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Linux in the newsRecommended Reading Everyone Wants to 'Own' Your PC (Wired)Here's a Wired column by Bruce Schneier about the forces which would have your computer work for them, rather than for you. "You can fight back against this trend by only using software that respects your boundaries. Boycott companies that don't honestly serve their customers, that don't disclose their alliances, that treat users like marketing assets. Use open-source software -- software created and owned by users, with no hidden agendas, no secret alliances and no back-room marketing deals."
Linux kernel 'getting buggier,' leader says (ZDNet)ZDNet reports from Andrew Morton's talk at LinuxTag. "Morton said he hasn't yet proved this statistically, but has noticed that he is getting more e-mails with bug reports. If he is able to confirm the increasing defect rate, he may temporarily halt the kernel development process to spend time resolving issues."
What's in a name? (NewsForge)Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier takes a look at naming conventions or the lack thereof. "As an editor and writer, I try to stick with the usage dictated by a project, but that's often difficult. Many projects don't agree on their usage on their own Web sites, documentation, and mailing lists. For example, on the Xpdf site, you see Xpdf and xpdf used interchangeably. On the KPDF site, KPDF and kpdf are also used interchangeably. Even though MySQL AB has managed consistent usage of MySQL, I frequently see articles that use Mysql and mySQL." GnomeDesktop also finds that suspend and hibernate names are not used consistently.
Trade Shows and Conferences KDE to Become Better Supported on the Ubuntu Platform (KDE.News)KDE.News covers a meeting of Kubuntu and KDE contributors at LinuxTag. "At the beginning of the meeting, Mark outlined Canonical's vision of the future of Ubuntu Linux and the role of Kubuntu and KDE therein. Canonical wants to create a free, professional economic eco-system and help to develop and transport KDE's vision of the future of the free desktop."
The 2006 LinuxWorld Canada Show (Linux Journal)Colin McGregor reports on LinuxWorld Canada 2006 from the Greater Toronto Area Linux User Group (GTALUG) booth and beyond. "Ross Chevalier of Novell spoke at the Wednesday afternoon keynote about Novell's efforts to bring Linux to the desktop via its SUSE subsidiary. There are several new efforts on that score. Novell is running a Web site, www.betterdesktop.org, that offers GNOME and KDE developers insights from Novell's usability studies. Novell has set up usability labs in Utah and in Boston, Massachusetts, and it has a portable lab. In the labs Novell asks ordinary computer users to perform a task, such as open and edit a document, then video tape what happens."
The SCO Problem April 14, 2006 SCO v. IBM Hearing Transcript (Groklaw)For those who are still interested in occasionally checking into the progress of the SCO case: Groklaw has the transcript of the April 14 hearing, which PJ describes as "one of the most interesting" since the beginning of the case. It shows that some things have changed little over the years: "I mean, the basic allegation, Your Honor, is that IBM dumped so much material into Linux that we made it a super operating system that killed SCO's UNIX business and that, therefore, they are entitled to billions of dollars in damages. Surely they don't contend that we are not entitled to understand exactly what it was that was supposed to be put in there and determine and evaluate whether that even matters to Linux, whether anyone is even using Linux because of that and whether, even if they are using it because of that, it has any bearing whatever on the competition between Linux, if any, and their UNIX products."
Companies Atmel bundles embedded Linux dev service with ARM SoCs (LinuxDevices)LinuxDevices covers a collaboration between Atmel and TimeSys. "Chip-maker Atmel has selected the TimeSys LinuxLink service as the "primary Linux distribution mechanism" for its new ARM-based processors, TimeSys says. Atmel customers will receive a free one-month subscription to LinuxLink, providing them with a starting point, including the newest kernel optimizations and validated binaries, according to the companies."
SGI Files for Bankruptcy (eWeek.com)eWeek looks at Silicon Graphics' bankruptcy filing. "The Mountain View, Calif., company on May 8 filed for Chapter 11 protection, saying it was a key step in the reorganization that is aimed at reducing SGI's debt by about $250 million. The filing occurred at the federal Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. Company officials say they will file their reorganization plan shortly and expect to come out of bankruptcy within the next six months."
