Life without Windows or OS X

GNU/Linux is quite possibly the most important free software achievement since the original Space War, or, more recently, Emacs. It has developed into an operating system for business, education, and personal productivity. GNU/Linux is no longer only for UNIX wizards who sit for hours in front of a glowing console. Are you thinking about switching to Linux and want to learn how to use it? Have you been using GNU/Linux for some time and want to learn even more? This is the place for you.

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

"Section 1201 exemptions."

House Bill Seeks to Exempt Backups from DMCA Violation
By Scott M. Fulton, III, BetaNews
February 27, 2007, 6:40 PM

In an announcement this afternoon prior to the publication of the bill by the Library of Congress, Reps. Rick Boucher (D - VA) and John Doolittle (R - CA) introduced a bill that apparently would grant a new exemption for private, non-commercial copies of digital content, from violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act - technically creating a new class of "Section 1201 exemptions."

more here

Monday, February 26, 2007

Linux In The New Year...part two


What else is new for GNU/Linux in 2007?

Many people may imagine that installing Linux is difficult, but in fact for the most part it isn't at all problematic. Most modern distributions of Linux have tackled the installation problem so most of its difficulties have been solved.


Lets look at in the summer of 2006, Intel released open source software drivers for the newest generation Intel graphics , including support for 2D and 3D graphics features. In years gone by; graphic vendors had been unwilling to open source drivers that supported hardware acceleration for 3D graphics. A proprietary driver, even if it worked, rose complications at times. Well good for Intel.

Which takes us to Xgl and AIGLX.

Xgl will only get better 2007 as it is designed to take advantage of modern graphics cards via their OpenGL drivers. It supports hardware acceleration of all X, OpenGL and XVideo applications and graphical effects. It offers a new and intuitive navigation experience that helps you more easily find and organize your applications and files, but Xgl goes further by delivering a truly next-generation desktop experience. They turn the desktop into a malleable 3D environment with features such as 'wobbly' windows that can be stretched and pulled, true real-time opacity, and treating the entire desktop as a multi-faceted rotable 'cube'.There is also AIGLX which can do do the same however,NVIDIA graphic cards currently lack any support for AIGLX in some cases. Many features in Xgl and AIGLX even surpass what we've seen in Vista.


Next on the list: Adobe Systems has released Flash Player 9 for Linux.

Version 9 of the Flash Player, they say, runs scripts up to ten times faster than previous versions, and also allows programmers to write portable applications exploiting more of the capabilities of Adobe's Flex 2 development platform.

For those that use OpenOffice.org, new in version 2.1. Impress, now supports an option for multiple monitors to allow users to choose where to display the presentation. The spreadsheet application, Calc, has improved on its HTML export capability so that browsers are able to recreate the original spreadsheet's appearance more accurately and Base now has improved support Microsoft Access.

The Portland Project was established to help get a greater GNU/Linux foothold in the desktop market.

Linux is a kernel, part of an operating system—not a complete operating environment in the sense that Windows is a complete operating environment. So in other words, Windows has a single interface. You have no choice in the matter. But Linux has no built-in GUI interface. People are free to choose among many commercially available or free GUI X-Window interfaces, such as Gnome, KDE, and Xfce
each of which provides a different look and feel. That has been a problem in the past; the differences in GUI X-Window interfaces extend to the programming interfaces as well, meaning that software developers must either support multiple GUIs or choose which GUI(s) they plan to support; ie Amarok and Exaile. some developers would just generally target one or two primary GUI programming
models. The Portland Project aims at resolving a number of key factors that are believed to reduce the adoption rate of Linux distributions as desktop operating systems. The project has Alex Graveley (GNOME) and George Staikos (KDE) as two of the task force leaders, who will look to gain feedback from ISVs, integration possibilities, and possibly create a draft implementation as well. The release of Portland 1.0 is expected to accelerate adoption of Linux on the desktop. According to market analyst IDG, this will help the desktop Linux market grow to around $10 billion by 2008.

Part ONE

Friday, February 23, 2007

BetaNews: Microsoft Responds to Alleged Ballmer 'Threats' Against Linux

By Scott M. Fulton, III, BetaNews

February 22, 2007, 4:06 PM

"Comments made by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer last Thursday to an analyst conference for the most part went unnoticed until stories this morning cited excerpts from a freshly published transcript of that conference. In one such story, an excerpted partial sentence was interpreted as part of a statement that Microsoft may yet exercise its option to sue manufacturers of Linux operating systems other than Novell for infringement of patent.

"A fresh read of the extended excerpt from that transcript, however, suggests at first this may not have been Ballmer's intended meaning..."

