This excellent Linux installation guide was written by my friend, “The Trojan” initially on the CHIP forums. So all credits to him, for writing this excellent post(and note that I’ve taken his permission to reproduce it here).

I am writing this down considering the fact that most of the newbies who want to try out Linux or want to make a shift to it or want to use it along side with Windows are afraid of the installation and the “GEEK” status of the Linux OS. I will try to resolve the issues with both the mental fear of geek status of Linux and the small technical fear of a new operating system.

First with the mental fear as it is necessary that you are mentally ready to do something before actually trying it out! So, what is the reason people fear that Linux is tough to use. Well, Linux is not tough to use, its only that it is a bit more difficult to administer it when compared to Windows Operating systems. So first of all, before installing Linux, be ready that you will have to learn new things and some really interesting facts about the real potential of your hardware and its details will be shown to you. The rules of Linux are much different from that of Windows. But there is JUST NO NEED TO BE AFRAID OF LINUX. It will become easier as you keep on using it.

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This is the first BETA release of Linux Mint 4.0, codename Daryna, based on Celena and compatible with Ubuntu Gutsy and its repositories.

Daryna is using Gutsy’s package base (kernel 2.6.22, Gnome 2.20, OpenOffice 2.3, Thunderbird 2.0…etc).

[...]

Wine 0.9.48 was released today, with the following main changes:

• Still more fixes for regression test failures.
• Much more complete cryptnet implementation.
• WIDL is now able to generate the oleaut32 proxy code.
• Lots of bug fixes.

Binary packages are in the process of being built and it may take a few days for them to appear, but the source is available now. You can find out more about this release in the announcement. Check out our download page for packages for your distribution.

AMD and ATI weren’t fibbing. The graphics company, now part of Advanced Micro Devices, has released high-end Catalyst 7.10 graphics drivers for the Linux desktop.

ATI, once AMD bought it, promised to be more friendly to Linux desktop users. While this release still contains some proprietary bits, it does offer advanced 3D features for Linux users who are willing to use proprietary drivers.

The most important of these improvements is that this release of Catalyst includes the first preview release of AIGLX (Accelerated Indirect GLX) support for ATI Radeon graphics processors for consumer Linux use. In particular, it should enable Linux users to enjoy a richer visual three-dimensional user interface with the 3D Compiz Linux desktop. AIGLX also enables OpenGL accelerated desktop effects for supported Linux distributions.

The AIGLX support isn’t quite ready for prime time, though

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Developers, artists and user interface designers from all over the world worked together to make GIMP more powerful and easier to use than ever. The changes from version 2.2 are too numerous to list here, please check the Release Notes to get an overview.

If you want to compile GIMP 2.4 yourself, you can grab the tarball from ftp.gimp.org or one of its mirrors. Binary packages for the various supported platforms are becoming available as we speak. Our Downloads section should help you to locate the package for your system.

 Opera 9.5 beta is available for download! Since the first alpha release hundreds of bugs have been fixed. Website rendering has been significantly improved, along with performance, stability and usability.

Opera Link
With Opera Link, it’s possible to get access to your bookmarks and Speed Dials everywhere. Get Opera Mini 4 beta and login to Opera Link to get your desktop bookmarks, or login to link.opera.com to access your bookmarks with any other browser.

The Desktop Team would like to thank everyone in the community for testing the weeklies, reporting bugs, and giving feedback on this blog and the forums!
Enjoy the Rock Opera launch party , and don’t forget to join the online celebrations if you can’t be there.

 Changelogs: Unix

Gobuntu is a GNU/Linux operating system, derived from Ubuntu, that endeavors to adhere to the Free Software Foundations four freedoms and intends to provide a base for other free software platforms to build upon with minimal modification required. It does this by only including open-source non-restricted software. This means there will be no firmware, drivers, applications, or content included in Gobuntu that does not include the full source or whose license does not provide the right to use, study, modify, and redistribute the body of work.

Gobuntu shares the same system requirements as Ubuntu. At present, this means Gobuntu is available for 32-bit and 64-Bit PC architectures and the install requires at least 4 GB of disk space.

