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.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

McAfee blames unpatched IE bug; Microsoft to release security advisory later today

January 14, 2010 04:00 PM ET

Computerworld - Hackers exploited an unpatched vulnerability in Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) browser to break into some of the firms targeted in a widespread attack that compromised Google's and Adobe's corporate networks, McAfee said today.

more here...

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Songbird, the open source iTunes

Philips To Bundle Songbird with Music Players

posted by Thom Holwerda on Sat 9th Jan 2010 19:52 UTC, submitted by John Mills

Songbird, the open source iTunes alternative (which we reported on earlier), has landed a big deal with Philips. The Dutch electronics manufacturer will bundle Songbird with its GoGear line of .mp3 players as the music management and sync tool. While this is good news for Songbird, there are is a catch.

more here...

In 2010 the penguin will be a force

Ever heard of Freescale?

Well...Freescsale, supplier of the chip that powers the Kindle as well as my Arcos 5, has just developed a 7-inch tablet reference design for tablets starting 2010. it features a resistive display. While Freescale could have gone with the capacitive one, it restrained itself to resistive to keep the overall cost of the Smartbook as-low-as possible. A "smartbook" is larger and more versatile than a smartphone but isn't as large as a netbook and doesn't run traditional Windows operating systems. Their smartbook includes ATi’s HD decoder, 4-64GB SSD, single USB port, micro-SD slot, accelerometer , light sensor, Bluetooth 2.1, GPS webcam and headphone jack. Freescale says that in their own tests, it can run for 12hrs with WiFi and the display on (80% brightness).

The OS for this tablet will be primarily browser based and Frescale’s Smart-Book Tablet will run on either the Android-Linux mobile OS or custom Gnu-Linux, providing a web-based mobile computer in a low-profile, finger-friendly design. With a customized Debian Gnu/Linux build, we could theoretically install Linux applications onto it. This smartbook platform is intended to run with Adobe Flash Player and other multimedia plug-ins, PDF and image viewers, a mail client, an RSS reader, an office suite, and widgets for Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Weather SMS and other applications.

Linux smart phones coming 2010.

The Nexus one will the best Android/Linux powered phone out there. It’s going the fastest and most coolest looking smartphone on the market today, solidly I think, beating the iPhone in most a lot of ways. The most obvious thing it has over the iPhone is the 480 x 800 OLED capacitive touch screen.

The Nokia N8, will be Nokia's latest GNU/Linux smartphone. With the Nokia N8 handset, people can create compelling content, connect to their favorite social networks and enjoy on-demand Web TV programs and Ovi Store software apps.

The Desktop.

In the 2010 desktop environments continue to evolve. Gnu/Linux these days just works--no drama with day-to-day Internet activities like e-mail, Web browsing, IM, Twitter. As it is open source it doesn’t give them the same level of problems as Microsoft or Macintosh. Yes barriers to Linux adoption for the masses are still there, including compatibility with popular software such as Apple's iTunes.


Could this be the year of Linux 64 bit?

The main benefit of running a 64-bit operating system is that it allows applications to access more memory. If you have an application which would like to access more than 4 GB of RAM, then a 64-bit system is for you. But one is not likely to find many Linux applications which need that much memory most may even notice performance improvements when running a desktop on a 64-bit operating system.