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PPASEARCH is a nice tool that search launchpad PPAs via command line and add them to your Ubuntu repositories, it is available for Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx and Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat.

Back in the good old physical server days, you bought a server system, added disks to it and, after a time, when you came close to filling those disks, either you added more disks or replaced them with larger ones. Times have changed in the virtual world. You can still provision a static disk (Thick provisioning), which is typically much too large for the workload and any reasonable amount of growth. But, you do it to prevent that middle-of-the-night ‘disk is full’ call. With thin provisioning, you don’t have to worry about that call anymore. Or, do you?

We have at last Novell's appeal brief [PDF] in the private antitrust case Novell brought against Microsoft regarding WordPerfect. The brief was filed with the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. It begins: "This case has been here before." Indeed. Here's the decision from the US District Court in Maryland that Novell is appealing, as text. But there's more. Microsoft is fighting to keep certain documents it alleges the judge in the district court didn't base his ruling on from being considered by the court of appeals. Here's the Microsoft Motion to Strike [PDF]. The full title is Motion to Strike Certain Exhibits from the Joint Appendix and Any References to Such Documents in Novell's Brief.

Copyright laws are designed to ensure that authors and performers receive compensation for their labors without fear of theft and to encourage them to continue their work. The laws are not intended to provide income for generations of an author’s heirs, particularly at the cost of keeping works of art out of the public’s reach. The Savory collection, like other sound recordings made before 1972, is covered by a patchwork of state copyright and piracy laws that in some cases allow copyrights to remain until the year 2067. Congress needs to bring all these recordings under the purview of federal copyright law, which generally applies during the lifetime of the author or musician plus 70 years. That time period has been criticized as too long, but is unlikely to be changed because it is part of a global trade treaty.

LXer Feature: 22-Aug-2010

In this week's Roundup we have more on the Oracle - Google lawsuit, how corporate America went open source, games that transmit GPS coordinates, converting eBooks, a space elevator and a Happy 17th Birthday to Debian. Enjoy!

The staff behind the Free Software Developers' European Meeting (FOSDEM) have just announced that the 2011 conference will take place on the 5th and 6th of February. This is the first weekend of February, which is right around the time that the other FOSDEMs have taken place. Like always, this event will be taking place in Brussels, Belgium.

If you use or follow Ubuntu, a great way to see what's happening somewhat behind the scenes is the Canonical Design Team site/blog.

Since the last article on downloading photos from facebook, I have received several requests to come up with an article on uploading photos to Facebook from Ubuntu. Well, there are plenty of Windows apps that allow the users to upload photos to Facebook, but when it comes to Linux Ubuntu, there are not really too many choices. Below, I have come up with several ways that you can use to upload photos to Facebook.

In this HowTo I will describe how to prepare an Ubuntu 10.04 server for OpenVZ. With OpenVZ you can create multiple Virtual Private Servers (VPS) on the same hardware, similar to Xen and the Linux Vserver project. OpenVZ is the open-source branch of Virtuozzo, a commercial virtualization solution used by many providers that offer virtual servers. The OpenVZ kernel patch is licensed under the GPL license, and the user-level tools are under the QPL license.

If you want to give remote support to a friend who uses a Linux computer then you can use SSH and VNC together for secure remote access. This recipe was developed on Linux Mint 7 but should also apply to other Debian-based Linux distributions, including Ubuntu and, of course, Debian itself.

Fedora 13 has been working out very well over the past couple of weeks. Let me bullet-point the good and bad.

Virtual desktops in Linux are great for remote working and for administering and supporting remote computers. A single server can host virtual desktops for several remote workers. This recipe is for Debian-based Linux distributions, including Ubuntu and Linux Mint.

In reality, Oracle is a major proponent of open software, pushing Linux and taking a stand against the notion of software patents themselves. Yes, that's right, the company filing the year's biggest software patent infringement case is also a major critic of the idea of software patents in general. When somebody points a gun at you, you point one back even if you don't like the idea of guns. You might even shoot first. Oracle likes Linux so much that it funds Btrfs, a GPL licensed, futuristic and advanced new file system that supports pooling, snapshots, checksums, and other features that sound a lot like Sun's ZFS, which Oracle now also owns. The difference is that Oracle didn't mire Btrfs in legal quandary the way Sun did with ZFS before Oracle bought them.

Ubuntu Artwork Pool in Flickr is buzzing with activity once again. With the release date of Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick getting nearer everyday, the submissions onto Ubuntu Artwork Pool in Flickr keeps piling on. Here are a few of those wallpapers that I think, are worth mentioning. Click on the links provided to get wallpapers with different resolutions.

A customer service trouble ticketing (or help desk) is an information and assistance resource that helps the resolution of computer related problems.

The tech industry loves a good vendor slugfest, and the upcoming legal battle between Google and Oracle has all the makings of a truly spectacular one. At issue is Dalvik, the unique, Java-based runtime at the heart of Google's Android smartphone OS. Oracle, which gained stewardship of the Java platform when it bought Sun Microsystems in 2009, claims Dalvik knowingly, willfully, and deliberately infringes on Java intellectual property. According to a complaint filed with the U.S. District Court in San Francisco last week, Oracle is seeking a halt to any further Android development, destruction of all infringing Android software, and for Google to pay damages, both actual and statutory.

LinuxCertified,Inc. a leading provider of Linux training, will offer Linux system administration bootcamp on September 1 - 2, 2010 near San Francisco (South Bay). This workshop is designed for busy information technology professionals and is designed to cover the most important Linux administration areas. All attendees get a free Linux laptop.

At my place of work, we use a Java-based trouble-ticketing system from Atlassian called Jira. It is hosted on a LAMP server virtual machine in our production VMware environment. The system has been in daily use (well, week day use) since near the end of 2008 - requiring minimal maintenance in that time (the occasional reboot after security updates have been installed). Up until yesterday, we had been using Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server. I decided it was time to move to the latest LTS release - 10.04 - which was released earlier this year and had just received it's first .1 refresh.

Canonical have just released a video trailer of the forthcoming Ubuntu Unity interface for netbook computers. Impressive stuff…

We introduced to you guys probably the best combination of gtk theme and icon set for Ubuntu/Gnome[Equinox gtk theme + Faenza icon theme]. Now take a look at Awoken icon theme. I won't say it is better than Faenza icon theme, but it is almost as good.