In an interview with the San Jose Mercury News last week, Mozilla CEO John Lilly said, “The first thing is to bring Firefox to mobile devices. We’re working on that and we’ll see some alphas in a few weeks.” At the time it was not clear which of the two development platforms, Windows Mobile or Linux would be getting the new builds.

Now, Mozilla developer Mark Finkle has revealed that, while the linux build is doing well and is in a more advanced stage of alpha testing, “Work on Windows Mobile has heated up quite a bit. We should be getting some Fennec builds for Windows Mobile soon.”

In a further post he said “Windows Mobile builds of XULRunner have progressed to the point where it can be built directly from the main Mozilla source tree. However, there’s a bit more work needed before we can start creating nightly builds.”

Hopefully progress will continue unabated, as I would love to see the innovative concept design for the software implemented on real Windows Mobile devices soon.

[vimeo]
Firefox Mobile Concept Video from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.[/vimeo]

Related:

• Mozilla CEO John Lilly: World Domination Is Overrated

IBM, whose decision to back Linux years ago was a driving force in its adoption by business, called on developers of the open-source operating system to make it more “green” and to stop copying Windows, if they want to see Linux on the desktop.

Bob Sutor, VP of open source and standards at IBM, told attendees of the LinuxWorld Conference in San Francisco, that what the open source community needs to make Linux popular as a desktop OS used by consumers and businesses are “some really good graphic designers.”

“Stop copying 2001 Windows. That’s not where the usability action is,” Sutor said during his afternoon keynote.

Sutor’s comments came a day after IBM announced at the show that it was joining Linux distributors Canonical, Novell, and Red Hat in building Microsoft-free PCs for business. The four companies agreed to provide hardware partners with the software to build desktops that would have alternatives to Windows and Office.

IBM’s comments to the Linux community of developers carry a lot of weight, given the huge investment and contribution the tech company has made to the OS. IBM threw its weight behind Linux in December 2000, when it promised to spend $1 billion on development of the OS the following year.

Complete Article

Related: IBM exec predicts the future of Linux, open source

Since GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is included by default in most Linux distros, I had no other choice but to try it. I then became more and more comfortable using it that I completely forgot about Photoshop. I know that I can still install Photoshop in Linux through software virtualization, but no thanks.

Here are my reasons why I made the switch and why I think GIMP is better than Photoshop:

1. GIMP has a simple and easy to use Graphical User Interface compared to a more cluttered working environment in Photoshop.

2. GIMP has a way lighter footprint than Photoshop. You don’t need plenty of disk space to install GIMP. The size of Gimp’s installer is less than 20MB; Photoshop could be around 600MB.

3. GIMP is wicked fast. The minimum recommended RAM requirement to run GIMP is only 128MB. The latest version of Photoshop will probably need 512MB at minimum.

4. GIMP has the right amount of essential features that I need. I think Photoshop is way too bloated and some of its included features are unnecessary.

5. GIMP can read and write most Photoshop native PSD format files, but Photoshop does not support GIMP’s native XCF file format.

6. GIMP has a more powerful automation than Photoshop.

7. GIMP’s open development model means that it is much more readily available on more operating systems, plugin development is not limited by developers and as such has no need to compete with Photoshop; by comparison, access to Adobe Photoshop’s SDK requires authorization.

8. GIMP is available at no cost compared to Photoshop’s hefty price tag.

How about you? Do you also feel that GIMP is better than Adobe Photoshop?

- by Jun Auza

Time has passed, and a great deal has changed. Fedora 7 installs on the PS3 out of the box, with the most challenging parts being selecting the PS3 storage driver so it can find the install DVD, and remembering to specify a video mode on the initial install command line so you’ll be able to see the installer.

So, you can run Linux on the PS3. It’s easy. The problem is, it doesn’t necessarily run well. If you picked the PS3 up as a cheap Cell development system, it’s a little frustrating to discover that, having followed the default install procedure, you have a system that comes up with a hundred megs or more of swap in use by the time you get to a shell prompt.

With these tweaks, the PS3 becomes a viable, and even sort of roomy, development environment. (It’s one of the most accessible environments for someone looking to dabble with the Cell Broadband Engine.) It stays responsive during compiles, and compiles run noticeably faster than they used to. While the memory provided isn’t so great for a desktop system, with video players and Web browsers and e-mail clients all running at once, it’s certainly adequate for a development effort, and indeed, with the overhead of GNOME and KDE out of the way, it can even manage some desktop work. It’s quite possible that future updates to the PS3 firmware will improve things, as might new kernel versions or drivers. Just remember to stay focused on what you need out of the system, and go ahead and disable features you aren’t using.

