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Linux in the newsRecommended Reading EU votes through software patent changes (ZDNet)ZDNet UK reports that the European Council has approved the software patent directive. "The Directive will now be sent back to the European Parliament for another vote there in the autumn as the different bodies of the EU engage in a game of legislative ping-pong. While observers expect vociferous lobbying from open-source and developer groups, reversing the Council's vote will be difficult, according to James Heald of the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure..."
GNOME and Enterprise Desktop Usability (Serverwatch)Serverwatch looks at desktop usability. "We've spent a lot of time experimenting with GNOME 2.6 during the past few weeks, and we're inclined to say it's no worse than anything else we've dealt with in recent years. Early OS X releases constituted the hoodwinking of an entire user community that had no idea it was paying for the privilege of running two years of beta software. It took a veritable bucket brigade of third-party software developers to let us stand the sight of a pulsing blue button. We've been similarly troubled by Windows XP and its obvious anxiety over OS X, and we've looked at the latest from the KDE project, which provides a cluttered riot of over-configurability." (Found on GnomeDesktop)
Trade Shows and Conferences International PHP Conference in Amsterdam (NewsForge)NewsForge covers the recent International PHP Conference in Amsterdam. "One of the most exciting novelties I saw at the conference was PIMP, a new graphic extension for PHP 5 meant to replace GD as the main image manipulation tool for PHP. Its author, Pierre-Alain Joye, gave an interesting demonstration of its capabilities. Even though PIMP is still experimental and unstable, its performance and nice API are really impressive. PIMP will certainly be an improvement compared to GD, which is quite buggy and has caused a lot of headaches over the last few years."
The SCO Problem A Year of Groklaw: SCO On The Ropes? (Groklaw)Groklaw celebrates one year on the net. "What a difference a year makes. When we started, all the headlines were saying that SCO was going to destroy Linux or at least make it cry. Now, looking around today, I see almost everyone predicting SCO's imminent doom instead. I think the truth, as usual, isn't in the headlines, and that it's somewhere in between those two extremes."
Companies Mandrake 'charges' $13k for $132 membership (Register)The Register reports that a bug in payment software from Natexis has been overcharging Mandrakesoft customers. "The system is now up and running properly and Natexis is talking to the banks so anyone who overpaid should get a refund soon."
Microsoft offers a self-test diagnosis on system security (Taipei Times)Microsoft Taiwan Corp is claiming superior performance over several popular Linux distributions in the availability of security patches, according to this article in the Taipei Times. "Citing a report released in March by Forrester Research, Chan said Microsoft is the only company that fixed all the flaws found in its platform, unlike Red Hat Inc, Debian Systems, Mandrakesoft and Suse, who are the major developers of the open-source Linux operating system. Chan said the number of security alerts announced by Microsoft had decreased from 43 in 2002 to 38 last year, while Red Hat, Debian and others reported more alerts during the period."
MS drags Linspire back to court (Register)The Register reports that Microsoft is taking Linspire to court again, despite the name change from Lindows. "The software giant is taking action in the Dutch courts, where it won its previous case, claiming that the word Lindows is still appearing on Linspire's website. A decision is expected by the end of this month. Michael Robertson, chief executive of Linspire, said: "Microsoft is continuing the bullying tactics which have obliterated competition over the last 20 years...Its recent actions demonstrate that it has not reformed, but continues to be one of the world's worst corporate citizens that will do anything to squash competitors that threaten its monopoly profits."
Novell's Linux Desktop Zeroes In on Integration (eWeek)eWeek covers Novell's enterprise desktop plans. ""So, we are essentially taking the best of all three companies: strength from SuSE in terms of multiplatform support and enterprise-hardened Linux distributions; our expertise and usability and innovation and interoperability on the desktop from Ximian; and Novell's strength as a billion-dollar-revenue company with an enormous channel and very powerful reach and great product quality and support," Nat Friedman, Novell's vice president of Linux desktop engineering, told eWEEK in an interview."
