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The Wine development release 1.1.41 is now available. The source is available now, Binary packages are in the process of being built, and will appear soon at their respective download locations.

The search for the next-generation video codec for the open web has reached an impasse. Few of the options are truly open or free, and those that are free are not being pushed by the major forces.

There are again some rumors about LiMux' dead here in Munich. I don't want to comment on the origin of them, but to the responsible company: This doesn't work out. LiMux is more alive than ever and the story goes on very well....LiMux has achieved one very important goal. The open standard Open Document Format (ODF) is now Munich's primary used internal document exchange standard, beside of PDF for non-editable documents. Congratulations to all, who made this great success happen! Our standard office workplace consists now of OpenOffice.org (Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw), Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird and many other sometimes needed apps like e.g. GIMP.

Lucid Lynx, Ubuntu 10.04 that Friday entered the beta stage, looks to be taking the popular distro to an entirely new - and very consumer-oriented - level. Between Canonical's web-based syncing service Ubuntu One - unveiled last year - the coming U1 music store, and the new Me Menu, Lucid Lynx is looking less like the stoic Linux desktops of yesteryear and more like like, well, what everyday consumers want in an operating system.

This entry is a continuation of one published in May of 2009. In fact it is relating to a comment made earlier today which I responded to in brief words. I am now taking the time to offer my viewpoint on the whole ZFS licensing under the CDDL and the reasoning for it. It wasn’t until I started working with the OpenSolaris kernel and by working I mean, modifying code and going through the build process that I finally realized why OpenSolaris was licensed under the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL).

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, recently spoke about large screen Android Tablets at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit keynote (at timecode 10 minutes and 39 seconds). It’s a nice way of Eric Schmidt to indirectly confirm that Google is definitely going to support the development of Android based Tablets as alternatives on the market to the upcoming iPad.

Shuttle announced a compact, all-in-one PC featuring a 15.6-inch touchscreen and a dual-core Intel Atom D510 available with SUSE Linux. The X50V2 includes a 1366 x 768 display, webcam, 4-in-1 card reader, a 2.5-inch hard drive bay, and up to 4GB of RAM, says the company. The X50V2 resembles Shuttle's recently announced XS35 desktop in that it is available in a "barebone" configuration without memory, a hard disk drive (HDD), or operating system. It will also be available preconfigured with 2GB of RAM and a 250GB HDD, loaded with either SUSE Linux or Windows 7 Home Premium, the company says.

Virtualization has come to be the hot pick for consolidating and cutting hardware costs. All those machines within machines raise questions about the safety of what's inside, though, and according to a recent study, some are seriously lacking in good answers. The analysts at Gartner have been pondering virtualization lately, with particular emphasis on how migration affects security. According to their research, that effect is considerable: They estimate that some sixty percent of virtual servers are less secure than the original boxes.

This two-day introduction to Linux broadens attendees horizons with a detailed overview of the operating system. Attendees learn how to effectively use a Linux system as a valuable tool. They get familiar with the architecture and various components of the operating system, learn both graphical and command line tools, and learn to do basic networking. This class is scheduled for March 25th - 26th, 2010.

Announced at the Mobile World Congress, details of Microsoft's new mobile OS are starting to become clear.

The cloud, the smartphone, the tablet, the Web itself as a big giant operating system-- what's the fatal flaw in all of these? It's all about feeding content to passive "consumers". Plug me in, baby, I'm not lifting a finger ever again.

Okay. So the Canon EOS 500D does create FullHD video. Well, alright, it's just with 20 fps. But that's actually not as bad as I had feared. Yes, there are no options whatsoever. That's kind of weird. And then there's this tiny details related to the options...

The enTourage eDGe™ is the world’s first dualbook, combining the functions of an e-reader, netbook, notepad, and audio/video recorder and player in one. It’s a comprehensive device that lets you read e-books, surf the Internet, take digital notes, send emails and instant messages, watch movies and listen to music anywhere, at any time. This is nothing you've ever seen before! Get books wirelessly, move files onto your enTourage eDGe™ using an SD card or a USB flash drive. Use the mini-USB port to move files back and forth from a Windows, Mac, or Linux-based PC. And with a netbook built in, you can forget the limitations of other e-readers, the enTourage eDGe™ does it all!

Ubunutu 10.04 TLS Lucid Lynx has been released today, here it is a screenshot tour of the new beta release .

When other mailers aren’t doing the trick, it’s time to break out Claws: An extremely configurable and extensible GUI mailer that gives you all the control you’d ever want over your mail without sacrificing ease of use.

Almost exactly one year ago, LWN examined the problem of 4K-sector drives and the reasons for their existence. In short, going to 4KB physical sectors allows drive manufacturers to increase storage density, always welcome in that competitive market. Recently, there have been a number of reports that Linux is not ready to work with these drives; kernel developer Tejun Heo even posted an extensive, worth-reading summary stating that "4 KiB logical sector support is broken in both the kernel and partitioners." As the subsequent discussion revealed, though, the truth of the matter is that we're not quite that badly prepared.

According to this press release, Marvell is announcing the $99 Moby Tablet for Education. You’ve seen my video of Marvell’s 4.3? Tablet prototype shown at CES based on the Marvell Armada 600 processor. The Moby tablet is based on the same Armada 600 platform but comes with a larger screen (probably 10?). Marvell’s Moby Tablet may be the first prototype of the OLPC XO 3.0.

Florian Schießl, deputy head of Munich's LiMux project for migrating the city's public administration to Linux, has, for the first time, explained why migrating the city's computing landscape to open source software has taken longer than originally planned. On his blog, the IT expert admits that "We were naïve," and confesses to a "miscalculation". Following approval of the project in 2003, LiMux was conceived as the sole Linux client, which "fits into every different environment inside the IT units." This may have been "theoretically possible", but, according to Schießl, would have meant failing to unify the existing patchwork of IT applications and essentially continuing to muddle through.

The Open Video Alliance (OVA), a group that seeks to promote adoption of standards-based open video technologies, has launched a new campaign encouraging users to upload videos to the Wikipedia website. The goals behind this new campaign are to visually enrich the online encyclopedia and promote awareness of the value that open video technologies can bring to the Web.

Open source application developers are switching their efforts to Android, according to a new study. Google's Android mobile phone operating system is winning many fans. And now it appears to be winning the hearts of open source developers as well. Which is good news for users looking for more applications, and good news for the future health of the Android ecosphere.