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There was a time when open-source software was the domain of computer geeks and do-it-yourselfers with more time than money. But, as Oracle's legal salvo against Google highlighted last week, those days are long gone. Oracle (ORCL), through its purchase of Sun Microsystems, has become one of the largest purveyors of open-source software in the world. Google (GOOG) makes the open-source and increasingly ubiquitous Android smartphone operating system. Their fight revolves around Java, a programming language Sun made predominantly open-source several years ago, but which Oracle's founder and CEO Larry Ellison now calls "the single most important software we've ever acquired."

The next version of Ubuntu Linux aims to support for multi-touch as part of an effort to expand the Linux desktop user experience, potentially bringing the sorts of interactivity popularized by devices like the Apple iPad to tablets and netbooks powered by Ubuntu. But the plan isn't to stop with Ubuntu alone, according to the distribution's founder, Mark Shuttleworth.

Linus Torvalds has released the first pre-release version of Linux 2.6.36 and closed the merge window – the first phase in the development cycle, during which the bulk of changes for a new kernel version are merged into the main development tree. The usual announcement mail for the new kernel is currently nowhere to be found, but the RC1 is tagged in the Kernel Git tree and available for download on Kernel.org.

An internal Oracle memo that was released last week provides a detailed summary of the company's plans for the Solaris operating system, which Oracle obtained when it acquired Sun. The memo offers a mix of good and bad news for Solaris enthusiasts. It reveals that Oracle is strongly committed to advancing the Solaris platform and intends to increase the availability of resources for Solaris development. The bad news is that Oracle plans to discontinue Sun's community-centric OpenSolaris distribution.

LaTeX, pronounced “La-Tec”, is a document preparation language that treats creating many types of document files like constructing a shell script. LaTeX uses a “What You See is What You Mean” interface, far removed from the WYSIWYG word processors like Word and OpenOffice. LaTeX is a programming language, but don’t let that scare you away. Like many things in open source, the learning curve may be steep, but the view from the top is fantastic.

In this conclusion to my survey of algorithmic music composition systems for Linux I present Christopher Ariza's athenaCL.

When the simple file and printer sharing features offered by Windows, Unix/Linux, and Mac aren't enough, you should consider using a network-attached storage (NAS) server. NAS servers offer a central place where you can store, access, and share files and documents on the local network, and possibly over the Internet. They are especially useful in multiple operating system environments, as they usually support all the sharing protocols.

Google has called Oracle's Android lawsuit an attack not only on Google but also on the open-source Java community. "We are disappointed Oracle has chosen to attack both Google and the open-source Java community with this baseless lawsuit," a company spokesman said in a statement to USA Today. "The open-source Java community goes beyond any one corporation and works every day to make the web a better place. We will strongly defend open-source standards and will continue to work with the industry to develop the Android platform."

The Apple iPad is going to face serious competition from Android Linux-powered tablets, but the first mass-market, low-priced tablet to arrive, the Augen GenTouch78 isn't it. The tablet does have some good things going for it. While it's made from black plastic, it has a solid feel. Better still, it comes with a form-fitting, faux-leather case. I don't know about you, but whether I pay $170 for a GenTouch78 or $500 for an Apple iPad, I appreciate getting a real cover to protect it without shelling out additional cash.

While in Berlin for the LinuxTag 2010 conference a couple of months ago, I took the opportunity for a 8-mile long meandering walk across the city, from Warschauer Strasse and the East Side Gallery to Wittenbergplatz and KaDeWe, taking in the various historical sites along the way. It was a great refresher course in 20th century European history. I especially enjoyed the free outdoor exhibit in Alexanderplatz, which dealt with the Revolutions of 1989 with a focus on the various dissident movements and publications in the DDR.

If you compare that strong language with IBM's counterclaims for patent infringement against SCO Group in 2003, for example, claims it later dropped for fear it would be stuck in that stupid litigation forever with a party that had no money to pay in the end for any infringement anyway, you'll see that IBM didn't use that language. My point is that it's language that indicates Oracle is going for treble damages. And sure enough, at the end, in the relief section, Oracle America does ask for that. And it also means they likely have something quite fact-based and specific in mind that they think can be pinned on Google.

It was on August 16th, 1993 that Ian Murdock started the Debian Project. Named after he and his Wife with the idea of a 'distribution' collaborated on openly by people all over the world. Thank You Ian, seventeen years later Debian still rocks.

At the beginning of this month we published workstation benchmarks comparing Windows 7 to Ubuntu Linux. In those tests, which were a continuation of tests from earlier this year when looking to see whether Windows 7 is faster than Ubuntu 10.04 and how fast is Windows compared to Mac OS X and Linux, the two operating systems performed quite closely in our workstation tests with only a few exceptions. Today, however, we are back to looking at the Linux vs. Windows performance of the Lenovo ThinkPad W510 and this time we are looking at the OpenGL gaming performance between Windows 7 Professional and Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.

Most Linux users assume there will never come a time when they will be able to join their machines to a Microsoft Windows domain. It's always been off-limits. You could take your Linux laptop in to work, but you could never work within that domain. That is officially history. With recent updates to many of the systems and sub-systems in Linux comes the ability to now join a Windows domain. It's not terribly challenging, but you will need to edit some configuration files.

LXer Feature: 15-Aug-2010

The big news this week is a double shot of Oracle both suing Google for supposed Java copyright infringement in Android and the killing of OpenSolaris. Our own Hans Kwint expounds the merits of anticipating lock-in and much more in this weeks LXWR. Enjoy!

As was reported earlier this week, id Software has open-sourced Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and Return To Castle Wolfenstein. Opening up these older games under the GNU GPL was done as part of id's long-standing tradition of putting out the code into the public domain once it makes sense for them a few years after their succeeding engine updates have fully replaced them in the marketplace. The developers behind ioquake3, the project that's based around the Quake 3 engine that was previously opened up by id Software, is already working on iowolfet and iortcw forks to incorporate this new code, but other free software developers are already utilizing this code too.

Did you ever want a little background music with your daily grind but either you didn’t want to (or couldn’t) fire up something graphical to use? That’s where mpg123 comes to your rescue. Mpg123 is a fast console MPEG audio player and decoder library. If you’re about to click on to another story because you think that a command line music playing application is devoid of features or functions, you’re going to miss out on one of the coolest and most versatile MP3 applications you’ve ever seen.

Open source licenses help to define the terms and conditions of software use and redistribution. But what are the terms and condition under which developers actually contribute code? That's the realm of software contribution agreements. A new effort spearheaded by Amanda Brock, general counsel at Canonical, the lead sponsor of Ubuntu Linux, is trying to help solve the problem of contribution agreements. The effort is called Project Harmony, and it's a multi-stakeholder project that aims to help provide some clarity and uniformity to software contribution agreements.

Following last week's Ubuntu 10.10 Alpha 3 release but landing before the Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" feature freeze this week were a number of last-minute features like X Server 1.9 integration and other updated packages along with the committing of the revamped Ubuntu desktop installer to Maverick. Via this revamped Ubuntu installer it's possible to install proprietary bits directly like support for MP3 audio files and proprietary graphics drivers.

he new software from KDE's recent 4.5 Release Day has been well received by the technical media with widespread positive reviews and recognition of the focus on quality for this set of releases.