Couple of days ago, there was a huge debate (argument ?)  between Matt Mullenweg  – developer of WordPress and Chris Pearson – developer of Thesis premium theme over twitter which then extended to Mixergy.

Crux of the argument is the disagreement amognst the two over the licensing terms. Matt believes that Thesis should adopt GPL{#aptureLink_Q1kNtLltNY} which as Wikipedia states:

The GPL is an example of a powerful copyleft license that requires derived works to be available under the same copyleft.

Chris, on the otherhand disagrees with this. The full transcript of their discussion is available on Mixergy, here are some quotes which I found interesting:

Been a while since I posted ;) For some strange reason, recently I got an urge to try out ArchLinux{#aptureLink_BWSwiwROlt}. After much deliberation finally decided to try out ArchLinux again, in VirtualBox{#aptureLink_YQu9cIpVYm}. My little install guide I compiled as I was reading through the Official ArchLinux Install Guide{#aptureLink_OrVThoOrTI} + Beginner’s Guide{#aptureLink_AMQvvRytbx}.

Please note: This is highly customized according to *my* requirements and nowhere as thorough /generalized as the official guides. Still, it might help you. Here we go –

Howdy folks! Been a *loong* time since I last posted isn’t it? Just been busy with work & travel (won’t bore you with the details, just check my personal blog{#aptureLink_20DGMzo67U}).

I’ve been looking forward to the upcoming openSUSE 11.2 version ( it’s no secret that I’m a fan of openSUSE{#aptureLink_yxkV6H9kot}), but the main problem for me was that I don’t like holding onto optical media, and have a 8gig USB flash disk, especially for these things.

Unfortunately  openSUSE has been lacking a install/boot from USB flash drive for quite sometime, upto now that is. The last Milestone (M8) and the first release candidate, RC1 includes support for booting from USB flash disks.

You will need access to a Linux environment, inorder to accomplish this step.

It’s been a while since I last used Ubuntu – I have generally shunned away from Ubuntu since Fiesty – for the main reason that I’m more of KDE guy, I never really liked Gnome, and my experience with Fiesty was rather unsavoury. You might say ‘hey you want KDE try Kubuntu’ –  Kubuntu – well I won’t get started on that. I’ve been using Sabayon and was pretty darn impressed with that. With Jaunty being due for release soon, I decided to check Jaunty, even more so after Manish{#aptureLink_LdqSI5xV6h} kept raving about Jaunty’s performance{#aptureLink_LyArR3kODf}.

Ever wondered if there’s a quick and easy way to write an iso file to a CD-R/DVD-R ? Don’t want to open K3B or Brasero ? Here’s a handy way of writing the iso file.

A while ago, I’d written a post on howto mount CD images, such as .iso, .mdf files etc via the command prompt using the mount command. In the post, among the comments, Sumeet had asked if there was a way to do all of this without having to type lengthy commands. Well yes there is! And it can’t get simpler than this!

Bang of the release schedule, the next version of Ubuntu, Ubuntu 8.10 dubbed the Intrepid Ibex was released on October 30th.

Ubuntu Intrepix Ibex brings in some new features like

LiveCDs are a great way to try out (new) Linux distros on your system.

Unfortunately CDs get scratched pretty easily, and can turn into a coaster pretty soon.

With prices of USB pen drives at rock bottom, they’re probably the best way to try out LiveCDs. Generally its not that easy to make a bootable LiveCD using USB pen/flash drives. If you’re a Fedora lover then here’s a very easy way to create a bootable USB pen drive.

Couple of days ago, the second beta to the second version of the immensely popular and fantastic audio player Amarok was released by the Amarok team.

The second beta brings in some drastic changes, the main one being SQLite no longer being the default backend, and PostgreSQL support being dropped, in favour of a single backend, that being MySQL-Embedded platform. Other notable changes include improved scripting support, the return of lyric fetching and incremental scanner support.

In this day modern day, most software installations can be done using repositories and package managers. However, you might face a situation of having only the source files availalble with you – you probably would want to try out bleeding edge software, which hasn’t been packaged yet, or isn’t available in the repos yet.

So if you really want to try it out, then the only way would be to download the source files and compile them.

Contrary to what most people think – Compiling from sources isn’t that complicated – the entire process takes 3 commands.

Admin’s Note: This is a guest post by Aditya. Though this post was drafted on 1st July, my work commitments and rather bad memory prevented this post being published. Due apologies.

I know that a title is a bit harsh but I am afraid it is true.

First lets get into some technical stuff.

Dream Linux is a Debian based distro(like Ubuntu) . It has both Xfce and Gnome interface. I’m reviewing the Gnome version.

The Installation

The first screen you get after booting into the CD ask you to choose the interface(Gnome or Xfce)

It also has memtest for testing memory but the CD cant be checked for defects, which is a very important feature, since the disk has to be free of defects as it is an operating system.

