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Linux in the newsRecommended Reading Windows vs Linux - Which is easier to install?Dave Fancella experiments with an "average idiot user" as she installs Windows 2000 and Mandrakelinux 9.2 for the first time. "The average 'idiot' user is someone who will characteristically describe themselves as an 'idiot with computers'. They don't know what a kernel is, they frequently think that 3.5" floppy disks are 'hard disks', they don't know what the 'internet' is (although they know how to check and send email), and they don't know a whole lot of things. Windows has abstracted most things so that people don't *have* to know about computers to use them. This is bad, but is a subject for another article entirely."
Application Suggestions for Gnome 3.0 (OS News)OSNews presents a wishlist for GNOME 3.0. "Gnome needs an integrated (with Nautilus, Evolution and other apps) multi-protocol instant messaging application. It needs to be doing Jabber, AIM/iChat/ICQ, MSN, Y! and maybe IRC (X-Chat will always be available as a third party app to fill up any IRC voids). More over, the application will need to support video and audio conferencing for the above protocols." (Found on Footnotes)
Free Software's killer applications (NewsForge)NewsForge takes a quick look at a few free software "killer apps". "While GNU/Linux has gained popularity as an operating system, many criticize it for lacking "killer applications" capable of competing with their Windows and Mac OS X proprietary counterparts. Some killer applications, however, haven't received the recognition they deserve. Here's a short overview of some professional-quality Free Software applications that run under Linux."
Trade Shows and Conferences Linux User and Developer Expo 2004, Floor Report and Award (KDE.News)KDE.News covers the 2004 Linux User and Developer Expo in London. "The main highlight of the day, however, was the prize giving ceremony that evening. Only Richard Moore was able to attend, but he picked up the prize for category "Best Desktop Environment" - beating Sun Java Desktop and Ximian Gnome!"
The SCO Problem BayStar: SCO needs new management (ZDNet)ZDNet talked with BayStar about why it is trying to pull its money from SCO. It seems BayStar wants SCO to dump Darl McBride and concentrate full time on the lawsuit business. "BayStar asserts SCO's Unix products business doesn't hold long-term value for shareholders, [BayStar spokesman Bob] McGrath said. SCO reported $9.7 million in Unix products revenue and $1.6 million in Unix services revenue in its quarter ended Jan. 31. 'We think there are limited prospects of that business ever generating growing and significant revenue,' McGrath said. 'And we believe it is diverting resources from going where they would have the most value--the intellectual property process'."
Who Shot Darl McBride? (ZDNet)ZDNet UK comments on BayStar's moves. "It's almost certainly too late to fix SCO, but by killing its management and keeping the IP claims on life support, something may be retrieved -- even if it's only face, an invaluable commodity in the venture-capital community. That it would be forced to make this move in public, a sanction that is indistinguishable to SCO from the threat of a massive legal fine and the judicial removal of its officers, marks an exceptional moment in modern capitalism."
BayStar, Bert Young, and marchFIRST (Groklaw)Groklaw has done some research into the history of Bert Young, SCO's new chief financial officer. "Perhaps it will be news to you there were some significant financial issues at marchFIRST, which went bankrupt, and which have resulted in lawsuits with Mr. Young named as one of the defendants, charged with corporate waste and breach of fiduciary duty, among other things. The lawsuits are ongoing."
Double whammy for SCO (Salt Lake Tribune)The Salt Lake Tribune has a lengthy article for people who haven't been keeping up with SCO; judging from the picture, Darl McBride hasn't been sleeping well recently. "'I'm not sure I see the sense in what they are doing. They have yet to prove their claims, and yet have moved forward' with lawsuits and a largely ignored global campaign to sell Linux licenses, said Dan Kusnetzky of IDC. 'The assessment I have seems fairly bleak. And as they continue this particular avenue, the prospects are more and more bleak,' he said."
Companies Open Sourcerers get UK trade body (Register)The Register covers the launch of Zope UK, in London. "According to the founders of the Zope UK Association, the hope is that with one body to present the views of the open source community to government and other organisations, the technology will make further inroads into the business world."
Sun announces new free support for open source server companies (NewsForge)NewsForge reports on the latest Java news from Sun. "Representatives from open source server leaders JBoss, Apache Software Foundation, and Europe's ObjectWeb consortium were on hand Monday in San Francisco in a show of marketing support for the updated J2EE platform, mostly because Sun has loosened up its open-source-connected licensing terms in recent weeks."
Legal GPL gains clout in German legal case (News.com)News.com takes a look at the netfilter case in Germany. ""This would be the first reported decision I'm aware of that interprets the GPL," said Brian Kelly, an intellectual-property attorney with Manatt, Phelps & Phillips. "Case law interpreting the GPL is both inevitable and useful, because parties are going to end up fighting over ambiguities in the license.""
