Richard M Stallman was in Bombay recently, as I found when Aditya Sengupta tweeted if anyone had questions for him. I asked Sengupta if there any plans to record the sessions and upload them, Sengupta said he’d have to check and come back. Few days after the event, Sengupta sent me an @reply saying that the videos had been uploaded, so thought I’ll post it here for easy reference.
The good folks over at Free Software Magazine got bored writing regular articles on free software. For some chuckles, they decided to research on some easter eggs. Here’s what they found.
What is it with cows and GNU/Linux? Let me answer my own self-serving question and show you some varied and slightly bizarre examples of human randomness. Assuming you are running under Ubuntu from a terminal type:
apt-get help | grep -i super This APT has Super Cow Powers.
OK, let us generate some somewhat warped and deranged ASCII
Written by apt-get moo
(__)
(oo)
/------\/
/ | ||
* /\---/\
~~ ~~
...."Have you mooed today?"...
Having fun yet? My brain is starting to bake trying to work out the meaning of it all. There are even serious and well researched Ubuntu bug reports on the subject.
How about trying to use aptitude from the command line to discern a recognizable and potentially disturbing pattern of social humor. Can we get aptitude to talk sense? Let us beat it around the head verbally and see if we can get it to admit its origins.
aptitude -v moo
There really are no Easter Eggs in this program.
aptitude -vv moo
Didn't I already tell you that there are no Easter Eggs in this program?
aptitude -vvv moo
Stop it!
aptitude -vvvv moo
Okay, okay, if I give you an Easter Egg, will you go away?
aptitude -vvvvv moo
All right, you win.
/----\
-------/ \
/ \
/ |
-----------------/ --------\
----------------------------------------------
aptitude -vvvvvv moo
What is it? It's an elephant being eaten by a snake, of course.
Yes now I understand life clearly. Well, if you cannot beat them with sharp pointy objects, then join them I say. Let me introduce to a small program called cowsay, a man’s best friend, a configurable talking cow. Just what you need when you already have multiple personalities and two children. From your favourite terminal, please type:
sudo apt-get install cowsay
cowsay what the
----------
what the
----------
\ ^__^
\ (oo)\_______
(__)\ )\/\
||----w||
|| ||
Cows, cows everywhere and not a pint of milk to drink.
For more chuckles, read the entire article over at Free Software Magazine
Ubuntu Live is a vibrant and important gathering of IT professionals, government and business leaders, educators, community leaders, enterprise and business users. The conference brings together the people who deploy and manage Ubuntu in organizations, companies offering services and solutions based on Ubuntu, customers of those services, users of Ubuntu, and the folks who build Ubuntu and other key open source software.
The two day event will allow participants to share their Ubuntu experiences, learn from each other, and catch up with the latest developments from Ubuntu, our partners, and the free software and open source ecosystem. Ubuntu Live is the meeting place for enterprise users and community developers to come together to exchange ideas and discuss projects face to face.
The Ubuntu Live program committee is now accepting proposals to lead sessions, panel discussions, and demos at the 2008 edition of Ubuntu Live. How are you taking Ubuntu further? Are you a guru using Ubuntu in unexpected ways? An entrepreneur launching a business with Ubuntu? An educator or researcher helping an underserved community thrive with Edubuntu? Are you a programmer, trainer, or system administrator with techniques or best practices to share? If so, submit a proposal to speak by February 4, 2008.
Co-presented by O’Reilly Media and Canonical, Ltd., the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, Ubuntu Live is conveniently co-located with the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) event, thus making Portland, Oregon the place to be during the week of July 21.
Wish there would be something similar here. It’s be great the Linux movement and for OSS in general. Event managers, are you listening?
For those planning to go for the Convention, here‘s more details
Windows vs Linux in a friendly fight to be choosen as the right OS for basic everyday use.
How we ranked
Installation shouldnot be too messy and should be user friendly. A GUI is preffered and faster installation obviously scores well.Live Cd’s/DVD’s score plus points.
The operating system must come with a good suite of softwares to take care of all your needs.
This is the place where the Operating System has to score. It is very important that it doesn’t spur problems routinely.
