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Linux and Open Source News for 11th July 2007

Linux

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Source: LinuxTracker.org

Category: BeleniX Size: 694.71 MB Status: 4 seeders and 7 leechers Added: 2007-07-11 20:46:12


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Source: LinuxTracker.org

Category: LazyDragon Size: 1.78 GB Status: 3 seeders and 17 leechers Added: 2007-07-11 13:29:16


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Source: LinuxTracker.org

Category: LazyDragon Size: 1.78 GB Status: 1 seeders and no leecher Added: 2007-07-11 12:48:31


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Source: LinuxTracker.org

Category: ParallelKnoppix Size: 650.19 MB Status: 3 seeders and 6 leechers Added: 2007-07-11 10:39:23


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Source: LinuxTracker.org

Category: ParallelKnoppix Size: 677.05 MB Status: 1 seeders and 1 leechers Added: 2007-07-11 09:50:49


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Source: LinuxTracker.org

Category: Bluewhite64 Size: 2.00 GB Status: 2 seeders and 1 leechers Added: 2007-07-11 05:02:37


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Source: LinuxTracker.org

Category: Bluewhite64 Size: 3.83 GB Status: 12 seeders and 28 leechers Added: 2007-07-11 04:58:23


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Source: LinuxTracker.org

Category: eLive Size: 678.19 MB Status: 11 seeders and 9 leechers Added: 2007-07-11 00:57:25


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Source: LinuxTracker.org

Category: Damn Small Size: 49.65 MB Status: 2 seeders and 1 leechers Added: 2007-07-11 00:33:51


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Source: pardus

The Pardus developers from Turkey have announced the availability of Pardus Linux 2007.2: "Pardus 2007.2 Caracal caracal released! It is possible to install Pardus 2007.2 in French, Italian and Catalan besides Turkish, English, Spanish, German, Dutch and Brazilian Portuguese. Pardus 2007.2 now introduces KDE 3.5.7 for better stability, .



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Source: Linux Today

Linux.com: "NoMachine recently released version 3.0 of its remote desktop product line. NX 3.0 has some interesting advantages over similar products--but also some pitfalls for inexperienced users "


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Source: Linux Today

HowtoForge: "This document describes how to install a PureFTPd server that uses virtual users from a MySQL database instead of real system users "


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Source: Linux Today

Linux.com: "'Siag, it sucks less!' This is the slogan for Siag Office "


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Source: Linux Today

ONLamp: "I've come to appreciate the power of a good compiler, especially when trying to walk other people through compiling my supposedly cross-platform code on Windows with MSVC "


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Source: Linux Today

Mad Penguin: "This just in: it's an Ubuntu future. Think I'm nuts? Take a cold, hard look around "


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Source: Linux Today

APC Magazine: "This one begins with that most fearsome of technological bugs--user error "


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Source: Linux Today

Technetra: "I was recently at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco and I was struck by the sheer number of Fortune 500 corporations talking about their adoption of open source and explaining why they've signed onto the movement "


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Source: Linux Today

Lars Strand: "A friend of mine asked me to have a look at his Linux-server. 'It behaves strangely' he said "


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Source: Linux Today

InformationWeek: "It stayed at arms length from distributing the code But did Microsoft circumvent the trap of GPLv2 by stepping into the snare of GPLv3 ?"


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Source: Linux Today

The Jem Report: "Ubuntu is open source, right? Most of it is, small parts of it are not "


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Source: Linux Today

Salon.com: "David Kirkpatrick lays it on a bit thick in the current Fortune magazine paean to Bill Gates, 'How Microsoft Conquered China '"


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Source: Linux Today

Legal World and Childhood Dreams: "Today--for many reasons--is a happy day for us. The Allahabad High Court website is being inaugurated and e-court project is being launched by symbolic distribution of laptops to the Judges of the subordinate judiciary "


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Source: Linux Today

Silicon.com: "Property asset management company Capital & Regional is evaluating Linux desktops and Apple Macs as a way to reduce its dependency on Microsoft "


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Source: Linux Today

SearchOpenSource: "Analysts familiar with Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Project Indiana say that as early as this week the company could reveal plans to revamp the OpenSolaris operating system by incorporating key pieces of Linux software "


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Source: Linux Today

CNET News: "Audacity's follow-up to its cult-classic audio editor, Audacity 1.3, warrants the attention of amateur and 'prosumer' music editors "


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Source: Linux Today

dot.KDE: "The final talk on Saturday at aKademy 2007 was from Patrick Harvie, a Member of the Scottish Parliament for the Green Party "


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Source: Linux Today

Computer Business Review: "I've just taken a first look at IBM's promise not to assert its patents involved in implementing 150 software standards and it appears to be a work of art in its simplicity "


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Source: Linux Today

eWeek: "Dell plans on expanding the reach of its factory-installed Linux PCs to include small and midsize businesses and Europe, Michael Dell, the company's founder and CEO, said at a July 10 event in New York "


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Source: Linux Today

Shuttleworth: "Thanks to Colin and Evan's efforts we now have daily images of a freedom-focused flavour of Ubuntu, 'Gobuntu '"


