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One of the striking aspects of the free software community is its obsession with licences. It's as if within every hacker there's a lawyer struggling to get out. But maybe it's not so surprising; as Larry Lessig reminded us, “code is law”, and the reverse is also true in the sense that the licence adopted has a big impact on how the software is produced. That explains, in part, why recent discussions of Oracle's proposed acquisition of Sun – and hence MySQL – have once more put free software licences under the microscope.

We looked back 6 months and chose 10 of our Linux computer recipients and spoke with them individually. More to the point , we presented them with a series of questions.

I think this bundle (the book and DVD) was a limited offer and unfortunately, it's taken me just a bit too long get to my review to take advantage of the package. Nevertheless, the products are still available individually, and are both written and presented by Barrie North. But let's back up a bit.

While Ubuntu 9.10 is using GRUB2 by default for its boot-loader on new installations, GRUB 2.0 has actually yet to be released even after many years in development. However, on this Sunday afternoon version 2 of GNU GRUB is closer to seeing the light of day...

Because it lacks the expensive licensing that is often the hallmark of proprietary software, open source is regularly touted as a way for IT departments to make their budget stretch a little bit further and it has already enjoyed considerable success in certain areas of the enterprise, such as web servers. However, when asked if they had chosen open source software as a way of cutting their costs during the recession, just two of the 12-strong jury said yes. In contrast, several CIOs said the costs of migrating to open source and the associated expenditure on retraining staff serve as a disincentive for adoption.

Mandriva Linux 2010 is aimed at improving the user experience for daily tasks. Let's have a look at what's new. 1. New installer. To improve the user experience of installation, the Mandriva developers thought that the installer design was quite old now and needed to be refreshed to stay ahead of the competition.

Medibuntu contain all software that cannot be included in Ubuntu for various reasons, like opera ,google earth, wincodecs and more, by adding Medibuntu repositories you will stop wasting time by looking for the right package adding repository for every package, verification keys ...

You may have heard that the "Docky" part of Gnome Do, which makes Gnome Do behave like a dock menu is about to be separated from Do. Using this Launchpad PPA, you'll be able to install the new Docky and also update your Ubuntu Karmic Koala Gnome Shell to a more recent version.

OpenSUSE will be released next month. Find out the most 10 important features in the default upcoming openSUSE 11.2. In short, OpenSUSE 11.2 is the best KDE distribution (IMHO).

This document describes how to install a PureFTPd server that uses virtual users from a MySQL database instead of real system users. This is much more performant and allows to have thousands of ftp users on a single machine. In addition to that I will show the use of quota and upload/download bandwidth limits with this setup. Passwords will be stored encrypted as MD5 strings in the database.

Version 2.6 of LLVM, the Low-Level Virtual Machine, has been released. This modular compiler infrastructure, which can replace many parts of the GNU Compiler Collection and go far beyond the conventional roles as a code compiler such as being used within Apple's Mac OS X OpenGL implementation for providing optimizations and is similarly going to be used within Gallium3D, has taken a major leap forward with the 2.6 release.

LLVM 2.6 includes better x86_64 code generation, new code generators for multiple architectures, support for SSE 4.2, improved optimizations, and perhaps most notably it is the first release to include Clang where it's now at a "production quality" status for C and Objective-C on x86...

In celebration of Gentoo's 10th birthday, the Gentoo engineering team banded together and created the Gentoo 10 LiveDVD of the latest packages for this rolling Linux distribution. Less than a month after releasing Gentoo 10.0, the Gentoo Ten team has released Gentoo 10.1.

The Gentoo 10.1 LiveDVD contains enhancements and bug-fixes since the 10.0 release at the start of the month...

Unknown Horizons is a FREE and open-source, real-time 2D strategy game. The game emphasis on economy and city building: Expand your small settlement to a strong and wealthy colony, collect taxes and supply your inhabitants with valuable goods. Increase your power with a well balanced economy and with strategic trade and diplomacy. Unknown Horizons is loosely oriented on Sunflowers Anno series however not a clone of these comercial games nor an engine to play the original content. Unknown Horizon version 2009.2 was recently released, bringing some really interesting improvements such as:

Under the open-source model, thousands of people pick it apart simultaneously and increase security. It comes more cheaply than computer coding designed for a single client, such as the Executive Office of the President. It gives programmers around the world a chance to offer upgrades, additions or tweaks to existing programs that the White House could — or could not — include in daily updates. Yet the system — known as Drupal — alone won't make it more secure on its own, cautioned Ari Schwartz of the Center for Democracy and Technology.

A 20-page downloadable whitepaper compares 10 free media center applications, including Boxee, Elisa, Entertainer, Freevo, MediaPortal, My Media System, MythTV, Neuros OSD, Plex, and XBMC.

When people first think of getting audiobooks online, they probably think of Audible. But, Audible has one really big problem: DRM (Digital Rights Management). Do not despair, though, there are some really great options for DRM free audiobooks that work great on Linux and Android. Meet EMusic and LibriVox.

A lot of people are praising MPD (Music Player Daemon) + Sonata so an article on this was probably expected. But what is MPD and what is Sonata?

Microsoft's latest operating system, Windows 7, is currently shipping with a potentially serious defect. Ahead of the product's global launch on Thursday, Germany's federal IT security agency (BSI) has issued a warning about a high-risk vulnerability in the SMB2 protocol. This can be exploited over the network to shut down a computer with a Denial of Service (DoS) attack.

Motorola posted and then removed specs for its Verizon-destined, Android-based "Droid" phone, says eWEEK. Meanwhile, Motorola "Calgary" and "Zeppelin" Android phones have been tipped, T-Mobile launched Huawei's Android-based "Pulse" phone in the UK, an HTC Desire photo has appeared, and HTC released source code for the Hero, say various reports.

Apple has closed down its project to develop ZFS for Mac OS X. An announcement on the project's site simply says "The ZFS project has been discontinued. The mailing list and repository will also be removed shortly". Sun's ZFS filesystem was believed by some to be a contender for Apple's next filesystem and the appearance of some support for the filesystem in Mac OS X 10.5 Server seemed to confirm that. The arrival of Snow Leopard, which lacked any ZFS support, contradicted that belief.