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LXer Feature: 26-Apr-2010

In this week's LXWR we have Oracle charging for Sun's ODF plug-in, Stallman reconsiders his existence, Steve Jobs tells people who want porn to buy an Android, a farewell to Songbird and much more. Enjoy!

Free software began as a political movement: its central aim was – and remains – the propagation of freedom. Later, it became a development methodology too, largely at the hands of Linus, whose geographical isolation in Finland forced him to develop ways of using the Internet to coordinate a new kind of massive, but decentralised, global collaboration. Later still, free software also became a way of making serious money – something that Stallman has repeatedly said he is quite happy with, contrary to much FUD claiming otherwise.

How many times have you read about a worm spreading through an enterprise network, or some malware or other compromising personal data, or computers being used to build a DDoS or spammer botnet and either shouted BLOODY WINDOWS at the screen or seen someone else lay the blame squarely on Microsoft? Chances are, rather a lot I would imagine

VLC Media Player 1.1.0 Pre 2 was released a few days ago and today I finally had some time to package it and upload it to the WebUpd8 PPA. Ubuntu 10.04 will be released in a few days but unfortunately VLC 1.1.0 won't be officially available until Ubuntu 10.10 so installing it from a PPA (or compiling it yourself) is the only way to use the latest VLC Media Player in Ubuntu.

This tutorial describes how to scan emails for image spam with FuzzyOCR on an Ubuntu 9.10 server. FuzzyOCR is a plugin for SpamAssassin which is aimed at unsolicited bulk mail containing images as the main content carrier. Using different methods, it analyzes the content and properties of images to distinguish between normal mails (ham) and spam mails. FuzzyOCR tries to keep the system load low by scanning only mails that have not already been categorized as spam by SpamAssassin, thus avoiding unnecessary work.

Brian Williams stood center stage in the NBC Nightly News studio, as always impeccably dressed and at ease in a conservative business suit. He shared a last quiet joke with the intern straightening his tie, and then on cue turned to the camera.

Adoption of Linux server is highest in Asia-Pacific at 25 percent more, driven by small and midsize businesses, finds new study.

This tutorial shows how you can set up a PCLinuxOS 2010 desktop (with KDE) that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge.

A tutorial on how to make Dolphin show the various multimedia files as thumbnails instead of icons as you browse the filesystem.

The past few days we have been reporting on Valve's Steam client coming to Linux (and some of the Source Engine games too) soon as we had found Linux references within the Steam Mac OS X client and then other Linux references. We even ended up finding the unreleased Linux files on the Valve servers.

Surveys suggest that up to 90% of home computer users do not back up their data. That is a pretty frightening statistic bearing in mind how valuable and precious users' files are. Computer users who do not backup their files are at risk of losing all of their personal and irreplaceable documents. The hard drive in a PC can malfunction at any time, sometimes without any warning at all. Alternatively, the computer's hard disk can be damaged by an accident, a fire, flood, power cut, or infected by a virus.

While a bulk of the Linux community is engaged by the release of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS next week, another popular Linux distribution put out its first major update of 2010 a few days ago. PCLinuxOS, the Mandriva-based OS that is one of the top 10 most popular Linux distributions according to DistroWatch, is out with this update that bumps their kernel to Linux 2.6.32.11 while still carrying the BFS scheduler, updated NVIDIA and ATI driver support, locale improvements, and much more. We have a few benchmarks up this morning of PCLinuxOS 2010 compared to the latest snapshot of Ubuntu 10.04.

The final version of the Procurement and Open Source Software Guideline has been published on OSOR.eu. The study, commissioned by the European Commission as part of the "Dissemination of good practice in Open Source Software (GPOSS)" measure under the IDABC programme, gives guidelines for public administration on how and why publicly acquire open source software.

Previously, iFixit was a repair site that posted step-by-step disassembly instructions for gadgets posted by iFixit staff. The company makes money by selling parts (like replacement iPhone screens) that intrepid fixers can use in their repair projects. Later, iFixit implemented a gallery tool for anybody to post an illustrative teardown manual for their gadgets (which Gadget Lab helped introduce with a Sony teardown contest). Now, the site has repurposed itself into a full-blown wiki for repair manuals, where contributors can collaborate on repair instructions in real time.

Linux is armed with Intelligent Input Bus (IBus) now. This is an input method (IM) framework for multilingual input in *nix like operating systems. Having a bus like architecture it is called I"Bus" Two major components of IBus are Input method engine (IME) and ibus-daemon. ibus-daemon provides a system tray configuration utility to select the Input method engine (IME) and then the language. IBus uses D-Bus to communication between the ibus-daemon and clients (engines, panel, config tools)

IBM is turning to technology from Novell to build Linux OS powered software appliances -- a move that aims to deliver easy-to-deploy software for physical, virtual and cloud-based environments in use at small to midsized businesses. The new software appliances deliver solutions for IBM Lotus, Websphere and Cognos software applications. Specifically, IBM will be offering software appliances for the IBM Lotus Foundations collaboration suite as well as the Lotus Protector for Mail Security. IBM's WebSphere Application Server is also benefiting with a software appliance aimed at virtualized environments, while Big Blue is ramping up its analytics offerings with appliances for its Cognos Now! and IBM Smart Analytics Optimizer packages.

Gloobus Preview is a Gnome application based on Apple’s “Quicklook”, designed to enable a full screen preview of any kind of file.

Webmaster Tools from Google can enhance your understanding of what is making your website work. ModSecurity, a valuable security resource, may block the verification page that is necessary for Webmaster Tools to function. This article will show you how to write a rule that will allow you to use both effectively.

TORONTO -- How will we know when IPv4 address space is all used up? And what will happen when that day comes? The modern Internet has been built using IPv4 (define), which provides for 4.3 billion address, a supply that could run dry within the next two years. Organizations that allocate IP address space like the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) have attempted to forecast when IPv4 address space will be gone, but it's not an exact science, and there is no precise date to mark on a calendar.

Calcuverter is a calculator and unit converter in one. Furthermore, you can enter queries in plain English.