Showing headlines posted by Sander_Marechal

A few Linux distributions emphasize license freedom as a goal, but Tom “Spot” Callaway says that there’s no such thing as a free Linux distro. Callaway, Fedora’s engineering manager, writes that “you’d need to do an incredibly thorough audit of every file in the system to be sure that every single file is under a known license,” and the evidence says that most distros haven’t actually done it.

The concept of an open set-top box is new and a place that Linux has a very favorable opportunity. Unlike the desktop, where compatibility with legacy applications and peripherals is a serious impediment, the set-top box simply has to play today's available content. Help us to make sure that Linux achieves the critical mass it needs to make sure that content producers and hardware makers ensure compatibility with Linux. The bounties range from $500 to $2500.

The 0.10.4 release of Google Gadgets for Linux is out, with optimized performance and memory consumption, as well as many bug fixes. To install or upgrade your copy of Google Gadgets for Linux, just download and install the binaries for your platform. The new release supports more gadgets, including the recently released YouTube, Gmail, and Google Docs gadgets.

Last week, we launched the Linux Foundation video site. As part of the video site, we will also be holding a Linux video contest that kicks off in January. The contest reaction hasn’t been without controversy. Many emails and articles have asked, “Why are you copying Apple? Linux should be original!” My answer is that I originally thought of this contest while sitting through multiple Apple and Windows ads during a football game. It occurred to me that messages about operating systems are everywhere, but that Linux, by nature of its distributed organization, is not well represented in the video realm.

Canonical, the company behind the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, has announced plans to overhaul desktop notifications. The project is part of a broader initiative that the company launched earlier this year to boost the usability of the Linux software ecosystem. Transient visual notifications are employed extensively in desktop applications to provide users with passive updates about application status or system events. Some typical usage scenarios include notifying users when they receive new e-mail, when an instant messaging buddy signs online, or when a CD finishes burning.

One of the most powerful aspects of free software is that its entire approach and mindset is orthogonal to proprietary software. It's not just better, it's profoundly different. That's one of the most important reasons that *everything* Microsoft has thrown against free software has not just failed, but failed dismally. Against that background, I have mixed feelings about the Linux Foundation 60 second video showcase.

Documentation is one area in which free/libre/open source software (FLOSS) is weakest. A project called FLOSS Manuals is trying to remedy this situation. The idea behind project is to create quality, free documentation for free software. FLOSS Manuals is the brainchild of digital artist Adam Hyde

Linux Kernel developer Alan Cox has announced that he will be departing Red Hat for Intel. In an e-mail to the editors he explained that this move allows him to spend more time with his family and work even closer on the low level stuff that he really likes. Alan has been working on the Linux kernel since the early days in 1991 and has been contracted and employed by red Hat for ten years.

As promised, we will keep the tech jokes coming because it's the season to be jolly (falalalala lalalala). Our next set of jokes will surely tickle some of our geeky readers’ funny bones. Now get ready for some classic Linux/Unix Christmas humor:

Audio in linux, how to put it into words? How about: oss, alsa, pulseaudio, esound, arts, portaudio, jack, gstreamer, phonon. Did I miss any? Embarrassment of riches? Or just embarrassment? I will not rehash history any more than to say that between buggy/incomplete drivers for sound cards and the wonderful world of alsa I’ve never been able to understand how the hell audio works beyond getting output and, sporadically, input. I am the quintessential dumb user of linux audio, even though I have tried to figure it out.

Move over Hodgman and that hipster kid who briefly dated Drew Barrymore, because there's a new advertising campaign in town that hopes to take Linux into the mainstream. With commercials. It's true. The Linux Foundation saw those successful I'm a Mac commercials, and Jerry Seinfeld playing with Bill Gates, and they wanted in. So they're having a video contest that will try and showcase "just what Linux means to those who use it, and hopefully inspires many to try it."

At this moment in time there seems to be a war going on. On one side there is the proprietary systems, iconified by windows. On the other side there is the open source systems, iconified by Linux. There is also a third group, the fence sitters, who alternate between the two camps. These are neither willing or able to choose one side and stick with it.

The beauty of Linux is in users ability to do large amount of customization to have a unique user expereince. So today we will look in to some tips for a “better” Linux experience. The term “better” here is relative, because what works for me might seem a distraction for some or plain annoying to others; some of this “tips” might appeal to beginners, while advanced users might find it too easy. Hopefully some of these tips will be helpful to some of you.

Opinion: Microsoft has long been worried about Linux competition in the server market, writes Preston Gralla. But now it's also taking Linux seriously as a desktop operating system, and it has designed Windows 7 to kill it.

I have recently been writing some documentation in DocBook XML format that I wanted to convert to PDF. Debian has a really useful package called xmlto that you can use for this, but it did not work for me. Instead I opted to use the DocBook-XSL stylesheets to convert DocBook to fo and use Apache fop to convert it to PDF. DocBook-XSL and Apache fop work wonderfully well but there were a couple of bumps that I had to sort out before everything worked as it should, especially regarding the Java setup and getting images to work correctly. Here is how I set up my DocBook toolchain on Debian Lenny.

As our software becomes more Web-centric and our devices cheaper, Linux is becoming the operating system on everyone’s lips for 2009. Sorry, Microsoft. If this week’s news is any indication, you’ve been served.

This may be old hat to you, but I stumbled across it and could not resist posting it here. It's a blog driven by a (bash-like) command line interface. You Linux folk should have no problem using it -- Sander

At least two Debian women developers are reconsidering their participation in the GNU/Linux project following the posting of what they deem to be a sexist message to one of the mailing lists meant for developers. The message in question was posted on November 23 by developer Josselin Mouette to the list meant for important announcements for developers. One of the women in question, Miriam Ruiz, who became a developer in 2004 by joining the Debian Women project, told iTWire she had not resigned and did not plan to do so because it would send the wrong message.

In the last major economic downturn, Linux established itself as a widely-accepted enterprise operating system, benefiting a lively ecosystem of vendors such as Red Hat and Novell. The return of tough economic times puts the open source alternative again front and center, this time with focus on databases and higher-level software applications. I believe we've entered another era for open-source companies of all stripes. IT decision makers need to fight the financial crisis and they need a more efficient solution for critical enterprise system and IT needs.

In Windows, you have the Windows Movie Maker that makes video editing a breeze. In Linux, while there is no default or inbuilt video editor applications, there are plenty of open source alternatives that one can consider for their video project. In case you are searching for one, here are some of the great open-source video editors that you can use in your Linux machine. Some of them are available for Windows and Mac as well.