Linux Today Sticky Page On this page we'll maintain links to important articles and documents that pertain to Free Software, Linux, and the tech industry. Please submit your suggestions to editors@linuxtoday.com. Thank you! (Jun 15, 2009)
Small Features
Is Bill Gates’ New Website Really Running On Linux? TechCrunch: "Sometimes tips come in that seem too good to be true. Take today, for example. I got a tip that Bill Gates’ new site, The Gates Notes, was running on a Linux-powered server." Feb 1, 2010
Best Linux Distributions of the Decade (2000-2009) (Feb 9, 2010, 20:33 UTC) (90 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Tech Source: "We've seen plenty of "Best of the Decade" lists around, but not one is related to Linux distribution. So it's only fitting that we will give credit to the best Linux distros that dominated the last decade (2000-2009), or most part of it."
The iPad questions Apple won't answer (Feb 9, 2010, 20:03 UTC) (336 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Mobilize: "What exactly does Apple have to hide about the iPad? Ten days after CEO Steve Jobs introduced the iPad with words like "magical" and "revolutionary," any questions regarding key capabilities remain unanswered."
HP Launches First Quad-Core Itanium Systems (Feb 9, 2010, 19:33 UTC) (326 reads)
(2 talkbacks)
(feedback) Serverwatch: "Intel launched what will be its largest server and storage refresh beginning Monday with the introduction of the Itanium 9300 line, the long-delayed "Tukwila" family of quad-core Itanium processors."
Dell Ubuntu Order Experience (Feb 9, 2010, 19:03 UTC) (561 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Baablogic: "Let me start off by saying hats off to Dell for giving us Ubuntu as an option. Any company that supports and contributes back to the community is always a good thing. With all that said I found the ordering experience to be quite frustrating."
Power Up Linux GUI Apps (Feb 9, 2010, 18:33 UTC) (655 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Linux Magazine: "Windowing interfaces to Linux have lots of advantages. Once you find the programs you need, the menus and dialog boxes list your choices, and there’s often not much else to know about the interface."
BM Ups Its Processor Power to 7 (Feb 9, 2010, 17:33 UTC) (614 reads)
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(feedback) Hardware Central: "During an event late last month celebrating the completion of Oracle's merger with Sun, the company's outspoken chief executive took repeated shots at IBM (NYSE: IBM), saying that Big Blue's systems couldn't scale."
KDE.org Relaunched for Software Compilation 4.4 (Feb 9, 2010, 17:03 UTC) (709 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) KDE.news: "The KDE web team is pleased to announce a major redesign of the KDE.org frontpage and buzz.kde.org, just in time for the pending release of our updated Workspace, Application and Development Platform compilation. The redesign is the result of many hours of work by artists, coders, writers and testers."
The application is the new the operating system (Feb 9, 2010, 16:33 UTC) (1003 reads)
(3 talkbacks)
(feedback) The Open Road: "If you're a Google Nexus One user, you experienced a bit of magic last week.
In one click of an over-the-air update, your Nexus One became an iPhone--offering the ability to pinch and expand the screen to zoom in or out."
Linux can compete with the iPad on price, but where’s the magic?
(Feb 9, 2010, 16:03 UTC) (958 reads)
(7 talkbacks)
(feedback) Jim Zemlin's blog: "His main message about the iPad was “a magical device at a breakthrough price.” He repeated this many times throughout the pitch and twice at the end. This phrase demands an honest response: how will Linux-based devices compete with the iPad?"
The Bruno Knaapen Technology Learning Center is Established (Feb 9, 2010, 15:33 UTC) (393 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Blog of Helios: "As we've written about this week, The Christo Rey Catholic Church houses a 25 computer learning center for the residents of East Austin. The HeliOS Project provided the computers and manpower to make this place a reality."
Anjal: GNOME's Evolution for Netbooks (Feb 9, 2010, 15:03 UTC) (871 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Datamation: "Less than a year old, Anjal is a light interface for Evolution, GNOME's default mail reader, and one of free software's main answers to Microsoft Outlook."
Linux Mint 8 KDE Community Edition (Feb 9, 2010, 14:33 UTC) (1127 reads)
(1 talkbacks)
(feedback) Jamie's Random Musings: "I'm still more of a Gnome desktop user than KDE, but as KDE 4 gets better and better, and combined with the excellent integration with Linux Mint, this one is a real alternative for me."
