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While I was at linux.conf.au 2010 last month, I finally met Ted Ts'o, one of the most senior figures in the Linux world, and, like many of them, now working for Google. Indeed, few people go further back in the world of Linux than Ts'o: he made his first contribution to version 0.10 of the kernel, which came out in December 1991, and he also set up the first site in the US that carried the Linux kernel and related software.

Enhancements to the ALSA code for HD audio codecs, a V4L/DVB driver for the Mantis TV chip, drivers for MSI laptops and drivers for newer AMD CPUs are just some of the improvements to Linux hardware support. Android drivers have now been escorted from the staging area, while Ramzswap (formerly Compcache) framework for compressing RAM has been added.

Work on porting KJots to Akonadi started a long time ago (around summer 2008!), and that effort is reaching a milestone this week. The ported version of KJots has been merged into trunk for the next release of the KDE Software Compilation where work will continue on it to refine features and fix bugs.

If you've been using the recently released Boxee Beta media center but found it to be a bit on unusable side of buggy (at least one Lifehacker writer felt that way), good news: Boxee just released an update to Boxee Beta, and while the update doesn't have any new features, it's overflowing with bug fixes (over 500 resolved issues in total).

With the rise of KDE 4.4 comes a new crop of desktop widgets (or Plasmoids). Earlier renditions of KDE 4.x saw the Plasmoids less than useful. The latest workings, however, have become quite useful, productive even. In this article I will introduce you to five of those Plasmoids that can help your productivity in one way or another. I will also show you how the Plasmoids are now installed.

At FOSDEM 2010 in Brussels, Linux Magazine Online pulled Android commentator Jan Wildeboer and kernel staging tree maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman away from the daily events to talk with them on camera.

Let's correct some facts and assumptions in Dr. Gary Pisano's Expert Report on behalf of SCO in the SCO v. Novell trial, shall we? Why? First, it's fun. Geek fun, granted, but that is who we are. Second, I see what I view as mistakes, and I surely don't want people to be confused or for errors to go down in history unanswered. If the testimony is excluded, which is the relief that Novell is asking the court for, it won't be answered in the trial. So, for historians, and for our own enjoyment, here is Groklaw's answer to the expert report of Dr. Gary Pisano, part 1.

In this two-part article by Audra Hendrix, Bogdan Brinzarea and Cristian Darie, authors of AJAX and PHP: Building Modern Web Applications 2nd Edition, we will create a form validation application that implements traditional techniques with added AJAX flavor, thereby making the form more user-friendly, responsive, and pleasing. In the AJAX world, entered data is validated on the fly, so the users are never confronted with waiting for full-page reloads or the rude "blank form" as a reply.

Understanding Apple vs Microsoft of the past can prepare Linux for the road ahead. It teaches us what to expect from Microsoft once the buzz hits a certain level. We can expect some underhanded, ulterior motives while we get a big smile and buddy handshake.

Before proceeding to the OpenOffice 3.2 installation (from its website), please note that there are quite a few differences between this version of OpenOffice.org and the OpenOffice.org version from the Ubuntu repositories!

The Wikimedia Foundation has received another major donation. Today Google announced that it is donating two million dollars to the non-profit organisation behind Wikipedia. "Wikipedia is one of the greatest triumphs of the internet," explained Google co-founder Sergey Brin, "This vast repository of community-generated content is an invaluable resource to anyone who is online." Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales emphasised the long friendship between Google and Wikimedia, "Both organisations are committed to bringing high quality information to hundreds of millions of individuals every day, and to making the Internet better for everyone."

I recently purchased an HTC Magic, my first device running Android, Google's Linux-based mobile operating system. Although there are a lot of things I like about Android, I also quickly realized that there are also a lot of things that either require urgent improvement or are going wrong altogether. Below is my not-so-small list of Android issues. A lot of them are related to the Android market because it is in my opinion the part of Android that requires the most urgent efforts.

Ever wonder whether a given FLOSS project is going to succeed or flounder? Need a little help reading the tea leaves? Now you can follow along at home with a handy scorecard that looks at everything from source control to project communication. A little history. I was researching a project yesterday that required potential users and contributors to pull source from a Git repository, rather than simply downloading a zip file or tarball with the source and other materials that users would need. I mentioned this on Twitter, and Karsten Wade of the Fedora project pointed out the scorecard on the newly launched guide to helping people learn to interact with and build community, Open Source Way.

When Google announced their ChromeOS there was a flurry of comment and opinion on what this could mean for the GNU/Linux user and the future of free software. Our esteemed editor, Tony Mobily made a bold statement (albeit framed as a question) at the time that Google’s ChromeOS could turn GNU/Linux into a “desktop winner”. I’m not sure that it’s true. Whatever happens of course the fact is that when somebody of Google’s size and impact enters a market, there will be winners and losers, losses and gains. Now that the dust has well and truly settled let’s have another look at the potential impact of ChromeOS. Read the full article at Freesoftware Magazine

Mutt is a text-based mail client along the lines of Pine or Elm. It's known for being a fast and highly configurable mail client, and since it is text-based, it’s ideal for checking email quickly over SSH (Secure Shell). Click through to learn exactly how to use it…

Just as they did last year, over thirty international security organisations have come together, to publish a list of the 25 most dangerous programming errors leading to vulnerabilities that can be exploited for cybercrime and espionage. The 2010 CWE/SANS Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors has been updated with a number of improvements to how the errors are graded, prioritised and categorised. For example, new "Focus Profiles" allow readers to quickly see the listed errors sorted for particular professionals' interests.

The Network Information Service distributes information on the network that must be shared between the Linux machines. Sun Microsystems developed a system known as Yellow Pages (YP) that eventually became known as NIS. The original YP is added to most commands for NIS ypserver, ypbind, and yppasswd. Typically NIS is used to distribute information about the users and how they authenticate to Linux.

As of this writing (Tuesday Feb 16th) there don't seem to be any new suggestions from Microsoft to assist XP users whose systems were rendered un-bootable after installing the February 9th patches. For example, the last entry on The Microsoft Security Response Center blog is four days old. So let me offer a suggestion: boot to Linux and move some files around. Windows Update on XP is architected [sic] to allow for the backing out of patches. The problem is that this depends on the system being bootable, so it's of no use when even Safe Mode is unavailable, as is the case here. And, as I wrote last time, the official troubleshooting tool from Microsoft, the Recovery Console, is unusable for many, if not most, Windows XP users.

Codeweavers offers downloads of its Crossover Games for $39.95 and Crossover Professional for $69.95 If you apply coupon code "ComeToTheLight" this will drop CrossOver Games to $29.96 And Crossover Professional to $52.46

For an open source company, nurturing a community around the software is as important as picking the right licence. Although developer communities tend to be more self-starting with a reasonably open development process, user communities, which are a source of valuable feedback, need more encouragement. The H went to the first meeting of the UK BIRT User Group (BUG) to see how one company was helping to create a user community.