Krishwords

and the winner is Linux. Check it out here. My question is: Why do you need a contest to know this?

Right now I am working from Panera. When I went to refill my coffee, I locked my screen and went. When I came back and tried to login, one of the options on the window that asked password to login is “leave a message”. It is a cool feature and will come handy in the office environment. When you are not at desk, your co-worker (or boss) can leave a message for you on your desktop/laptop. When you login, it just pops up and shows the message. I love Linux for a reason. Such handy features (arising out of the itch for the developer) are rarely found in proprietary software. I am assuming that it is a gnome feature and not specific to Ubuntu. If I am wrong, correct me. I got so excited by this tiny little, but very handy, feature and, hence, this blog post.

FOSSwire has this cool tip to restart a frozen Linux Machine. I haven’t tried it yet because I haven’t got a frozen linux machine yet.

You finally got your Linux environment to crash. Ctrl+Alt+Backspace does nothing, nor do the F-keys. You know you shouldn’t have installed that bad driver, but you did it anyway.

So you reach for the power button.

Stop.

Mashing in the power button to reboot could cause a problem if your hard drive is still being written to, and usually causes more problems than it solves. The Linux kernel includes a secret method of restarting your PC should it ever stop doing its job.

1. Hold down the Alt and SysRq (Print Screen) keys.
2. While holding those down, type the following in order. Nothing will appear to happen until the last letter is pressed: REISUB
3. Watch your computer reboot magically.

Google has released a linux client for its Google Desktop product. You can get it here.

Matt Zimmerman posts on Ubuntu Mailing List

To fulfil the aims of our mission and in response to the technical challenges that these devices pose, we are announcing the Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded project. We will start more detailed planning at the Ubuntu Developer Summit next week in Seville and the first release of this edition will be in October with Ubuntu 7.10.

It appears Microsoft has patented a user process similar to sudo. Check out this post for more information.

Redhat Magazine features The story of RPM. Check it out.

Mad Penguin reports about the low spec version of Ubuntu

Ubuntu Lite, by contrast, is said to work with 64MB of RAM, and if need be, it can even work with as little as 32MB of RAM. Considering the advantages demonstrated by other Lite Debian-based distributions, it could very well open up some doors for folks looking to make the switch, yet not possessing up to date hardware.

In reality, what is the key difference here? I see two major differences. The first is the desktop environments being selected. Xubuntu is using Xfce; whereas, IceWM is the desktop of choice with Ubuntu Lite.

We have seen the bullying tactics of Microsoft for a long time. Off late, it was keeping quiet. They tried to bully businesses thinking about open source with their “get the facts” campaign, albeit without any facts. It didn’t work. They tried to bully Mail Service provider to adopt their Sender ID program. It didn’t work either. After their unsuccessful attempts to bully the open source movement, they tried to show that they are reaching out to open source community. Their open source software labs tried to reach out to open source community. They released Sender ID under Microsoft Open Specification Promise. They invited Mozilla developers to Redmond campus to discuss with them about supporting Firefox and Thunderbird in Windows Vista. They even sent a cake congratulating Mozilla team on the launch of Firefox 2. I am not sure what their strategy was but if they had expected Open Source Community to run behind them, it is just a day dream. They inked an agreement with Novell in the early November. They tried to tout it as a deal on interoperability, it was more of a legal indemnification for their respective customers. This deal fell flat as soon as it tried to take off. Then Microsoft tried to do the same with Redhat and got rebuffed. Once they realized that their strategy will not work with open source community, they tried to use the strong arm tactics. Steve Ballmer crowed in Seattle last week warning the Linux users of drastic consequences. Red Herring reports about the whine of Steve Ballmer

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, speaking at a conference in Seattle last week, said Microsoft signed the deal with Novell because Linux uses Microsoft’s intellectual property and Microsoft wants to get the “appropriate economic return” for its innovation. He also stated that anyone who uses a non-SuSe version of Linux is infringing on Microsoft patents.

“If a customer says, ‘Look, do we have liability for the use of your patented work?’ Essentially, if you’re using non-SUSE Linux, then I’d say the answer is yes,” Mr. Ballmer told eWeek.com recently, referring to the Linux system sold by Novell.

“I suspect that [customers] will take that issue up with their distributor,” Mr. Ballmer said, adding that if customers considered doing a direct download of a non-SUSE Linux version, “they’ll think twice about that.”

After listening to Steve Ballmer’s talk, Novell became desperate and its CEO wrote an open letter to the Open Source Community in which he stated that he disagrees with Microsoft on its statements. I am pretty sure that their deal will come to an end as fast as it started. If Novell doesn’t move out of Microsoft, they are going to pay heavily due to the open source community’s reaction to the Microsoft’s new bullying tactics. It is high time Novell moves out of their deal with Microsoft. The open source community will definitely teach a lesson to Microsoft.

Technorati Tags: Open Source, Opensource, Novell, Microsoft, Bullying tactics, SenderID, Redhat

LinuxPlanet reports

There is evidence that in places Oracle is a rebuild of CentOS, rather than of Red Hat–again as they are entitled [to] under the GPL. [But] it would be polite for Oracle to acknowledge the fact that they are derived from CentOS and make a donation to the project.