LXer Weekly Roundup for 23-Mar-2008

LXer Feature: 23-Mar-2008 In this week's roundup we have an early look at KDE 4.1, the Supreme Court rejects Microsoft's Novell appeal - 12 years later! 25 Simple Games for Linux, CodeWeavers to release CrossOver Games, A Wine 1.0 release in our lifetime and reviews of Spicebird and Clonezilla. To wrap things up we have two FUD articles, an old argument about Linux viruses and Apple fixes some Open Source Vulnerabilities.

In this week's roundup we have an early look at KDE 4.1, the Supreme Court rejects Microsoft's Novell appeal - 12 years later! 25 Simple Games for Linux, CodeWeavers to release CrossOver Games, A Wine 1.0 release in our lifetime and reviews of Spicebird and Clonezilla. To wrap things up we have two FUD articles, an old argument about Linux viruses and Apple fixes some Open Source Vulnerabilities.

Firefox at Mix08: While viewing the SEO presentation from Microsoft's Mix08. I noticed that the presenter preferred Firefox when ever he need to do anything really useful.

Clone Linux, Windows disks with Clonezilla: Most users know about proprietary software packages such as Norton Ghost that can be used for cloning hard disks for backup or distribution purposes. And a few may know about Partition Image, an open source alternative for saving partition images. But how many users know about Clonezilla, an all-in-one cloning tool that promises both speed and power?

An Early Look At KDE 4.1: The first alpha release of KDE 4.1 isn't planned until the end of April, but this past weekend the OpenSuSE team had updated their KDE Four Live spin against the latest KDE 4.0.66 snapshot packages. The KDE 4.0.66 development packages contain new Kickoff and Plasma features along with much other work to the numerous packages that will ultimately make up this first major update to KDE 4.

Supremes Reject Microsoft's Novell Appeal: The U.S. Supreme Court Monday refused to hear Microsoft's appeal of a lower court ruling, thus setting the stage for yet another antitrust trial for the software giant. At issue is a private lawsuit brought against the company in 2004 over whether the Redmond, Wash. company unlawfully used its monopoly power to crush Novell's incipient move into productivity applications 12 years ago.

25 Small/Simple Games to Install on your Linux desktop: A comprehensive tutorial showing how to install 25 small and simple games on your Linux Desktop (with installation instructions for Ubuntu 7.10 ) also included are instructions on playing classic Dos Games , NES/SNES games and Scummvm games on your Ubuntu desktop

Penguin Suicide Bombers: I am not aware of any other entity, group or idea that matches these five primary characteristics of the open source movement as exactly as terrorist organizations.

Response to "Penguin Suicide Bombers: The Terrorism of Open Source": The Objective Observer wrote what appeared to be a logical argument from which he drew what he claims is a reasonable comparison... Open Source is like Terrorism. Riiiiight. Well, I decided to respectfully respond to his commentary with some specific examples of how his conclusions are inaccurate. I'm assuming he got hit with a lot of flames but I didn't want to add to it.

CodeWeavers to release CrossOver Games: Today while browsing around the CodeWeavers site I came across the 2008 CrossOver roadmap that was posted by Jeremy White the CEO of CodeWeavers.

Explaining Open Source's Exponential Growth: One of the problems with open source is that much of it happens invisibly. Whereas proprietary software, which is sold, has to publicised at some point, open source can simply be written: whether or not it gets used is a question of the author's personal inclinations. Even the big-name open source projects – Linux, Apache, Firefox – have the problem that contributions are made in all sorts of ways, and that there is nobody really tracking who is doing what where. That makes a paper from SAP Research's Amit Deshpande and Dirk Riehle particularly welcome, since they do the hard work of tracking down just how much coding is going on these days. They start from a hard core of open source activity, ignoring projects that are dormant.

Bruce Perens seeks support to become OSI board member: The Open Source Initiative, the organization that certifies Open Source software licenses, is holding an executive board election soon. I am standing for election. The board is self-electing, and I'm told I don't have a chance unless I can show community support for my candidacy. One problem I'd like to help solve is the over-representation of vendors, particularly the kind that have an Open Source product as their profit-center rather than part of operations. The vast majority of Open Source developers, paid or volunteer, are not in that sort of business, yet vendors tend to dominate the leadership of organizations like OSI and conferences about Open Source in business.

Wine 1.0 to be released in June or July: Alexandre stated back in October 2007 that he knew of no 1.0 release blockers even then, and suggested we pick Wine's 15th anniversary for the actual date. Depending on how you look at it, there are several possible birthdays for Wine. Given that the exact birthday is a bit fuzzy, we'll simply continue with our normal biweekly release dates. That puts the 1.0 release at June 6th if it's ready by then, or June 20th or July 4th if it's not.

How Microsoft is trying to eradicate email: Very strange article in which an InfoWorld Blogger seems to have taken the red pill and awakened to the truth about bot nets and the email spam they produce.

Reiser Shows Jury Where He Dumped the Car Seat: The Hans Reiser murder trial resumed here Wednesday with the defendant fumbling on the witness stand. "Are you just making these things up?" Alameda County prosecutor Paul Hora asked at one point. Hans Reiser underwent a second day of grueling cross-examination by Hora who claims the Linux programmer killed his wife, Nina Reiser, amid a bitter divorce and custody battle over their two young children. The defendant had spent nearly five days on the stand under direct examination before it came to an abrupt halt at noon Tuesday.

Has Dell Delivered on GNU/Linux?: Almost exactly one year ago, I made the followingsuggestion in the wake of Dell's long-awaited decision to offer ready-configured GNU/Linux systems alongside the usual panoply of Windows systems:we must vote with our wallets. Assuming the Dell GNU/Linux systems are not hopelessly flawed in some way, we must all try to buy as many of them as we can (within reason, of course).What follows is a short report on my own experiences of putting my money where my mouth is.

Windows is caught between Mac and Linux: For the first time in ages, the sale of new PCs with Windows as a percentage of the PC market is declining sharply. The new winner is the Mac, but, while no one does a good job of tracking the still-new, pre-installed Linux desktop market, it's also clear that Linux is finally making impressive inroads into Windows' once unchallenged market share.

Open-source efforts derailed by 'loud minority': Efforts to increase the adoption of open-source software are being derailed by the efforts of a "loud minority" within the community who have made personal attacks on individuals who have expressed doubts about the software, according to one of the open-source movement's main advocates.

Spicebird: More Open Source Competition For Outlook: There's been a lot of discussion about which open source application works best as a replacement for Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Outlook: Evolution, Ximian, Thunderbird, and so on. Let's add another contender to that list, shall we? Meet Spicebird, currently in beta 0.4 form.

The truth about viruses: This FUD which has been floating around for some time has raised it's ugly head once again.

Apple Fixes Open Source Vulnerabilities: At first blush, Microsoft hounds might want to pounce on Apple's release of over 80 vulnerability fixes this week. But before anyone bears that red M tattooed on their chest, you should take another look at Apple's updates.