Business BitTorrent inks studio distribution deal (ZDNet)ZDNet reports that BitTorrent has made a distribution deal with a Hollywood studio. "Warner Bros. Entertainment Group has agreed to use BitTorrent's peer-to-peer system to distribute movies and television shows, including "Dukes of Hazzard" and "Babylon 5," beginning this summer, the companies are expected to announce Tuesday."
Linux at Work Sporting goods retailer now sporting Linux everywhere (NewsForge)NewsForge looks at the use of Linux-based e-commerce software by outdoor sporting goods retailer Backcountry.com. "Jenkins hesitated at the last minute because he felt that Open-Xchange was "just copying Microsoft Exchange. Why go with a platform that's copying an eight-year-old piece of crap?" he says. "Why not go with something new and sexy?" He and the Backcountry.com staff decided to look a bit further, found Zimbra Collaboration Suite. Jenkins liked the AJAX-based interactivity of Zimbra. Backcountry began testing it with 25 users, who also fell in love with some of the same features that lured Jenkins, such as the interactive calendar that renders pages with one mouse click and "zimlet" plugins that let users do on-the-fly Wikipedia and Yahoo! Maps searches."
Legal Artistic License in software spat (NewsForge)NewsForge examines a lawsuit between Auto/Mate and Webswell involving the ownership of software derived from open-source code. "The two firms signed a contract last year under which Webswell would consult, develop, and test software for Auto/Mate. It appears that starting point for the work to be performed included both existing proprietary software, owned by Webswell, and open source code licensed under the Artistic License. In the lawsuit filed in the United States District Court, Northern District of New York, Auto/Mate asserts that it owns the software developed for the company by Webswell, and that by posting the source code for that software on various open source Web sites, Webswell has violated its copyright."Correction: The open source code was originally released under the Academic Free License, not the Artistic Free License.
Legal analysis of the GPLv3 patent provisionsDiane Peters, General Counsel for the Open Source Development Labs, presents an analysis of the GPLv3 patent provisions, the paper was presented at the 2006 AIPLA conference.
Interviews The Evolving ODF Environment: Spotlight on KOffice (ConsortiumInfo.org)ConsortiumInfo.org has an interview with Inge Wallin, the KOffice Promotions Lead. "A few weeks ago, KDE announced the release of KOffice 1.5, which achieves a high degree of support for ODF. In this extensive interview, I explore with Inge Wallin, the KOffice Promotions Lead, how KOffice is different from the other major office productivity releases that support ODF, which users may find it most appropriate to their needs, in what directions future development will proceed, and much more. In the future, I hope to provide similar interviews with representatives of the other major offerings, in order to illustrate the way in which the ODF standards-based office productivity environment is evolving in real time." (Found on KDE.News)
Trolltech sees a billion Linux phones (the Register)Andrew Orlowski talks to Eirik Chambe-Eng and Haavard Nord about Trolltech's plans in the cell phone market. "But when we caught up with Trolltech's two founders on a recent swing through San Francisco, it wasn't the most talked-about market that they believe will dip towards Linux. Eirik Chambe-Eng and Haavard Nord are quite happy to let Symbian and Microsoft duke it out for ascendency in the smartphones segment. It's the increasing complexity of feature phones where they're pitching their Qtopia embedded suite. "Microsoft and Symbian are established in smartphones, they have good support for business applications. It's the feature phones and low-end that we believe will be a success for Linux," says Eng."
Resources CLI Magic: Bash complete (Linux.com)Linux.com has some tips on using bash completion. "The auto complete feature of the Bourne Again SHell makes bash one of the most loved and newbie-friendly Linux shells. Just by pressing the Tab key you can complete commands and filenames. Press the Tab key twice and all files in the directory get displayed. But you can do more with autocomplete -- such as associating file types with applications, and automatically designating whether you're looking for directories, text, or MP3 files. With simple commands such as complete and the use of Escape sequences, you can save time and have fun on the command line."
Creating a Dual-Boot Windows XP and Ubuntu Laptop (O'Reilly)Kevin Farnham shows how to make a laptop computer dual boot Linux and Windows XP in an O'Reilly article. "Notebook computers are generally preloaded with Windows XP, but for those of us who do considerable work in the Linux environment, a Windows-only notebook is far from ideal. I worked with Unix on Windows packages such as Uwin and Cygwin for several years, but I finally decided I wanted a full Linux installation on my notebook."
strace - A very powerful troubleshooting tool for all Linux users (LinuxHelp)Linux Help takes a look at strace. "Many times I have come across seemingly hopeless situations where a program when compiled and installed in GNU/Linux just fails to run. In such situations after I have tried every trick in the book like searching on the net and posting questions to Linux forums, and still failed to resolve the problem, I turn to the last resort which is trace the output of the misbehaving program. Tracing the output of a program throws up a lot of data which is not usually available when the program is run normally. And in many instances, sifting through this volume of data has proved fruitful in pin pointing the cause of error."