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Source: Linux Today

IT Business Canada: "Despite the performance and price advantages offered by open source applications, financial institutions in Canada remain hesitant dive into non-proprietary solutions, according to a recent survey "


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Source: Linux Today

SeekingAlpha: "The open source software [OSS] blogosphere has taken its eye off attacking Microsoft for a few days to focus on a recent BusinessWeek article that predicted a 2007 initial public offering for MySQL "


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Source: Linux Today

KernelTrap: "Ingo Molnar's Completely Fair Scheduler has been merged into the Linux kernel for inclusion in the upcoming 2.6.23 release "


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Source: Linux Today

InformationWeek: "Lenovo on Tuesday introduced its highest performing notebook, a Linux mobile workstation powered by an Intel Centrino Pro processor "


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Source: Linux Today

Red Hat Magazine: "Today, Sunday, is the first day of Red Hat High, and I'm expecting 47 kids. It's 4:00 in the afternoon, and orientation starts at 4:30. Of those 47 kids, how many have arrived so far? Three, that's how many "


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Source: Linux Today

KernelTrap: "In the ongoing effort to reduce the power consumption of the linux kernel and take better advantage of the tickless kernel patch, Stephen Hemminger posted a patch to make it possible to unload the keyboard blink driver "


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Source: Linux Today

Nirlog: "The benefits of designing and testing complex networks in simulated environments are obvious to network professionals and companies "


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Source: Linux Today

Phoronix: "The NVIDIA GeForce 6100 and 6150 integrated graphics processors have been relatively popular among Linux and Windows users. These IGPs have been common in HTPC setups with the NVIDIA driver working out well with MythTV "



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Source: Slashdot: Linux

slasher writes "MadPenguin.org discusses the future of Ubuntu and confirms Ubuntu's growing market share in the Linux market. Author Matt Hartley writes, "Now, for the biggest question: do high numbers mean that Ubuntu is the best distribution out there? Some will argue that this is an impossible point to make, as each person has different needs from their distribution. But for the sake of this article, we will be considering the average user, not the Slackware crowd, who is obviously much more comfortable within a command line environment than mainstream users."Read more of this story at Slashdot.


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Source: Slashdot: Linux

An anonymous reader writes "One week ago this community discussed the apparent price advantage of Ubuntu Dell over Vista. The article linked to a Dell IdeaStorm page with the status: 'Implemented.' Today the status has changed on that page to 'Reneged: Ubuntu Dell is $225 More Than Windows Dell.' The full price of a Ubuntu Inspiron 1420N is indeed $50 cheaper than the identical hardware configuration with Vista — except that a $275 free upgrade to 2GB memory and a 160-GB hard drive is available for Windows only."Read more of this story at Slashdot.



previous    News, reviews and commentary on all aspects of Linux and open-source software, including application servers, communications and database servers.    next


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Source: eWEEK Linux

Microsoft announces that Asian Linux distributor Turbolinux is the latest Linux company to join its Ecma Open XML-Open Document Format Translator Project.



previous    Open Source, Open Standards    next


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Source: Linux Magazine: Top Stories

LDAP allows you manage users on a network.


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Source: Linux Magazine: Top Stories

This article introduces you to a few lesser known X utilities.



previous    The O'Reilly Network ONLamp Articles and Weblogs    next


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Source: ONLamp.com

In the spirt of health competition, and because I selfishly want to know what blogs to fill my Google Reader account with, what are the Top Ten Python Related Blogs? Also, how many RSS feeds should I take? What is manageable?
What are the Top Ten Python Blogs you read either “old school” or through an rss feed? Here are ten I happen to read in no particular order but feel free to order yours by whatever political statement you choose:
Tornado of Testing Titus
Dynamic Diatribes of Doug
Glitsy Glyf
Enigmatic Ian
Jazzerific James
Jewels of JJ
Jonathan’s Juleps of Joy
Ricky the Tricky Raccoon
Natural Selection Niemeyer
Jumping Jeremy Jones


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Source: ONLamp.com

IBM announces an interesting initiative today that will make it easier for open source programmers and other small coders to put together a range of software, including Web Services. The initiative is just a subtle procedural change, but a welcome one for people with little time and tolerance for bureaucratic red tape: IBM’s wide range of royalty-free patents are now available without formal licensing.
IBM helped form the Open Invention Network in 2005 and contributed a large portfolio of patents to help protect Linux and a selection of other open source projects from patent infringement lawsuits. It was an idea that had been tossed around in the free software community for some time–a free software defensive patent pool–but it didn’t reduce the overhead of developing new software that uses patented software.
On another front, royalty-free patenting has become a rallying cry for software standards developers who can’t (or don’t want to) fight the concept of software patents altogether. A royalty-free patent can be used anywhere to do anything, so it’s compatible with free software. But it still requires the programmer to go through the formality of contacting the patent holder to get a license.
Of course, hundreds of thousands of Sourceforge sites and other projects are going on right now, and I’m certain that few if any of them contact IBM or anybody to ask about patent licensing. Still, that leaves patent infringement as risk that could pop up at any moment.
So now IBM takes the next step and removes the formality of making a contact from patent licensing. By promising not to assert a large group of patents, it effectively makes its technology public-domain across a wide range of areas. In particular, they promise not to assert any patents that cover more than 150 standards in SOA, Web Services, and other web technologies. Along with software patents, numerous patents in the areas of health care and education are released in this way.
IBM still holds on to the patents for defensive purpoes, and the license includes a GPL-like “defensive termination” clause: if a hostile patent-holder tries to assert a patent claim against anyone who is covered by one of these IBM patents, the hostile patent-holder is no longer allowed royalty-free use of IBM’s patents. It’s the standard patenting practice of mutually assured destruction, now extended to cover anyone in the world who is covered by the patents themselves. Large companies as well as small developers will benefit.
IBM got this simple but innovative idea through the nitty-gritty procedure of working with standards bodies and free software developers. Bob Sutor, IBM’s Vice President of Open Source and Standards. said that working with such organizations as the World Wide Web Consortium and OASIS showed IBM how much of a barrier patents were to small software developers. Why not eliminate fussy requirements?
He also said that IBM welcomes others to join them in patent non-assertion statements.


