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Canonical releases uTouch to add multi-touch support. Ubuntu's next release will include support for multi-touch input. This follows the release of uTouch 1.0 by Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu.

There has been a spate of security reports recently about Android apps being malware or suspicious. Most of these were found baseless but at least one was indeed correct (e.g. The Russian Trojan app). We also know that Android has a very good security model but even then, the rest of the reports also makes one think and focus on why an apps requires the permissions that it states it needs?

Ever wanted to set video as your desktop wallpaper a la the quickly-ditched Windows DreamScene? With 'Video Wallpaper' it's easy. By using Video Wallpaper you will be forfeiting the ability to use the 'desktop' as normal - no icons, files etc will show. Any drop shadows present on panels will also disappear. If you're tuff enuff to cope, here's how...

This guide explains how you can set up an iSCSI target and an iSCSI initiator (client), both running Ubuntu 10.04. The iSCSI protocol is a storage area network (SAN) protocol which allows iSCSI initiators to use storage devices on the (remote) iSCSI target using normal ethernet cabling. To the iSCSI initiator, the remote storage looks like a normal, locally-attached hard drive.

I love the fact that I can sort of follow along as Debian Squeeze makes its way from Testing to Stable with the excellent images from the Debian Live project. For i386, I was impressed with the Alpha 1 system, and today I just burned and tried the Debian Live Alpha 2 image for i386 on the Lenovo G555 laptop.

If you are a network (or systems) administrator, you know how crucial it is to have the right tools for the job. One of the toughest tools to really nail down is a network monitoring tool. Although there are plenty of such tools out there, they range from the over-priced to the under-featured. Where do you look for any sort of middle ground where features don’t lose out to price? Zenoss is an outstanding, enterprise-ready network monitoring tool that includes all of the features you are accustomed to finding in a much costlier solution. Many a network administrator would do well to deploy such a tool.

The whole advantage to free software is that you can take it apart and look at it, right? That is what most free software advocates would have you believe. So what would happen if the GNU Project released a Perfect Decompiler, a decompiler that could perfectly decode any binary into source code understandable by humans? Would this help or hurt the Free Software Movement?

An Ubuntu Linux veteran has joined Dell as part of the PC giant’s effort to focus on systems management. Ken Drachnik, a former manager at Canonical (promoter of Ubuntu) has joined Dell as director of product marketing for KACE. Here are the details.

Google has vowed to fight Oracle's patent lawsuit over use of Java patents in Android, claiming that Android's Dalvik implementation is not covered. Meanwhile, Java creator James Gosling blogs that neither side in the lawsuit is without blame, but calls the suit a victory for "ego, money and power" at the expense of open software development, says eWEEK.

There was a time when open-source software was the domain of computer geeks and do-it-yourselfers with more time than money. But, as Oracle's legal salvo against Google highlighted last week, those days are long gone. Oracle (ORCL), through its purchase of Sun Microsystems, has become one of the largest purveyors of open-source software in the world. Google (GOOG) makes the open-source and increasingly ubiquitous Android smartphone operating system. Their fight revolves around Java, a programming language Sun made predominantly open-source several years ago, but which Oracle's founder and CEO Larry Ellison now calls "the single most important software we've ever acquired."

The next version of Ubuntu Linux aims to support for multi-touch as part of an effort to expand the Linux desktop user experience, potentially bringing the sorts of interactivity popularized by devices like the Apple iPad to tablets and netbooks powered by Ubuntu. But the plan isn't to stop with Ubuntu alone, according to the distribution's founder, Mark Shuttleworth.

Linus Torvalds has released the first pre-release version of Linux 2.6.36 and closed the merge window – the first phase in the development cycle, during which the bulk of changes for a new kernel version are merged into the main development tree. The usual announcement mail for the new kernel is currently nowhere to be found, but the RC1 is tagged in the Kernel Git tree and available for download on Kernel.org.

An internal Oracle memo that was released last week provides a detailed summary of the company's plans for the Solaris operating system, which Oracle obtained when it acquired Sun. The memo offers a mix of good and bad news for Solaris enthusiasts. It reveals that Oracle is strongly committed to advancing the Solaris platform and intends to increase the availability of resources for Solaris development. The bad news is that Oracle plans to discontinue Sun's community-centric OpenSolaris distribution.

LaTeX, pronounced “La-Tec”, is a document preparation language that treats creating many types of document files like constructing a shell script. LaTeX uses a “What You See is What You Mean” interface, far removed from the WYSIWYG word processors like Word and OpenOffice. LaTeX is a programming language, but don’t let that scare you away. Like many things in open source, the learning curve may be steep, but the view from the top is fantastic.

Net neutrality has been a hot and persistent topic on the internet for some time, so I’m not even going to attempt to summarize the debate here. Anyone who values their personal and online freedom knows it’s a crucial issue. Regardless of your operating system or the software we use it will affect each and every one of us. However, if you use GNU/Linux you’re already tech savvy and familiar with the politics and philosophy of free and open software, so you’ll be particularly sensitized to the impact of threats to net neutrality on free software. Rea the article at Free Software Magazine.

In this conclusion to my survey of algorithmic music composition systems for Linux I present Christopher Ariza's athenaCL.

If you want your application to have the widest reach possible, it would be a good idea to ensure they play nice with both KDE and GNOME. Follow Kunal Deo’s brief tutorial to find out how to get started…

The idea called Open Source is fast spreading into non-computer sectors as well. For long, Open Source was equated to GNU and Linux basically and the idea behind Open Source was never really understood properly by many. Its all changing. The idea of sharing, collaborating and having community involvement is no more a bad thing.

When the simple file and printer sharing features offered by Windows, Unix/Linux, and Mac aren't enough, you should consider using a network-attached storage (NAS) server. NAS servers offer a central place where you can store, access, and share files and documents on the local network, and possibly over the Internet. They are especially useful in multiple operating system environments, as they usually support all the sharing protocols.

Google has called Oracle's Android lawsuit an attack not only on Google but also on the open-source Java community. "We are disappointed Oracle has chosen to attack both Google and the open-source Java community with this baseless lawsuit," a company spokesman said in a statement to USA Today. "The open-source Java community goes beyond any one corporation and works every day to make the web a better place. We will strongly defend open-source standards and will continue to work with the industry to develop the Android platform."