Complete Story

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Life without Windows

This the new year and yes still on subject for the most part. The subject being: Life without Windows or OS X, the 2 big dogs on the planet. While Windows is the dominant desktop computing platform, it isn't the only game in town. Millions of people live every day without Windows XP or Vista all the time. I use Windows on my terms, if and when I choose to. I use open Suse, Linspire, and PClinuxOS for almost everything I have ever done in Windows. When I say "almost everything," I mean that Linux at this time does not have the support of many ISV's as Windows XP. That is changing....slowly, but that is changing.


K.D.E desktop

You know there was a time when a time Microsoft was able to charge PC companies a Windows licence fee for every PC they shipped, whether or not the PCs actually shipped with Windows preinstalled. Cool deal while it lasted, but regulatory concerns have subsequently eroded Microsoft's ability to collect a Windows licence fee on, say, a PC that ships with Linux preinstalled.

And last year Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer’s declaration that Linux “uses our intellectual property” , a horse thought long dead by many. Novell objected to Ballmer’s characterization of its patent deal with Microsoft and some users accusing him of trying to sow fears about using Linux. Then Microsoft later released a statement saying it “respects Novell’s point of view on the patent issue, even while we respectfully take a different view.” Microsoft acknowledged that Novell is “absolutely right” in saying it didn’t admit to any Linux patent problems as part of their agreement.

They have 95% of the desktop market in the US, it seems they want the other 5%. They over there know what we all know. No matter what; people have no intention of trying something new no matter how many articles they read about someone going to Linux because they have had it with XP. For every one person who has made the switch to Linux, there are thousands who are buying their first computer with Windows on it.

So what is this fight for 5% about? Truth be told, My parents have got an ancient system at home that runs KDE and open SUSE well enough, see that's the great thing about Linux, it's light enough to run on just about anything. They try not to leave an old system behind. But if you are a hardware manufacturer, that is news you don't want to hear. Windows Vista will help PC vendors sell more desktops than Linux will. Bought a system new in 2003, just got it paid for a week ago. Well its time to go in deat again for a Vista PC able PC.


Linux on the desktop needs strong support from groups outside the Linux community and its just not really there yet. Microsoft has nothing to worry about. They just want 100% of every thing. In guess every one does, but i like every one else was taught to share at a young age.

Here are things that have made Linux better the past few years...



KDE-based Live Installer for Knoppix+Kanotix:


Klik allows you to run applications from a single file (Like OSX application dirs), but its for linux.

To install the Klik client:

1) Press Alt-F2 and paste:

wget klik.atekon.de/client/install -O -|sh

2) Restart your browser.

To uninstall klik client:

wget klik.atekon.de/client/uninstall -O -|sh

Note...If you get: need to install "rpm2cpio" It means you have to install “rpm” on your OS

The is not a package management system. It doesn't strive to replace apt-get, dpkg, rpm, yum, apt4rpm, portage, smart, autopackage, or CNR.



open-source CNR CNR.com

Linspire released a new open-source CNR client in December for other popular desktop Linux distributions called CNR.com. Users of CNR.com, will be able to safely and legally add support to their Linux desktop for things such as mp3, Windows Media, Quick Time, Java, Flash, ATI drivers, nVidia drivers, and so on. Both Debian and RPM distributions will be supported. During 2007, CNR.com will be rolling out support for current versions of the following distributions: Debian, Fedora Core, Linspire/Freespire, OpenSUSE last but not least Ubuntu.


There are those in the Linux world that would want Will Gates to just go away. I am not one. Locking someone into open source is just as bad as locking someone into proprietary software.

Sunday, February 11, 2007

instant messaging (IM) client for Linux.

Gaim is a multi-protocol instant messaging client for Linux, BSD, MacOS X and Windows. It is compatible with AIM and ICQ (Oscar protocol), MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu and Zephyr networks.
Gaim users can log in to multiple accounts on multiple IM networks simultaneously. This means that you can be chatting with friends on AOL Instant Messenger, talking to a friend on Yahoo Messenger, and sitting in an IRC channel all at the same time.

Gaim supports many features of the various networks, such as file transfer, away messages, typing notification, and MSN window closing notification. It also goes beyond that and provides many unique features. A few popular features are Buddy Pounces, which notify you, send a message, play a sound, or run a program when a specific buddy goes away, signs online, or returns from idle; and plugins, consisting of text replacement, a buddy ticker, extended message notification, iconify on away and more.
Gaim runs on a number of platforms, including Windows, Linux, and Qtopia (Sharp Zaurus and iPaq).

