GNOME 2.22 Released!

The GNOME community announced the release of GNOME 2.22 after six months of development. With its aim to provide ease of use, stability, and first class internationalization and accessibility support, let’s see some of the new features of this release.

Like any other release, this release also has new features, improvements, bug fixes, and translations. New application named Cheese. Cheese lets you take photos and make videos using your computer's webcam. It’s an open-source clone of Apple's Photobooth. Vinagre is a new remote desktop client that supports multiple simultaneous connections.

Some newly introduced features include window compositing on capable platforms. By default, this feature is disabled. GNOME has also added live previews when switching windows, transparency effects, simplified keyboard settings, improvements to tomboy and much more. Evolution, GNOME’s messaging and calendar application has also evolved to support Google Calendars and custom message labels (tagging) for your email.

So far we discussed about UI and utilities enhancement, but GNOME comes with some architectural changes as well! Two major changes include: GVFS and GIO. GVFS is the replacement for GNOME-VFS and GIO, a new shared library that is part of GLib and provides the API for GVFS. GVFS will provide a network-transparent virtual filesystem layer for GTK+ and provide better APIs for developers.

I just started GNOME 2.22 VMware Live Demo download which is around 1G and can’t wait to get it downloaded. As of now, Live CD is still not available. New version will be available for installation in Fedora 9 and Ubuntu 8.04. And I am looking forward to move from Ubuntu 6.06 to 8.04! :)

KDE becomes Cross-platform!

KDE one of the most used open-source desktop environment is going cross-platform. Phonon, which was developed by KDE community as a part of KDE 4.0 release. Now KDE community, with the help of Trolltech will be extending Phonon to all major desktop including Windows® and Mac® OS X.

The core KDE library, and some applications like KDEOffice,Amarok audio player are being ported. Windows KDE (still in starting stages) is available for download at KDE mirrors.

Trolltech's Qt® has been a high-performance, cross-platform software library available for both open-source and commercial developers. It is also the base library used by KDE. Initially only linux verion of Qt was available in GPL, but Trolltech has decided to make Windows version available under the GPL too with the introduction of Qt 4. With these changes, you will see KDEOffice and KDE PIM softwares on windows environment.

This appraoch of bringing KDE as a cross-platform is welcomed. But I am still doubt how effective this is going to be. Mac has one of the test UI and is much user friendly than any other environment will user accept a change from the default Mac OS UI to KDE? Another concern is will the linux adoption reduce if this "KDE adoption" become popular?

Linus on where Linux is heading to..

I just read an interview from InformationWeek with Linus Torvalds, the creator of linux about where linux is headed in 2008. Linus is very exicted about the solid-state drives, graphics and wireless networking. When asked about Linux and Windows server development, here is what is had to say:

I simply don't use Microsoft products, not because I hate them, but because they aren't interesting to me.

If you are interested, here is the whole story.

Mandriva's open letter to Steve Ballmer

I came across Mandirva' Blog and site after a long time. I have used the distro when it was named Mandrake. One of their blog entries caught me. It shows how unethical Microsoft is.

It’s an open letter to Micorsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Here is the full post:

Dear Steve,

Hi, this is François, from Mandriva.

I’m sure we are way too small for you to have heard of us. You know, we are one of these Linux company who is working hard to make its place in the market. We publish a Linux Distro, called Mandriva Linux. Mandriva Linux 2008, our last edition, has a pretty good review and we’re proud of it. You should try it, I’m sure you’d like it. We also happen to be one of the Linux companies that did not sign an agreement with your company (nobody’s perfect).

We recently closed a deal with the Nigerian Government. Maybe you heard about it, Steve. They were looking for an affordable hardware+software solution for their schools. The initial batch was 17,000 machines. We had a good deal to respond to their need: the Classmate PC from Intel, with a customized Mandriva Linux solution. We presented the solution to the local government, they liked the machine, they liked our system, they liked what we offered them, especially the fact that it was open, and that we could customize it for their country and so on.

Then, your people get in the game and the deal got more competitive. I would not say it got dirty, but someone could have said that. Your team fought and fought again the deal, but still the customer was happy with the CMPC and Mandriva.
We actually closed the deal, we took the order, we qualified the software, we got the machine shipped. To conclude, we did our job. And, the machine are being delivered right now.

