Linux in the news

Recommended Reading

How the Linux kernel works (TuxRadar)

TuxRadar takes a simplified look at the Linux kernel. Targeted at users and application programmers, rather than system-level programmers, the article gives an overview of what the kernel does, with a bit about how it does it. "All the other pieces you find in a Linux distribution - the Bash shell, the KDE window manager, web browsers, the X server, Tux Racer and everything else - are just applications that happen to run on Linux and are emphatically not part of the operating system itself. To give some sense of scale, a fresh installation of RHEL5 occupies about 2.5GB of disk space (depending, obviously, on what you choose to include). Of this, the kernel, including all of its modules, occupies 47MB, or about 2%."

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The Free Beer Economy (Linux Journal)

Doc Searls ponders the word free on Linux Journal. "Why is FREE! the world's best-selling noun, verb, adjective and adverb, yet so hard to credit as a foundation for business in the Internet Age? And what will happen when business folk finally grok the abundant opportunities that FREE! provides?"

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Companies

Kodak releases ScanTWAIN document scanner for Linux

Kodak has announced the release of their Linux-compatible ScanTWAIN document scanner software. "Emphasizing support for open source and building on its previous participation in the OpenUSB Project, Kodak today announced at FOSE 2009 in Washington, D.C., the availability of a robust, open source and production quality scanning application for use on the LINUX Operating System called ScanTWAIN. ScanTWAIN functionality will support duplex scanning at rated speed on automatic document feeder (ADF) based scanners, like those available from Kodak. The ScanTWAIN scanning application is available via the SourceForge website and is issued under GPL, Gnu Public License, version 2."

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Discouraging Software Patent Lawsuits (Red Hat Magazine)

Red Hat VP and Assistant General Counsel Rob Tiller covers Red Hat's stance on its patent applications related to the AMQP specification. "Recently we've seen some surprising comments about Red Hat's stand on software patents and, in particular, about one of its patent applications related to the AMQP specification. It looks like clarification is called for. Our views and our position, as expressed in our work for patent reform, our Patent Promise, and our work with the AMQP project, have not changed."

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Linux Adoption

Gendarmerie saves millions with open desktop and web applications (OSOR)

The EU Open Source Observatory reports from a talk by Xavier Guimard of the French Gendarmerie which, he says, has saved millions of Euro by moving to Linux-based desktops. "According to Guimard the move to open source has also helped to reduce maintenance costs. Keeping GNU/Linux desktops up to date is much easier, he says. 'Previously, one of us would be travelling all year just to install a new version of some anti virus application on the desktops in the Gendarmerie's outposts on the islands in French Polynesia. A similar operation now is finished within two weeks and does not require travelling.'"

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Legal

Patents Being Abused To Put Your Life In Danger (TechDirt)

TechDirt takes a look at how the lawyers for Priority Dispatch Corporation are abusing the patent system. "Bob Austin, who for many years has worked in major metropolitan fire and EMS departments, had the idea of creating an open source medical dispatch system. Such [an open source] system would have numerous benefits. Beyond being a free system, it also would allow best practices to easily bubble up in a way that actively would help save lives. If another EMS department could improve on the system, they easily could do so and contribute it back to the community." The Priority Dispatch lawyers claimed possible patent infringement for ten patents. See Wikileaks for more information. (Found on LinuxMedNewsArticle)

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Interviews

Fellowship interview with Georg Greve (FSFE Fellowship)

Here's a Free Software Foundation Europe Fellowship interview with Georg Greve. "Georg Greve is the founder of the Free Software Foundation Europe and has served as its president since the beginning in 2001. Marking the eight birthday of the FSFE I asked him some questions on his own background and the history of the FSFE for a special birthday edition of the Fellowship interview series."

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Resources

Linux tip: Finding rootfs during boot (IBM developerWorks)

IBM developerWorks shows how to work with Linux boot problems. "As a Linux® administrator, you may encounter rootfs errors like cannot mount rootfs and kernel panic when you try to reboot a server after attaching volumes from external storage or even after installing a new Linux operating system.. This article outlines the Linux booting process on an x86 platform, shows why this problem happens, and offers four tips to avoid it or fix it."

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Linux services without mains power (Tectonic)

Stevan Lockhart explains how he set up an off-grid Linux-powered home and business in Scotland. "Originally from Cape Town, Stevan Lockhart now lives in the north west of Scotland in a house that is off the electricity grid. Using a wind generator, some solar panels and free and open source software he and his wife both run their businesses off just 20W of power. Here Stevan explains the software and hardware decisions that made this lifestyle possible."

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The seven best Linux Foundation contest videos (Computerworld)

As the Linux Foundation's "We're Linux" video contest has entered the judging phase, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols lists his seven favorite entries. "I'm not a judge on the committee that will decide the winner, but I do know a little bit about both Linux and marketing. So, here are my seven favorite picks in the contest. I tried, I really did, to cut the list to five, but I couldn't do it. It was hard enough to get to seven."

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Reviews

KDE4 Version of Digikam Photo Management (KDE.News)

KDE.News takes a look at the newest release of Digikam. "Photographers in the Free world rejoice! On behalf of the Digikam developer team, Gilles Caullier has announced the first KDE 4 release of Digikam, the photo management application. Digikam is a full-fledged tool that covers the whole digital photography workflow, from downloading the pictures off of your camera (and in the new version even capturing photos from inside digikam) to sorting, editing, rating and tagging (including geolocation and editing of raw photos in the new version) and of course also publishing your photos. Digikam now also allows for importing images from Social Media such as Facebook and SmugMug."

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The Squirrel portable shell and scripting language (developerWorks)

Here's an overview of the Squirrel shell on developerWorks. "If you don't want to commit to the idiosyncrasies of the Fish shell, the Bash shell, the Z shell, the Windows operating system's cmd.exe, or some other shell scripting language, try the Squirrel Shell. The Squirrel Shell provides an advanced, object-oriented scripting language that works equally well in UNIX, Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows systems. You can write a script once and run it anywhere."

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Miscellaneous

How to Lie with Maps: When Open Source and National Security Collide (Linux Journal)

Linux Journal covers an effort to blur Google maps to preserve (US) national security. "Could a skilled bad guy glean a lot of information from Google Earth or similar system? Sure. Just like you or I can plot out a route to maximize our walking time or minimize our commute. I would argue that I could get better information from a 7.5 minute quadrangle because it would also include the ability to generate points that I could enter into my GPS for turn-by-turn directions. But until we actually go through the motions, it is just static data. And I would suggest that the attackers in Mumbai, once they planned their route on paper, walked, rode and photographed any number of things that were not available publicly."

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