Posted by jamba on July 31, 2009
Including varying levels of desktop support.
First, a little praise for Canonical: Now is exactly the right time to promote Ubuntu to individuals and small business owners. The reason: We’re nearing another PC market inflection point, where millions of uses will be forced to decide whether to hold tight to Windows XP or leap to Windows 7. Converting some of those users from Windows to Ubuntu sounds like a logical, timely strategy.
http://www.workswithu.com/2009/07/30/canonical-launching-switch-to-ubuntu-migration-services/
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Posted by jamba on July 30, 2009
After a dispute with Linus Torvalds, the long time developer and Linux kernel maintainer Alan Cox has stopped development of the Linux TTY subsystem. A debate took place on the Linux kernel mailing list over the question of whether changes in the TTY code should, or could, affect the operation of existing programs
Dispute between Linux gurus Alan Cox and Linus Torvalds
Open Letter to Lance Davis
July 30, 2009 04:39 UTC
This is an Open Letter to Lance Davis from fellow CentOS Developers
It is regrettable that we are forced to send this letter but we are left with no other options. For some time now we have been attempting to resolve these problems:
You seem to have crawled into a hole … and this is not acceptable.
You have long promised a statement of CentOS project funds; to this date this has not appeared.
You hold sole control of the centos.org domain with no deputy; this is not proper.
You have, it seems, sole ‘Founders’ rights in the IRC channels with no deputy ; this is not proper.
When I (Russ) try to call the phone numbers for UK Linux, and for you individually, I get a telco intercept ‘Lines are temporarily busy’ for the last two weeks. Finally yesterday, a voicemail in your voice picked up, and I left a message urgently requesting a reply. Karanbir also reports calling and leaving messages without your reply.
Please do not kill CentOS through your fear of shared management of the project.
Clearly the project dies if all the developers walk away.
Please contact me, or any other signer of this letter at once, to arrange for the required information to keep the project alive at the ‘centos.org’ domain.
Sincerely,
Russ Herrold
Ralph Angenendt
Karanbir Singh
Jim Perrin
Donavan Nelson
Tim Verhoeven
Tru Huynh
Johnny Hughes
http://www.centos.org/
Also on the website, it states:
Facts Regarding CentOS and the Open Letter to Lance Davis
- CentOS is not Dead or going away.
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Posted by jamba on July 30, 2009
http://mybroadband.co.za/news/Software/8949.html
But Linux’s declining popularity on netbooks also had something to do with the choice of Linux versions that PC makers chose to run on their hardware. Acer’s awfully-named Linpus Linux was adequate but had none of the coolness of something like Fedora or Ubuntu Linux. And Asus’ EEE Linux also failed to sparkle.
Easy Peasy
Now there is a version of Linux that runs exceptionally well on the likes of the Asus EEE, even on the smallest 4G version with its slimmed down solid state drive. Easy Peasy Linux (http://www.geteasypeasy.com/) was previously called Ubuntu EEE and, as its former name suggests, is based on the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution.
I installed Eeebuntu (NBR) on my wife’s eeePC. Like it a lot, but this looks really similar.
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Posted by jamba on July 29, 2009
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/26567/1090/
The Debian GNU/Linux Project has decided to adopt time-based development freezes from now on, on a two-year cycle.
The policy was proposed and adopted at the project’s yearly conference which is taking place in Caceres, Spain.
According to the scheme, details of which have been released by project spokesperson, Meike Reichle, from now on freezes will take place in the December of every odd year – 2009, 2011 and so on.
edit!
http://mdzlog.alcor.net/2009/07/29/debian-is-not-switching-to-time-based-releases/
they will use the same approach as in previous releases, where they set criteria for release-critical bugs, and release when all release-critical bugs are closed.
The difference is that they will schedule the freeze date in advance. This means that there is a bounded time period available for new development, where things sometimes need to be broken in order to make progress. Once the freeze point is reached, Debian developers will minimize breakage and focus on stabilization. Once the RC bug count drops to zero, they’ll release as usual. That could happen soon after the freeze, or it could take a long time, depending on how many bugs are introduced during development.
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Posted by jamba on July 27, 2009
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Posted by jamba on July 27, 2009
I’ve often wondered this same thing, myself.
