Linux News for Dec 31, 2008

• Debian mourns the loss of Thiemo Seufer (Dec 31, 2008, 22:47)
  Debian News: "The Debian Project has lost an active member of its community. Thiemo Seufer died on December 26th in a tragic car accident."


• Editor's Note: Linux Needs Fewer Friends (Dec 31, 2008, 22:03)
  It's a cliche, but it's an apt one: "God save me from my friends - I can protect myself from my enemies." Theodore Ts'o wrote an anti-Free Software rant this week that could have come straight from the massive, never-sleeping Redmond FudMachine, Debian, Philosophy, and People. He seems to blame Free Software for Debian's ills.


• Why Ubuntu users should care about Debian (Dec 31, 2008, 21:17)
  ars Technica: "The Ubuntu Linux distribution has attracted a broad audience of Linux enthusiasts, and it's beginning to gain traction among mainstream computer users. Although Ubuntu is relatively new, it builds on the rich history and deep roots of the venerable Debian project, one of the oldest and most influential Linux distributions. The fate of the two popular flavors of Linux is as inextricably bound as their respective histories."


• A Linux Christmas Carol Explained (Dec 31, 2008, 20:32)
  IT Wire: "On Christmas Eve I suggested what "Jingle Bells" may look like if it were a Linux shell script. Here it is for those who missed out, and some interpretation for those who didn't."


• If Santa Claus used Linux (Dec 31, 2008, 19:47)
  IT Wire: "If "Jingle Bells" was a Linux shell script it might look something like this"


• Profiling the Power Usage of a Desktop PC (Dec 31, 2008, 19:03)
  LWN: "Reducing the power usage of a desktop computer can bring about a number of benefits. Whether your goal is to save money on your power bill, reduce your carbon footprint or eliminate unwanted heat and noise from your office, a bit of effort can produce a more power-efficient computer. Effort spent reducing power can have an even larger effect on servers and other machines that run 24 hours a day compared to machines that are only on during work hours."


• Hv3 and the Art of Minimalist Web-Browsing (Dec 31, 2008, 18:17)
  LWN: "A case in point is Hv3, a web browser written in Tcl/Tk. Although currently in alpha and paying more attention to developers' needs than those of end users, Hv3 is already highly suitable for basic web-browsing, with a design philosophy all its own -- and, quite possibly, the fastest performance of any free software browser."


• Look Ma! A Drive-In Theatre for Ants! (Dec 31, 2008, 17:32)
  Tech Broiler: "Here's some neat Star Trekky-tech that you'll be able to get your hands on shortly -- Texas Instruments' DLP Pico Projector Development Kit. The kit includes a Zippo lighter-sized 7.5 lumen projector unit, combined with a BeagleBoard embedded Linux developer platform"


• New Year's Eve News: Unix And Linux Users Beware (Dec 31, 2008, 16:47)
  The Linux and Unix Menagerie: "As part of a non-existent tradition, composed of this year's "New Year's Eve post" (being written as I type ;) and last year's zany and over-the-top network port querying script post, we're going to make this year's EOY post short, to the point, hopefully fun and somewhat worthwhile, so you can leave work early without getting it ok'ed and begin making bad decisions as soon as possible ;)"


• Installing RPM Packages on Ubuntu (Dec 31, 2008, 16:02)
  Tech Source From Bohol: "If you happen to have .rpm file package that you would like to install on your Ubuntu machine, you will have to convert that file to .deb first for it to be installed. How will you do it? --Use the package converter application called "alien"."
  link fixed--ed.


• Review: GoblinX 2.7 (Dec 31, 2008, 15:17)
  Raiden's Realm: "GoblinX is a LiveCD distribution built around Slackware Linux, and designed for ease of use. The flexibility of GoblinX is worthy of mention, as even its boot options show this ability. But is GoblinX an angel in disguise, or a troll under the bridge? Let's find out."


• Sabayon 4 Screenshots (Dec 31, 2008, 14:33)
  TCS: "Open your source, open your mind."


• PGP's Universal Server Provides Unobtrusive Encryption (Dec 31, 2008, 13:47)
  Enterprise Networking Planet: "Over the last couple of weeks we've looked at the theory behind public key encryption and public key infrastructure. But how is all of this pulled together into a product that enables you to send or receive encrypted e-mail messages?"


• Orinoco WaveLAN Silver PCMCIA card works in Power Mac G4/466 with Debian Etch (Dec 31, 2008, 13:04)
  Click: "I had no expectation that it would work, but I decided to shove my trusty Orinoco WaveLAN Silver PCMCIA 802.11b wireless networking card into the meant-for-Airport-only slot in my Power Macintosh G4/466 running Debian Etch"


• An OS from India (Dec 31, 2008, 11:34)
  IT Examiner: "Father of free software Richard Stallman is visiting Hyderabad to oversee the migration of thousands of computers to a new "Indian" operating system."


• Dell Sells Ubuntu Boxes That Cannot Run Ubuntu (Dec 31, 2008, 10:04)
  bitsenbloc: "However, when opening the box I found something suspicious, the DVD provided by Dell was not a standard Ubuntu, but a version that contains a + after the number of the version. This Ubuntu is not free because it is written "Do not distribute" on the DVD."


• The November Cornucopia: One Month In Linux Audio (Dec 31, 2008, 08:34)
  Linux Journal: "This week I'm your straight reporter bringing you news of of updates, upgrades, and new releases in the world of Linux audio software. Development in this world is continuously productive, so I'll present only a selection of the Linux sound and music applications and utilities announced in the month of November in the year 2008."


• A Diatribe Against OpenOffice, But What's the Real Agenda? (Dec 31, 2008, 07:04)
  OStatic: "Meeks argues that OpenOffice is "not getting better with age" and that a big part of the problem is that Sun Microsystems exerts too much control over the suite, not allowing more contributors to innovate and improve."


• Finding Your Yahoo Search Index Rank From The Unix Or Linux CLI (Dec 31, 2008, 05:34)
  The Linux and Unix Menagerie: "Today we're going to continue in our ongoing quest to rank highly in search engine results while simultaneously messing with them a lot ;) Previously, we've put out scripts to find your MSN search index rank from the CLI and to find your Google search index rank from the CLI. This is, of course, another script that, although it fits in the same category as the other two, is distinctive in several ways:"


• Keeping it All in Mind (Dec 31, 2008, 04:04)
  /var/blog/messages: "Back in the 50's, the psychologist George A. Miller wrote a paper entitled 'The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information'. While quite a dry and involved read, it's findings (and other corroborating evidence) are of great significance to anyone creating a software design, architecture, process, checklist, API or code listing"


• 17 Telecommuting Pet Peeves (Dec 31, 2008, 02:34)
  CIO: "Telecommuting is great. I've been doing it full time for most of 20 years. But it isn't perfect. Working at home has its own set of irritations, some of which aren't well understood—particularly by those who don't telecommute."


• Installing Yellow Dog Linux 6.1 on PS3 (Dec 31, 2008, 01:04)
  Softpedia: "Yellow Dog Linux 6.1 operating system for SONY's PlayStation 3, Apple PowerPC G4/G5, IBM Power Systems and YDL PowerStation was officially released by Fixstars on November 19th, 2008. Yellow Dog Linux 6.1 (codename Pyxis) is an operating system for the PPC64 architecture and it is based on the CentOS Linux distribution, a RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) derivative."