Linux in the news
Recommended Reading
Stein: 'In 5-10 years, most of the software you use will be free' (ZDNet)
ZDNet covers the EclipseCon keynote by Greg Stein, chairman of the Apache Software Foundation. "Over time you're not going to see people paying for software anymore. All your software will be free. Customization, install, config, and maintenance will require expenditures. I predict that in 5-10 years most of the software you use will be free. So how do you win? The main thing is to track the licen[s]ing pressure trend. Everything is going down the stack. There are only a few types of software that can stay up at the top. Serviced based stuff. Software heavy in content, like modern games. Tax software, different in every state (needs a lot of paid people to research it, etc.). But most is going to go down."
Sandals and ponytail set cramp Linux (ZDNet)
According to this ZDNet Australia article, former Massachusetts CIO Peter Quinn knows what's holding back desktop Linux adoption. "He pointed to the 'sandal and ponytail set' as detracting from the business-ready appearance of open-source technology and blamed the developers for the inertia for business Linux adoption. 'Open source has an unprofessional appearance, and the community needs to be more business savvy in order to start to make inroads in areas traditionally dominated by commercial software vendors.'"
The powerful appeal of something for nothing (Financial Times)
Here's a Financial Times article giving a general overview of open source adoption in the developing world. "In the developing world, graduates with programming skills may have an extended family network depending on them as the breadwinner - so spending time debugging open source code for no payment will be especially hard to justify. 'The ability to become an active contributor to free software is at the moment limited to fairly wealthy countries and communities,' says Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth." (Thanks to Philip Webb).
Trade Shows and Conferences
Conference Report: FOSS Means Business, Belfast (Linux Journal)
Linux Journal has a conference report from the FOSS Means Business Conference in Belfast. "Framed by two large stained glass windows, an impressive church pipe organ and an altar, Bruce Perens began his keynote by spreading his hands wide and uttering the words, "Dearly beloved". After the laughter died down, Perens joked further by comparing programmers to clergy, with references to "oaths of poverty", "chastity" and "celibacy" thrown in for good measure. Overall, Perens delivered an entertaining keynote, recounting tales from his days at Pixar and his first experience with collaborative software development across the Internet, apparently unbeknown to his Pixar bosses."
FreedomHEC to help Windows developers learn Linux (NewsForge)
NewsForge looks at the FreedomHEC unconference. "FreedomHEC is scheduled for May 26 and 27, and will follow Microsoft's WinHEC, which takes place in Seattle May 23 through 25. The idea behind FreedomHEC is to provide a "shadow" conference to WinHEC to teach Windows hardware developers how easy it is to make hardware compatible with Linux and other free operating systems."
Idlelo2 FOSS conference in Kenya (IT Manager's Journal)
IT Manager's Journal covers the Idlelo2 Conference in Nairobi, Kenya. "Last month Nairobi, Kenya, hosted the Idlelo2 Conference, a major African free and open source software (FOSS) symposium sponsored by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), InWEnt Capacity Building International, Germany, and the eGovernment Directorate of Kenya. We spoke with one of the organizers of this year's conference, Milton Aineruhanga, program officer for Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET)."
Plone Symposium Wrap-up
Alan Runyan covers the recent Plone Symposium. "The Plone Symposium March 8-10 was a very special event. It was one of the first events to be held in New Orleans post Katrina. Quite a few people were hesitant to come to the Symposium event since New Orleans was shown in such bad condition on the national news. We still managed to pull in about 100 attendee's for a full three days of tutorials, talks, birds of feather and lightning talks. Oh and of course socializing. Lots of socializing *grin*"
Companies
Microsoft's anti-ODF battle continues (Linux-Watch)
Linux-Watch reports that Microsoft has joined the the Open Document Format standards body, and may have done so in order to slow down the group's progress. "Microsoft claims that Apple, Intel, and numerous Microsoft partners and resellers, such as InterKnowlogy LLC and The Computer Solution Company, have joined the Open XML group. Perhaps a more significant move than this public relations announcement, is that Microsoft's Jim Thatcher has just joined the U.S. national body responsible for the JTC1 SC34 "V1 Text Processing: Office and Publishing Systems Interface," which, in turn, is the group responsible for sheparding the ODF (OpenDocument Format) through the ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) certification process."
Novell Strikes Three Open Source Deals (News.com)
News.com reports on Novell's newest customers. "Novell drove home its open source gospel Tuesday, trotting out three major converts to its Linux software suites: the Finnish military, a New England bank and a New York hospital chain. The announcements came on the second day of BrainShare Global 2006, the week-long conference that has drawn more than 6,000 Novell users, developers and sellers to the downtown Salt Lake Convention Center."
