Linux News for Sep 30, 2008

• "Geen Stijl" is a Communist Website! (Sep 30, 2008, 23:34)
  The Beez' speaks: "Later on it states that "Everyone who uses Linux supports terrorism, atomic weapons, high oil prices and the destruction of the earth"."


• Top 5 Least Popular Linux Distributions That Could (Sep 30, 2008, 23:04)
  Tech Source From Bohol: "Let's focus on the following Linux distributions that some of us may consider least popular, but are highly capable of becoming way bigger than what they are today"


• Linux for Older PCs : From Ubuntu to Vector Linux (Sep 30, 2008, 22:34)
  My Take on Technology: "This week, I tried Vector Linux, a slackware based distro, known to be fast and stable, ideal for older machines like mine and yet never compromising on the features. Read on, to see if it delivered what it promised."


• Three Little Tweaks to Make Your Ubuntu Desktop Beautiful and Productive (Sep 30, 2008, 22:04)
  Quick Tweaks: "What I liked about GnomeDo is its ability to learn. Suppose, if you have installed Avant Window Navigator, aMSN and Amarok and you regularly use Amarok, hitting A will bring you Amarok but not other applications."


• Script To Get Weather Forecasts For Your Zip Code (Sep 30, 2008, 21:34)
  The Linux and Unix Menagerie: "Today's Linux/Unix bash shell script is probably not the last follow up to the growing stable of scripts we've written to mine the knowledge on tap online. Today's info is grabbed from WeatherBug.com."


• Cloud Computing is a Trap, Warns GNU Founder Richard Stallman (Sep 30, 2008, 21:04)
  Guardian UK: "The concept of using web-based programs like Google's Gmail is "worse than stupidity", according to a leading advocate of free software."


• Backing Up Your OS With dd (Sep 30, 2008, 20:34)
  Rootninja: "I love dd. Why mess with the clutter and bloat of backup software when all you really want is a simple image for those times when you accidentally wipe out something important or a hard drive goes plonk."


• Make a Multi-polaroid Image out of jpegs With ImageMagick's Montage (Sep 30, 2008, 20:04)
  Rootninja: "You can take several regular pictures or other image files and put them together into one image that looks like they’re all polaroids laid out on a desk using ImageMagick's montage tool. If you have a dual monitor setup you can easily fit 8 across your screens at once without even overlapping much."


• Survey Says: Windows and Open Source Play Well Together (Sep 30, 2008, 19:34)
  LinuxInsider: "Through its Open Source Census initiative, OpenLogic hopes to gain a clearer picture of the OSS landscape. Now in its ninth month, the census has found a sizable presence of OSS among Windows users, European governments and the financial industry."


• 4 Easy Fun Useful Things You Can Do With Linux (Sep 30, 2008, 19:04)
  LinuxPlanet: "In this ENP classic, learn how to colorize and test your Bash prompt, run your own local timeserver, deliver customized MOTDs that change, and create elegant ASCII art---the easy way."


• gOS 3: Is it better than Ubuntu? (Sep 30, 2008, 18:34)
  The How-To Geek: "Combining the best parts of Mac OS X and Ubuntu, gOS is truly a worthy competitor in the OS wars. It has simplicity, a well designed interface, a rock solid linux core and web apps. But is it good enough? Is it 'a Linux for the rest of us!' ?


• The G1 Quandary: Open Yet Locked (Sep 30, 2008, 18:04)
  Datamation: "When can something be locked yet still be open? When it's a mobile handset sold by a wireless carrier concerned about security and bandwidth issues..."


• When Linux Goes Bad: the e1000e Ethernet bug (Sep 30, 2008, 17:34)
  Cyber Cynic: "I know some people think I only say wonderful things about Linux and bad things about Windows. Wrong. I call them like I see them. Most of the time, while wearing my operating system umpire's cap, I see Linux making the right hits... Most of the time. Sometimes, though, Linux strikes out..."


• 5 Ways to Know You're Ready for Virtualization (Sep 30, 2008, 17:04)
  Linux Magazine: "To help you avoid those opportunists who jump on new technologies like cockroaches pouncing on freshly fallen cake crumbs--gobbling up the sweet bits and running off into the dark when the lights come on, I've compiled 5 simple questions to ask yourself before taking the plunge."


• Zen and the Art of the Six-Figure Linux Job (Sep 30, 2008, 16:34)
  Datamation: "You've heard the stereotypes and the misconceptions. Since Linux is free software, the developers who create it are paid next to nothing, right?"


• Linux Speaks Your Instant Messaging Dialect (Sep 30, 2008, 16:04)
  IT Wire: "Pidgin is multi-lingual. It will communicate with, and manage, your MSN, ICQ, Yahoo, AIM and other accounts all in the one package. There's no need for loads of different IM clients. You can control each and every one from within Pidgin."


• 1 Million Classmates Headed to Venezuela (Sep 30, 2008, 15:34)
  ZDNet Education: "In the latest success for this model, Venezuela has just ordered 1 million second-generation Classmates from the same local OEM (J.P. Sa Couto) producing Classmates for Portugal."