Interviews Interview with Miguel de Icaza (Netcraft)Netcraft News interviews Miguel de Icaza. "We cannot choose one desktop over the other - Gnome or KDE - because there's users for both code bases.... Gnome and KDE are basically the shells, but then there are higher-level applications like the office suite. We're making the decision it's going to be OpenOffice, the browser it's going to be Mozilla, the email client it's going to be Evolution, the IM client it's going to be Gaim. So we basically have to pick successful open source projects and put them together."
An Interview with Harald Welte (OrangeCrate)OrangeCrate.com has done an interview with Netfilter maintainer Harald Welte. "I'd much rather prefer spending my time developing software and not dealing with legal issues at all. But I am developing this software for the freedom of the users - and I am determined to make use of legal means against any party who wants to prevent users from exercising their freedoms."
The People Behind KDE : Alexander Kellett (KDE.News)KDE.News introduces this week's People Behind KDE interview with Alexander Kellett. "In what ways do you make a contribution to KDE?A number of improvements to bookmarking in Konqueror, KEditBookmarks, some DCOP related stuff, very minor stuff to KSVG, and as of late polishing the QtRuby and Korundum projects with some example code and test cases."
Interview with Barth Netterfield about kstTom Chance interviews astrophysicist Barth Netterfield, author of Kst, a data plotting application for KDE. "The Free Software community is constantly inundated with interesting new projects, but occasionally something crops up which is really special. Kst is just such a project. Started by Barth Netterfield, an astrophysicist, as a personal project to plot data from his experiments, it has now taken on a life of its own, being used in academic projects including BLAST, Boomerang and Planck. It is finding widespread use in Universities and in the European Space Agency, and its development is funded by the Canadian Space Agency."
Resources Linux Productivity Magazine April 2004The April issue of Linux Productivity Magazine is out. This month the magazine helps you take advantage of free software when upgrading to a new computer.
Installing and Configuring Nessus (O'ReillyNet)Here's an O'ReillyNet how-to on installing and configuring Nessus, an open source network vulnerability scanner. "Why Nessus? You just can't beat free. There are commercial vulnerability scanners available and they may be useful in their own right, but consider that Nessus is comparable to some commercial scanners that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. In addition Nessus is open source, and its source is published under the GPL."
Reviews Metrowerks tool supports entire embedded Linux dev cycle (LinuxDevices)Linux Devices covers a new version of Metrowerks' embedded Linux development suite meant to support the entire device development cycle. "Metrowerks claims its Platform Edition suites provide several unique capabilities not supported by other "end-to-end" Linux tools providers."
Open-Source Bug Tracking with Bugzilla (Linux Journal)Linux Journal takes a look at Bugzilla. "This article provides an overview of how introducing Bugzilla can help your team work together and communicate more efficiently. Bugzilla uses the term bug, so I will stay with this notation throughout the article, but don't forget, it's not only about bugs, You can use Bugzilla for any task you need to track."
OSDL doubling membership, seizing China chance (NewsForge)NewsForge looks at OSDL's membership drive. "With an eye on pumping up its desktop initiative and customer advisory councils in the U.S. and Europe, as well as riding a swell of Linux and open source adoption in Asia, the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL) is on track to double its membership by year's end, OSDL Chief Executive Officer Stuart Cohen told NewsForge last week."
Scribus 1.1.6 Reviewed (Mad Penguin)Mad Penguin reviews the latest version of Scribus. "Scribus is a desktop publishing program for Unix and Linux. It is built with the Qt libraries and is run natively in the KDE desktop environment. Scribus is published under the Gpl and is similar to similar to Adobe PageMaker, QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign. Scribus has an unusually small development team and is mostly the work of a German programmer called Franz Schmid. The Scribus team are positioning the program as an easy to use DTP publishing program for the Linux and Unix operating systems with support available for professional publishing features." (Found on KDE.News)
Miscellaneous The Rise of Interface Elegance in Open Source Software"Acts of Volition" has posted an article on user interfaces in free software. "While it may be that I'm attracted to projects that tend towards elegance in interface and design, I suspect that the examples I've cited here are not exceptions. Rather, I see them as part of a larger trend in open source software - one where simplicity and elegance in interface design is held in the same respect as elegance in code and engineering has been all along."
Opening Up E-Voting (O'ReillyNet)O'Reilly looks at open source e-voting. "The politics of e-voting may be controversial, but the technologies used for e-voting are not exceptionally complicated or difficult to understand. Now, two initiatives have opened e-voting systems to public examination and varying degrees of tranparency and verification. The Open Voting Consortium demonstrated an e-voting system called evm, built from commodity hardware running GPL'd software last April 1. A few days later, VoteHere opened the source to its proprietary VTHi e-voting software to public inspection."
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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