Softwares for the Operating System should be easily available and easily installable.
The Operating System Should not hog your system resources. By hogging you system resources you will get very little performance out of your system.
Introduction to the contenders
KOffice, the office suite built on KDE technology and in the KDE Communtiy has recently gotten a lot of press, but is still often underrepresented. In this interview, some key KOffice developers tell us about the recent progress of KDE’s Office suite, about Open Standards and how KOffice plays an active role in bringing Freedom to users. We have talked to Boudewijn Rempt, developer of Krita, core KOffice contributor and KOffice release manager, as well as to David Faure who has been taking part in the OASIS, the organization that is responsible for advancing the OpenDocument (ODF) standard.
David Faure says:
We’re taking part in the OASIS because we truly believe in Open Standards. KOffice standardises on OpenDocument. Free Software and open standards are a perfect match and the way to move forward for a society to ensure vendor-independent access to its data. We’re actively participating in the OASIS since it matches our value, and we believe that one strong standard is in the best interest of our users.
Boudewijn Rempt gives us an overview over what’s happening in the KOffice community.
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.
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.
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
Corey Burger n his 5th part of the 10-parti series: Today we turn to all the improvements for Firefox including the a better way to install plugins and the arrival of Gnash, a Free flash player.So what is this new way to install plugins?
One of the most powerful features of Firefox is all the amazing plugins available for it. However, sometimes those plugins don’t work with the version of Firefox you may have. To solve that problem, the Ubuntu developers have created a list of high-quality tested plugins that can be easily installed in Ubuntu 7.10.
Contrary to previous reports, it would seem the lawsuit against Monsoon Multimedia for violating the GNU General Public License (GPL) in its distribution of BusyBox may not be headed for a quick settlement. Nor will the settlement necessarily be out-of-court.
Yesterday, Monsoon issued a news release that announced that the company was in “settlement negotiations with BusyBox.” Graham Radstone, Monsoon chairman and chief operating officer, said, “Since we intend to and always intended to comply with all open source software license requirements, we are confident that the matter will be quickly resolved.”
However, Daniel B. Ravicher, legal director of the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), which filed the suit on behalf of BusyBox, is more cautious.
“I can confirm that we are discussing settlement,” Ravicher says, “but — contrary to what many in the press seem to believe — no agreement has been reached. Simply coming into compliance now is not sufficient to settle the matter, because that would mean anyone can violate the license until caught, because the only punishment would be to come into compliance.”
In the past, both the Free Software Foundation and the SFLC, the two main defenders of the GPL in North America, have preferred working with companies found in violation of the license to taking them to court. However, now that a case has actually gone to court, the SFLC is apparently less forgiving.
“I can’t discuss the details of what additional things are being sought by our clients, but hopefully we’ll be able to shed light on that if and when we do reach an agreement,” Ravicher says.
Source: Linux.com
The first release candidate of Mandriva Linux 2008, codenamed Galilee, is now available. The release notes are also available via the wiki. A guide to major new features (some of which are not yet implemented in this release candidate), and the detailed technical specifications are also available. This release candidate is available as a three CD or one DVD Free edition (containing no non-free software or drivers) for the x86-32 and x86-64 architectures, with a traditional installer, and as a mini-CD edition for both x86-32 and x86-64 architectures. A One combined live / install CD edition will be released in the near future (problems with unionfs prevented the One edition from being release at the same time as the other editions).
Updated Software:
Once again, Mandriva Linux 2008 will come with the latest release of GNOME, which will be hot off the press at release time. The development releases will feature the latest available releases of GNOME 2.19, the development series for 2.20. New features planned for GNOME 2.20 include:
See the full plan here.
The latest stable KDE 3 release will be included, with all the bug fixes since the previous 3.5.6 release. KDE 3.5.7 is mainly a maintenance release but also comes with some new features :
KDE 4 will be available as an experimental preview, with the latest available pre-release included. The development releases will be tracking KDE 4 development very closely. The changes in KDE 4 are countless and, of course, include the revolutionary Nepomuk semantic desktop system, whose development is being led by Mandriva. There is no single resource for a full list of new features in KDE 4, but Wikipedia gives a good overview.