I choose the Gnome interface and booted. Here’s where I faced my first nightmare. The whole thing is pretty slow. Even after booting completely. I do know that a live CD is slow as it is limited by the optical drive but this was way slower than other live C.D’s.

It’s the season of Linux distribution releases! Ubuntu was released about 3 weeks ago, and now it’s time for Fedora 9, aka “Sulphur”. So What’s new?

PackageKit

Much Like Ubuntu’s Add/Remove Programs, Fedora gets a similar one, known as “PacakgeKit”.PackageKit is a cross-distribution package management solution that has a complete yum backend. It has been designed to make installing and updating software on your computer easier, and aims to unify all the graphical package management tools used in different distributions.

GNOME Desktop 2.22 Release

As with Ubuntu 8.04, GNOME 2.22 will power Fedora 9. GNOME 2.22 features lots of new features and improvements, such as a new Nautilus that uses GVFS as its backend. GVFS makes it possible to fix shortcomings of Nautilus such as the inability to restore files from trash, pause and undo file operations, and will make it possible to escalate user privileges for certain operations using PolicyKit for authentication. It also brings a significant performance boost to many operations.

KDE Desktop 4.0.3

Quite a lot of people have been waiting for the latest release of Ubuntu, version 8.04 dubbed the “Hardy Heron” – primarily because it’s a LTS release. So how does the Hardy Heron stack up? I decided to jump into the Hardy Heron brigade and have a look. Is it worth the upgrade?

Read on to find out more!

System Specifications

I used my beloved Dell Inspiron 1520(Intel Core2Duo T5250 @ 1.5 Ghz, 2 GB DDR2 667 RAM, nVidia 8600m GT, Intel 3945 Pro/Wireless) for testing out the Hardy Heron.

I had a pretty bad time with Gutsy – no sound despite the sound card being detected, LCD brightness varying as if its possessed etc – these resulted with me removing Gutsy and going back to openSUSE 10.3.

Also, generally I’ve always tested the 32-bit versions of most distros. This time I decided to break the tradition and go with the 64-bit version.

It’s that time of the year. Everyone’s excited and looking forward to it. Ofcourse it’s the release of the next LTS version of Ubuntu, Ubuntu 8.04, aka Hardy Heron. So what’re new features expected in Hardy Heron you ask? Well here are some of them

Laptop Review:

As few might be knowing I’ve purchased a Dell Inspiron 1520. Here’s a short review on it.

Laptop Specifications:

• Processor: Intel Core2Duo T5250 @ 1.5 GHz, 2 MB L2 Cache
• Main memory: 2x1GB DDR2 667 MHz Dual Channel mode
• HDD: Fujitsu MHW2160BH 160GB SATA
• DVD-RW: TSSTcorp DVD+/-RW TS-L632H 8X
• Sound Card: Intel HDA ICH8(82801)
• Graphics Card: nvidia 8600m GT with 256MB RAM
• NIC: BroadCom BCM4401 100
• WiFi: Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG
• Bluetooth: BroadCom BCM2045
• System Chipset: Intel GM965
• Expansion & Misc ports: 4xUSB, 1xIEEE1394, 1xRJ-45, 1xRJ-11, 1xVGA Out, 2xExpressCard 54, 1xHeadphone out, 1xMicrophone In, 1xMedia Card reader(SD/MMC/MS Pro).

Phoronix reports that NVIDIA’s 169.04 driver brings out a lot of improvements over its predecessor. This X.Org driver contained a number of GeForce 8 fixes, initial support for the GeForce 8800GT graphics card, monitoring of PowerMizer state information, and other changes. 

What Phoronix had not tested, however, at that time was a performance comparison of the new driver and the previous 100.14.23 driver. The undocumented fact we have found is that this 169.04 Beta driver does deliver performance improvements for the GeForce 8 series on Linux.

Max Spevack, Fedora’s Project Leader speaks about the release of Fedora 8 at the [Mailing List

]1

On Thursday November 8th (about 3:00 PM GMT), Fedora 8 will go live to the world, and you will be able to download it at http://fedoraproject.org

The bits are all finalized, the mirrors are synced, and the torrents are primed. But until we flip the switch, you will have to tide yourself over with this — my personal Fedora 8 release announcement.

Fortunately, it’s pretty long, so if you read it all, Fedora 8 might be released by the time you have finished!

While I was having a discussion on some of the popular Linux distribution on my favorite forum, CHIP TownSquare one of the members(thanks, Aditya :D) suggested me to try out DreamLinux. And I did that, downloaded DreamLinux 2.2 Multimedia GL edition. Since I was using my office PC, I couldn’t install this on the physical HD, had to make use of VMWare.

DreamLinux is a Brazilian distro, based on Morphix, and Debian. The Brazilian connection is evident from the Live CD screen: