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Linux in the newsRecommended Reading Linux Desktop Developers Find Common Ground (eWeek) eWeek covers a recent OSDL meeting which included over two dozen representatives from various Linux desktop projects. "The most concrete result from the meeting, however, was the creation of the Portland Project. "Portland will provide a common set of Linux desktop interfaces that allows applications to easily integrate with the Linux desktop that the end user or his organization has chosen to work with," said Waldo Bastian, a KDE engineer and a FreeDesktop leader."
Report of the KDE Quality Assurance Meeting (KDE.News) KDE.News reports on the recent KDE Quality Assurance Meeting. "After having some food, Ellen Reitmayr of OpenUsability.org fame was kind enough to educate the rest of us about usability. The fact that a whole bunch of factors which influence the usability of the user interface can easily be checked automatically came as a relieving surprise (so the idea wasn't all that crazy after all!). During her explanations, it became apparent that even though many things are terribly difficult to check automatically it would be a big achievement if we could have nightly checks for the low hanging fruits. Getting them out of the way (and there are a lot of them) would give the usability people more time to focus on the things which actually require human intervention."
Trade Shows and Conferences LinuxWorld Boston mulls "invisible Linux" pavilion (LinuxDevices) LinuxDevices reports that LinuxWorld Boston 2006 organizers are considering an embedded Linux pavilion. "According to Exhibits Coordinator Ellen Boland, the Invisible Linux pavilion concept is modeled after a similar, successful pavilion at a LinuxWorld Expo in Germany. Although currently still at the "concept stage," several companies have expressed interest, she says. "Obviously, mobile is the hot area. We're talking to embedded Linux users such as Nokia, Motorola, and PalmSource, as well as embedded Linux OS and service providers.""
LISA '05 Conference: Day 1 (NewsForge) Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier reports from the 19th Large Installation System Administration (LISA) Conference in San Diego. "LISA is a strong community show, and you'll hear a lot of references to the "hallway track," the between-sessions time where geeks get together between classes and socialize. I've already met a number of interesting folks from other companies, and have had a great time chatting with other geeks in attendance and finding out what kind of work they do, and what tools they use." Day 2 is also available.
Last day at LISA (NewsForge) Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier reports from the 19th Large Installation System Administration Conference (LISA). "At LISA, no matter how well you plan your schedule, the odds are good that you won't be able to attend all of the sessions that you're interested in. Case in point: On Friday morning I had to choose between a refereed papers session about management tools, an invited talk on wireless security, guru sessions on change management and security/cryptography, or Kevin Bankston's invited talk on "How Sysadmins Can Protect Free Speech and Privacy on the Electronic Frontier." In the end, I opted for Bankston's talk."
Companies Mandriva Strives to Win Business, Desktop Users (eWeek) eWeek looks at Mandriva's growing business. "Today, the company has approximately 130 employees with most of them in France and Brazil. With a market cap of about 35 million Euros and quarterly revenues of approximately 5.5 million Euros, Mandriva is now fiscally stable."
Red Hat Supports Creative Commons Red Hat has announced a challenge grant for donations to the Creative Commons. "Red Hat supports Creative Commons in their mission. Creative Commons is in the midst of a year-end fund drive, and Red Hat has established a matching program to help them meet their goal. If you donate to Creative Commons, Red Hat will match your donation dollar for dollar, up to a maximum of $5000 total for all donations." The challenge will end on December 31. (Thanks to Benjamin Kosnik.)
Revitalised Turbolinux spreading its wings (NewsForge) NewsForge looks at the latest developments from Turbolinux. "Turbolinux, recovered and prospering in its new incarnation as an Osaka Securities Exchange-listed company, is looking to achieve success in Asian markets beyond Japan and China. The company, now a subsidiary of booming Japanese portal operator Livedoor, has announced plans to double its percentage of income from exports to neighboring countries to 20% within the next couple of years. The latest venture for Turbolinux is into the relatively untapped Vietnamese market, where it has started to conduct market research under a contract with Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry."
Linux Adoption Linux in Italian Schools, Part 7: Teaching Free SW to Adults in Bari (Linux Journal) The seventh edition of Linux in Italian Schools looks at how Free and Open Source Software is helping Italian schools with adult education and training programs. "The first module of the 2002 program, for example, ranged from teaching the definition of ICT and its influence on society and daily life to ergonomics and legal implications of computer security. The next module explained in detail how to create folders, what home directories and file permissions are and why, on Linux, disks have to be mounted. Immediately after this, students would learn what a graphical user interface is and how to choose one from GNOME, KDE and the others."
Open Source - Is it a Valid Direction for You? (IT-Director) IT-Director tries to discourage business interest in open source, especially on the desktop. "Technical support will involve participating in internet forums, asking people of unknown capability for help with any problems and trusting that what comes back is a real fix, not some means of a malicious person gaining access to the user's system. This haphazard way of supporting IT is unattractive, especially for smaller businesses with limited in-house expertise."
Legal CCIA Calls on ECMA to Reject MS's Proposal (Groklaw) Groklaw looks at a letter from the CCIA regarding open office standards. "The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) has just sent Ecma International a letter calling upon the international standards group to reject "Microsoft's proposal for what it calls an open standard for office productivity applications." "Far from fostering competition," the letter, signed by Ed Black, President and CEO of CCIA said, "Microsoft's proposal seems destined to assure that only Microsoft will produce software that can interoperate fully with its products.""
Agenda for MA Meeting on Dec. 14 (Groklaw) Groklaw shows the agenda for a meeting to discuss open formats. "The agenda for the December 14 meeting, "An Open Forum on the Future of Electronic Data Formats for the Commonwealth," the Hart public meeting, has now been distributed to interested parties. It's in .doc format, natch. Sigh. Some of the Massachusetts senators really do think the whole world uses Microsoft. Thanks to OpenOffice.org, I was able to read it anyway, even though I don't use Microsoft's Word. There is life without Microsoft."
Chancellor announces intellectual property review (HM Treasury) The British government will hold a year-long review of the UK's intellectual property rights system. "The review will provide an analysis of the performance of the UK IP system, including: the way in which Government administers the awarding of IP and their support to consumers and business; how well businesses are able to negotiate the complexity and expense of the copyright and patent system, including copyright and patent licensing arrangements, litigation and enforcement; and whether the current technical and legal IP infringement framework reflects the digital environment, and whether provisions for ‘fair use’ by citizens are reasonable." (Thanks to Nick Talbott.)
Interviews The People Behind KDE: András Mantia András Mantia The latest interview in The People Behind KDE series features András Mantia. "Q:In what ways do you make a contribution to KDE? A:In general my biggest contribution is C++ code and some documentation. Ideas and discussions might also be considered as a contribution. The main area where I work is the kdewebdev module in general and Quanta Plus especially. Together with Eric Laffoon we are the heart of Quanta and its current maintainers. Outside of kdewebdev, I contributed to some extends to the KDE libraries, to KDevelop, kdetv and some patches here and there which I don't count."
Busy Executive by Day and Linux Developer by Night (LXer) LXer interviews Fabio Marzocca, author of the BUM Boot-Up Manager. "LXer: How did you get involved with Linux, and Ubuntu in particular? Fabio: I have a typical “experimenting” approach towards anything is new, and when Linux came out I was extremely curious. Then, about 4 years ago, I was tired about Windows capabilities because I felt it was choking any free experimenting activity, so I gave Linux a try.... and I fallen in love!"
Through Project Looking Glass with Hideya Kawahara (O'ReillyNet) John Littler interviews Hideya Kawahara about Project Looking Glass. "3D has practically taken over video gaming. Lifelike, if not very pleasant, worlds exist aplenty--worlds that most users find easily navigable without any training whatsoever. Is the world of spreadsheets, word processors, and the like just unsuitable for 3D? Is it a case of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"? Or is it that we've lacked imagination? John Littler recently talked to Hideya Kawahara about an open source 3D desktop project that he started and that Sun subsequently took under its wing."
Interview with Marten Mickos CEO of MySQL AB (LXer) LXer has an interview with Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL AB. "The top goal is always to produce something about which our users and customers can say, "It just works!". This means focusing on reliability, performance and ease of use. Yes, we also add new features, but new features are not our top priority. We try to make sure that we fit into the new IT architectures -- the LAMP stack, web applications, new types of enterprise applications, and so on."
China's Red Flag Sees Desktop as Linux Battlefield (eWeek) eWeek has posted an interview with Red Flag VP Zhongyuan Zheng. "And from the end of last year, the central government asked the provincial governments and the city governments to buy legal software to replace all of the previously illegal software. These governments - city and provincial - compared the performance, capabilities and price of desktop Linux and Windows and they considered whether they could migrate all their applications from Windows to Linux. So finally about 30 percent of desktops in China now use Linux. Microsoft has about 60 percent."
Resources Bug Trackers: Do They Really All Suck? (O'ReillyNet) O'ReillyNet is looking for better bug tracking systems. "More than most tools, bug trackers serve lots of different groups of people. Developers want to know which bugs need to be fixed. Testers want to know which bugs have been fixed in each build. Managers want answers to very different questions: "What kinds of bugs are there?" "Who should work on this bug?" and, "Is the number of critical bugs increasing or decreasing?""
Security Expert Dan Geer's Letter to MA Senator Pacheco Re ODF (Groklaw) Groklaw looks at security reasons to use OpenDocument format. "Here is a letter that security professional Dan Geer has just sent to Massachusetts Senator Marc Pacheco, and he tells me he sent similar letters to Secretary of the Commonwealth Francis Galvin and Senate President Robert Travaligni. He warns them that the Commonwealth needs to mitigate its risk by avoiding a computing monoculture. If a private company received such a letter, I assure you that their lawyers would take it very seriously, as it would put them on notice, actual notice. Dr. Geer strongly supports OpenDocument Format, as you will see, and his reasons include concern about security issues."
Reviews OOo Off the Wall: Master Documents (Linux Journal) The Linux Journal continues its look at OpenOffice.org features with this article on master documents. "Master documents aren't a feature of Writer that everyone needs. If you never write documents longer than 30 pages, you probably can ignore them entirely. However, if you ever write anything longer--especially a document that shares some parts with other documents--take the time to learn about them."
Miscellaneous A certifiable path to Linux Jobs (Linux-Watch) Linux-Watch looks at Linux certification programs. "[As] Linux increasingly is entering businesses' front doors rather than as a skunk-works project in the back-room, the people hiring Linux-workers are more likely to be in human resources than in IT. That, in turn, means you're more likely to be judged by your degrees and certifications than by your experience and skills."
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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