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/opensource/?p=811
Adoption = savings, freedom, updates
Here in Kentucky the public schools are seriously strapped for cash – to the point that arts, humanities, and teachers (a precious commodity) are being dropped to save money. I have a suggestion for the public school systems around the country – adopt open source software and you will save a lot of money. Not only will you save a lot of money, you will also be able to keep all of your software up to date.
This would not be the case if the schools adopted open source software. No longer would schools be using out of date and unsupported operating systems (I know schools and institutions still using Window 98 because they can’t afford to upgrade). Every school would have the latest-greatest software and the students would be somewhat closer to the cutting edge.
If adopting open source software would allow schools to save thousands upon thousands of dollars per year (per school) I have to ask, again:
Why are schools across the country not migrating to open source software so they can focus the dollars spent on software in such a way to further the education of our children?
Educational institutions are supposed to be a pillar of learning and intellegent decisions. But it seems, as far as software is concerned, our educational system is consistently making some farily unintelligent choices.
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Posted by jamba on July 27, 2009
Of everything I have tried so far, my top 3 favorites at this point in time are:
- Ubuntu
- Sabayon
- sidux
- Linux Mint
1. I like Ubuntu a lot, and I have been using it for quite a while. The LTS is stable, and does not give me any problems–or they are few and far enough between that I can’t really remember the last issue I had. I use this on my desktop. Pros: stable. just works. Cons: can be a pain to configure with codecs/dvd burn type stuff. Also not always with the latest software.
2. Sabayon is pretty awesome. based on Gentoo, it is definitely powerful, and runs well even on this junky-ish laptop. Entropy is well laid out and handles updates and package dependencies. Also, emerge/portage is available for packages not contained in the Sabayon repositories. Pros: fast. flexible. stable, for the most part. everything works as it should. Cons: have had a couple of bugs, but definitely nothing major.
3. sidux. another one that is very cool. sidux is based on Debian, so it can use Synaptic GUI with the very powerful apt-get command. the debian repositories are filled with tons of stuff, and .deb packages are very common. this is a rolling release distro, so there are no real upgrades in the normal sense. just run a command and everything is updated to the latest version. neat. Pros: bleeding edge software (and lots of it!). rolling release model means no big upgrades. fast. Cons: things can break when running the latest–the downside of being based off of unstable branch/sid.
4. Linux Mint. This is like a better version of Ubuntu. comes with codecs, video drivers and things preconfigured. all of the Ubuntu repositories are available. Pros: stable, lots of software available. Cons: can’t really think of any, unless the style just doesn’t suit you.
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Posted by jamba on July 24, 2009
A while back I mentioned that I wanted to start testing out/reviewing several GNU/Linux and BSD operating systems. I’ve been doing this, however I have found that it is awfully imprudent (or maybe just overambitious) for me to do a full in-depth review of each one.
That really isn’t much my style, anyhow. I don’t really observe all the specifics about much of anything. I’m more of a “generalizer.”
So, instead of having the goal of writing a full review of each one, what I am going to do is have a personal synopsis of each one, and how well it meets my criterion for being an OS that I like, or could even come to love.
Mainly, the things I would like to see:
- a decent-sized software repository
- a way to get updates (both for newer software, and security) that is not too complicated
- a few desktop environments to choose from
- stability
- support of newer hardware
- speed
- ease of use (this does not necessarily mean “no command line” or “no config files”)
Obviously, can’t really have everything–but that’s why I would like to see them, instead of them being “must-haves.”
So far I have used:
- CentOS
- CrunchBang
- Linux Mint
- Mandriva
- openSuse (although I wouldn’t say I actually got to USE it)
- Pardus (2008.2 and 2009)
- PCBSD
- Puppy
- Sabayon
- sidux
- Slackware
- Ultimate Edition
- VecorLinux
Some of these I haven’t used very extensively–Puppy and sidux, for example.
My day-to-day distros:
- Desktop: Ubuntu 8.04 LTS “Hardy” (been using this since it came out)
- Laptop: Sabayon 4.2 Gnome
Of those my top 3 favorites so far are:
- Linux Mint
- Sabayon
- Pardus
My least favorite 3 (1 being the worst for me):
- openSuse
- CentOS
- Slackware
I don’t want to get flamed for these. I do not mean that they are bad, or even that I disliked them– I just would not choose them for my daily use, for various reasons.
I’ll write a little more in-depth overview of each as I get the chance.
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Posted by jamba on July 15, 2009
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