News Linux News for May 06, 2009:

Introduction to Arrays and Hashes in PHP - The ABC's of PHP Part 7
(2009-05-06 00:01:34)
PHP Builder: "What is an array? An array is a list of a certain variable type, where each item in the list can be referenced by a unique index number, usually starting at 0. Think about it in real terms as you might think about a shopping list..."

Does MS Office SP2 With ODF Support Really Work? Test Results Point to No. - Updated
(2009-05-06 01:31:34)
Groklaw: "I had included one footnote, a photo, and a text block, all of which OpenOffice can do, but when I opened the saved document in OpenOffice, none of it looked right."

Firefox hits 270 million users, without Linux
(2009-05-06 03:01:34)
Netstat -vat: "The open source Firefox web browser from Mozilla now has some 270 million users. That's the figure that Mozilla staffer Aza Dotzler is now claiming, and it's not an easy number to calculate."

The Perfect Desktop - Ubuntu Studio 9.04
(2009-05-06 04:31:34)
HowtoForge: "This tutorial shows how you can set up an Ubuntu Studio 9.04 desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge."

Minimal Xubuntu 9.04
(2009-05-06 06:01:34)
DistroWatch Weekly: "Last week we took a look at how two distributions can be so very different even though they are based on the same technology (and even the same distribution). What we found was that the Ubuntu variant, Xubuntu, which comes with the Xfce desktop, used more than twice the amount of memory over Debian's implementation of the same desktop."

Exactly Wrong
(2009-05-06 07:31:34)
Almost Diamonds: ""If I have a problem, I want the person helping me to be someone I'm paying, not some bunch of teen-aged geeks--""

Tridge -- Subject: [PATCH] Add CONFIG_VFAT_NO_CREATE_WITH_LONGNAMES option
(2009-05-06 09:01:34)
Groklaw: "When this option is enabled the VFAT filesystem will refuse to create new files with long names. Accessing existing files with long names will continue to work."

Mr. Bezos, Tear Down This Wall
(2009-05-06 10:31:34)
Tech Broiler: "b) ...Are a device for doing nothing other than read books, magazines and newspapers using Amazon-protected formats and personal documents loaded through their e-mail conversion service. Oh yeah, and charge you for reading blogs (albeit awkwardly) that you would otherwise have free access to on your PC or other handheld device."

How many desktop Linux users?
(2009-05-06 12:01:34)
Cyber Cynic: "If you want to buy W3Counter's numbers, 2.16% of users use Linux. Or, if you want to go by my own Web site, Practical Technology's AWStats statistics, 29.9% of desktop users prefer Linux."

The LKML Summary Podcast
(2009-05-06 12:31:34)
LWN.net: "I'm experimenting with recording a short 3-5 minute summary of LKML traffic for those of us who like to listen to Podcasts. It's modeled after e.g. the NYT Front Page Podcast, though not quite as cool."

Linux SOHO NAS offers iSCSI
(2009-05-06 13:01:34)
LinuxDevices: "Qnap Systems announced a network-attached storage (NAS) device, aimed at SMB/SOHO users, that supports two 2TB hard drives. The Linux-based TS-239 Pro Turbo NAS is notable for its iSCSI (Internet SCSI) target service, enabling the NAS to be configured for expansion or backup for other servers."

PHP Speeds to the Cloud With Zend Framework 1.8
(2009-05-06 13:31:34)
InternetNews: "PHP developers will have new ways to easily connect their PHP applications to the cloud, thanks to the latest version of the open source Zend Framework."

U.S. Trustee Moves to Convert SCO Bankruptcy to Chapter 7
(2009-05-06 14:01:34)
Groklaw: "Additionally, not only is there no reasonable chance of "rehabilitation" in these cases, the Debtors have tried -- and failed -- to liquidate their business in chapter 11."

Forking Nagios: Behold Icinga
(2009-05-06 14:31:34)
Open Enterprise: "A group of leading Nagios protagonists including members of the Nagios Community Advisory board and creators of multiple Nagios Addons have launched ICINGA - a fork of Nagios, the prevalent open source monitoring system."

9 Great Gnome Themes with Ubuntu Repositories
(2009-05-06 15:01:34)
Web Upd8: "François Vogelweith is the author of zgegblog, a site that maintains a collection of great GNOME themes (you can see screenshots of the themes and some more info but in French, on his website). Balanzan (translated: Balance) is one of its most popular creations, a very comprehensive theme based on Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope, which contains a wallpaper, logon theme, Emerald theme, controls and icons."

Steady march to CrossOver 8.0 builds for OpenSolaris and FreeBSD
(2009-05-06 15:31:34)
Wine-Reviews: "We've been making good progress towards CrossOver 8.0. In fact, we are feeling confident enough about our progress that we put out a public release of the first beta. We've done this mostly for our customers that use Quicken 2006. This way, they can upgrade to Quicken 2009 before the support for Quicken 2006 expires."
Link fixed-- ed.