Open source means freedom from 'anti-features' (Feb 9, 2010, 14:03 UTC) (1237 reads)
(1 talkbacks)
(feedback) Computerworld: "Proprietary vendors are using "anti-features", features that no user would ever want, to protect intellectual property, Benjamin “Mako” Hill, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the linux.conf.au open source conference last month."
GTalX - Google Voice Chat has arrived in Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) (Feb 9, 2010, 13:03 UTC) (1339 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Ubuntu Geek: "Ever since I moved to Ubuntu, my only problem was that I couldn’t use GTalk in Ubuntu.Here comes the solution - GTalx. It works flawlessly on my Ubuntu 9.10 karmic running on Dell Inspiron 1525."
Top 10 Super Bowl tech ads (Feb 9, 2010, 12:33 UTC) (1036 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Computerworld: "What were the best Super Bowl ads from tech companies in years past? Wading through four decades' worth of Super Bowl ads was entertaining, educational (who knew that Exxon once had an office products division?)"
OOXML not suitable for Norwegian government, says study (Feb 9, 2010, 12:03 UTC) (1220 reads)
(1 talkbacks)
(feedback) Good Gear Guide: "Microsoft's XML-based office document format, OOXML, does not meet the requirements for governmental use, according to a new report published by the Norwegian Agency for Public Management and eGovernment (DIFI)."
Add Cloud Storage to OpenOffice.org with SMECloud (Feb 9, 2010, 10:33 UTC) (991 reads)
(1 talkbacks)
(feedback) Worldlabel: "Cloud computing is all the rage these days. But while the idea of using your browser to access your applications and documents sounds like a great idea on paper, in practice there are all kinds of reasons to stick to your desktop software."
10 Ways that Enterprises use Linux (Feb 9, 2010, 09:03 UTC) (1570 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Daniweb: "The world's largest technical support, software and hardware companies use Linux on a daily basis for a variety of tasks and solutions. This post gives you an overview of all the ways in which large companies use Linux."
SECURITY: A sensation of wonder about technological developments (Feb 9, 2010, 07:33 UTC) (843 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Too Much Information: "It's a common thing to admire the way someone solved what was previously a limitation. The funny thing is this can be true even when faced with things we normally consider evil, because we can see that the application of the technology is different from the way it was used."
HTML5 Theora Video Codec for Silverlight (Feb 9, 2010, 06:03 UTC) (1512 reads)
(1 talkbacks)
(feedback) Alp Toker: "I’m glad to announce the first release of our fully managed Theora audio / video decoder implementation for the Silverlight platform! The Highgate media suite will bring installation-free support for HTML5 streaming video to an additional ~40% of web users overnight."
SourceForge turns off "blanket blocking" (Feb 9, 2010, 04:33 UTC) (1115 reads)
(1 talkbacks)
(feedback) The H Open: "SourceForge, the open source project hosting site, has announced that it has turned off the "blanket block" on access from Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria."
Home, Events, and Ubuntu (Feb 9, 2010, 03:03 UTC) (843 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Just Me, Amber: "I have been working with the SCaLE 8x coordinators, and the CA Loco Team for the Ubucon event at SCaLE. I am giving a talk at the WIOS event at SCaLE - A Year NTEU the Ubuntu Community and the FLOSS World."
Has the Irresistible Rise of OpenOffice.org Begun? (Feb 9, 2010, 01:33 UTC) (3344 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Computerworld UK: "Regular readers of this blog will know that I'm a big fan of OpenOffice.org, and that I think it has the potential to break through into the mainstream. Maybe it's already begun..."
Alexandria Project Chap. 4: Beware of Greeks bearing Trapdoors (Feb 9, 2010, 00:33 UTC) (1197 reads)
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(feedback) Standards Blog: "Our story so far: Security expert Frank Adversego comes under suspicion when the Library of Congress is hacked by a mysterious cracker with motives unknown and a taste for the bizarre; to protect himself, Frank had better get to the bottom of things"
The kernel column by Jon Masters #83 (Feb 9, 2010, 00:03 UTC) (1574 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Linux User and Developer: "As I’ve mentioned before, one of the longer-term goals of the kernel development community is to kill off the Big Kernel Lock (BKL)."
