Infrastructure Linux News for Nov 29, 2010

• What We Do (and Don�t) Know about the Novell Patent Sale (Nov 29, 2010, 23:03)
  Standards Blog: "Ever since the proposed acquisition of Novell by Attachmate Corporation there has been much curiosity, but almost no information, relating to the other major piece of the deal: the acquisition of 882 patents by a consortium led by Microsoft for $450 million."


• Ghosts of Unix past, part 3: Unfixable designs (Nov 29, 2010, 22:33)
  LWN.net: "In the second installment of this series, we documented two designs that were found to be imperfect and have largely (though not completely) been fixed through ongoing development."


• New Linux User's Guide to Managing Your Files (Nov 29, 2010, 21:03)
  Blog of Helios: "When we install computers for our kids at The HeliOS Project, one of the main sources of confusion is the differences between Windows and Linux file systems."


• Creating Custom Styles and Formatting in OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice (Nov 29, 2010, 20:33)
  Linux.com: "If you are a user of OpenOffice.org or LibreOffice you might be familiar with styles and formatting. These are pre-defined text formats that you can select from in order to change various aspects of your text."


• Hands-on: a first look at Diaspora's private alpha test (Nov 29, 2010, 20:03)
  ars Technica: "The Diaspora project has launched a private alpha test of its open source social network. It is opening up its own hosted instance of Diaspora to a select group of testers, starting with people who contributed financial support when Diaspora was first getting off the ground."


• Triaging a trio (Nov 29, 2010, 19:33)
  Distrowatch: "A little while back I did a rapid-fire review of three distributions in one set. A few readers e-mailed to ask if I would do this again with new projects and this seemed like a good time to honour those requests. I grabbed three distributions which had recently been added to the DistroWatch waiting list and gave them each a one-day test run. Here are my first impressions of these projects in no particular order."


• How a "Welded-to KDE 3.5 User" Began a Move to KDE 4.4 - Part 2 (Nov 29, 2010, 19:03)
  LXer: "In this second part of a two part guest editorial and tutorial Dr. Tony Young (an Australian Mycologist by trade) shares his trials, tribulations, successes and disappointments in working with the new version of KDE. In this installment he configures media players, K3b, Crossover Office, Lucid and Post Script and his final thoughts on his adventures."


• Yes, Novell Owns Unix (Nov 29, 2010, 18:33)
  Linux Planet: "Novell is selling over 800 patents to Microsoft, but not their Unix copyrights."


• DRBD, raid-1 through the net (Nov 29, 2010, 18:03)
  Linuxaria: "You may need to have information replicated between two computers that actually are part of a cluster, in addition to"software" replica mechanisms such as Rsync you can use a product that is stable and included in the standard kernel: DRBD."


• Facebook looks to trademark the word 'face' (Nov 29, 2010, 17:33)
  BBC News: "The social networking giant Facebook is a few steps away from trademarking the word face, online documents reveal."


• Linux Radio : broadcasting the Linux kernel, one source file at a time! (Nov 29, 2010, 17:03)
  Linux Radio: Listen to the listen kernel.


• Seven Improvements Needed in KDE (Nov 29, 2010, 16:33)
  Datamation: "I use it about two-thirds of the time, with the rest of my desktop usage divided between GNOME, Xfce, and occasionally other desktops like LXDE. You could call me a generally happy user -- but, as with any desktop not designed for me personally, KDE has one or two quirks or deficiencies that make my computing less than ideal."


• Weekend Project: Linux Filesystem Tune-up (Nov 29, 2010, 16:03)
  Linux.com: "If the thought of getting up at 3AM on "Black Friday" and dragging yourself across town to stand in line for sales doesn't fill you with the holiday spirit, why not spend your weekend doing something more meaningful, like cleaning up your Linux filesystems?"


• Fedora 12 approaches end of life (Nov 29, 2010, 15:33)
  The H Open: "Fedora Project developer Kevin Fenzi has issued a reminder that Fedora 12, code named "Constantine", will reach its end of life (EOL) on Thursday, the 2nd of December, 2010."


• The best netbook distro of 2010 revealed - Linux User group test (Nov 29, 2010, 15:03)
  Linux User and Developer: "Linux User & Developer magazine reviews four of the best netbook distros currently available in a bid to uncover the ultimate open source user experience for your netbook computer"


• A history of viruses on Linux (Nov 29, 2010, 14:03)
  Neowin: "We recently gave you a brief history of viruses on the Mac and as requested by a user we wanted to give you a history of viruses on Linux. Given the tight security integrated into Linux, it is difficult to take advantage of a vulnerability on the computer, but some programmers have found ways around the security measures"


• Moving Desktop Windows users to Linux (Nov 29, 2010, 13:33)
  Linux Made Easy: "I manage our computer systems at work and never tried to convert user Pc's to Linux, instead sometimes I showed them some of the nice stuff and played with them when their windows system crashed, or simply because network printers stopped working."


• Best Linux backup software: 8 tools on test (Nov 29, 2010, 13:03)
  TechRadar: "Have you been burned before and lost important data? Or do you lose sleep because of the fear of one day joining the ranks of those who have? Fear not, worried and jaded souls – there's a range of Linux backup tools that can help."


• KDE 4.6 Beta 1 � a first look (Nov 29, 2010, 11:03)
  everyday linux how2s: "The first beta release of KDE SC 4.6 was released yesterday. OpenSUSE had packages up almost immediately, so being curious as to what's new, I've downloaded and upgraded to the new release. These are my impressions thus far."


• Toshiba spins shake-and-bake hard disk drives (Nov 29, 2010, 03:03)
  LinuxDevices: "Toshiba announced a pair of 2.5-inch hard disk drives it claims offer the industry's widest temperature range for 24/7 operation. Suitable for ATMs, digital surveillance, automation, and other embedded devices, the MK1060GSCX and MK8050GACY spin at 4,200rpm and offer 100GB or 80GB capacities, respectively."