SUSE Linux CTO To Exit Novell (CRN)
CRN reports that Juergen Geck, former CTO of SUSE Linux, is leaving Novell. "Last November, SUSE founder Hubert Mantel resigned from Novell following a corporate restructuring that claimed 600 jobs, a number of them at SUSE headquarters in Nuremberg, Germany. Earlier, in May, Novell lost former SUSE CEO Richard Seibt, who served as president of Novell's subsidiary for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) after the acquisition. And in July, SUSE channel chief Petra Heinrich announced her resignation. Heinrich, who headed Novell's European, Middle East and Asia channel operations, joined Open-Xchange as its top sales executive."
Interviews
Maddog says desktop the final frontier for Linux (IT Wire)
IT Wire talks with Jon "maddog" Hall about Linux on the desktop. "In the desktop space, Maddog dismisses suggestions that Linux still faces challenges with usability in areas such as the installation of new applications. "I don't think that it's Linux itself that has to do work in that area. I think it's the people who create the applications that you want to install," he says."
Marco Gulino (People Behind KDE)
The People Behind KDE have interviewed Marco Gulino. "In what ways do you make a contribution to KDE? First of all with my own project, KMobileTools. I also created the Konqueror Sidebar for Amarok. And I do bug reporting/fixing, when I can. (I mean of other's apps of course. It would be weird if I wouldn't solve my own bugs.)" (Found on KDE.News)
CEO Jack Messman talks about Novell's present and future (Linux-Watch)
Linux-Watch interviews Jack Messman. "Messman also sees Microsoft's stumbling introduction of Vista as opening the door for Novell's forthcoming SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) 10. "People tell us that the more they learn about Vista, the more they see that switching to it isn't a migration; it's a conversion.""
Interview: Theo de Raadt of OpenBSD (NewsForge)
NewsForge interviews Theo de Raadt of OpenBSD. "NF: You regularly organize events called hackathons. What exactly is a hackathon? TdR: This is something we started many years ago. A bunch of us would fly to one location (typically before or after a conference) and we would sit down and code. These events really are about getting tasks done; there is very little chatter, as we already know basically what needs to be done. They are not meetings, no one presents talks, nor are they so-called summits. They are for taking action in the source tree, knowing that the guy you need to ask a question of really quickly is sitting at a table a meter away."
Resources
Multiple live CDs in one DVD (Linux.com)
Linux.com shows how to bundle multiple live CDs on one DVD. "Nautopia.net has put up a script that you can use to make a custom DVD to boot multiple live CDs. The Nautopia script currently supports Knoppix, Kanotix, Kurumin, Livux, MEPIS, ProMEPIS, Slax, Aurox, BerryLinux, Basilisk, Adios, PCLinuxOS, MandrakeMove, Gnoppix, RiP, SystemRescueCD, Ultimate Boot CD, and INSERT distributions. Grab a couple of live CDs of any of the above listed distributions".
Taking Free Software to the Farmers and Fields of India (Linux Journal)
Linux Journal covers the aAqua.org (Almost All Questions Answered) web site. "Thanks to work done by the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT-Bombay) and its partners, IT-savvy and knowledge-hungry people across rural India now can find relevant, demand-driven farming knowledge on the aAqua.org Web site. So far, the site has been a great way to bring together people such as Prasad Kaledhonkar, who has a clue about what the white patterns emerging on tomato plant leaves are; farmer's daughter Niyatee Nilesh, who wants advice on buying agricultural land; and Shirish, from rural Maharashtra, who wants to learn about using waste water from the school kitchen to irrigate gardens and crops."
Open-Source Framework Means Happy Trails for Java Developers (eWeek)
eWeek covers the Trails framework, a new open source framework aimed at making Java easier for developers. "Some might call Nelson a flatterer, as imitation is considered the finest form of flattery and Trails gets some of its notions from the popular, though non-Java, Ruby on Rails framework. But Nelson said Trails was simply "inspired" by Ruby on Rails but is not a Java-based clone of it. "Developing J2EE [Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition] is just too hard," Nelson said in a talk at TheServerSide Java Symposium here on March 23. "Things like Hibernate, Spring, etc., make it easier, but it's still too hard. Ruby on Rails raises the bar," he said."