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Source: ONLamp.com

OK - so I haven’t done a “recipe of the week” in a while. But does titling the post “{{whatever}} of the week” mean that I’m going to do one of these every week, or does it mean that I promise not to do more than one per week? :-)
Anyway, I was googling around to see if a certain type of utility existed and I stumbled across this recipe for something called Pyline. Basically, Pyline allows you to pipe text to it and use Python syntax to manipulate what it will output, specifically at the word and line level. Here are a couple of examples from the recipe:

Print out the first 20 characters of every line in the tail of my
Apache access log:
tail access_log | pyline “line[:20]”
Print just the URLs in the access log (the seventh “word” in the line):
tail access_log | pyline “words[6]”

Good work Graham Fawcett. This is a useful little utility and the code is pretty brief. So, this is the recipe of this week.



previous    The O'Reilly Network's Linux DevCenter Articles and Weblogs    next


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Source: Linux DevCenter

A couple of weeks ago, the O’Reilly editors asked Is Microsoft Relevant in a Post-Rails World? Contrary to some reports, there are still desktop applications in the world besides a web browser–and there are plenty of desktop applications under serious development.

Many of them are F/OSS. Of those, plenty have ties to existing projects to produce fully-free desktop software. They run on top of free Unixes, take advantage of free APIs and libraries, and interoperate well with other free software.

There are very few technical reasons much of this software cannot run on non-free platforms, however. One of the first pieces of free software I used reliably was Emacs (though I quickly switched to Vim). This was on Windows NT 4. Perhaps the most successful free software desktop application is Mozilla Firefox.

Nikolaj Nielsen recently ranted about why he finds Windows ports of F/OSS applications valuable and how much he dislikes the arguments against making such ports. By one theory, switching to free applications will make it easier for users to switch to free platforms in the future, as those applications are already available and, hopefully, work better on free platforms.

Then Aaron Seigo picked up the argument, asking “are there reasons to believe that users who switch applications really will switch platforms?” I suspect (but don’t want to speak for him) that Aaron and I are both glad to see more people have the option to use software that respects their freedoms and supports open standards and does not lock them into proprietary traps. Yet does this step really help in the long term?

It’s important to keep in mind the philosophical goal of some free software developers. That goal is to spread freedom by encouraging the use of free platforms, ideally from hardware through BIOS and drivers to all software, but certainly as much of the software stack as is possible. The question is whether it’s worth the additional development and maintenance work to make free software applications available to non-free platforms, or if that work subverts the goal of encouraging the use of completely free platforms.

Of course, with the source code available for porting, there are no universal technical barriers to running any given piece of F/OSS on Windows or Mac OS X. The project’s maintainers may refuse to merge the portability patches, in which case a fork is necessary, but this is a question of philosophy, not technical concern.

The best anyone can give at this point is likely anecdotal evidence. For example, my father has tired of Windows XP on his laptop and would like to move to Ubuntu. His only concern is that one job-related website he needs to visit requires the use of IE (and he reported that to the webmaster, who acknowledged the request but there’s no change yet). He already uses Thunderbird and Firefox, and with a decent photo gallery, he’d have everything else he needs. We set him up with good free software in the hope that he could switch one day.

Contrarily, one of the pieces of software that kept me on Mac OS X for as long as I remained was a ports system by which I could install free software without the silly .app bundle dance. (It’s so easy, after you’ve already found and downloaded the bundle manually, in the same way that receiving a trophy for a triathlon is easy after you’ve already finished the race.) Without a decent mechanism to install software, Mac OS X wouldn’t have lasted even one month for me.

I don’t expect any easy answers to this conundrum. I also suspect that many of the users of free software on proprietary platforms are home users of free platforms trying to make their work computers more palatable, rather than early adopters slowly sidling their way to freedom. However, I can’t prove that either.

Meanwhile, fully-free desktops improve daily, and not just in the quality and breadth of free software applications. Millions of people have liberated part or all of their software from proprietary restrictions. The question now is how to offer that freedom to everyone else.



Updated: Thu Jul 12 23:55:03 2007


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