Why would I want Gobuntu?

If you are looking to build a free software distribution based off of Ubuntu, or you wish to use an operating system that only provides you with truly free software and content, you should consider trying Gobuntu.

Please note that because running Gobuntu on most laptops and many desktops will be difficult, Gobuntu is intended for experienced Linux enthusiasts at this time.

How do I get Gobuntu?

Download the text-based install CD. At present there is no live CD installer for Gobuntu.

Gobuntu has its own area on the Ubuntu wiki, a collaborative environment where the community can work together to share information. There is also a mailing list for developer discussion.

 From : Ubuntu.com

Hey Ya All! Been a long time since I did a personal post here. Just been too busy, with office, with no PC and all. Sigh, I’ll have to rely on CyberCafes for the upcoming 2 months.
Meanwhile, you may have noticed that I’ve setup a forum a while ago. Well today I *finally* managed to get out of my slumber and setup some forums and categories. Let’s see what kind of response I’ll get. Meanwhile, if you’re reading this site, go regsiter on my forum and start posting, pronto!

Cheers!
Sathya

Chart

The Chart component of OpenOffice.org has undergone a major revamp for 2.3. The developers have added a range of exciting new features, and at the same time made the creation of charts simpler and more logical. The default chart appearance is improved, with a new colour palette. The scaling of axes has been changed to give better results automatically. 3D charts are greatly enhanced in appearance, and easier to create. New chart types include ’3D exploded pies’ and ‘exploded donuts’ (watch out Homer Simpson). There is an improved data editor for charts that use their own data (e.g. within Impress).

Writer

The way Writer displays various page images has been improved. There is a new filter for exporting documents to MediaWiki (“Wikipedia”) format

Calc

Calc now supports inline matrix/array constants in formulas. Summation has been made more powerful and more intuitive. The display of error values has been made more user-friendly. Compatibility with Microsoft Excel has been improved with workarounds for cotangent functions (supported in Calc, missing from Microsoft Excel).

Base

Base continues to evolve as a fully-fledged OpenOffice.org application in its own right, with its windows all having their own size, position, etc settings. The Report Builder, available as extension on http://extensions.services.openoffice.org, now has additional facilities for expert users. There is a greater support for keyboard shortcuts throughout Base.

Draw

Draw includes a number of accessibility improvements and support for .png images when exporting to .html documents

Impress

The much-loved ‘move along curve’ animation feature has been re-introduced, despite claims that over-use could easily create sea-sickness among sensitive members of an audience.

Language Support

Language support has been improved for a further fourteen languages, building on OpenOffice.org’s already impressive language support.

Extensions

There are a number of new features available to developers of OpenOffice.org extensions, and a one click link to a new extensions repository.

Other

Writer, Calc, Draw, and Impress now allow users to preview their work within a browser before exporting it to .html format. The default security level for Macro Security has been changed to High, to make it difficult for users to run possibly malicious macros ‘without thinking’.

Source: OpenOffice.org Wiki

Rudd- has written in his blog about Distribution X downloading oh-so-many updates, everyday. He says:

For the last six months, I’ve been reading article after article spewing the same bovine manure: Look at how many updates Distribution X issued! How can it be more secure than Windows? Let’s bury that stupidity under a ton of facts:

“Look at the pace of the update releases!”

Microsoft shills’ latest tune goes something like this: “but Linux is so much more insecure than Windows — just look, every day you see security updates released!”.

True: open up your Linux distribution’s update manager after three months of not upgrading, and you will see quite the list. Probably a bit more than your Windows or Mac OS X updates.

But only a minority are security updates. From that minority, only a handful apply to your scenario. And even so, the number of updates is of no consequence. As a matter of fact, you should be happy you have all these updates for you to install.

Don’t just take my word for it — let’s explore why.

Linux updates: much more modular

When you update your Linux system, you’re not just updating the operating system, but system services, libraries, applications and artwork as well. In a modern Linux distribution, you can expect about a thousand quarter-of-a-megabyte discrete applications (packages), instead of ten monolithic applications.

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