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At the beginning of this month we published workstation benchmarks comparing Windows 7 to Ubuntu Linux. In those tests, which were a continuation of tests from earlier this year when looking to see whether Windows 7 is faster than Ubuntu 10.04 and how fast is Windows compared to Mac OS X and Linux, the two operating systems performed quite closely in our workstation tests with only a few exceptions. Today, however, we are back to looking at the Linux vs. Windows performance of the Lenovo ThinkPad W510 and this time we are looking at the OpenGL gaming performance between Windows 7 Professional and Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.

I always wanted to sync a few folders of my system across all my computers. E.g. the my scripts directory, where I constantly fiddle with my scripts and create new ones, my documents I always want to be able to have and edit everywhere, etc. I would never know where the most current version is without bothersome comparison of the dates. I would have to check every file and then copy the newer one. But that's now history, thanks to unison and my sync configuration I will describe below.

Most Linux users assume there will never come a time when they will be able to join their machines to a Microsoft Windows domain. It's always been off-limits. You could take your Linux laptop in to work, but you could never work within that domain. That is officially history. With recent updates to many of the systems and sub-systems in Linux comes the ability to now join a Windows domain. It's not terribly challenging, but you will need to edit some configuration files.

LXer Feature: 15-Aug-2010

The big news this week is a double shot of Oracle both suing Google for supposed Java copyright infringement in Android and the killing of OpenSolaris. Our own Hans Kwint expounds the merits of anticipating lock-in and much more in this weeks LXWR. Enjoy!

As was reported earlier this week, id Software has open-sourced Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and Return To Castle Wolfenstein. Opening up these older games under the GNU GPL was done as part of id's long-standing tradition of putting out the code into the public domain once it makes sense for them a few years after their succeeding engine updates have fully replaced them in the marketplace. The developers behind ioquake3, the project that's based around the Quake 3 engine that was previously opened up by id Software, is already working on iowolfet and iortcw forks to incorporate this new code, but other free software developers are already utilizing this code too.

Did you ever want a little background music with your daily grind but either you didn’t want to (or couldn’t) fire up something graphical to use? That’s where mpg123 comes to your rescue. Mpg123 is a fast console MPEG audio player and decoder library. If you’re about to click on to another story because you think that a command line music playing application is devoid of features or functions, you’re going to miss out on one of the coolest and most versatile MP3 applications you’ve ever seen.

The most recent release of Puppy Linux, version 5.1 “Lucid Puppy” includes some significant changes such as binary compatibility with the Ubuntu 10.04 packages, easier package installation with Quickpet and Puppy Package Manager, a new Simple Network Setup utility and more. I dove into Puppy 5.1 over the weekend, took some screenshots, and made a video showing a few of Lucid Puppy's features.

The 2010 Ohio LinuxFest is held in the Greater Columbus Convention Center in Columbus, Ohio, This conference boasts speakers well known and informative, a vendor expo, tutorials, a new medical track and lots more. As always, basic registration is FREE!

Puppy Linux 5.1, code-name 'Lucid' as it is binary-compatible with Ubuntu Lucid Lynx packages, has been released. The announcement and release notes say that because of the Ubuntu binary files, the development time to produce program packages that are tested and configured for Lucid Puppy is extremely short.

Ubuntu Studio is a multimedia enhanced Ubuntu variant packed with custom wallpapers, themes, screensavers, system sounds and more. With Canonical in the lookout for a new System Sounds theme for upcoming Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat, all those who want to contribute may want to check out the original Ubuntu Studio sound theme for inspiration. They are pretty darn good IMO.

This is a detailed description about how to set up an OpenSUSE 11.3 server (x86_64) 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, Dovecot 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).

Never doubt that your voice matters. CWTV will now stream on your operating system of choice so long as said operating has a flash enabled browser.

Open source licenses help to define the terms and conditions of software use and redistribution. But what are the terms and condition under which developers actually contribute code? That's the realm of software contribution agreements. A new effort spearheaded by Amanda Brock, general counsel at Canonical, the lead sponsor of Ubuntu Linux, is trying to help solve the problem of contribution agreements. The effort is called Project Harmony, and it's a multi-stakeholder project that aims to help provide some clarity and uniformity to software contribution agreements.

Following last week's Ubuntu 10.10 Alpha 3 release but landing before the Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" feature freeze this week were a number of last-minute features like X Server 1.9 integration and other updated packages along with the committing of the revamped Ubuntu desktop installer to Maverick. Via this revamped Ubuntu installer it's possible to install proprietary bits directly like support for MP3 audio files and proprietary graphics drivers.

Unlike proprietary software, open source software is not developed by a single company or group of developers. Instead it is developed by many different companies, thousands of individual developers and hordes of hobbyists.

I am currently in that level of hell reserved for people who upgrade their GNU/Linux system too quickly. I have for some time now been happily using KDE 4 with the plasma desktop enjoying the cute little animations and eye candy, and learning to use the task-bar and widgets. Then my bliss was interrupted by a simple mistake. I decided to upgrade. I forgot that my /etc/apt/sources.list was set to load experimental versions of the software, and now my X-server system is broken. It is only now that I am discovering that there is no apt-get undo. Read the full article at Free Software Magazine.

The release of Ubuntu 10.10 is getting closer and details of what will be included are starting to become clear

Need to convert multiple .NEF files to the JPEG format? You can easily do this from the command line using the UFRaw tool.

HTML is basically a standard for structuring and presenting content in the internet and HTML5 is the newest incarnation of HTML. HTML5 is still a work in progress and is supposed to have features like video playback which currently depends upon third-party(and proprietary) browser plug-ins like Adobe Flash.

Finally announced during the annual Debian Developer Conference "Debconf10" in New York that Debian "Squeeze" has now been frozen. In consequence this means that no more new features will be added and all work will now be concentrated on polishing Debian "Squeeze" to achieve the quality Debian stable releases are known for.