Ubuntu, another choice

I got to confess! I never read readme files, ever. Even for hardware or software installations, I prefer to figure it out by myself. But, things might just change for me in the future. A readme file from gnome-cups-manager had me in a fix over the things I could have missed earlier. If you’re not aware, the readme file is for a Gnome graphical front-end for a tool used to manage print queues and adding printers/etc. Once upon a time there was a printer who lived in the woods. He was a lonely printer, because nobody knew how to configure him. He hoped and hoped for someone to play with. One day, the wind passed by the printer’s cottage. “Whoosh,” said the wind. The printer became excited. Maybe the wind would be his friend! “Will you be my friend?” the printer asked. “Whoosh,” said the wind. “What does that mean?” asked the printer. “Whoosh,” said the wind, and with that it was gone. The printer was confused. He spent the rest of the day thinking and jamming paper (for that is ...

Faces behind Popular Linux Distros Have you ever wondered who are the people behind Ubuntu, Debian, Slackware,..? Stop wondering and have a look at faces behind popular Linux Distros. Ubuntu: Mark Richard Shuttleworth (born 18 September 1973) is a South African entrepreneur who was the second self-funded space tourist and first African in space. Shuttleworth founded Canonical Ltd. and as of 2008, provides leadership for the Ubuntu operating system. Faces behind Popular Linux Distros | yabBLOG

One of the several advantages of having many Linux distributions is that there is always one distribution that meets specific needs for a group of users with similar interests. Whether you are a student or a scientist or someone who believes in some religion; you could use one of these special purpose distribution and share with people with similar interest instead of creating and customizing something from scratch. Today we will share with you 10 such distribution (among many) that are fairly popular for specialized task or interest: 10 Special Purpose Linux Distributions | LinuxHaxor.net

This paper provides quantitative data that, in many cases, using open source software / free software (abbreviated as OSS/FS, FLOSS, or FOSS) is a reasonable or even superior approach to using their proprietary competition according to various measures. This paper’s goal is to show that you should consider using OSS/FS when acquiring software. This paper examines market share , reliability , performance , scalability , security , and total cost of ownership . It also has sections on non-quantitative issues , unnecessary fears , OSS/FS on the desktop , usage reports , governments and OSS/FS , other sites providing related information , and ends with some conclusions . An appendix gives more background information about OSS/FS. You can view this paper at http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html (HTML format). A short presentation (briefing) based on this paper is also available. Palm PDA users may wish to use Plucker to view this longer report. Old archived copies and a list of ...

Now that we all know the hidden pages in Firefox , it’s time to go a bit deeper into tweaking your browser for optimal use. All of the operations will be made in the about:config page, so save your important stuff, open up a new tab, write about:config in the address bar and be prepared. I have gathered four tricks that will improve your Firefox experience, and here they are. 1. Fetch only pages that you click Firefox mostly resembles to Google from this point of view. It has a built-in feature (enabled by default) that will pre-download the pages behind the links it thinks you MIGHT click. Google anticipates you might click the first result from the page, but how in the world can Firefox anticipate the link you’re going to click? Anyway, in my opinion this is just useless bandwidth usage, CPU power and HDD space. You’re practically downloading and storing pages you are not viewing. Here’s how you stop that in three simple steps. In the about:config list, filter up your search ...

FreeNetworks.org is a volunteer cooperative association dedicated to education, collaboration, and advocacy for the creation of FreeNetworks. You can show solidarity and support the cause by building a network that follows our peering guidelines, and identify it to your users as a FreeNetwork. FreeNetworks.org

Comprehensive links to information and resources about the Linux Operating System. Linux Links - The Linux Portal

Yesterday, I was trying to figure out what to do with a spare Athlon XP 1600+ box that I have. I wrote down some of my ideas and threw in some others I’ve used in the past. If you’re looking for ways to reuse that old PC, just peruse this list. (Great stuff here and how can you NOT like the site name: I Can Has Linux? ) I Can Has Linux? » Blog Archive » 10 ways Linux can breath life into your old PCs

Starting NOW, you can choose a username for your Facebook account to easily direct friends, family, and coworkers to your profile. To select your username, visit the link NOW: http://www.facebook.com/username/ To learn more about usernames, visit the Help Center: http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=89

This is a compilation of Free and Open Source Educational software for Linux and is available on CD at http://os.cqu.edu.au/pub/iso/oslinux . These Free and Open Source programs can also be downloaded from the latest copy of this document at http://os.cqu.edu.au/oslinux . Files can be accessed using the category index below or accessed via the file tree structure of the CD image using a file or web browser. Many of the applications are self extracting archives which then install the software. Several applications are packaged into archives which have to be opened first before installation proceeds. Tools to create archives and extract files are located in the misc tools folder. The open source software categories on the OSLINUX CD are: The Arts art dance drama music painting photography English vocabulary reading online books mindmap vocal tools typing Society history geography government environment Health Science chemistry physics astronomy biology geology weather Mathematics...