Part 1 - Getting Started

Part 2 of this series discusses getting the latest PS3 addons installed and updated on your system, and some of the configuration changes you can make to reduce the basic memory footprint until you’ve got a bit of breathing room.

Part 3 in this series looks at what you can do to get a usable X environment for doing simple graphical work, without losing the ability to run the compiler.

Here’s a short list of good reasons to replace your MSN Messenger or Live Messenger with Pidgin:

Pidgin is open source

An open-source software have many advantages: It’s free most of the time, and its source code is accessible, so you can be sure that no backdoor exists in the program

Pidgin can deal with 16 IM protocols

Of course, Pidgin works with the MSN protocol, but also on AIM, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, Groupwise, ICQ, IRC, MySpaceIM, QQ, SILC, SIMPLE, Sametime, XMPP, Yahoo! Messenger and Zephyr, for a total of 16 IM protocols.

Remember some years ago, when you had to download a new client just because the friend you wanted to talk to didn’t use the same protocol as you? With Pidgin, this time’s over.
Note, Pidgin can also work with the Skype protocol.

Pidgin is ads free

Microsoft makes lots of money with the Windows Live Messenger ads. Pidgin developers aren’t that interested in money: The software is advertising-free, which results in more speed and less memory use.

Pidgin is quicker than MSN/Live Messenger

Make a test and see: Due to the fact it don’t have any ads or useless features as in MSN, Pidgin starts 2 to 3 times quicker than the official MSN client.

You can use more than 1 account at time

If you have a msn account for your job and another one for your friends and family, you’ll be able to connect both of them at the same time. With MSN Messenger, it’s one account, and that’s all. I remember a time when I used two different versions of MSN Messenger in order to chat with two different accounts at the same time, but with Pidgin, that’s not going to happen again!

Pidgin is cross platform

You’re a Mac user, your browser prefers Ubuntu and your girlfriend works on Windows? No problem, anyone can use Pidgin on his or hers favorite operating system. Note, on Mac OS X, this is not really Pidgin but a similar software called Adium, and which have almost exactly the same functionality as Pidgin.

Pidgin can be used in command line mode

Most users will probably don’t care, but the ultimate geek will be very happy to know that Finch is a Pidgin command-line version, in Lynx style!

Pidgin uses a tabbed interface

Why taking all the available space on your monitor when a single window is enough? If you like tabs in Firefox, you’ll love it in Pidgin. Right, you can use MSN Plus to have tabs in the official MSN client interface, but why installing one more software add-on when you simply can install a better IM client?

Fear of being deleted? Pidgin will tell you.

In the world of instant messengers, you can easily become paranoid: Did she blocked me? Am I still on his friend list? It’s kinda easy to know, if you’re a Pidgin user: Just put the mouse cursor over one of your contacts name, and you’ll see if you’re still in this person’s buddy list.

You can modify your friend’s nicknames

The basic MSN user often put a very loooooooong nickname, or even worst, tell everyone about his mood as his was on twitter. And for you, nothing more boring than to be forced to open a conversation window just to be able to know who is that person. With Pidgin, it is possible to locally edit the screenname of your buddies.

Here is a video showing what Pidgin can do:

KDE Users: An alternative to pidgin for KDE users is kopete. I usually prefer to stick with Gtk apps on Gnome and QT apps on KDE, hence Pidgin on Gnome and Kopete on KDE.

In the GMA X4500 desktop series there are currently two variants, the vanilla X4500 and then the X4500HD. The GMA X4500 is used by Intel’s lower-end chipsets, which is currently the G43 and soon-to-be-released G41, while the GMA X4500HD is found on the G45. Intel’s IGPs are quite popular on the mobile front and for that they have introduced the GMA 4500MHD, which is the mobile variant to the X4500HD. In addition to the X4500, X4500HD, and X4500MHD, Intel will be introducing a fourth X4500 part in the coming months that will be a cut-down version of the X4500 and used by the forthcoming Q43 and Q45 Chipsets. The IGPs with the “HD” postfix are supposed to be able to handle full 1080p high-definition video playback along with Blu-ray Disc movies, at least under Windows.

