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Linux.conf.au announced a Call for Papers for its 12th annual open source Linux conference for developers, to be held in Brisbane, Australia, on Jan 24-29. Linux.conf.au 2011 (lca2011) starts off with two days of mini-conferences, and is followed by three days of main sessions and an "Open Day" of events and presentations that is open to the general public.

Project London movie is the triumph of community spirit, togetherness or whatever you call it over money. A team of online volunteers using free software, created the movie, Project London, with as many as 650 VFX shots! Isn't that awesome?

As OSCON (Open Source Convention) gets set to start July 23, I’m reminded of an Ubuntu-centric conference that once showed great promise. The event, called Ubuntu Live, was co-located at OSCON in 2007. But it no longer exists. It’s time for Canonical to revive Ubuntu Live for partners and customers. Here's why.

In this article, we create many visually rich activities combining text and pictures. In this article by Vanesa S. Olsen, author of Moodle 1.9 for Teaching Special Education Children (5-10): Beginner's Guide we will learn: * Learn how to combine images with sounds to represent real-life situations * Create activities to write sentences according to visual and sound resources * Improve simple writing and composing skills

My first install of Fedora 13's Xfce spin didn't go so smoothly. During the initial (and lengthy) software update, something apparently went wrong and the system wouldn't reboot to a desktop. It might have had something to do with a very vertical window opening on my very horizontal screen instructing me to do something about OKing some dependencies for new packages. I tabbed my way through and did it by "feel," rather than by sight, and I guess it didn't work.I didn't have a whole lot invested time-wise, so I reinstalled and then used yum in a terminal window to update the box.

How is a Linux distribution put together? For Novell's openSUSE, it starts with its newly improved Build Service 2.0. Building a Linux distribution is a complex task that involves both project and package management skills. For Novell's openSUSE community Linux distribution, the key tool it uses is the openSUSE Build Service, which was recently improved with a 2.0 release in June.

The OpenSUSE Project announced the final 11.3 release of OpenSUSE, featuring Linux 2.6.34, the Btrfs file-system, improved netbook support, and desktops including KDE 4.4.4, GNOME 2.30.1, XFCE, and LXDE. Meanwhile, eWEEK Labs reviews Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11, praising its virtualization features, despite some "snags."

Microsoft might be "all in" on tablets (here and here), but it's Linux that will dominate this new category of device, according to latest research. ABI Research reckons Linux-powered non-smartphone mobile devices will comprise 62 per cent of operating systems by 2015.

Yesterday we found it interesting that Intel is not even able to ship their own Linux driver for their own hardware with their MeeGo operating system. The driver in question is their new EMGD driver for the Menlow and Tunnel Creek platforms that have a graphics core that's designed by Imagination Technologies rather than their own in-house intellectual property. The EMGD driver from Intel currently requires signing a Non-Disclosure Agreement with them to gain access to this driver, but it's not the only driver available that targets the Intel GMA 500 / GMA 600 graphics core that's derived from the Imagination Technologies PowerVR SGX 535.

At a recent local LUG I regularly attend, Braddock Gaskill gave a wonderful presentation on an open source 8-bit computer he had created. This was his first public debut of the device and every person in attendance was enthralled. Later, we met over coffee since I wanted to let him know (and ask if it was ok) that I thought his device would make for a great piece for Linux Journal. Braddock agreed and we started to chat about both the Humane Reader & Humane PC.

A beta version of Firefox 4.0 has been released with a new look and new features It's been a while in the coming but a beta version of Firefox 4.0 is now out. The most noticeable changes to the browser are the interface ones. Although the interface changes are not available in all beta versions yet they are included in the Windows-specific release.

Let's retire that silly bushwah how the OS doesn't matter. Try that on any conscript into the World Wide Botnet, or anyone who has enjoyed a visit from the Business Software Alliance, or anyone who enjoys a big surprise when they renew their site licensing and learn that first taste was just to get them hooked, and now they get to enjoy paying the full freight. "Linux Inside" is a great selling point.

Left with few options, the OpenSolaris Governing Board sends a final message to Oracle. You may have seen some of the news reporting of the OpenSolaris Governing Board (OGB) meeting that was held last Monday (I am an elected member of the Board). At a meeting with an unusually large number of community observers, we discussed how to respond to the 100% radio silence the OGB has experienced from the new owners of the OpenSolaris copyright and infrastructure. I believe we reached a balanced and well-considered conclusion and remain hopeful of a good outcome.

Now that I'm back from vacation, it's time to actually start using my new $329 Lenovo G555 laptop. Yep, that's cheap for new hardware, and that's what prompted me to spend the money in the first place. My goal: Install and run the 64-bit version of Fedora 13 with Xfce.

VPN connections let you remotely access file or connect remote offices together via secure tunnels over the Internet. They can even come in handy to secure connections on public Internet ports or Wi-Fi hotspots, hiding Internet traffic from local eavesdroppers. If you aren't going to have more than two-dozen VPN users, you might consider setting up your own VPN server using the DD-WRT router firmware. If you have a compatible wireless router, you can load the firmware on it. This gives you an OpenVPN server and client, and many more cool features. You can then set it up for remote access connections or site-to-site connections to connect offices together.

This tutorial shows how you can run your own name server for domains that you register with fasthosts.com. Of course, this works with every other registrar as well, although the procedure might differ a little bit. We will use the ISPConfig 3 server as the primary name server and also acting as the secondary. This may be suited best to a single server setup. To do this, you need one server with ISPConfig 3 installed and a Fast hosts account.

Mozilla Lab's Firefox Home app has cleared Apple's approval process and is now available for free in the App Store. The app uses Firefox Sync to import browser history, tabs, and the Awesome Bar, bringing a truncated version of the Firefox experience to the iPhone and iPod Touch.

The Linux kernel development process stands out in a number of ways; one of those is the fact that there is exactly one person who can commit code to the "official" repository. There are many maintainers looking after various subsystems, but every patch they merge must eventually be accepted by Linus Torvalds if it is to get into the mainline. Linus's unique role affects the process in a number of ways; for example, as this article is being written, Linus has just returned from a vacation which resulted in nothing going into the mainline for a couple of weeks. There are more serious concerns associated with the single-committer model, though, with scalability being near the top of the list.

The Wine team is proud to announce that the stable release Wine 1.2 is now available. This release represents two years of development effort and over 23,000 changes. The main highlights are the support for 64-bit applications, and the new graphics based on the Tango standard.

Say you've got yourself a nice computer, be it tower, notebook, or whatever, and it has a dual core 64 bit chip. It's a pretty cool system and it came with Windows 7. After much hounding and friendly ribbing from your Linux-pushing friend, you decide you're going to load up Ubuntu. So you wander over to the Ubuntu desktop site to download your desktop Linux ISO where it tells you that the 64 bit edition isn't recommended for desktop use. You're confused. After all, your computer came with a 64 bit version of Windows. Isn't 64 bits better than 32? Why can't Linux run a 64 bit desktop?