Red Hat updating both Linux versions (News.com)News.com reports the recent release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 2 and the expected release of Fedora Core 2. "In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 2, released Wednesday, the Linux seller added support for Intel's 64-bit "x86" processors and IBM's Power processor-based JS20 blade servers. In addition, the update adds 64-bit versions of developer tools for Intel's Itanium and Xeon chips and Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron." Fedora Core 2 is scheduled to be available on May 18.
Business Making money for FreeDave Fancella looks at issues behind making money with free software. "Once, a long time ago, we had one of the Rock Stars--er, businessmen himself appear on the list. He basically said "How am I supposed to make money off this software when people can just download it for free?". Well, you're not. Sorry. You asked the wrong question. The right question for him is "How can I add value to this software so that people will buy it from me rather than download it for free?"."
Linux Adoption Asian Governments Start to Speak the Same Language on Linux Implementations (LinuxInsider)LinuxInsider.com reports that several Asian countries are sharing research about conversion to Linux. "According to Japanese officials, the purpose of talks between Japan, South Korea and China is to share research findings, reduce the amount of money spent on Windows licensing and maintenance fees, and promote the use of Linux in the private sector. The main goal is to come up with a Linux standard that will support Asian languages -- which have many more characters than Western alphabets. In the Chinese language, for example, there are literally thousands of characters."
Linux at Work The Gelato Federation (Bioinformatics.org)Bioinformatics.org reports on an organization called the Gelato Federation. "The Gelato Federation, also known as Gelato, is working to develop scalable, commodity software to enable researchers to advance their studies in developing and technology-intensive areas, such as life sciences and physical sciences. Gelato invites participation from all interested organizations. Co-founded by HP and seven of the world's leading research institutions, Gelato is launching an open source community initiative designed to foster the development and dissemination of focused computing solutions for researchers and associated IT staffs working on the Itanium Linux platform."
Legal Congress mulls revisions to DMCA (News.com)Declan McCullagh reports on the House subcommittee meeting which considered the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act (a DMCA reform bill). "It's unclear what the prospects are for the Boucher-Doolittle bill. It has a mere 15 co-sponsors in the House and no Senate version exists. What's more, the consumer protection subcommittee that convened Wednesday's hearing does not have jurisdiction over copyright law, making it unlikely the bill will be forwarded to the House floor this year."
Una direttiva europea minaccia l'open source (Repubblica)La Repubblica reports (in Italian) that some members of the Italian government are opposed to the introduction of software patents in Europe. "'An excessive reliance on software patents risks putting small and medium enterprises in this sector at a disadvantage, limiting the development of the market.' With these words, the Minister for Innovation and Technology, Lucio Stanca, expressed himself today against the proposed software patent directive..." (Editor's translation. The headline reads "A European directive threatens open source.") Sig. Stanca will not be representing Italy when the directive is discussed, however, so it is unclear what the country's position will ultimately be.
Interviews Interview: Andrea ArcangeliKernelTrap interviews VM hacker Andrea Arcangeli. "The VM at large is a big heuristic, and there's no perfect formula you can use to tell which page it's time to swapout to disk when, nor you can exactly predict how well the swapping will behave at runtime until you test or simulate it; that is the really hard part of the VM.'
Interview with International Hout (KDE::Enterprise)Fabrice Mous talks with Walter Stolk at International Hout about the company's KDE use on KDE::Enterprise. "The big advantage we have from using using KDE is the manageability of the workstations. Because there is not much need for maintenance I can take care of this aside of my daily work without the need for external expertise. This saves us a lot of money." (Found on KDE.News)
The People Behind KDE: Gunnar Schmi DtThe People Behind KDE will be going on a summer vacation after this interview with Gunnar Schmi Dt. "Which section of KDE is underrated and could get more publicity?The accessibility project could live with many more people. Some jobs that can increase the accessibility of KDE without requiring much knowledge about programming are to test all applications in order to find accessibility issues and to read bug reports and decide whether they are accessibility related or not. " (Found on KDE.Net)
Putting Linux on the desktop (vnunet)vnunet talks with Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik about desktop Linux. "One of those Wall Street banks now has one administrator for 800 machines. One did it then everybody else came rushing to him to say: 'how did you do that?' Now nine out of the 10 leading Wall Street banks are Red Hat customers."