Gaim integrates well with GNOME 2 and the KDE 3.1 system tray, as well as Windows' own system tray. This allows you to work with Gaim without requiring the buddy list window to be up at all times.

Friday, February 09, 2007

Canonical and Linspire Announce Technology Partnership


Linspire to base Linspire/Freespire on Ubuntu and Canonical to use the CNR commercial software e-commerce technology.



LONDON & SAN DIEGO, February 8th, 2007 - Canonical Ltd, the lead sponsor of the popular Ubuntu operating system, and Linspire, Inc. the developer of the commercial desktop Linux operating system of the same name, today announced plans for a technology partnership that integrates core competencies from each company into the other's open source Linux offerings.

Linspire will transition from Debian to Ubuntu as the base for their Linspire and Freespire desktop operating systems. (http://www.linspire.com/OSblocks). This will mean that Linspire users will benefit from Ubuntu's fast moving development cycles and focus on usability. The Freespire community will start seeing early releases of Freespire 2.0 based on Ubuntu in the first quarter of 2007, with the final release expected in the 2nd quarter of 2007, following the official release of Ubuntu 7.04 in April. more here....

 

Word processing

Word processing developed as specialized programs on mainframe computers. The term word processing was invented by IBM in the late 1960s. By 1971 it was recognized by the New York Times as a "buzz word” who knows.

OpenOffice.org is a free office suite of applications available for many different operating systems including Linux, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X. It supports the OpenDocument standard for data interchange.
OpenOffice.org is based on StarOffice, an office suite developed by StarDivision and acquired by Sun Microsystems in August 1999. The source code of the suite was released in July 2000 with the aim of reducing the dominant market share of Microsoft Office by providing a free, open and high-quality alternative. OpenOffice.org is free software, available under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).

If you want to write something. what you need is...OpenOffice.org Writer which is an open source/free software word processor which is a component of the OpenOffice.org software package. Writer is a word processor similar to Microsoft Word, with a roughly equivalent range of features. It provides a number of features not present in Word, including being able to export to the PDF format natively.
As with the entire OpenOffice.org suite, Writer can be used across a variety of platforms, including Mac OS X, Windows, GNU/Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris.

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Dell's open-source n Series desktop

Are you looking for a desktop on which you can run Linux® or other open-source operating systems? Look no further.

Dell's new open-source n Series desktop solution provides customers with a Dimension E520, E521 or C521 desktop without an installed or included Microsoft® operating system. With the n Series desktop, customers have the flexibility to install an alternative operating system (such as a version of Linux®), and help reduce the price of this system. In addition, the n Series desktop comes with a non-formatted hard drive ready for your custom installation. Dell's n Series desktop ships with a copy of FreeDos, an open-source operating system that is ready to install.

 

Dimension n Series E520
Pentium® D Processor 820 with Dual CoreTechnology(2.80GHz,800FSB)
FreeDOS™ included in the box, ready to install
1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz- 2DIMMs
Free Upgrade! 250GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache


Dimension n Series E521
AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core 3800+
FreeDOS™ included in the box, ready to install
512MB Single Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz - 1DIMM
250GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™

Dimension n Series C521
AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core 3800+
FreeDOS™ included in the box, ready to install
512MB Single Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz - 1DIMM
250GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™

Exaile media player and Mint in the new year...

If you using linux Mint 2.1, based on Ubuntu 6.10, you have to get Exaile media player, for it incorporates many of the cool things from AmaroK , like the automatic retrieving of album art, handling of large libraries, lyrics fetching, artist/album information via the wikipedia, last.fm support, optional iPod support if you have python-gpod installed .Exaile also includes a built in shoutcast directory browser and tabbed playlists. It's GTK+ based, so it runs more smoothly in GNOME.

Mint 2.1 Bea runs on the Gnome desktop. For those who don't know, Gnome got its start in the Americas, and development remains centered there till this day. Gnome, for the most part resembles the classic Mac in terms of layout.. There's a menu bar atop the screen from which applications are launched; a clock and other applets often live in this bar, too.

The purists have really got to recognize that people want to watch Flash movies or play MP3 tracks or Windows Media Tracks. isn't time to combine the power of open source with proprietary code, because its just a simple fundamental core of the Internet experience. Even Ubuntu 7.04, scheduled for release on 19 April 2007 reportly will be including some proprietary drivers. A large proportion of people using Ubuntu has new computers and need a non-Free driver for reasonable performance from their graphics card, wireless card, or modem, because there is no Free driver available, they have little choice in the matter.

The Ireland-based Linux Mint project team, whose goal is to provide a more complete out-of-the-box experience by including browser plugins, media codecs, support for DVD playback, Java, and other components.