It's been approximately two years since I've written the first article, A (cool) list of Linux tools . The article proved quite popular with my audience, as it allowed Linux users, new converts in particular, a quick taste of some of the more useful programs available for Linux platforms, across a range of categories. Since, a lot has changed. Two years is a long time. I have decided to write a new article, from scratch, cataloging an up-to-date collection of must-have programs. To make it even more interesting and useful, I decided to add screenshots wherever I can and link to tutorials explaining the use of these programs. So, not only will you have a nice list compiled, you will also have a preview of what they look like and detailed instructions how to configure them! Like the last time, the programs will be sorted by categories. The list ...

Why should I use Linux? Here are lots of reasons why Linux might be the perfect operating system to meet your requirements. Here are a few: A Linux Distribution has thousands of dollars worth of software for no cost (or a couple of dollars if purchased on DVD). Linux is a complete operating system that is: stable - the crash of an application is much less likely to bring down the operating system under Linux; reliable - Linux servers are often up for hundreds of days compared with the regular reboots required with a Windows system; extremely powerful. Comes with a complete development environment, including C, C++, Fortran compilers, toolkits such as Qt and scripting languages such as Perl, Awk and sed. A C compiler for Windows alone would set you back hundreds of dollars. Excellent networking facilities The ideal environment to run servers such as a web server (e.g. Apache), or an FTP server. A wide variety of commercial software is available if your needs aren't sati...

Linux Shortcuts and Commands:   Linux Newbie Administrator Guide by Stan and Peter Klimas This is a practical selection of the commands we use most often. Press to see the listing of all available command (on your PATH). On my small home system, it says there are 2595 executables on my PATH. Many of these "commands" can be accessed from your favourite GUI front-end (probably KDE or Gnome) by clicking on the right menu or button. They can all be run from the command line. Programs that require GUI have to be run from a terminal opened under a GUI. Linux Newbie Guide: Shortcuts And Commands

MythTV is a Free Open Source digital video recorder (DVR) project distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL. It has been under heavy development since 2002, and now contains most features one would expect from a good DVR (and many new ones that you soon won't be able to live without). If you are interested in learning more about MythTV (or just want to check out some screenshots), please take a look at MythTV In Detail . MythTV, Open Source DVR

The world's third-largest PC vendor plans to roll out the Moblin Linux operating system, championed by Intel, in its products, a top executive said Wednesday. "Acer is in the process of putting Moblin in the range of its products," said R.C. Chang, chief technology officer at Acer, at a news conference in Taipei. Acer products that will soon run with Moblin Linux include Aspire One nettops, as well as regular laptop and desktop PCs, he said. Aspire One netbooks already running Moblin were on display at the news conference. Moblin was developed for netbooks, which are mini-laptops built for mobility with low-power microprocessors, 10-inch screens and six-cell batteries for long run times. An updated version of the operating system, Moblin 2.0, was released last month, and it has proven popular at Computex Taipei 2009. A number of netbooks wer...

What is GNU/Linux? When you hear the word Linux, you may think of programmers with a beard typing obscure code on a black screen. Good news! things have changed. The picture Linux is an operating system , a large piece of software that manages a computer. It is similar to Microsoft Windows, but it is entirely free. The accurate name is GNU/Linux but "Linux" is used more often. Linux is not one company's product, but a number of companies and groups of people contribute to it. In fact, the GNU/Linux system is a core component, which is branched off into many different products. They are called distributions . Distributions change the appearance and function of Linux completely. They range from large, fully supported complete systems (endorsed by companies) to lightweight ones that fit on a USB memory stick or run on old computers (often developed by volunteers). A prominent, complete and friendly distribution to step into GNU/Linux is Ubuntu . Using Linux GNU/...

Windows and Office work fine — Why worry about it? Restrictions A legal copy of Windows is expensive, but what do you get? Windows and Office are licensed, not sold. By using these products, we have to agree to a number of harsh restrictions . For most Windows licenses, you can't keep the software when you change the hardware. You sometimes can't even give your software away. Who can run the software? On which computer? What can you do with it? The list of restrictions is long and some items are outrageous. read our full article: Restrictions What about choice? Software should come without locks in it. Why are Office documents difficult to export? Why are the formats continually changing? Why can you not even uninstall some programs? It might be that if you look for choice, Microsoft products aren't for you. read our full article: What about choice? No source code The source codes of Windows and Office are hidden, so, no one is allowed to understand how these ...

If you use sites like Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Gmail, Twitter you'll want Shareaholic . Winner of the Extend Firefox contest, Shareaholic enables you to quickly, and very easily share, bookmark, and e-mail web pages via a wide array of your favorite web 2.0 social networking & bookmarking sites -- such as Digg, Facebook, Gmail, MySpace, StumbleUpon, and many many others. This is the ultimate add-on for the link sharing junkie. Shareaholic currently supports posting to: bit.ly, connotea, digg, delicious, facebook, foxiewire, friendfeed, google bookmarks, google reader, gmail, healthranker, kaboodle, magnolia, meneame, mixx, myspace, plurk, reddit, simpy, soup.io, stumbleupon, streakr, tipjoy, truemors, tumblr, twine, twitter, weheartit, yahoo! buzz, ycombinator, bzzster, etc. Shareaholic also lets you quickly evaluate web page popularity by telling you the number of times the web page you're on has been dugg or saved to del.icio.us. It will show you if the item is d...