Linux in the news [LWN.net]

The Perpetual Peril of Open Platforms (Freedom to Tinker)

Here's a column on Freedom To Tinker stating that people worry too much about the future of open platforms. "But open technologies have a kind of secret weapon: the flexibility and power that comes from decentralization. The success of the iPhone is entirely dependent on Apple making good technical and business decisions, and building on top of proprietary platforms requires navigating complex licensing issues. In contrast, absolutely anyone can use and build on top of an open platform without asking anyone else for permission, and without worrying about legal problems down the line. That means that at any one time, you have a lot of different people trying a lot of different things on that open platform. In the long run, the creativity of millions of people will usually exceed that of a few hundred engineers at a single firm."

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The Evolution of Linux (TechRepublic)

Over at TechRepublic, Jack Wallen laments the loss of Linux configuration files. He went to edit his xorg.conf file on Fedora 10, finding, to his dismay, that there wasn't one. "Dont get me wrong, I understand the 'why'. For large-scale adoption Linux needs to be as simple to use as the competition. One way to make this so is to take the guess work out of setting up such things as video. And I think its safe to say we all know that configuring video has, in the past, been a nightmare on certain chipsets. And to that end I can fully understand why the developers would want to go this route. And if they can create a fool-proof system that will be able to successfully configure X Windows with zero user intervention, more power to them. But I think this is a sign of things to come, and that sign looks like a Merge with Linux and Windows."

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Trade Shows and Conferences

Camp KDE Takes off in Jamaica (KDE.News)

KDE.News covers Camp KDE. "In a warm Jamaica some thirty KDE developers have gathered for the first Camp KDE. The healthy growth of the KDE community created the need for a combined North/South American meeting. The release event showed it is possible. It has been a year since the KDE 4.0 release event by San Fransisco, and we see many of the faces we saw back then at Google headquarters."

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Companies

The facts behind Microsoft's anti-Linux 'Get the Facts' campaign (cnet)

Over at cnet, Matt Asay looks at recently revealed information about the infamous "Get the Facts" anti-Linux campaign from Microsoft. "What facts? 'Facts' about Windows alleged superiority as a preemptive kernel and asychronous I/O, facts that demonstrate that 'Linux is old unix.' Facts about Windows alleged security superiority over Linux. Facts that go to the heart of Red Hat and IBM's patent indemnification offerings and, frighteningly, Allchin seems to be foretelling Microsoft's later patent FUD against Linux [...]".

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Linux Adoption

Mortal OS Kombat: Linux versus Windows 7 (MaximumPC.com)

MaximumPC.com discusses the upcoming battle between Linux and Windows 7, which is out in a beta release. "Windows 7 is also catering to admins with its tough little PowerShell utility--a souped-up version of the command line that now allows administrators to remotely mess with machines via a powerful console-based scripting environment. But really, the fight is in the netbook space. IT World's Preston Gralla puts it clearly: if Linux gains traction on netbooks, people will become more familiar with using the OS (already a significant issue plaguing Linux-based netbooks). If people become more familiar with Linux as a whole, they might consider adopting it on their desktop platform as well."

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Calls for open source government (BBC)

Sun co-founder Scott McNealy is advocating open source for governments according to a BBC article. McNealy has been asked to prepare a paper on the subject for the Obama administration. "Mr McNealy told the BBC he wants to ensure the government does not get 'locked in' to one specific vendor or company. [...] 'The government ought to mandate open source products based on open source reference implementations to improve security, get higher quality software, lower costs, higher reliability - all the benefits that come with open software.'"

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Legal

LGPL 2.1, Qt 4.5 and C++ templates

George Makrydakis investigates some potential problems in using the LGPL v2.1 license with C++ libraries. "But I have not seen in the FAQ, so far, a series of licensing issues related to the unmodified LGPLv2.1 license proposed. One of these issues has to do with C++ templates for starters. While it is true that Qt 4.4 right now, does not use templates for signals and slots, it does have templates in container classes. Does an unmodified LGPLv2.1 - I assume that this is their intent, from what comes out of the current FAQ and republished by all other websites - take into consideration the use of C++ templates and template metaprogramming techniques by third party code, when instantiating these LGPLv2.1 templates in a non LGPLv2.1 license model (even OSI compliant)? C++ template instantiation is known for actually nesting code inside the end user code in ways that transcend the wording of an unmodified LGPL 2.1 license." (Thanks to Martin Langsjoen).