• The XO Files Part III: Re-imagining the OLPC Distribution (Sep 30, 2008, 15:04)
  OLPC News: "Concern over the original distribution plan was what got me writing for OLPCNews.com. The belligerent anti-pilot-project attitude, the requirement to buy the laptops in lots of 1million units, and the hushed discussions about the costs beyond the "$100" laptop. Rapid, bulk deployment is not a good model to introduce technology, particularly in a resource-constrained environment."


• Review: Intellectual Property and Open Source (Sep 30, 2008, 14:31)
  LWN: "Regardless of one's own feelings in the matter, the fact remains that the legal system exists, it affects our lives, and that we can only be better off if we understand it. To that end, O'Reilly has published Intellectual Property and Open Source by Van Lindberg."


• Wall Street's Collapse May be Computer Science's Gain (Sep 30, 2008, 14:01)
  Computerworld: "The collapse of Wall Street may help make computer science and IT careers attractive to students who abandoned these fields in droves after the pop of the last big bubble, the dot-com bust of 2001."


• Linux alternatives to Windows SBS part two (Sep 30, 2008, 13:31)
  IT Wire: "Yet, it's not just cut down on price but cut down on features too. It has deliberate built-in limitations. You don't have to put up with this. Here are a range of Linux-based options that give you greater functionality and at a lower price."


• VLC Goes to Nine Point Two (Sep 30, 2008, 13:01)
  Linux.com: "Sometimes I get the feeling that I only know about 5% of what VLC can do. Everyone knows it's a dependable, free, cross-platform media player...the new VLC exposes a lot more of that functionality."


• Motorola Building Up 350-Person Android Team. Nokia Also Sniffing Around. (Sep 30, 2008, 12:31)
  TechCrunch: "The iPhone may be the only game in town for serious mobile Web developers right now, but that won't last long. Next year, the iPhone will see some serious competition from Google's Android platform."


• Omega 10 Desktop Linux (Sep 30, 2008, 12:01)
  OSNews: "The Omega 10 Beta release is roughly equivalent to the Fedora 10 Beta to be released tomorrow, but integrates multimedia support not found in Fedora."


• Save a Web Page for Later With Read It Later Extension (Sep 30, 2008, 11:31)
  Linux.com: "At first sight, the Read It Later (RIL) extension looks redundant -- after all, you can use Firefox's own bookmarking functionality to save Web pages for later reading. But dig deeper, and you'll discover that it offers enough nifty features to make it a must-have tool for most users."


• Keyboards Must Die (Sep 30, 2008, 11:01)
  Linux Today Blog: "The computer of the future is almost here. It's a small handheld device with some pretty good built-in muscle and storage, and that depends on the network for most of its functionality. But it won't really be practical until the keyboard goes away and we can talk to our computers."


• Tools for Editing Vector Graphics in GNU/Linux (Sep 30, 2008, 10:31)
  Linux.com: "Free software includes a number of options for working with vector graphics, including several simple ones: OpenOffice.org's Draw, KOffice's Karbon14, and Inkscape, which is currently the premier vector graphic editor in free software."


• Live DVD for Linux Games (Sep 30, 2008, 09:01)
  LinuxHaxor: "lg-live is a live Linux DVD pre-installed with some of the top linux games out there. You just boot from your dvd, select your game and start playing."


• Tip of the Trade: Make Perl Scripts More Readable With perltidy (Sep 30, 2008, 07:31)
  Serverwatch: "I am of course sure that everyone reading this is well aware of scripting best practices and always writes beautifully neat and well-set-out scripts that will still have meaning when you return to them in six months time. You might not then need perltidy for your own scripts."


• Midgard 8.09.0RC "Ragnaroek" released (Sep 30, 2008, 06:01)
  Midgard CMS: "The Midgard Project has released first 'Release Canditate' release of 8.09 "Ragnaroek LTS" generation of the Midgard Content Management System. Midgard is a mature Free Software CMS package targeted for mid-to-high-end web services."


• Postfix Stress Test With smtp-source and top (Sep 30, 2008, 04:31)
  PostfixMail: "In order to evaluate the load on your box you can run smtp-source and combine that with snapshots of top to evaluate the load on the server."


• Install open-vm-tools on Debian 4.0 (Etch) (Sep 30, 2008, 03:01)
  Debian Admin: "VMware Inc. released an OpenSource version of their VMware-Tools, called open-vm-tools. While they’re quite easy to install on Gentoo (emerge open-vm-tools), it’s not that easy having them installed on a Debian Etch (4.0) if you want to go the proper way."


• Kubuntu: How To Turn The Touchpad Off And On With One Shortcut Key (Sep 30, 2008, 01:31)
  HowtoForge: "...but nothing worked in my Kubuntu environment for whatever reason...Therefore, facing all these 'downers' I set out to find another method using the code that did work in my system."


• Installing Google Android SDK 1.0 On Ubuntu 8.04 Desktop (Sep 30, 2008, 00:01)
  HowtoForge: "This guide explains how you can install the Google Android SDK 1.0 on an Ubuntu 8.04 desktop. With this stable release of the Android SDK, you can now develop applications for Android smartphones (like T-Mobile's G1) and offer them on the Android Market."