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
BM Ups Its Processor Power to 7 (Feb 9, 2010, 17:33 UTC) (57 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(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) (249 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) (470 reads)
(1 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) (510 reads)
(3 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) (279 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) (646 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) (857 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) (948 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) (1134 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) (867 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) (999 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) (899 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) (1409 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) (778 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) (1369 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) (1026 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) (812 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) (3139 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) (1139 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(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) (1477 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) (958 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) (1122 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) (1924 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) (1097 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) (1964 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) (1259 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) (1857 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) (836 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) (1498 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) (1592 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) (1229 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) (1141 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."
13 Ways To Customize Ubuntu Netbook Remix For Better Usability (Feb 8, 2010, 16:33 UTC) (1400 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) MakeTechEasier: "Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) is a modified version of Ubuntu specially for the netbooks. The latest version of UNR runs Ubuntu Karmic in the backend, but the interface has been heavily customized to make it looks/functions good in small screen."
5 open source office suites to watch (Feb 8, 2010, 15:03 UTC) (2740 reads)
(4 talkbacks)
(feedback) CIO: "As the name indicates, Simple Groupware was developed as an open source groupware suite, but we've included it here because of the increasing amount of office suite-like applications it contains, including an online spreadsheet."
Happy Camper
(Feb 8, 2010, 14:33 UTC) (1292 reads)
(1 talkbacks)
(feedback) Linux.com: " I broke down and bought a Nexus One last week.
I got the original G1 phone from google when it came out, and I hardly ever used it. Why? I generally hate phones..."
The KDE 4.3 System Settings - Part 2 - Personal + Network & Connectivity (Feb 8, 2010, 14:03 UTC) (1125 reads)
(0 talkbacks)
(feedback) Raiden's Realm: "Welcome to part 2 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 two more master sections. Namely, Personal and Network & Connectivity. So sit back and enjoy."