Linux News for Nov 16, 2009

• My life with Linux: the daily ups and downs of switching to open source (Nov 16, 2009, 23:34)
  PC Magazine: "Linux is turning up in everything from netbooks to Dell PCs, but is it actually fit to replace Windows? Stuart Turton spends a week with Linux to find out"


• Corporate IT Policies More Linux-Friendly (Nov 16, 2009, 23:04)
  Community-cation: "As the week began, I had the fortune to come across an excellent article in the Wall Street Journal that addressed the problem employees face all-too-often in the workplace: the hardware and software workers are required to use based on their company's IT policies is often out of date with the technology they can purchase and use at home as consumers."


• Communities Vs. Teams: Open Source Needs Both (Nov 16, 2009, 22:34)
  Information Week: "A curious insight has come from all the recent talk about MySQL / Sun / Oracle. People talk about a community around a given open source product, but there's at least as much talk about a team within it. Let's not neglect the importance of either of those things."


• Firebird available in major linux distros (Nov 16, 2009, 22:04)
  Firebird News: "Finaly OpenSuse 11.2 is out. It is the first time that Firebird is in official OpenSuse repositories."


• Ubuntu 9.10 Live CD and Mandriva One 2010: Reviewed and Compared (Nov 16, 2009, 21:34)
  LinuxBSDos.com "For this review, however, I'm doing a two-for-one – revewing and comparing two very popular distros. For the reader, I think it makes it very easy (or easier) to evaluate distros. So for this combo-review, I'm taking on Ubuntu 9.10 Live CD and Mandriva One 2010."


• XtreemOS 2.0 release: a Linux-based Grid Operating System (Nov 16, 2009, 21:04)
  XtreemOS: "The XtreemOS project has released the second public release of its Linux-based Grid operating system under the motto "Making Grid Computing Easier"."


• Laptop Backups With anacron (Nov 16, 2009, 20:34)
  Tip of the Trade: "Cron is great for servers and desktops that are always on, but if you want to schedule a backup (or indeed any other job) on a laptop or other machine that may not always be on, try anacron instead."


• Most security products fail to perform (Nov 16, 2009, 20:04)
  Help Net Security: "Nearly 80 percent of security products fail to perform as intended when first tested and generally require two or more cycles of testing before achieving certification, according to a new ICSA Labs report"


• Stumbling and Sniffing Wireless Networks in Linux, Part 3 (Nov 16, 2009, 19:34)
  LinuxPlanet: "In this third and final installment of how to survey the airwaves with Linux tools, Eric Geier shows us more tools for network surveying and discovery, deep snooping, and intrusion detection and alerting."


• Rackspace CEO says cloud computing is a game changer (Nov 16, 2009, 19:04)
  Cloudy News: "Rackspace has been an especially hot company on Wall Street... Rackspace grew its topline at an enviable 17 percent year-over-year. The company's CEO is giving cloud computing a healthy share of the credit."


• The old vs. the new Linux desktop (Nov 16, 2009, 18:34)
  Cyber Cynic: "You want to know the funniest thing is about compared Corel Linux 1.0, released in 1999, with a typical modern desktop Linux -- say, Ubuntu 9.10? How much hasn't changed."


• Implications of rejecting "intellectual property" (Nov 16, 2009, 18:04)
  Libervis.com: "In my recent article titled ""Intellectual Property" a Violation of Real Property" I've laid down the reasoning behind my rejection of the intellectual property idea, primarily in recognizing that it cannot exist without the medium and that in fact it is the medium itself - a specific property of the medium such are the dents arranged on the surface of a compact disc or energy patterns within the brain, and so on."


• Google Latitude Lets Users Follow Their Own Footprints (Nov 16, 2009, 17:34)
  LinuxInsider: "For now, the information is accessible only to the individual user, but the functionality suggests a variety of possibilities if sharing were allowed -- such as parents tracking kids, or delivery companies tracking employees."