The GMA (Graphics Media Accelerator) X4500 series is Intel’s second graphics solution that supports Microsoft DirectX 10.0 and Shader Model 2.0 (the first was the Intel GMA X3500). In addition, it presents support for Intel Clear Video Technology, HDMI capabilities, and DisplayPort capabilities. Intel Clear Video Technology presents full hardware HD decoding support for H.264, VC-1, and MPEG-2. It also includes HD and SD video post processing support. Unfortunately when it comes to video playback, the full capabilities of Clear Video aren’t taken advantage of under Linux, at least not yet. Intel’s Linux driver (xf86-video-intel) supports both X-Video and XvMC (X-Video Motion Compensation) for video playback. XvMC though is currently limited to MPEG-2 format (a generic limitation and not something Intel-specific).

Complete Review

Much of Firefox’s internal architecture was overhauled during the 3.0 development process. This means that Mozilla now has a much stronger foundation to build upon. The features planned for 3.1 will continue pushing the browser forward and will leverage some of the new infrastructure that was put in place for 3.0. The new release will also include some features that were deferred during the 3.0 development cycle because of time constraints. Additionally, some of the experimental features from 3.0 will be refined and improved for 3.1 based on feedback from users.

The 3.1 alpha, which is codenamed Shiretoko, already includes some of the earliest pieces. The Firefox developers are attempting to improve on the conventional tabbed browsing model and extend the tab interface so that it provides more visual feedback. In the alpha release, the ctrl+tab keyboard shortcut now invokes the visual tab switcher, which shows previews of the pages in each tab. It also changes the order of tab rotation. Instead of iterating through each tab sequentially, it switches between them based on when they were last used—much like the alt+tab application switcher in Windows or command-tab on the Mac.

KDE 4.1 Packages, openSUSE-based KDE 4.1 Live CD

Regular KDE 4 Packages and an openSUSE-based KDE Four Live CD have been available throughout the whole cycle, and final versions of them are also available now. On openSUSE 11.0 you can use 1-click-install to get the KDE 4.1 desktop environment (for openSUSE 10.3 follow above link):

Or you can choose to install a more basic KDE 4 desktop. Developers can also optionally install the KDE 4 build dependencies: all the packages you need to have installed for compiling KDE 4.x from source (experts only).

- openSUSE news

It has happened at last …. 6 months after the release of KDE 4.0, the KDE community today announced the release of the second feature release in the KDE 4 era - the magic number “4.1″.

Lots of changes have gone into this release and the KDE community hopes to be able to make most early-adopting users happy with this release. Lots of feedback from people trying out KDE 4.0 has gone into KDE 4.1, filling most of the gaps people experienced with the 4.0 releases. Highlights of KDE 4.1 are the KDE PIM suite, which has returned in its KDE 4 incarnation, a more mature Plasma desktop and many, many new features and applications. Make sure to take some time to read through the high-level changelog or even the more detailed feature plan on Techbase. Before you try KDE 4.1, please read the KDE4 End User FAQ and make an educated guess whether KDE 4.1 is for you.

The following comes from KDE’s official 4.1 release announcement, perhaps one of the most beautiful announcements I have seen so far in software industry:

The KDE Community today released KDE 4.1.0. This release is the second feature release of the KDE 4 series, sporting new applications and newly developed features on top of the Pillars of KDE4. KDE 4.1 is the first KDE4 release to contain the Personal Information Management suite KDE-PIM with its E-Mail client KMail, the planner KOrganizer, Akregator, the RSS feed reader, KNode, the newsgroup reader and many more components integrated into the Kontact shell. Furthermore, the new desktop shell Plasma, introduced in KDE 4.0, has matured to the point where it can replace the KDE 3 shell for most casual users. Like with our previous release much time has been devoted to improving the framework and underlying libraries on which KDE is built.

Dirk Müller, one of KDE’s release managers gives numbers: “There have been 20803 commits made from KDE 4.0 to KDE 4.1 along with 15432 translation checkins. Almost 35000 commits have been done in work branches, some of them also being merged into KDE 4.1, so those were not even counted.” Müller also tells us that KDE’s sysadmin team has created 166 new accounts for developers on KDE’s SVN server.