Linux Mint 7 Release Candidate Is Here
(2009-05-06 16:01:34)
Softpedia: "This first RC is based on the recently released Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) and it is powered by Linux kernel 2.6.28. The good news is that the 7th release of Linux Mint will include a brand new artwork, updated applications and many, many new breathtaking features."

The RGB/Green.org Sustainability Challenge
(2009-05-06 16:31:34)
IBM Developerworks: "An organic social network is one that arises naturally within a specific geographic community. Some users of geographically dispersed social networks, such as Facebook, feel "connected," yet report a lack of meaningful relationships. Because organic social networks arise from local relationships, they can provide meaningful and significant forms of support. And a Web site that supports these local relationships can have a significant impact on a local community."

A weekend with Ubuntu 9.04 and Kubuntu 9.04.
(2009-05-06 17:01:34)
Wolfmanz Bytes: "For me one of the biggest problems with any of these Linux installs is a lot of them don’t seem to get the screen resolution right. For anyone who has read any of my Ubuntu articles in the past you already know I’m not a big fan of Live CD’s that load up into low resolutions such as 800 by 600. So then you can imagine the look on my face when I put the Ubuntu 9.04 CD into the drive and booted that up and low and behold I had an 800 by 600 desktop"

Universal BIOS Flash programmer for Linux, BSD and more
(2009-05-06 17:31:34)
The H Open: "The developers of the CoreBoot project have released version 0.9,0 of FlashROM, which is able to read, delete, rewrite and verify the flash chips which store a systems BIOS."

Command line made easy: five simple recipes for grep
(2009-05-06 18:01:34)
ars Technica: "The grep search utility is one of the most essential building blocks of command line text filtering and processing. In this tutorial, we will give you a few simple examples that will demonstrate how to get going with grep."

Sun's Data Storage 'Startup'
(2009-05-06 18:31:34)
Enterprise Storage Forum: "It's just a tiny part of a $13 billion company, but Sun Microsystems'Open Storage program exemplifies everything the company had hoped to achieve in its turnaround efforts."

Linux - Dealing With The Reality
(2009-05-06 19:01:34)
Blog of helios: "My question to this kind of suggestion would be "then what?". Assume that we succeeded in "unifying" the effort and experience, and GNU/Linux achieves significant market share in desktops, then what? What have we offered to the world but Windows-with-Linux-kernel?"

Installing Windows 7 with some Linux help
(2009-05-06 19:31:25)
Cyber Cynic: "I took Microsoft's word that the best thing to do was to install Windows 7 as a new operating system. That was a mistake. After zapping the Windows 7 beta on my PC, Windows 7 couldn't find a hard drive partition to install itself on."

Novell Moonlight 2.0 previews Silverlight on Linux
(2009-05-06 20:01:34)
Netstat -vat: "It wasn't all that long ago that Moonlight 1.0 was released providing Linux users with a way to run Microsoft Silverlight media on their screens. Now Novell is out with the Moonlight 2.0 preview, including expanded functionality and compatibility with Microsoft's media framework."

ESP launches en.swpat.org: a wiki for anti-software patent campaigns
(2009-05-06 20:31:34)
LWN.net: "End Software Patents today launched en.swpat.org, a wiki to document the case against software patents. Over 100 articles have already been started to give an idea of the scope and structure of the wiki."

An early look at whats coming in PHP V6
(2009-05-06 21:01:34)
IBM Developerworks: "The main feature of PHP V6 is improved support for Unicode. Currently, PHP is essentially a binary preprocessor. PHP V5 does not provide native Unicode support; it assumes that all characters are 1 byte long, which is a problem when handling non-Latin characters. You can do conversions to Unicode, but it requires the mbstring extension, which is not enabled by default or an external tool like iconv."
Link fixed-- ed.

Debian is switching to EGLIBC
(2009-05-06 21:31:34)
Aurelien's weblog: "I have just uploaded Embedded GLIBC (EGLIBC) into the archive (it is currently waiting in the NEW queue), which will soon replace the GNU C Library (GLIBC)."

100 Tests & Counting For Linux Benchmarking
(2009-05-06 22:01:34)
Phoronix: "With now having 100 different tests and over 50 test suites, there are plenty of tests to suit your needs whether you are interested in graphics / video, server, CPU, memory, disk, or system benchmarking."

Ubuntu 9.04 UNR on Asus Eee PC 901: good and fast
(2009-05-06 22:31:34)
ITWire: "Last night I downloaded the Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix (UNR) and installed it on my Asus Eee PC 901. Here’s how it all went."

1% Linux Market Share = 100% Dishonesty
(2009-05-06 23:01:34)
Linux Today Blog: "If Linux is such a pipsqueak, why are there such relentless tides of propaganda and deception against it?"

Libre.fm Is Gathering Speed
(2009-05-06 23:31:34)
Adventures In Open Source: "Libre.fm is a free network service aimed at replacing Last.fm initially but also going beyond that to develop unique features of it's own. The service is still in alpha at the moment but it's developing really quickly. I've been impressed by it's progress and the developer mailing list is packed with action every day."

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