Now, we hear a different story from the customer: “we shall pay for the Mandriva Software as agreed, but we shall replace it by Windows afterward.”
Wow! I’m impressed, Steve! What have you done to these guys to make them change their mind like this? It’s quite clear to me, and it will be to everyone. How do you call what you just did Steve? There is various names for it, I’m sure you know them.
Of course, I will keep fighting this one and the next one, and the next one. You have the money, the power, and maybe we have a different sense of ethics you and I, but I still believe that hard work, good technology and ethics can win too.

cheers

François

PS: a message to our friends in Nigeria: it’s still time to do the right thing and make the right choice, you will get lots of support for it and excellent services!

I am quite happy to see the Mandriva challenge Microsoft, because it has gone through bankruptcy protection and have emerged a strong open source player.

Come back for Ubuntu!

After 9 months Ubuntu is back to my life. Today my friends and I decided to ditch Microsoft and turn back to Linux at our home system. So from now on we will be using Ubuntu to browse, listen music and orkut! he he.

Installing Ubuntu was as simple as ever. I have used it till I came to Bangalore. Everything went fine on my friends system and once the broadband configurations was done.. we were connected!! But just being connected was not we needed, Our next move was to update the software and install them.. as I type this entry, A big list of installation is going on!

Another problem is accessing the NTFS partitions.. By default we are not able to access the NTFS. I am installing ntfs-3g for it now. You will find enough help regarding this matter in Ubuntu forums itself. So, I am on the Linux again!

Happy Blogging :)

Microsoft Strikes GPLv3 and ditchs Linspire!

Yet again Microsoft plays out its plan to mess up Linux and open source software. I am sure you must have heard about the MS deal with Novell and Linspire.And now we see how MS is ditching both these compaines after the so called "patent protection deal"!

The latest : Microsoft says that's open source software licensed under GPLv3 isn't covered by the patent protection deal it recently signed with desktop Linux distributor Linspire.

On "Microsoft Interoperability" site it says "software products of Linspire that include the Linux operating system, including Linspire Five-0 and successor offerings. However, Client Offerings do not include (i) any portions of products that comprise or include Foundry Products, Clone Products, GPLv3 Software or Other Excluded Products, (ii) Freespire and any other software offerings that include the Linux operating system for which Linspire receives no Revenue, (iii) any products running on a server, or (iv) any Linspire CNR applications distributed separately from the Linux operating system."

The article appeared on MS site on July 5th, 6 days after GPLv3 was launched. From the time of launch Microsoft has been treating GPLv3 software as highly radioactive. Just after the launch, Microsoft said "Microsoft isn't a party to the GPLv3 license and none of its actions are to be misinterpreted as accepting status as a contracting party of GPLv3 or assuming any legal obligations under such license,".

Its not just Linspire that's the target,but Novell is also in the trap.Microsoft recently said that it wouldn't distribute any GPLv3 software under its SUSE Linux alliance with Novell. But Novell insists that GPLv3 does not touch their agreement. So does Microsoft! So now we know that's going to happen with the agreements if Novell and Linspire want to provide GPLv3 softwares! And this is how Microsoft does the business -- Destroy your competitor!

Linux Kernel 0.01!

Linux have come a long way since its creation. I was wondering recently where did the first version go? Surely we use 2.6 kernel on Ubuntu or RedHat (Two distros that I have extensively used..) but I wanted to see the first kernel code! And ...

After some search and scratching the web, I finally got what looked like one of kernel ancestors: Linux Kernel 0.01! All the linux kernel is archived at kernel.org. You can download from version 1.0 to the latest version 2.6.x. And its all available at http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/ for download. So If you want to see how Linux kernel was (and is).. Have a look!

Linux moves to Mobile Phones

Ubuntu Linux is onto new grounds - The Mobile/Hand held devices! They aims at building a open source platform for hand held devices with an initial release by October 2007. It will be built by the Ubuntu community along with some Intel staff.

It interesting to see Ubuntu advance fast these days as they have already become one of the popular Linux distributions on desktops. They have also released sever editions and now onto mobile devices. To start with, some "Geek" have already installed a tuned Ubuntu version on a mobile (I lost the link). The project will be called Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded Project. The major work set to start after Ubuntu Developer Summit and aims at providing a open source platform for hand held devices which still pose problems like: power consumption, low processor power and also need better graphical user interface, connectivity to internet etc.

So we are now set to see Linux move into hand held devices, we also have other existing players like Nokia who has set up open source community,beta labs and development technologies already. Yet another competitor is Microsoft, who also has a Windows version for hand held devices.

