Linux in the news

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The worm that didn't turn up (Guardian)

Here's a column in the Guardian from a writer who had no trouble with the latest worm episode. "How have I achieved this blissful freedom? Simple: by using only computers running Apple or Linux software. No special geeky skills required - just common sense and a desire to avoid pain. For six years, I have enjoyed all the benefits of networked computing without experiencing any of the downsides."

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Tim Berners-Lee Sends a Letter to the US Copyright Office (Groklaw)

Groklaw reports that Tim Berners-Lee, director of the W3C and inventor of the Web, has responded to a call for comments from the US Copyright Office. "He mentions security issues , which can and have arisen in connection with all browsers. As it happens, there was one yesterday involving IE, and some responded to the fact that there is currently no patch for it by suggesting that you use a different browser at least temporarily."

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Apache hopes to encourage female coders (News.com)

News.com has a short article on the Apache Foundation's efforts to encourage participation from women. "Debian, the free Linux distribution, set up a group last year to encourage the participation of women. Helen Faulkner, a member of Debian Women, told ZDNet UK last year that the group offers advice to women on a variety of topics from how to install Debian to how to write a bug report. It is also encouraging Debian to become more welcoming to women by flagging instances of sexism."

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Companies

Open-source Mambo project faces rift (News.com)

News.com reports on a split in the Mambo project. "On one side of the clash is Miro International and the Mambo Foundation. Miro is the company that originally released Mambo as open-source software, and it helped establish the foundation earlier this month to govern the software as an open-source project. On the other side is the entire team of Mambo developers."

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Asia to show Linux-based system (CNN)

Here's a brief CNN article on the upcoming release of Asianux 2.0, a distribution put together by Miracle Linux (mostly owned by Oracle), Red Flag Software, and Haansoft. "Miracle Linux President Takeshi Sato said in January 2004 that the group hoped Asianux will be prevalent in server systems for regional businesses and governments within three years."

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Sun launches open-source digital rights plan (ZDNet)

According to this ZDNet article, Sun is pushing into the digital restrictions management (DRM) area. "Sun also believes it can bypass corporate powers though use of open-source software. 'Now it's no longer simply about engaging a few corporate interests. The open-source community is all about engaging the planet,' Schwartz said, including individuals who might want to sell their own digital content over peer-to-peer networks."

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Linux at Work

Can Linux Put PalmSource Back On Top? (InformationWeek)

InformationWeek examines the increasing use of Linux on PDA and cell phone platforms. "These vendors cite a variety of advantages to adopting an open source platform over a proprietary one. Interestingly, the lack of licensing royalties appears to be the least important advantage to most of them. Motorola, for example, which continues to ship Windows and Symbian phones but divested its ownership stake in Symbian two years ago, notes the advantage of choosing launch dates based on the company's own preferences rather than being tied to the OS developer's next major OS release. Korean Linux phone pioneer E28 points to another benefit: the fact that closed, monolithic platforms often impose proprietary standards that restrict a company's freedom to differentiate itself from its competitors."

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Interviews

Looking at Real Time for Linux, PowerPC, and Cell (developerWorks)

developerWorks talks with Paul McKenney about processors, computer history, time slices, games, physics, and Linux. "Paul E. McKenney is a Distinguished Engineer at the IBM Linux Technology Center. He has worked on SMP, NUMA, and RCU algorithms since he came to IBM in the early 1990s. Prior to that, he worked on locking and parallel operating-system algorithms at Sequent Computer Systems. He has also worked on packet-radio and Internet protocols (even before the Internet became popular), system administration, real-time systems, and business applications."

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Interview with Aaron Seigo (Linux Magazine)

Linux Magazine interviews Aaron Seigo about his Trolltech sponsored work on KDE. "We also sat back and went, "you know it'd be really nice if we could really show what X, the X modern protocol, especially from X.org, is capable of these days. Cause it's got a bad reputation or has a crude one largely because development was so stagnant for so many years, but X.org has really picked up again and we're starting to see some exciting capabilities on the X.11 platform. We also have Q4 coming out from Trolltech, that's got, I was playing around with the new painting facilities that were there yesterday, and was really happy with how much more progressed Q4 is over Q3 for what we can do eye-candy wise."

