that could happen to your company would be that your business might be sued because it used a particular software program. You’d be wrong. In the aftermath of the Bilski Supreme Court decision, the Supreme Court did nothing to stop software or business method patents. As a result, not only software development companies but all businesses are now in more danger from patent lawsuits than ever before.

I've been using (and abusing) my Ben Nanonote daily now for several weeks, simply to find out whether this little machine is just a little gadget or really a useful device. There is no word processing package available for the Nanonote. Just a few editors. However, while looking for a "curses" based word processor I stumbled upon "txt2tags", a formatting program written in Python - which is supported by the Nanonote.

If you have not yet noticed, I am a nerd. Not just your garden variety, everyday, commonplace nerd, but a big nerd. With that cleared up, I could not help but purchase an ARTiGO. Over the past month (maybe longer), I have been testing different operating systems on it, and I think I can confidently declare a winner for best fit, and another for best performance. I did not have the Wifi Kit or the SD card reader installed for the tests. I am using 2GB of Crucial DDR2 800mHz RAM, and a 500GB 7200 RPM 2.5" SATA for the HDD.

Even before the first Oracle-driven JavaOne conference has seen the light of day, an alternative Java conference is being planned for those not thrilled with Oracle. Media company Software & Support Media (S&S) plans to offer a U.S.-based version of its JAX (Java Apache XML) conference, which the company has been conducting in Germany for several years. "A lot of the Java community has been a little upset about how the JavaOne conference is being [run] by Oracle," said a source familiar with S&S plans.

Like many of you, every year we look forward to the workshops, conferences and events related to open source software. In our view, these are among the best ways we can engage the community, by sharing our experiences and learning from yours. So we're sad to announce that we won't be able to present at JavaOne this year. We wish that we could, but Oracle's recent lawsuit against Google and open source has made it impossible for us to freely share our thoughts about the future of Java and open source generally. This is a painful realization for us, as we've participated in every JavaOne since 2004, and I personally have spoken at all but the first in 1996.

Mozilla announced today via its blog that Fenec, the mobile version of Firefox is now available for Android 2.0-powered smartphones and the Nokia N900. Unlike other mobile browsers, Fenec supports add-ons as well as tabbed browsing, and now ships with Firefox Sync baked into code. Sync allows users to synchronize their tabs, passwords, bookmarks, and other pertinent material from their desktop Firefox session.

After browsing through LinApp website for sometime, I was awed by the sheer number of commercial applications available for Linux. Never in my wildest of imaginations did I thought that, this many number of commercial applications ever existed for Linux. And I think thats exactly the point. Thats why LinApp is here.

It's hard to believe that Debian has 17 years under its belt, but the project celebrated its 17th birthday on August 16. Though Debian may not be quite as well hyped as other distros, it's still one of the most important FOSS projects around.

GCC and GNU Emacs are the two facets of the GNU operating system that have probably done more than any other to take GNU and free software from idealistic concept to a utilitarian reality. Having previously looked at GNU Emacs and the Hurd, Richard Hillesley looks at the history and progress of GCC.

Mozilla has pushed out another alpha version of Firefox for mobile phones, Fennec, and it's inviting Android, and N900, users to have a shot with the little fox. Fennec is the working title for the mobile version of Firefox, incorporating the irritatingly-named "Awesome Bar" and synchronising in real time with its bigger brother. Previous alpha releases of Fennec have only been available for Nokia's N900 internet tablet, with one "pre-alpha" release being built for Android. But now Android users get a proper "alpha" and are invited to download to see what they think.

This patent troll shakedown racket has gotten a lot of press attention over the years; here is a piece I did a few months ago. Unfortunately, there is no end is in sight. Some had hoped that the Supreme Court would find a way to curb the matter in the recent Bilski case. The decision, though, ended up doing no such thing.

Yesterday Red Hat hosted a virtual press conference titled "The Evolution of Cloud Foundations." The press conference served to outline Red Hat's plans for the future of their cloud services and JBoss, but the big announcement was that the company would be open sourcing all of its cloud APIs.

Billionaire Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, has sued 11 major Web-based companies, including Apple, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, YouTube and eBay, alleging they infringed internet patents he owns.

Since at least 2008, the Btrfs Linux filesystem has been talked about as a next-generation technology one day potentially rivalling or supplanting the current dominant Linux filesystems. According to Chris Mason, founder of the Btrfs effort and now director of software development at Oracle, Btrfs is today generally stable and usable even though it's yet to be finalized.

Tablet fans will be spoilt for choice with a flood of Android tablet PCs heading their way. A year ago netbooks were the one must-have mobile device. This year it is the tablet PC that is an essential accessory. Apple's iPad wasn't the first tablet PC available but it is the best-known of these devices. But it will face stiff competition in the coming months as most hardware makers switch on to Android-based tablet devices.

This morning, I came across two Phoronix articles (here and here) generating some sort of hype with regards to a ZFS port for the Linux kernel, with article headlines as Native ZFS Is Coming To Linux Next Month. My response to this, as I will explain below is: Why?

Early this week Gnash 0.8.8 was released. Despite the small increment in version number, which would make this seem like a minor maintenance release, the difference between version 0.8.8 and the earlier 0.8.7 is like night and day.

The Indian ICT market was hit pretty hard by the global financial crisis. Although the country's tech economy avoided going into a recession, growth fell from around 30 percent in 2008 to just five percent last year. In 2010, a healthy rebound is expected.

When you get serious about creating panoramas on Linux, there's really only one answer: Hugin. Akkana Peck shows us how.