Reviews GNU/Linux training with Damn Small Linux manual (Linux.com)Linux.com has a review of the book DSL -- Linux Operating System in Less Than 50 MB by Mike Weber. "First, it centers on Damn Small Linux (DSL), a distro which fits on a credit card-sized 50MB mini CD. Second, the book was originally written for "an elite group of grade school students," a group that's technically inclined, if not yet technically skilled. Third, rather than coming in regular book format, this manual is published as a binder that can receive regular updates. Finally, this hands-on manual is replete with practical tips and tricks and concludes with a valuable series of projects, such as creating a backup server, building an embedded system, and building an $18 computer."
First look: Dropline GNOME 2.14.0 (Linux.com)Linux.com takes a look at Dropline GNOME. "Once installed, dropline provides a nice, usable GNOME desktop. All the applications required for an average desktop user are on the menu: Firefox and Epiphany Web browsers, Evolution groupware suite, Thunderbird email, AbiWord word processor, the Gnumeric spreadsheet, and the GIMP graphics program. It offers a good selection of Internet programs, such as Gaim, Drivel, Liferea, gFTP, and Gnomemeeting; multimedia tools such as Totem, Gnomebaker, Rythmbox, and Soundjuicer; and graphics tools such as gThumb and Inkscape. Underneath it all I still have Slackware providing Apache, sendmail, Samba, and CUPS, so my PC is also the email, data storage, and printing server, and the Internet gateway/firewall for the rest of the computers at home."
Phonon and the future of KDE multimedia (Linux.com)Linux.com looks at Phonon and KDE. "Clearly, aRts could not serve as the next generation KDE multimedia framework, but, given that KDE's emphasis on integration effectively discourages adoption of established projects, what would? The solution will come in the form of a front end to these established frameworks, one for which plugins can be written to support any contemporary or future multimedia back end that has the basic features the Phonon API must provide. Phonon will support a sensible median of the playback, mixing, and effects features of Gstreamer, Helix, Xine, JACK, NMM, and other back ends (even aRts), while presenting them to developers in a simple and unified API. The choice of which back end to use, if the user has several installed, will be user-configurable, with some power reserved for applications to choose or recommend their preferred back ends."
Defeat spam with SpamBayes (NewsForge)NewsForge looks at SpamBayes. "The SpamBayes classification sorts out virtually all spam messages and almost never produces a false positive -- that is, a good message wrongly identified as spam. Only once have I had to fetch an email from the junk mail folder. This happened when a Spanish friend wrote me, presumably because Spanish messages are rare in my inbox. I corrected the wrong classification, and all her subsequent messages were recognized as good. The program improves precision with each manual correction."
Transcoding and streaming DVD films with VLC media player (NewsForge)Dmitri Popov reviews the VLC media player on SourceForge. "The VLC media player (VLC) is a versatile tool. It can handle virtually any media file, it can play network streams such as Internet radio stations, and it can stream media contents across the network. But that's not all; VLC can also 'stream' media to a file in a user-defined format, which makes it a handy transcoding tool. The most obvious use of this feature is to backup your film DVDs, a process that VLC makes straightforward. While VLC doesn't support so-called DVD shrinking (fitting a film onto a single-layer DVD or even CD), it's perfectly capable of converting an entire film into a single file that you can play in any media player, including VLC itself."
Miscellaneous Coming soon: ODF for MS Office (Linux-Watch)Linux-Watch covers an Open Document Format plugin for MS Office. "The [OpenDocument] Foundation is offering ODF support for Microsoft Office because "this isn't about 'Windows' or MS Office. It's about people, business units, existing workflows and business processes, and vested legacy information systems begging to be connected, coordinated, and re-engineered to reach new levels of productivity and service. It's also about the extraordinary value of ODF and its importance to the next generation of collaborative computing," said Edwards."
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