• First look at openSUSE 11.2 (DistroWatch Weekly #329) (Nov 16, 2009, 17:04)
  Distrowatch: "While SUSE has never been my favorite I have always found it to be a solid distribution in the past. Sadly, at least on my hardware, that simply isn't true of openSUSE 11.2. Installation on my netbook, which is extremely well supported by a half a dozen other distributions I've tried, was exceptionally challenging with openSUSE."


• Ubuntu Music Store coming ? (Nov 16, 2009, 16:34)
  Always Right: "For those who don't know, the Lucid UDS has begun today. One of the most interesting yet controversial meetings is this: the Ubuntu One Music Store. What it will be is currently left to the imagination since no specification has apparently have been drafted yet."


• The Linux consultant: The Maytag repairman of the IT world (Nov 16, 2009, 16:04)
  Linux and Open Source: "But after hearing what I heard from the collective mouths of an IT group with years of experience and a metro city's worth of clients it became all too clear why Windows is always rolled out.
  $$$$$$$$$"


• Top 500 supers - rise of the Linux quad-cores (Nov 16, 2009, 15:34)
  Register Hardware: "The single biggest transition in the list is the move to quad-core - and in some notable cases, six-core - processors inside supercomputing systems. And most of the machines on the list now run Linux with x64 processors."


• Installing KDE 4.3.2 on Ubuntu (Nov 16, 2009, 15:04)
  Ghacks: "Now you may be saying to yourself: "Why don't I just install Kubuntu and be done with it? That's a good question. The answer? Most new users have no idea that Kubuntu even exists and will have already installed the GNOME-based Ubuntu."


• Google Chrome OS: A Nice Place to Visit, But? (Nov 16, 2009, 14:34)
  Tech Inciter: "Google's new OS, rumored to be released next week, could turn operating systems inside-out. But will it?"


• 10 open source projects worth checking out (Nov 16, 2009, 14:04)
  10 Things: "The open source field is pretty crowded, but certain projects stand above the rest. Jack Wallen introduces 10 open source tools and solutions you don’t want to overlook."


• Google: Firms can 'get rid' of Office in a year (Nov 16, 2009, 13:34)
  ZDNet Asia: "In a year, most enterprises will have the choice to "get rid of [Microsoft] Office if they chose to", suggests Dave Girouard, president of Google's enterprise division."


• Great Documentation Is Key to Open Source Success (Nov 16, 2009, 13:04)
  Monkey Bites: "Listen up open source developers, if you want your project to succeed you’re going to have to do more than write great code; you’re going to have to document it, teach new users how it works and provide real-world examples of what you can do with it."


• GwenView ReView - The Linux killer application? (Nov 16, 2009, 12:34)
  Dedoimedo: "I do not know who Gwen is or what she looks like, but GwenView looks good and it's a great application. When it comes to working with images, GwenView offers the right balance of functionality, ease of use, speed of use, and accessibility."


• Microsoft does the right open-source thing (Nov 16, 2009, 12:04)
  Cyber Cynic: "Microsoft has admitted that it violated the GPL2 with its Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool. That's not too surprising, since the violation was about as clear-cut as you could get. What's surprising, even shocking, is that Microsoft is going to re-release the tool under the GPL2!"


• A Virtual Gallium3D Driver Coming For VMware (Nov 16, 2009, 08:04)
  Phoronix: "For months Sun's VirtualBox virtualization software picked up OpenGL and Direct3D acceleration support for virtualized guest operating systems, but now 2D/3D hardware-acceleration support for those running operating systems under VMware's virtualization products are imminent."


• Installing Software on Ubuntu: AppNR.com, AllMyApps.com, Software Center (Nov 16, 2009, 04:04)
  TuxSoftware: "Software installation on Ubuntu and really all major Linux distributions contrary to some people's uneducated rants on the subject can actually be much easier than anything Windows has to offer."


• Using Kate As a Web Editor (Nov 16, 2009, 00:04)
  MakeTechEasier: "There are many applications out there that provide project-based web development tools and very feature-rich interfaces, but sometimes all you really need is a good text editor. For those times, there are few editors that can stand up to the KDE powerhouse called Kate."