Resources File alteration monitoring techniques under Linux (DevChannel)The OSDN DevChannel looks at monitoring filesystems with tools like dnotify and FAM. "Most modern operating systems provide file monitoring facilities to give applications real-time information about changes to the filesystem. A variety of notification methods are used to tell the application when a change happens, ranging from an asynchronous signal being sent from the kernel through a user space tool printing the name of the changed file on its standard output. We'll take a look at some of the file monitoring facilities available to the Linux developer, starting with the lowest-level mechanism and working up to the highest."
Reviews BloGTK - a Linux blog tool for Moveable Type (Planet Geek)Planet Geek has a review of BloGTK, the Python-based blog tool. "The interface is clean and easy to work with, nothing was difficult to find or unintuitive. I'm able to save postings for later re-editing, (though the 'draft posts' are not available from my MT installation, so if I've been working on something online, I can't switch to using BloGTK to continue editing, or vice versa)."
Desktop Publishing with OpenOffice.org (Linux Journal)Linux Journal examines desktop publishing using OpenOffice.org. "Desktop publishing (DP for short) differs from word processing. In word processing, you type pages of characters and numbers to create documents for others to read. They might include graphics, such as tables and charts, to illustrate points made in the text, but the goal is to create a written document to convey information. In DP, you use graphics, along with text, to create a document with more visual appeal. Look at any printed advertising--the graphics in the document often are more important than the written word."
Application of the Month: KMPlayer (KDE.News)KDE.News reviews KMPlayer in its Application of the Month series. "KMPlayer is a multimedia player for the KDE Desktop capable of playing audio and video. The difference between KMPlayer and other multimedia players like Kaffeine is that KMPlayer acts as a frontend to multiple multimedia libraries. KMPlayer supports not only Mplayer but also Xine and Ffmpeg. This means that KMPlayer will play everything MPlayer and Xine will play. With KMPlayer you can also record streams with mencoder and watch TV if your card is supported by Video4Linux."
Linux boot camp: A sharp wake-up call to all attendees (linux.com)Linux.com reviews Linux training from The Training Camp. "The most important thing to realize when attending The Training Camp's LPIC certification course is that it really is a boot camp. You need to be prepared to eat and sleep Linux for seven days. Although there are no prerequisites, students should familiarize themselves with Linux before attending. Browse the Web, read up on Linux, install it, acquire a frame of reference. Being able to learn and retain this much information in this short of a timeframe is a skill. It's important to put yourself in that mindset when attending."
Cultured Perl: Three Essential Perl Books (developerWorks)IBM developerWorks reviews three perl books: Perl 6 Essentials, Perl Cookbook, 2nd Edition, and Perl Template Toolkit. " After finishing the second edition of the Perl Cookbook, I felt ready for the challenges of programming Perl in today's environment. Where the first edition seems inadequate today because of technologies that have emerged since its printing, the second edition again provides a stable foundation for any Perl programmer, beginner to advanced. I recommend the Perl Cookbook strongly, even for those who already have the first edition."
The Official Samba-3 HOWTO and Reference Guide (Linux Journal)The Linux Journal reviews The Official Samba-3 HOWTO and Reference Guide. "Due to the complexity of modern Samba installations, it isn't sufficient for a book to cover only the Samba software itself. A number of external software packages are needed to integrate a Samba server into a large network. Fortunately, the book does not let us down. The use of OpenLDAP, PAM, ISC BIND and DHCP in conjunction with Samba are all touched on in varying degrees."
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