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As we all know, OSCON provides a multitude of opportunities for those in the Open Source world to learn not just the ins and outs of what's new, but how to improve their projects on fronts ranging from code to documentation to community members. One such opportunity at this year's convention came in the form of a panel presentation on press relations, a subject that can be both touchy and treacherous where PR pros are scarce. As that's the business we're in, and our readership includes many in target audience, we thought it would be beneficial to pass on.

Over the weekend, I decided to see which of the major operating systems would be the easiest to update. The answer may surprise you.

OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source open software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. You can adjust openoffice to your needs by adding more functionality with the help of extensions, for installation guide you will find it at the end of this article.

I'm a blogger but I like to write about personal things that don't belong in a blog. I have been using a standard text editor to manage my personal writings but there are always shortcomings with standard editors when it comes to keeping a personal journal. I recently happened upon a very nice application tailored specifically for people who keep a personal journal.

When the Red Hat Summit (and the associated JBoss World) conferences kick off Sept. 1 in Chicago, The VAR Guy will be watching closely for new developments involving Qumranet virtualizations, Cisco Systems, EnterpriseDB and Alfresco. Here's the scoop and an early look at Red Hat Summit.

Wikipedia wants to give users more confidence in the reliability of its information, so it has come up with a color-coding scheme that will assign an orange background to less-trustworthy information -- the darker, the more suspect -- and a white background to content that ranks high for accuracy. However, Wikipedia hasn't said much about how it will arrive at its rankings.

If you have any (non-tech support) questions about NVIDIA and Linux, ask away! Phoronix will be hosting a Q&A with NVIDIA regarding their Linux graphics driver. If you have any questions to ask, click on the "Comments & Discussion" button below and ask away in our forums. After a few days we will be narrowing down the list of questions before NVIDIA begins answering them.

In my post two weeks ago, I introduced you to KDE’s KIO slaves and gave you a brief overview of the services they offer. One of the KIO protocols is remote:/, which relies on KNetAttach to create virtual network folders. With it, you can create folders for the following services: 1. WebFolder (webdav) 2. FTP 3. Microsoft Windows network drive (using Samba) 4. Secure shell (ssh) Each one has its slightly unique features and requirements, and in this post, you will learn about each one.

According to a new report, the market for netbook computers grew 40 percent from the first to the second quarter of 2009, almost twice the rate of standard notebooks. Netbook shipments actually outstripped notebooks in Latin America and Greater China.

Apple started the App Store revolution. Canonical hopes to continue it with the Ubuntu Software Store for Ubuntu 9.10 and Ubuntu 10.10. I bet eager adopters will be kids who are already familiar with the iPod Touch (iTouch) and Apple App Store.

Apache Wink is a new framework for developing "RESTful web services". The project currently resides in the Apache Incubator, where newly introduced projects within the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) are matured and evaluated for promotion to full Apache projects, having entered the incubator in May. The code base for Wink was contributed by HP and IBM, who also intend to oversee the project in the future.

Anyone wanting to watch just a short video on YouTube probably won't need Minitube, for those that want more, it's a must-have app. Minitube is a classic Unix program for the playback of YouTube films. Enter a keyword and the program will retrieve all relative URLs from YouTube and play them one after the other. With a binary of just 440KByte, Minitube does without Flashplayer, is advertisement-free and relies fully on the Phonon framework for audio and video support.

The Slackware team released version 13 of its venerable Linux distribution, now supporting 64-bit computers. Slackware 13 provides "completely reworked" X packages, upgrades to KDE 4.2.4 and Xfce 4.6.1 desktops, a new .txz package format, and support for Ext4 and the GRUB bootloader, says the project.

In my last article I wrote about accessing a PostgreSQL database in C/C++. In this article, I'm going to discuss performing the same functions in C against an SQLite database. Unlike Postgresql and the supporting libraries, SQLite creates completely self-contained databases that aren't dependant upon a client-server architecture.

Steve Jobs is a genius of design and marketing, but his track record on calling the right balance between utilizing proprietary arts and public resources (like open source and open standards) is more questionable.

Wayan and I and others have wrangled over the last two years over what OLPC programs would cost, and whether countries can afford it.

The threat to Linux is its users, advocates, and fanboys not the megacorps of the IT industry.

Ruben Unteregger discloses how he created a Skype trojan under contract from the German government while working for a Swiss company. Linux users may not be exempt. He has now released the trojan source code under GPL.

Whether you call it Web 2.0, Software as a Service (SAAS), Cloud Computing, or some other trendy buzzword, it still means ceding control of your data and applications to someone else. Bruce Byfield examines some exciting possibilities in KDE4 for incorporating networked functions into the desktop in a different way, one that keeps control in the user's hands.

Tightening of the belt has seemingly paid off for Novell. The enterprise earned 38 million USD in the last quarter with Linux products. Novell’s turnover for the third quarter this year is lower than that of the third quarter last year, but the figures are still in the black. Novell closed out 2009’s third quarter with a profit of 17 million USD.