Tweaking Linux Library Settings Within Readline (Feb 8, 2010, 23:03 UTC) (998 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Serverwatch: "Readline is the library that handles your Linux command-line input (and input for some other applications). The various customizable options for it are set either system-wide in /etc/inputrc or per-user in ~/.inputrc."
The KDE 4.3 System Settings - Part 3 - Computer Administration (Feb 8, 2010, 22:33 UTC) (1166 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Raiden's Realm: "Welcome to part 3 of our overview of the KDE 4.3 System Settings panel, the replacement for the old control panel of KDE 3.5. Today we're going to look at the Computer Administration master section. This will be a key area for those wanting to administer their own section."
8 of the Best Free Linux Geometry Software (Feb 8, 2010, 22:03 UTC) (2016 reads)
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(feedback) LinuxLinks: "To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 8 free high quality Linux interactive geometry software. We have included 2D and 3D software. Hopefully, there will be something of interest in this article for both students and teachers alike."
GNOME Boston Summit 2009 (Feb 8, 2010, 21:33 UTC) (1144 reads)
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(feedback) The GNOME Journal: "GNOME Shell--
Jon McCann from Red Hat ran the first Shell session, on design. An amazing amount of progress had been made since the hackfast one year prior that spawned the Shell project, but some major tasks remained."
Sketchpad (beta) (HTML5 drawing program) (Feb 8, 2010, 21:03 UTC) (2052 reads)
(6 talkbacks)
(feedback) Colorjack: "Sketchpad uses the little-known [canvas] tag to provide users and publishers with full control over the presentational qualities of their work. Directly accessing vector graphics, the [canvas] tag gives publishers real-access to their users’ display. The [canvas] tag will be available in HTML 5.0."
Cleaning Up The Linux Graphics Driver Stack (Feb 8, 2010, 20:33 UTC) (1324 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Phoronix: "Yesterday Luc Verhaegen gave a talk at FOSDEM on reverse engineering a motherboard BIOS, but today we finally have X@FOSDEM for the last time. Luc has just begun his talk on unifying and simplifying the free software desktop's graphics driver stack."
Ubuntu 9.10 and GNOME 2.28: Advancing Past Meh (Feb 8, 2010, 20:03 UTC) (1925 reads)
(2 talkbacks)
(feedback) LinuxPlanet: "When GNOME 2.0 was born, it left a lot of GNOME users out in the cold because it jettisoned the very features we loved. Eight years later, your editor takes another look at GNOME in the form of the Karmic Koala."
Let your inner Video Director loose: "We're Linux" Video Contest 2010 (Feb 8, 2010, 19:03 UTC) (873 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Standards Blog: "As you may recall, the Linux Foundation last year ran a video contest that drew a lot of entries, many of which were not only entertaining, but had surprisingly high production values as well. Last year's invitation was to use the popular "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" ad series as an inspiration, and you can see the winning videos here (all of last year's entries can be found here)."
PCLinuxOS 2010 is Shaping Up (Feb 8, 2010, 18:33 UTC) (1562 reads)
(5 talkbacks)
(feedback) PCLinuxOS: "The version label "2010" in that ftp URL caught my attention. Finally, PCLinuxOS is shaping up for a 2010 release!"
How To Reverse Engineer A Motherboard BIOS (Feb 8, 2010, 18:03 UTC) (1644 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Phoronix: "Since being let go by Novell last year where he worked on the RadeonHD Linux graphics driver and X.Org support within SuSE Linux, Luc Verhaegen has continued work on his VIA Unichrome DDX driver as well as other X.Org code..."
Waste plenty of time with Frozen Bubble and gnubik (Feb 8, 2010, 17:33 UTC) (1270 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Ghacks: "This time around I will visit two games. One of these games is one of my all time favorite second sucker – Frozen Bubble. The other, gnubik, is sure to frustrate you for hours. Let’s take a look at these two gems."
Patent nonsense (Feb 8, 2010, 17:03 UTC) (1177 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) The Economist: "Or what about those ludicrous business-process patents, like Amazon.com’s “one-click” patent or the “name-your-price” auction patent assigned to Priceline.com? Instead of stimulating innovation, such patents seem more about extracting “rents” from innocent bystanders going about their business."