Linux in the news

Rethinking Community Documentation (O'ReillyNet)

Andy Oram has written a lengthy analysis of the state of community documentation in an O'Reilly article. "Good documentation makes good software great. Poor documentation makes great software less useful. What is good documentation, though, and how can communities produce it effectively? Andy Oram explores how free and open source software projects can share their knowledge with users and how publishers and editors fit into the future of documentation."

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From 0 to 1 in 100 years (Linux Journal)

Doc Searls talks about network neutrality in his Linux Journal blog. "Net Neutrality is a snowball. That is, it's an idea that started small but grew steadily as it rolled forward, gaining mass and speed as it accreted the passions and opinions of many -- on all sides of the issue. Today the topic is so large and complex that it's hard to find where it began. It has also become so highly politicized that it may sink the telecom reform legislation that carriers have been working on since the last round of reform, in 1996."

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Alan Kay's EuroPython Keynote - Children First

Python creator by Guido van Rossum reports on the EuroPython keynote by Alan Kay. "Two days ago, Alan Kay gave a very inspiring keynote here at EuroPython. I can't possibly do it justice but I want to describe it anyway. Alan was still recovering from a recent bout of pneumonia, so instead of delivering the presentation in person, he talked to us from his living room in California over a video link provided by CERN. It was one of the best video presentations I've ever seen -- delivered in person it would have been even more stunning."

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Four Core continues series of KDE 4 meetings (NewsForge)

NewsForge covers the Four Core meeting in Trysil, Norway. "Last week, members of the KDE project attended the Four Core meeting, one of several events designed to accelerate the development of KDE's next major release. Attendees worked on readying the fundamental kdelibs and kdebase packages for version 4 so that work on overlying applications may continue."

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PostgreSQL Anniversary Summit a success (NewsForge)

NewsForge has a report from the PostgreSQL Anniversary Summit. "This weekend marked the 10th anniversary of PostgreSQL's posting as a public, open source project. To celebrate, the PostgreSQL project held a two-day conference at Ryerson University in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada."

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PostgreSQL 10th Anniversary Summit (Planet PostgreSQL)

Planet PostgreSQL has coverage of the PostgreSQL 10th Anniversary Summit. On the code sprint: "Day One of the code sprint has finished, and seems to have been a great succeess, althought it did not turn out the way some people were expecting. Instead of a room full of people doing heads-down coding, there were many small groups of people discussing ideas in depth that had only been hinted at in the previous two days."

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Toronto high school expels Linux lab (ITBusiness.ca)

ITBusiness.ca covers the story of the removal of a Linux lab at a Toronto, Canada high school. "Ed Montgomery, a computer science teacher at Monarch Park Collegiate, said in an e-mail to ITBusiness.ca that he was given a note in May, telling him that the Linux lab would be dismantled and replaced with a Microsoft-based Classroom Migration Technology Initiative (CTMI) lab. On June 21, according to Montgomery, Terry Wister, the head of school wide services for Monarch Park, removed all of the Linux computers from the lab room under the direction of the school’s principal, Rob MacKinnon, while Montgomery was out at lunch. When Montgomery came back from lunch, he said all of the machines in the lab were running Windows."

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Open source IP case puts spotlight on patents (SearchOpenSource)

SearchOpenSource has an interview with lawyer Tom Carey about the FireStar lawsuit. "An interesting twist is that because under terms of the JBoss merger agreement, Red Hat is holding $43 million of the purchase price in escrow, which is supposed to protect Red Hat from breach of warranties and other such protections. So, Red Hat in a sense has $43 million in house money to play with -- to potentially pay to FireStar or pay to the shareholders of JBoss. At some level, Red Hat probably doesn't care very much who [the money] goes to. FireStar may be very skillful, or very lucky, but it has found a defendant that has free money available to make the problem go away." Red Hat also has a strong interest in not encouraging patent trolls, however.

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Barcelona GPLv3 Roundtable: Heinz, Weiden, and Oliva, interviewed by Sean Daly (Groklaw)

Groklaw has an interview with Federico Heinz, Fernanda Weiden and Alexandre Oliva from the Barcelona GPLv3 conference. "Federico Heinz is President of Free Software Foundation Latin America and co-Founder of La Fundación Vía Libre, which has as its subtitle, "Compartiendo la riqueza intelectual" which has a lovely overtone in Spanish. In English, it sounds less evocative, but it's still meaningful: sharing intellectual wealth. I think of it as having an overtone of sharing the riches of the mind."

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Sebastian Sauer Talks About Scripting with Kross (KDE.News)

KDE.News has an interview with Sebastian Sauer, author of Kross. "KOffice 1.5 saw the addition of Kross, a framework to allow for scripting plugins in a number of languages. Krita and Kexi come with a number of plugins with more available for download at KDE-Files.org. To find out more about this intriguing technology and how it came about KDE Dot News interviewed the author Sebastian Sauer. Read on to discover how you can use Kross."

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KDE and Distributions: Red Flag Interview (KDE.News)

KDE.News has an interview with Huang JianZhong, a Senior Manager in the Desktop Product R&D Department of Red Flag Linux. "Red Flag Desktop Linux is the leading distribution in China and surrounding regions. Its goal is to provide the most professional desktop product available. It has more than an 80% desktop share in the Chinese linux market, and over one million copies are shipped each year with KDE as its only desktop environment. Huang JianZhong, a Senior Manager in the Desktop Product R&D Department of Red Flag, speaks below about the history of Red Flag Linux and their relationship with KDE. In 2006, Red Flag Linux has been visible by joining the Open Source Development Labs and their ongoing work with Asianux."