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Interview with Roberto Cappuccio (Tuxmachines)

Tuxmachines talks with Roberto Cappuccio about KAT. "Kat Desktop Search Environment is an open source framework designed to allow KDE applications to index and retrieve files; loosely speaking, a search tool. Tuxmachines has had the rare opportunity to speak with Roberto Cappuccio, wonderfully talented developer of KAT." (Found on KDE.News)

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3 Questions: Patent Commons Protection (ITBusinessEdge)

ITBusinessEdge talks with OSDL general counsel Diane Peters about the patent commons project. "With increasing frequency, institutions, companies and inventors want to formally signal to open source developers, distributors and users that software patents they hold are not a threat or inhibitor to the development or use of open source. The patent commons gives them a forum in which to do so. As for patent holders who assign their patents to OSDL, they are relieved of the administrative burdens associated with licensing their patents to various players in the open source community."

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Resources

Open Source Power management - Gnome Power Manager (MYOSS)

MYOSS magazine is running an article on the Gnome Power Manager by lead developer Richard Hughes. "Power management in Linux sucks. Depending if you are running a PPC or i386 PC the different power management facilities are vastly different. To get your machine to suspend on lid press is already possible, but is difficult to know what config files to modify. To get your LCD screen brightness set to 50% when you remove the AC Adapter of your laptop is probably possible with a clever little Perl script, but is not something that comes ready configured on a standard Linux distro. Any of these things need the user to become the super-user to do the action. This needs to change before Linux is accepted as a contender for the corporate desktop."

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A Video Card Upgrade HOWTO (Linux Journal)

Colin McGregor walks through the process of upgrading a video card on a Linux system. "Given the many dozens of video cards on the market, how to choose? The first step is to take a look at your motherboard manual to answer the question "what video cards could my computer support?" All other things being equal, you want the fastest data transfer between the computer and the video card. The upper limit as to how fast data can transfer from the computer to the video card is the bus connector between the card and the motherboard. In decreasing order of performance, the video card bus arrangements are PCIexpress, AGP 8x, AGP 4x, AGP 2x, AGP and PCI."

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The Eclipse Voice Tools Project (developerWorks)

This developerWorks article introduces the Eclipse Voice Tools Project. "The Voice Tools Project (VTP) was formed to take advantage of the Web Tools Project by extending its base of Web-development tools into the voice-recognition world. This allows the Voice Tools Project to provide a great Web-development experience for voice applications out of the box and allows users to development their voice applications using the same tools they would use to develop their visual applications. For companies that use the Voice Tools Project as a base for their own tools, it means that all the tasks users come to expect from a modern Web-oriented Integrated Development Environment (IDE) are provided without any additional effort."

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Reviews

amaroK 1.3 'Airborne' takes off (KDE.News)

KDE.News reviews version 1.3 of the amaroK audio player. "amaroK is one of the first applications to integrate live information from the free encyclopedia, providing useful facts about the music you are currently listening to. Discography of an artist, biography and even photos are just a mouseclick away with the new Wikipedia tab."

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FreeBSD 6.0 to target wireless devices (News.com)

News.com looks at FreeBSD 6.0. "FreeBSD developer Scott Long said on Thursday that the next version of the open-source BSD-based operating system, planned for release in September, includes support for "a lot more" wireless cards and for wireless security standards such as the Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA)."

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Kino makes video editing simple (NewsForge)

Ben McGrath likes Kino for video editing, on NewsForge. "Kino takes video to the disk in AVI and raw DV format. When you finish editing a video, Kino lets you export it in a number of formats, such as MPEG and MP3. Kino also features incredible support for IEEE-1394, otherwise known as FireWire, which allows it to communicate with different video hardware, and also supports most USB drive input. Kino has easy tools for filters, general effects, and video transition, ranging from kaleidescope to a general background generator. Kino also comes equipped with audio tools, such as filters and audio transitions, which include useful "fade in/out" and "mix" features."

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A Comparison of Linux Performance Tuning Books (Linux Journal)

Linux Journal has a mini-review of two performance tuning books. "I've recently had the opportunity to read two books on the topic: Optimizing Linux Performance, written by Phillip G. Ezolt and part of the HP Professional Books imprint, and Performance Tuning for Linux Servers, edited by Sandra K. Johnson and published by IBM Press. As both of these titles came out of large companies that are throwing a lot of support behind Linux, I thought it would be worthwhile to compare the two books."

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Linux for Video Production (O'ReillyNet)

Jono Bacon examines the present and future of video production with Linux and open source software, on O'ReillyNet. "At the GNOME User And Developers European Conference (GUADEC) in Stuttgart, Germany, PiTiVi was one of the most promising applications demonstrated. Currently being developed by French-born Edward Hervey, PiTiVi offers a refreshing outlook for video production on Linux. Hervey's goals for PiTiVi have been clear from the beginning. His intention was to create a simple, intuitive, and powerful editor that can be useful for both home and professional needs."

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