Ubuntu brings Java to users

Ubuntu has been steadily climbing to become one of the best Linux distros available. this community built Linux have become one of the stable and user-friendly OS available. The installation process is simple compared to other linux distros and with each new release, Ubuntu have come a long way in building desktop version of linux (They also have server versions).

The new release, Ubuntu 7.04 is going to offer a "java combo". The combo will contain Sun's J2EE with GlassFish, JDK 6, Derby based java DB and NetBeans IDE 5.5. This offer comes after Sun Microsystem partnered with Canonical Ltd, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu. The combo will be available for download from the Ubuntu repository.

The main aim of this move is to catch up with the RedHat/Jboss which is already available. The Sun's choice to pick Ubuntu is really good because, Ubuntu have been growing fast. The main reason for this growth is its free online support, free CD distributions, forums along side the commercial support. Apart from this they have done a good work to bring out a very user-friendly desktop OS!

So with Sun and Ubuntu providing this new combo, lets see how the other rivals compete.

Linux under threat

The Linux operating system is one of the biggest revolutions in the history of computing. It has changed the world and still changing. A project by Linus Trovalds, has changed computing world a lot in its 15 years of existence. Linux now drive world’s super computer to mobile phones and many other gadgets. Linux and the open-source software movement have got billions of dollars of investment from IBM, HP, Red Hat, Google. But will this all stop? Is it in endanger not by its rival “Microsoft” but from world’s greatest hacker – Richard Stallman? He the creator of FSF (Free Software foundation) and GNU, the leader of Freedom movement in computing. A Guru, hacker etc…

Now let me take you to year 2005 when Richard Stallman visited our VIT campus on his mission to propagate Freedom. I was excited to see him and attended his speech in which he talked about calling Linux “GNU/Linux” as GNU supported its growth and existence. And from that day on I called it that way, giving respect to GNU. And I do respect GNU. They have started the revolution for free software and Linus just fitted the pieces to form the complete system. This is one instance from my side.

The second one: I was one the first subscribers of the magazine “Linux for you”. A well known Linux magazine in India. One of its initial issues contained an interview with Stallman who said the magazine should have been “GNU/Linux for you” or “GNU for you” as Linux is just a small part of GNU.

Richard Stallman is now waging a new crusade that could end up toppling the revolution he helped create. He aims to impose new restrictions on IBM and any other companies that distribute software using even a single line of Linux code. They would be forbidden from using Linux software to block users from infringing on copyright and intellectual-property rights ("Digital Rights Management"); and they would be barred from suing over alleged patent infringements related to Linux. Now don’t you think that’s breech of freedom? And Torvalds doesn't like GPL that would prohibit companies from using GPLv3 code to create digital rights management (DRM) schemes. Torvalds says he won't adopt the new license and will stick with GPLv2 instead.

The Problem is, Torvalds only controls the "kernel" of the operating system, which is just 5% of the total operating system. Many of the other parts will move to the new license thus causing a big split. This will cause problems for companies like Red Hat, Novell etc.
Another problem is that the two licenses seem to be incompatible. According to Diane Peters, It's not clear yet whether companies can ship products that merge v2 code with v3 code. So what will happen next? The Linux world would be spilt into two… “v2” camp (corporations) and “v3” camp (extremists)!

Extremists say they don't care. "People can go run another operating system," says Bruce Perens, a free-software advocate who supports Stallman. He also says if Torvalds doesn't adopt GPLv3, extremists will create a new operating system using a different kernel. So now we have “forking” of Linux Operating System and this would create many incompatible versions of the OS.The biggest beneficiary of this is the proprietary software giant: Microsoft, which pitches its Windows operating system as "safer" than Linux, and Sun Microsystems, with its open-source version of Solaris system, which doesn't use the GPL.And the looser could be Stallman himself. He is risking loosing the empire he helped built. Loosing would make him an irrelevant person in the community and would be considered a crack who tried bringing down his own empire!

Coming of Ubuntu

A hard week is over! With the end of my exams.. i am free for todays and to my surpise i got my Ubuntu (GNU/Linux) pack! For me it has come in right time. A day before would have ruined by examinations. he he.. so this weekend its UBUNTU time!!!
But plans don't end here... I am also planning to try out the new init(alization) for GNU/Linux! Its called initNG (Next Generation). Even though its in its primitive stage.. sound interesting when my friend Zaheer mailed me about it. It loads services asynchronusly to reduce the booting time of GNU/Linux distros..
And. . . . final thing on agenda.... will be to prepare for the project review which is on 10th. My WebShell still needs makeups and i plan to keep myself busy with these.

Happy GNUing :) !!!