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Intrusion Detection With BASE And Snort (HowtoForge)

HowtoForge sets up BASE and Snort on Debian Sarge. "This tutorial shows how to install and configure BASE (Basic Analysis and Security Engine) and the Snort intrusion detection system (IDS) on a Debian Sarge system. BASE provides a web front-end to query and analyze the alerts coming from a Snort IDS system. With BASE you can perform analysis of intrusions that Snort has detected on your network."

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aDesklets: Eye candy for the Linux desktop (Linux.com)

Linux.com dresses up a desktop with aDesklets. "Have you ever seen the Mac OS X desktop and wished all that eye candy were available for Linux? Now you can jazz up your Linux desktop with desklets -- nifty little windows that float on your desktop and display information such as weather updates, system monitors, and calenders. Once you have aDesklets installed, you can download and install an assortment of desklets."

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Hardware diagnostics with open source tools (NewsForge)

NewsForge takes a look at some of the diagnostic tools found on the GRML live CD. "A GNU/Linux live CD distribution can come handy for hardware diagnostics. For this purpose, my favorite live CD distribution is GRML, which bundles the tools we're about to discuss, along with some other useful programs for both home users and veteran system administrators. Other distributions also include some or all of these tools."

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A scanner for wireless interlopers (Linux.com)

Joe Barr tries out RogueScanner on a Ubuntu machine. "Wireless security firm Network Chemistry recently released a cross-platform, free software security tool called RogueScanner in conjunction with its wireless network protection package RFprotect. RogueScanner, licensed under the GPL and the latest of three free software security modules available from Network Chemistry, allows you to monitor your network for rogue wireless devices. Release 1.0 comes in both Windows and Linux versions."

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Device Profile: Trinity Audio Group portable digital audio workstation (LinuxDevices)

LinuxDevices takes a look at the Trinity Audio Group's new Linux-based Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). "The Trinity DAW will let users record stereo 16- or 24-bit audio tracks at sample rates up to 96kHz (192kHz support is planned). It will also let users add effects to recorded or imported audio samples, and mix down multi-track audio through a graphical interface. Additionally, the Trinity DAW will offer a wireless network interface, and run a normal web browser and other software enabling users to interact with two fledgling online music communities that TAG is starting." The device won't be available until October.

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Desktop Linux Integration Nears With Portland Project Beta Release (SYS-CON India)

SYS-CON India covers the first beta release of the Portland Project. "The “Portland Project,” the collaborative venture that simplifies the process of porting and integrating applications for Linux desktops, announced the Beta release of its programming interfaces for GNOME and KDE environments. Several of the global Linux distributors have indicated a commitment to support their application vendors with early versions of the Portland Project tools."

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Collaborative text editing with Gobby (Linux.com)

Linux.com looks at Gobby for cross-platform, collaborative editing. "Wikis and groupware are great for distributed collaboration between teams, but they lack the ability to provide real-time feedback to teams working on a shared document. Collaborative editors, on the other hand, give multiple users a convenient way to work together on one or more documents. Mac users have had SubEthaEdit for some time, but Gobby is the first collaborative editor for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X users. Let's take a look at how you can start editing documents with your friends and co-workers using Gobby."

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Open source casts new mold for type design (News.com)

News.com looks at DejaVu fonts. "In 2003, type design company Bitstream, in conjunction with the GNOME Foundation, released a font family called Vera for open-source use. Under the license terms, anyone was permitted to make new fonts based on Vera, as long as the derivatives were given a different name. Now, with Vera essentially dormant, an international group has picked up work on an offshoot called DejaVu. There are other Vera derivatives, such as Erav. But DejaVu has caught on widely enough for it to be the default font for Dapper Drake, the latest update to Ubuntu Linux. It may also become the default font for Red Hat's Fedora version of Linux." (Thanks to Nicolas Mailhot)

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Tremulous: The best free software game ever? (NewsForge)

NewsForge reviews Tremulous, a GPL-licensed first-person shooter game. "Tremulous is basically a struggle between two teams: the humans, a species I will assume you are familiar with, and the aliens, which look like bugs and sometimes crawl along walls and ceilings. During the game, each side progresses through three stages, with advanced abilities and equipment coming in during the second and third stages. There is one major difference between the species, beyond being on different teams. Humans can upgrade their equipment. Aliens can upgrade themselves."

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Open source as software obsolescence insurance (Linux-Watch)

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols considers the advantage of open-source software against obsolescence. "Lance Ulanoff, my colleague at PC Magazine, has a problem. One of his favorite applications is the Macromedia vector-based drawing tool, Freehand. Those of you who pay close attention to software as a business already know where this tale is going. Macromedia was bought out by Adobe Systems last year. Guess who owns Freehand's chief rival, Illustrator? Why, yes, it's Adobe. So, Lance went in to talk to Adobe about their plans for Freehand... I'll make a long story short: the future doesn't look good for Freehand."

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Musings From Studio Dave (Linux Journal)

Dave Phillips starts a blog about Linux audio software. "I use Linux exclusively here at Studio Dave. I have a modest home studio that I use for music composition and recording, but it's also a central component in my teaching practice. Students are introduced to ear-training with Tom Cato's wonderful Solfege, they learn how to capture audio and manipulate it with the Audacity soundfile editor, and they read scores in standard notation beautifully rendered by the LilyPond music typesetter. They also see and hear the sophisticated control systems (e.g. XMMS, MPlayer, xine) I use to play their CDs, DVDs, and MP3 collections."

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