Infrastructure Linux News for Jan 28, 2010

• Doonesbury on the iPad (Jan 28, 2010, 22:47)
  Slate: "The geeks are calling the new device the 'Jesus Tablet'"


• Apple’s iPad vs Notion Ink’s Adam tablet with Ubuntu: battle of two (Jan 28, 2010, 22:34)
  sola's blog: "We can safely say that the Apple iPad is received with mixed feelings by the IT-savvy community. The main problem is that the tablet is just not as revolutionary as many expected it would be"


• Tech Tip: Use gxmessage for Displaying GUI Messages from Scripts (Jan 28, 2010, 21:34)
  Linux Journal: "There are many dialog programs out there, Zenity, Kdialog, xdialog, etc. I love programs like these. They make it so easy to spice up a shell script with a little GUI action. Today I'm going to go look at a dialog program called gxmessage."


• OpenOffice.org Extensions for Business Users (Jan 28, 2010, 21:04)
  WorldLabel: "OpenOffice.org is an excellent all-around productivity suite as it is, but you can add a few useful features using extensions to make it better suited for use in a business environment. Here are a handful of extensions worth considering if you are using OpenOffice.org as a business tool."


• Tracking Time with Rachota (Jan 28, 2010, 20:34)
  Linux Pro Magazine: "There are quite a few time tracking solutions out there, including the nifty Rachota utility which not only makes it easy to track time spent on different tasks but also helps you to analyze the collected data."


• 6 of the best desktop search tools for Linux (Jan 28, 2010, 19:34)
  TechRadar: "Do desktop search tools spell the end of grep?"


• The Importance of Fitting In (Jan 28, 2010, 18:34)
  Linux Magazine: "Is the success of Linux directly proportional to its ability to integrate with existing proprietary systems like Windows? If so, should free software developers be spending more time integrating with it instead of building better software for free platforms?"


• Anything the iPad can do, Linux can do better. (Jan 28, 2010, 18:04)
  Cyber Cynic: "The Apple iPad has finally arrived, and, as I predicted a while back, it's really just a big iPod Touch. That's great. I love my iPod Touch. But, really, is there anything here that Linux can't do just as well for less money?"


• A Look at KDE 4.4 (Jan 28, 2010, 17:04)
  IT News Today: "The latest version of my favorite desktop, KDE SC 4.4, is due to be released in just a couple of weeks. Even though it’s still in beta, I just couldn’t keep my hands off of it, being the desktop geek that I am. Let’s take a quick look at how KDE 4.4 is shaping up during the last leg of its development phase."


• Dear Netflix (Jan 28, 2010, 16:34)
  PetitionOnline: " We, the undersigned, are current or prospective subscribers of Netflix that would like the "Watch Now" feature available to Linux users."


• GNOME Activity Journal Shows Your Recent Computer Work (Jan 28, 2010, 16:04)
  Lifehacker: "Linux only: It's still a work in progress, but GNOME Activity Journal already offers a nice at-a-glance look at your file work over the last few days, offering usage charts, image previews, and quick file access."


• 20 Ubuntu Karmic Annoyances (Jan 28, 2010, 15:34)
  Rocky Hillside: "If you are mounting shares from disks on your network and you are using wifi, the shares don't unmount when you try to shut down. This is a major pain. (The pain is amplified because folks keep marking the bug "fixed" when it's not.) "


• Linux Audio Plugin Update (Jan 28, 2010, 15:04)
  Linux Journal: "LADSPA is the senior player in the Linux audio plugin field. Its API (applications programming interface) is stable, but development is no longer as lively as when it first appeared. Nevertheless, some significant LADSPA plugins have shown up in the last few months."


• The choices inside Ubuntu (Jan 28, 2010, 14:34)
  Linux Pro Magazine "Hearing that the next Ubuntu release will use Yahoo! as the default search engine in Firefox leaves me with a twinge of uneasiness. My misgiving -- and it's a small one -- is not so much with the decision as with why it was made."


• Using Brasero for data backup and ISO burning (Jan 28, 2010, 13:34)
  Linux.com: "From command line to stand alone GUI to fully desktop-integrated tool, you can get your data (or ISO) onto a CD or DVD in many ways. One such way is the Brasero CD/DVD burner. Brasero is the default burner for the GNOME desktop."


• And the best Linux desktop distro of all is... (Jan 28, 2010, 12:34)
  IT World: "When it comes to Linux, there is no one size fits all answer. But, unlike other desktop operating systems, Linux doesn't try to squeeze you into a system's that's too large or too small. Instead, Linux offers a wide variety of distributions and one of them is likely be the right one for you."


• Solid State Drives Get Faster with TRIM (Jan 28, 2010, 10:34)
  Enterprise Storage Forum: "More companies are turning to the TRIM command, a subset of the data set management features within the latest ATA specifications, to help them improve the speed of SSD drives and ultimately boost the drives' overall read and write performance."


• 9 Hilarious USB keys (Jan 28, 2010, 07:34)
  Uphaa: An oldie but goodie, featuring Barbie, a real thumb drive, and a teddy bear.


• Just what is “Linux”? (Jan 28, 2010, 06:04)
  Ghacks: "The central issue that I have is that this issue causes great confusion with newbies and anger with power users. To that end, I thought I would put forth a few ideas that could solve this issue. It’s confusing, it’s frustrating, and it’s rooted in years of heavy geek war. So read on and chime in."


• Goodbye KDE, Hello XFCE (Jan 28, 2010, 01:34)
  Doug in Real Time: "This past weekend I uninstalled KDE4 from my Desktop. When I first started playing around with Linux, my first desktop was KDE 1.something. Even though it didn't have the polish of Windows, I could see that it had a lot of potential."


• Meetings, Minutes, and Mootbot (Jan 28, 2010, 00:04)
  Ubuntu User: "I found out the #ubuntu-meeting Channel on Freenode uses mootbot. This great little bot that makes keeping track of action items and gathering meeting minutes/notes really easy."