Infrastructure Linux News for Dec 22, 2009

• ASUS Eee PC 1201N On Linux (Dec 22, 2009, 22:32)
  Phoronix: "For the past year my netbook of choice has been the Samsung NC10 as while it shipped with stock Intel Atom hardware like other netbooks such as the Dell Mini 9 and earlier ASUS Eee PCs, the Samsung was built very well and possessed a rather large and well laid out keyboard for only being a 10.6" mobile computer."


• dxtop - Android home alternative (Dec 22, 2009, 21:02)
  Ian's Thoughts: "dxTop is an alternative to the Android home interface. When you install dxTop it will install as an alternative to the default Home interface allowing you to choose which on to use."


• Custom Transitioning Backgrounds In KDE3 (Dec 22, 2009, 20:32)
  Linux Journal: "My recent article about transitioning slide show backgrounds in GNOME garnered quite a bit of attention, so here's my first reminder of how to do the same thing in other desktop environments. This one will show you how to create a custom slide show backgrounds in KDE3."


• Linux or Windows: Most hardware support plans are worthless (Dec 22, 2009, 19:32)
  Cyber Cynic: "Recently, a user who had replaced Windows on his netbook with Ubuntu Linux discovered that, as far as Best Buy was concerned, he had voided his warranty. For all practical purposes, he had."


• Of Thunderbolts and Revelations (Dec 22, 2009, 18:02)
  Blog of Helios: "Mark and Family were having Dinner with Daniel in their home when the subject of technology and computers came up. Daniel complained about the lack of privacy and the hassle-in-general of using Microsoft Windows. Van Kingsley might as well of had a bear trap set for the poor guy."


• Beware of Comcast's Growing Power (Dec 22, 2009, 17:32)
  Daniweb: "Yet Comcast seems to be growing into a super power with control over the very pipes that provide many of us with internet access, but without any real competition and often with government support."


• Texas Linux Fest announces keynote speaker and call for papers (Dec 22, 2009, 17:02)
  LWN.net: "Texas Linux Fest is proud to announce the first annual Linux and open source software event for Texas and the surrounding region, Texas Linux Fest 2010, scheduled for April 10 at the Monarch Event Center in Austin."


• Verizon snuffs Google for Microsoft search (Dec 22, 2009, 16:32)
  The Register: "Verizon has unilaterally updated user Storm 2 BlackBerries and other smartphones so that their browser search boxes can only be used with Microsoft Bing."


• Fixing Your Holiday Photos With GIMP (Dec 22, 2009, 16:02)
  Linux Planet: "Redeye, wrong exposure, blemishes, and other defects can afflict your holiday photos. But despair not, for GIMP can fix them. And here's a little secret: it's easy. Akkana Peck shows how."


• Cloud Computing with Chromium and Jolicloud: Two Steps Back (Dec 22, 2009, 15:32)
  Datamation: "Yet, as a user, I feel that both Chrome and Jolicloud have too much of the centralization that I moved to open source to escape. In fact, both seem a step backwards in usability, evoking uncomfortable reminders of the awkwardness of the bulletin boards of the early 1990s. "


• Inkscape 0.47 totally solid with lots of new tools (Dec 22, 2009, 15:02)
  Worldlabel: "The free open source vector graphics editor Inkscape has released an update packing several new features, new tools, effects, and improved SVG compliance. Version 0.47 is available for Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows, as well as source code. Ubuntu users can also add the Inkscape Testers package archive to automatically upgrade."


• Creating Slide Show Backgrounds in XFCE (Dec 22, 2009, 14:17)
  Linux Journal: "Continuing in this series of slide show backgrounds, in this article I will explain the process of creating a set of desktop backgrounds that will transition like a slide-show in XFCE"


• Why It's Better To Pretend You Don't Know Anything About Computers (Dec 22, 2009, 12:03)
  The Oatmeal: "It happens to the best of us. A friend or family member asks for help. How can you say no?"


• Clouds, Universities, The One, and What It Is. (Dec 22, 2009, 10:33)
  Ubuntu User: "Clouds continue to dominate my life it seems. Not just because it's December which, granted, has been awfully cloudy and dark as we push ever closer to the solstice."


• Adding music to your iPhone (Dec 22, 2009, 09:03)
  Ghacks: "Now that we how to set up your Linux system to sync music to your iPhone (see my article “Syncing your iPhone (or iTouch) with Linux“), I thought it would be a good call to show you the step-by-step process of adding that music. This tutorial will start from ripping a CD all the way through to syncing the music to the device."


• Using Bluetooth on Linux (Dec 22, 2009, 07:33)
  Jamie's Random Musings: "I have mentioned before that I use a number of Bluetooth peripherals with my portable computers. This is one of those things where, the more I use it the more I like it."


• 10 Linux-based Technologies to Look for in 2010 (Dec 22, 2009, 06:03)
  Daniweb: "Get ready to see the biggest increase in Linux adoption in history. You can say you saw it here first."


• NVIDIA Linux 2009 Year In Review (Dec 22, 2009, 04:33)
  Phoronix: "Another annual tradition of ours besides running a Linux Graphics Survey is to provide a "year in review" analysis of the ATI and NVIDIA Linux drivers with their respective graphics driver releases from the past year in terms of both feature improvements and how their quantitative performance has changed."


• The most successful open source project ever (Dec 22, 2009, 03:03)
  TechRepublic: "At one point in the lesson I brought up open source, and he nearly turned red saying, “Nothing is free.” That statement got me to thinking about free, open source, and open source projects. He is right - nothing is free."


• Open Source Downloads: the Monster List (Dec 22, 2009, 01:33)
  Datamation: "As demonstrated by the nearly 500 open source downloads on this list, open source software has benefited from an explosion of creativity in the last several years. Indeed, the first decade of the 21st century could be called "the Decade of Open Source.""


• Dell introduces best Ubuntu netbook ever? (Dec 22, 2009, 00:03)
  Cyber Cynic: "Dell has long been desktop Linux's best friend in the big-time computer vendors, and it's proving it again with the introduction of the latest version of its Mini 10 netbook with Ubuntu."