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Interviews

Interview: Dann Washko, The Linux Link Tech Show (Montana Linux)

Scott Dowdle talks with Dann Washko of the Linux Link Tech Show. "ML: Who have been some of your most interesting guests? Dann: We have had so many great guests along the way. In fact, I am often quite surprised that some well known people come on our show and have actually listened to or do listen to us on a regular basis. Probably the biggest guest for me was Patrick [Volkerding], the creator and maintainer of Slackware; that was an awesome show. Other notable include Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond, Jeremy Allison, Bruce Perens, Dean Haglund (of Lone Gunman fame), Bil Herd (former Commodore engineer) and more recently Scott Sigler. As you can see, not all our guests are strictly Linux related, but most are. There have been so many wonderful people who have taken the time to share with us and the community."

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Fellowship interview with Enrico Zini (FSFE)

The Fellowship of Free Software Foundation Europe has an interview with Enrico Zini. "Enrico Zini is a long time Fellow of the FSFE and a prominent Debian developer. He has been involved in many different projects relating to Free Software and is deeply concerned about social issues. I had a nice chat with Enrico and asked him about some of his favourite causes."

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Resources

Enable high availability for composite applications (IBM developerWorks)

Mahesh Viswanathan and Suraj Subramanian show how to set up high availability systems on IBM developerWorks. "This article describes an implementation of high availability for a composite application using Linux-HA. Delivering high availability to composite applications can be challenging. Because composite applications consist of several distinct applications, each with different availability requirements, configuration is complex. In this article, the authors describe how they designed and implemented a high availability prototype for Tivoli® Maximo®, a composite app. Their configuration script shows how you can provide high availability to a heterogeneous cluster of related applications using a systematic and prioritized failover schedule."

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Holiday Cheer, Holiday Uncheer - Part 2 (Linux Journal)

Dave Philips continues his Linux Journal series on 2008 audio software releases with part two. "Continuing my holiday machine maintenance saga I move on to some notable trials and tribulations with Ubuntu, but not before I report on a little more holiday cheer."

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Setting Up the Ideal Linux Desktop (It Management)

There are many ways to set up the ideal desktop. In this article Bruce Byfield shares some thoughts on the subject. "After years of authorized and -- I admit -- the occasional unauthorized but non-tampering snooping, I'm overdue to offer reciprocity. I'm not naive enough to throw open my machine for everyone to examine online, but, over the years, I have developed several pages of hard-earned notes that I follow and revise whenever I buy and set up a new computer."

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Installing SugarCRM Community Edition On Ubuntu 8.10 (HowtoForge)

HowtoForge has published a tutorial about installing SugarCRM on Ubuntu. "SugarCRM is a webbased CRM solution written in PHP. SugarCRM is available in different flavours called "Editions" ("Community" (free), "Professional", and "Enterprise"). For a detailed overview of the different editions, have a look at the SugarCRM website. In this tutorial I will describe the installation of the free Community Edition on Ubuntu 8.10. With the modules My Portal, Calendar, Activities, Contacts, Accounts, Leads, Opportunities, Cases, Bugtracker, Documents and Email, SugarCRM Community Edition offers everything that can be expected from a CRM solution."

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Tribler: BitTorrent and Beyond (Linux Journal)

Doc Searls looks at peer to peer acceptance and the Tribler client. ""Everything we're doing is based on open source", says Johan Pouwelse, PhD, scientific director of P2P-Next and Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Delft. The good doctor also runs P2P-Next's first trial application: Tribler (pronounced "tribe-ler"), a BitTorrent-based client with no servers and a "zero-cost" business model. Tribler provides an all-in-one way to find, consume and share media."

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Miscellaneous

Obama Inauguration shines on Linux too with Moonlight (ars technica)

ars technica reports on efforts to get Moonlight to be able to display video streams of the Obama inauguration. Moonlight currently supports Silverlight 1.0, but the streams required Silverlight 2.0. "Several developers on Novell's Mono team leaped into action and worked late into the night so that Linux users will be able to watch the stream with Moonlight, an open source implementation of Silverlight 1.0. Their efforts, which were undertaken in collaboration with Microsoft, have ensured that the PIC stream will be accessible to Linux users who download the Moonlight browser plugin from the project's web site, as well as to PPC Mac users who rely on Microsoft's Silverlight 1.0 plugin."

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