The new Mandriva XFCE development community will present improved packages for XFCE 4.4.1 in Mandriva Linux 2008. They are working on various areas including integration of the Mandriva themes and menu structure into the XFCE desktop. XFCE will be moved into the supported /main repository, and we hope to build an XFCE-based Mandriva Linux One image for 2008 in addition to the regular GNOME- and KDE-based One images.
As Mandriva Linux 2008 marks a new basesystem (after the previous basesystem was used for Mandriva Linux 2007 and 2007 Spring), it will of course include a new kernel. 2.6.22 will add support for new hardware and also has many interesting new features.
Perhaps the biggest new feature visible to end users will be the new Devicescape (mac80211) wireless networking stack, which provides a superior base with much more common code than the previous kernel wireless stack, allowing drivers to be more reliable and functional.
2.6.22 also includes the new ‘tickless’ technology which will save battery power on laptops, with the effect increasing over time as applications are improved to avoid needlessly waking up the kernel. There’s a good write-up of this system here.
It also includes ALSA 1.0.14, adding support for some newer sound cards and chipsets and improving support for others.
Other improvements include the usual gradual improvements to suspend support, a new scheduler (which will result in improved responsiveness in typical desktop use), and the integration of the ivtv TV card driver (as used, notably, for the Hauppauge PVR series cards). An exhaustive overview of changes between 2.6.21 and 2.6.22 is available here: the same site has similar pages covering the changes back to 2.6.17, the kernel that was included in Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring.
Compiz Fusion, the result of the re-merge between the Compiz and Beryl 3D desktop technologies, will replace Compiz and Beryl in Mandriva Linux 2008. The development branch is currently tracking the pre-release Fusion code, prior to the first official release. New features in Fusion are many, and a video demonstrating some of them is available at YouTube.
Other significant updates will include X.org 7.3, featuring the new XrandR 1.2 framework which vastly improves support for multiple displays and display hotplugging on supported drivers, OpenOffice.org 2.2, featuring improved text rendering, improved PDF exporting and enhanced compatibility with Excel spreadsheets, GCC 4.2 (with a complementary build of 4.3 available as an option in the /main repository) and IcedTea, a GNU project which makes it possible to provide an open source Java implementation based on the code open sourced by Sun as the OpenJDK project. IcedTea will likely not be ready for use as a browser plugin by the time of 2008′s release.
Changes from previous beta releases include:
draknetcenter, the new consolidated network configuration and monitoring tool, is included in this release candidate. For now it is available only by running draknetcenter from a console or a run dialog. This tool is still undergoing revision and improvement: the version you see in this release candidate is not the final design.
A new menu structure, based on an initial proposal by Frederik Himpe, has been implemented in this release candidate. This structure attempts to reduce the amount of nesting in the menus. Applications are split into category groups. In each category group, applications native to the current desktop environment are displayed in the top level, and applications native to other desktop environments are displayed in a sub level. Some applications that are commonly used across many desktop environments are specially configured to always appear in the top level.
The kernel package has now adopted the kernel-tmb spec file, which means that the kernel packages have been renamed. The old kernel is now kernel-desktop. The old kernel-enterprise is now kernel-server. The old kernel-legacy is now kernel-desktop586. A kernel-laptop package is now introduced, which contains several customizations useful to laptops in terms of reducing power usage.
This also means that the official kernel packages now adopt the kernel-tmb style for source and headers. Each kernel package now has its own -devel package – e.g. kernel-desktop586-devel – which contains the source and headers necessary for building external kernel modules. This is the package you should install if you need to compile external kernel modules. The single kernel-source package is of interest only to those who need to build an application against a complete copy of the kernel source, or those interested in building their own kernels.
This release candidate is available as a Free edition for the x86-32 and x86-64 architectures, on three CDs or one DVD, with a traditional installer. It is also available in a mini CD edition for both x86-32 and x86-64 architectures. It will also be available as a One combined live / install CD edition in the near future: issues with unionfs prevented the One edition from being released at the same time as the other editions.
The images are available from any official Mandriva mirror site in the /devel/iso/2008.0 subdirectory. For the list of Mandriva mirrors see CookerMirrors.
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