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Keith Packard has just made available the first release candidate of X Server 1.8 and confirms that its release schedule is still on track. Snapshots and the Git code for X Server 1.8 go back to last year, but with a planned release by the end of March, Keith has now started working on release candidates.

I recently read an article about some “Papercuts” a user experienced with Ubuntu 9.10, and it inspired me to write about my thoughts regarding the latest Ubuntu release, four months after its release. Ubuntu 9.10 was reviewed right here on this site. At the time, I found that the temporary theme wasn’t the greatest thing that I’ve ever seen, though it was a worthy upgrade to anyone using 9.04. However, since then my experiences with it have changed my view considerably. While I almost completely switched to Arch Linux for all of my computers, my wife is still an Ubuntu girl, and probably always will be. She just loves it, and all of her computers run it. She recently purchased a netbook that came with Windows 7, and she immediately wanted me to wipe it and put Ubuntu on it. While I offered to install the UNR version (Ubuntu Netbook Remix) on it she made it clear that she just wanted standard Ubuntu, and that’s what I did. In addition, I inherited a netbook as well, though I decided that I would give the UNR edition a try.

We are pleased to announce the Plasma Javascript Jam Session. This friendly competition will reward creators of the most original, interesting and beautiful Plasma widgets (Plasmoids) written in Javascript with some great prizes and community recognition.

And here is another solution to one of my problems. Ever since I use awesome and awsetbg to switch wallpapers every 5 minutes, feh sometimes bugs up a popup. Well, that is now solved since there were some problems with filename characters. A massive rename solves it. And with Massive I mean over 1500 wallpapers ;).

We all know that lots of companies use open-source software. Trying to get a handle on what open-source programs they use can be a little harder. That's why the recent report from OpenLogic, an open-source software support company, on both their growth and what programs businesses are asking for help with is interesting. In general, OpenLogic is continuing to grow while many other businesses are stuck in the bad economic times. According to the company, "OpenLogic's new customer growth was strong as bookings increased 86% over 2008 ... [while] renewal bookings grew by 40% over 2008."

Heartbeat automates all the moving parts and can work as well with the MySQL master-master active/passive solution as well as it can with the MySQL & DRBD solution. It manages the virtual IP address used by the database, directs DRBD to become primary, or relinquish primary duties, mounts the /dev/drbd0 device, and starts/stops MySQL as needed.

If you look back on the history of OpenOffice.org, it makes the 3.2 release that came out on Thursday the 11th even more impressive. Nearly 10 years in the making, OpenOffice.org has evolved from a clunky proprietary offering that struggled to import Microsoft Office documents to a productivity powerhouse that is faster, supports a fully open document format (ODF) and handles most proprietary formats with grace.

IBM unveils its entry in the growing market for clustered network-attached storage (NAS) systems, the Samba-based SONAS, capable of handling billions of files and petabytes of data.

I was happy to read From Windows to Linux: A Sound Decision, by Sam Varghese, which ran earlier this week on IT Wire. Mr. Varghese interviews Geoff Beasley, the owner of Laughing Boy Records, and "a producer, composer, arranger and performer." Because it confirmed what I've felt all along, that Linux is a superior audio production platform. I don't have the skills of people like Geoff Beasley, so I wasn't confident in making that claim. In my own experience, audio production on Mac OS X starts out easier than on Linux or Windows. You don't have to fuss with hardware and system tuning, just hook up your audio gear, load up your software, and away you go. AppleScript is a great scripting language for GUI applications. There are three downsides: cost, inflexibility, and inconsistent application quality. It's the same old bushwah from the beginning of time: Most audio production software runs on both Mac and Windows, and rarely equally well on both, but better on one or the other. Sometimes a lot better. (I'm puzzled why vendors don't mind supporting two completely different platforms, but don't want to bother with OS X's close cousin Linux.)

GNU Screen is one of the most useful utilities you can have at your disposal if you spend any time at all working at the command line. Screen allows you to manage multiple shell sessions from one terminal window or console, view multiple shell sessions at the same time, and even log into the same session from more than one location at a time. The screen utility is a "window manager" that allows you to organize and work with multiple shell sessions in a very powerful way. Utilizing screen, you can manage shell sessions in all kinds of useful ways. This tutorial will show you how to display two or more sessions simultaneously in the same window, "detach" from a session and log in later, and even log into the same session from more than one system.

By now, you should have already heard of the popular Wine software that allows you to install Windows applications in Linux. There is also another paid application – CrossOver that utilities Wine and comes with a simplified GUI to help you get the job done easier. Now, here’s another software that is as powerful as Wine and as user-friendly as Crossover, and best of all, it is free.

Google has announced the availability of version 5.0.307.7 of Chrome for Mac and Linux, the latest betas of its Chrome WebKit-based browser for each platform. According to the developers, Chrome on both platforms features stability improvements to plug-ins, such the Adobe Flash Player, and is now even more reliable.

Sure I've tried Wine before. But never successfully. I took the plunge recently, forking over $20 for the Bordeaux GUI front-end for Wine, the non-emulator that allows users of Linux (and Solaris and FreeBSD) to run Windows applications on their Unix-like computers. I decided to use Bordeaux because its developers (or developer singular ... I'm not sure) promised that IrfanView 4.25 — the best image editor on any platform for my particular needs — would run with it. And I saw plenty of Wine users have trouble with Irfanview. Codeweavers, who I'd rather deal with than Bordeaux, doesn't make any promises in regard to Irfanview. Bordeaux does.

GNU/Linux has never been short of audio and video players, but they live in a world of multiple codecs, chief culprit amongst them being MP3, AAC, WMA and (Adobe) Flash. I say “culprits” because they are not free and open codecs. They are encumbered by patents; most websites with embedded audio/video use them and most of the people who view them are also using other patented software: Windows. GNU/Linux is a good alternative and all distros come bundled with free and open multimedia alternatives too: Ogg. You would not be surprised that these players can handle Ogg but what if I told you that Mozilla’s Firefox browser could not only handle this codec but could be used also to transcode videos to that format? Interested? Read on. Read the full article at Freesoftware Magazine.

There are a few different programs for ripping DVDs on Linux. The following details my personal experience with four different applications over the last week and a half.

I realize that it's trite for anyone in the computer industry, but I have to confess to being a life long fan of Star Trek. Now, mind you, I don't know Klingon, I don't own a starfleet uniform, and I don't routinely go around quoting obscure Ferengi dialog. So there are many that would say I don't really qualify as a trekkie (or trekker, although I do know that it's a point of debate...

Thats true. Now you can install and get the latest updates of Google Picasa in Ubuntu by adding these repositories. Here is how you do it.

Ubuntu is considering including Google Docs as the default office suite for its next netbook release. Ubuntu's forthcoming Netbook Remix (UNR) will very likely not include OpenOffice.org and instead use Google Docs or other lightweight alternatives as the default office tools. The decision is proving to be a controversial one within the developer community but the lead developers believe that the web-hosted suite will free up enough space to give UNR a speed boost.

Mary, the daughter of a friend is in college: her Windows XP laptop constantly reboots and, we suspect, has a bad hard drive. The system will boot a live CD (Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala Desktop), and data on the hard drive can be read. During boot, the live CD identifies disk errors and tries unsuccessfully to repair them.

The rapid advance of the cloud, along with other existing Internet-based services, into the business space has highlighted the need for trust in the underlying protocols that provide the driving force behind the Internet. Some are now arguing that a secure software-based DNS signing system is essential if business is to maximise the potential of the cloud.