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There has been a whole host of innovative features being worked on in the build up to Ubuntu 10.04; some of the technical things include noticeably faster booting, other aspects include artwork and imagine redesign. Community leader Dave Walker shares his behind-the-scenes views on the latter…

One of the major innovations of OLPC consists in the idea that a computer given to a single child (also called 1:1 computing) is the best way to enhance the pupil's ability to learn effectively. It's called ONE-laptop-per-child after all.

You don't need a PhD in computer science and years of experience to hack the kernel. Sure, they help, but the nature of Linux development means that it's open to all by default. All you have to do is get stuck in. You use the Linux kernel in whatever shape or form every day; wouldn't you feel just the tiniest swell of pride if you'd helped work on it, no matter in how small a way?

Search engine maker Google is again providing scholarships in 2010 for student open source works. Information is now first hand this week in Stuttgart and Karlsruhe.

A new version of the Elementary gnome theme has been released in the Elementaryart PPA. There were some previews of this new update, but only now the theme has been officially updated. It was mainly the Metacity theme who has been redesigned, as you can see in the screenshot below:

Xfce, LXDE, and other desktop environments are often referenced as being lighter-eight Linux desktop environments than KDE and GNOME, but what are the measurable performance differences between them? Curious how much of a quantitative impact the GNOME, KDE, Xfce, and LXDE desktops have on netbook systems, we carried out a small set of tests to look at the differences in memory usage, battery power consumption, and thermal performance.

Developer Joshua Wright intends to release KillerBee, an open source collectionPDF of Linux tools intended for testing the security of ZigBee networks. According to Wright, many ZigBee implementations are a mess – he hopes that his tool, which is coded in Python, will ultimately lead to more secure products. Wright lists ZigBee applications which include controlling water flows in dams and natural gas control valves. The technology is also widely used in building automation; many thousands of ZigBee devices have been used in the brand-new MGM CityCenter in Las Vegas, for example. Some intelligent electricity meters in use in the US also communicate using ZigBee in a mesh network.

This guide explains how to set up WebDAV with lighttpd on an Ubuntu 9.10 server. WebDAV stands for Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning and is a set of extensions to the HTTP protocol that allow users to directly edit files on the lighttpd server so that they do not need to be downloaded/uploaded via http://FTP. Of course, WebDAV can also be used to upload and download files.

Omnis Studio is a cross-platform (Windows, Mac and Linux) Rapid Application Development tool. It allows you to quickly build applications using a combination of graphical elements as well as a code editor. In this tutorial we look at installation on Ubuntu and getting familiar with the excellent tools on offer...

To Frank’s disgust, it was love at first sight for Lilly when Carl Cummings arrived to collect Frank’s passport. But Frank’s distaste turned to glee when he realized that the CIA agent hated dogs. Frank stepped back to better appreciate Carl’s futile efforts to fend off the obese corgi’s surprisingly energetic advances.

Berlin, probably one of the most frequented KDE hacking locations in the world, saw another hack sprint from 13th to 21st of February. This time four of the KDevelop and five of the Kate developers shared a week of very productive programming. Additionally team members from Okteta and KDE on Windows joined the meeting.

One of the big changes in Ubuntu 10.4 (aka Lucid Lynx) is the built-in social networking tools. These include a menu bar option for posting updates directly to any number of social networking sites. This change has been introduced for the first time in the third alpha release, made last week. Called the MeMenu the tool expands on the existing "presence" menu to add a text box for updating the users status on any of their accounts. The existing presence menu includes rudimentary options for marking a user available or away on their instant messaging account. The MeMenu uses the much-improved Gwibber tool to broadcast the status updates to all networks.

The Novell software engineer, Linux Foundation board member and kernel maintainer talks technical about Linux and more…

LXer Feature: 08-Mar-2010

In the area of window managers Linux users are completely and totally spoiled rotten. We constantly debate the merits of one desktop environment/window manager over another. We argue over what programs are better than others, what versions of those programs we like over another and getting in world class pissing contests all the while crying about what we wish they would do better or differently. I wish Windows users had this problem, but they don't. Why? Because they have no choice.

You can use Audacity to import music into your project, convert different audio files from one format to another, bring in multiple files and convert them, and more. In this article we will learn how to add background music into your podcast, overdub, and fade in and out. We will also discuss some additional information about importing music from CDs, cassette tapes, and vinyl records.

The Ubuntu developers are moving quickly to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source community has to offer. The Lucid Lynx Alpha 3 is the third alpha release of Ubuntu 10.04, bringing with it the earliest new features for the next version of Ubuntu. Note:- This is an alpha release. Do not install it on production machines. The final stable version will be released on April 29, 2010.

The Bordeaux Technology Group released Bordeaux 2.0.0 Beta 2 for Mac today. Bordeaux 2.0.0 Beta 2 marks major progress over the older Beta 1 release. With this release we now support Leopard and Snow Leopard. We have improved support for Microsoft Office 2007 (Word, Excel and PowerPoint) and preliminary support for Internet Explorer 7 in this release, there has also been many small bug fixes and tweaks on the back-end.

Victoria’s Electoral Commission has flagged plans to expand its use of electronic voting kiosks based on Linux software in the next state election in November this year.

Canonical wants Ubuntu Linux to run on a range of devices — from mobile Internet devices all the way up to high-end servers and cloud systems. But there are two markets where Canonical has no plans to push Ubuntu. Here they are.

Recently we acquired a Sony Cybershot n50 I hooked this camera up to my Linux system and it picked it right up as Linux does with many Digital Camera’s and the world was good. Then one evening I get home from a long night at work and my newly converted from Windows wife is asking for her Window’s install back. New Linux users can be so difficult to please. Anyways upon investigation I found out that she just wanted to run the Sony Picture Motion Browser software that came with the Camera. So I fired up wine-doors and put the disk in and gave it a try inside Linux.