Mastering podcasts with Audacity (NewsForge)
NewsForge has some tips for podcasters using Audacity. "Open source software makes podcasting easy -- too easy. Listening to a playlist of first-timer podcasts can leave your ears ringing from sudden changes in playback volume. The problem is audio mastering. Recording sound is simple, but mastering that sound -- compressing volume differences, maintaining a decibel ceiling, and similar operations -- is anything but. Fortunately, an open source tool offers everything you need for mastering podcasts and other spoken-word recordings. Audacity is well-known among podcasters on all platforms for its ability as an editor; here are some tips and tools for mastering and adjusting volume, aimed at podcasters, but they could apply to anyone who needs to produce a spoken-word recording under less-than-perfect conditions."
My sysadmin toolbox (Linux.com)
Linux.com looks at a few desktop enhancement tools. "Torsmo differs from other system monitors, such as GKrellM, in that it does not spawn a new window, but instead renders text directly to your desktop. It can display almost anything about your system, including uptime, current CPU usage, network activity, hard drive usage, memory usage, and swap usage. The program's developers wrote it to use as little of your system's resources as possible, and it does a good job of this."
Snort on OpenWrt: Guarding the SOHO perimeter (Linux.com)
Joe Barr looks at getting extra security by running Snort on an OpenWrt router. "Nicholas Thill -- known as Nico in the OpenWrt community -- maintains three separate packages for Snort in his repository of packages. They include a plain Jane version, without any support for logging to a database, and two database-specific packages: one for MySQL and one for PostgreSQL. All are based on the Snort release 2.3.3-1 and are considered to be in a testing state and not yet included in the official release."
Reviews
Marcel's Linux App of the Month: KDissert (Unix Review)
Marcel Gagné looks at KDissert on Unix Review. "Thomas Nagy's kdissert is an application referred to as a mind mapping tool. Its purpose is to help you create complex documents such as a thesis, or a dissertation, or a presentation. And yes, perhaps even an article or a book. You do that by creating a map of your ideas, a mind map, that allows you to structure the ideas you already have into the basis for producing a high-quality, well-ordered document." (Found on KDE.News)
Linux Multimedia Hacks: A Book Review (Linux Journal)
Linux Journal reviews the book Linux Multimedia Hacks. "If you're interested in multimedia and the penguin, you certainly must be puzzled by the plethora of software available for Linux. Which one fits your needs? Linux Multimedia Hacks (LMH) explores several software options, the ones the author feels are worth spending time with. In terms of the hacks I tested for the purpose of this review, as well as my personal tastes, I have to say that I'm pleased by the choices the author made. With the help of this book, I've been able to solve all of the issues I encountered while trying to edit video on my Linux box."
New Scriptable Linux Screen Reader for Gnome on Freshmeat (Groklaw)
Groklaw takes a look at Linux Screen Reader 0.1.0. From the LSR homepage: "The Linux Screen Reader (LSR) is an application that transforms the contents of the computer screen to other media, enabling non-visual access to the graphical Gnome desktop environment."
Few Linux, FOSS alternatives at tax time (NewsForge)
NewsForge looks at Open Tax Solver (OTS), a tax application that was written by Aston Roberts. "Roberts says almost all tax software -- including popular programs such as TurboTax and TaxCut -- will calculate taxes, but describes OTS as an alternative method. "It operates quite differently from the commercial packages, which tend to be question-oriented, or interview-oriented," he says. "For some people, the interview method may be better, but others have found the direct input approach of OTS to be quicker, especially to those who have done taxes before and basically know where to put their numbers, but want to automate the math.""
Finding Linux Applications (Amauta)
Amauta takes a quick look at the Linux App Finder. "Since many Linux applications are free and have no marketing to inform the public of their existence, it is often difficult to find the right program when it is needed. The goal of Linux App Finder is to make finding the right software an easy task by grouping programs into categories and allowing for a task based search."
Get Thoggen, and leave your DVDs at home (Linux.com)
Linux.com has a review of thoggen, a DVD ripping tool. "That said, I still recommend Thoggen. For one thing, I can't heap enough praise on the interface. Simplicity is the watchword, and Thoggen gets it just right, presenting the user with the appropriate choices and working out the necessary details itself. Transcoding video is complicated, but Thoggen manages to make it simple. A lot of other apps could learn a lot from its design decisions."
Miscellaneous
Mozilla plans to fund developer community (ZDNet)
ZDNet reports that the Mozilla Foundation will be using some of its money to fund outside developers. "The foundation made $5.8 million in 2004 and is thought to have made tens of millions of dollars last year, predominantly from partnerships with search companies, such as Google and Yahoo. Though much of its money has gone toward increasing its head count, some has been used to bulk up its reserve fund. Mitchell Baker, the chief executive of the Mozilla Corporation, the commercial subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, said Mozilla plans to put some of its excess revenues back into the community."
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