The KDE 4.1 desktop

The key improvements in KDE 4.1 are:

• The KDE-PIM suite is back
• Plasma matures
• Many new and improved applications and frameworks

In memoriam: Uwe Thiem

The KDE community dedicates this release to Uwe Thiem, a long-time contributor to KDE who passed away recently after a sudden kidney failure. The death of Uwe came totally unexpected and as a shock to his fellow contributors. Uwe has, quite literally until the last days of his life contributed to KDE, not only in the form of programming. Uwe also played an important role in educating users in Africa about Free Software. With Uwe’s sudden death, KDE has lost an invaluable part of its community and a friend. Our thoughts are with his family and the ones he left behind.

Past, present and future

While KDE 4.1 aims at being the first release suitable for early adopting users, some features you are used to in KDE 3.5 are not implemented yet. The KDE team is working on those and strives to make them available in one of the next releases. While there is no guarantee that every single feature from KDE 3.5 will be implemented, KDE 4.1 already provides a powerful and feature-rich working environment.

Note that some options in the UI have moved to a place in the context of the data they manipulate, so make sure you have a closer look before you report anything missing in action.
KDE 4.1 is a huge step forward in the KDE4 series and hopefully sets the pace for future development. KDE 4.2 can be expected in January 2009.

KDE PIM is back

Improvements

While stabilising the new frameworks in KDE 4.1, more emphasis has shifted towards end user visible parts. Read on for a list of improvements in KDE 4.1. More complete information can be found on the KDE 4.1 Release Goals page and in the more verbose 4.1 Feature Plan.

For users

• KDE-PIM is back with 4.1, containing the applications necessary for your personal information and communication. KMail as mail client, KOrganizer as planning component, Akregator as RSS feed reader and others are now available again in KDE 4 look.
• Dragon Player, an easy to use video player enters the stage
• Okteta is the new well-integrated and feature-rich hexeditor
• Step, the physics emulator makes learning physics fun and easy
• KSystemLog, helps you keep track of what is going on in your system
• New games such as KDiamond (a bejeweled clone), Kollision, KBreakOut and Kubrick make taking a break from your work irresistible
• Lokalize, helps translators to make KDE4 available in your language (if it’s not among the 50-odd languages KDE4 already supports)
• KSCD, your desktop CD player has been resurrected

Answers to common questions have been collected in the KDE4 End User FAQ, which is also a good read if you want to learn more about KDE4.

Dolphin’s new selection mechanism

• Dolphin, KDE’s filemanager has a new treeview in the main view, also new is the support for tabs. A new and innovative single-click selection allows for a more consistent user experience, and copy-to and move-to context actions make those actions easier accessible. Of course Konqueror is also available as alternative to Dolphin, taking advantage of most of the above features as well.
• Konqueror, KDE’s webbrowser now has support for re-opening already closed windows and tabs, it also scrolls smoothly through webpages.
• Gwenview, KDE’s image viewer has gotten a new fullscreen view, a thumbnail bar for easy access to other photos, a smart Undo system and support for rating images.
• KRDC, KDE’s remote desktop client now detects remote desktops on the local network automatically using the ZeroConf protocol.
• Marble, KDE’s desktop globe now integrates with OpenStreetMap so you can find your way everywhere using the Free Maps.
• KSysGuard, now supports monitoring process output or running applications so there is no need to restart your apps from a terminal anymore when you want to know what’s going on.
• KWin’s compositing window manager features have been more stabilized and extended. New effects such as the Coverswitch window switcher and the famous “wobbly windows” have been added.
• Plasma’s panel configuration has been extended. The new panel controller makes it easy to customize your panel providing direct visual feedback. You can also add panels and put them on different edges of your screen(s). The new folderview applet allows you to store files on your desktop (in fact it provides a view of a directory on your system). You can put zero, one or more folderviews onto your desktop, providing for easy and flexible access to the files you are working with.

For developers

• The Akonadi PIM storage framework provides an efficient way of storing and retrieving email and contact data across applications. Akonadi supports searching through data and notifies applications using it of changes.
• KDE applications can be written using Python and Ruby. These language bindings are considered stable, mature and suitable for application developers.
• Libksane provides easy access to image scanning applications such as the new scanning application Skanlite.
• A shared emoticons system which is used by KMail and Kopete.
• New Phonon multimedia backends for GStreamer, QuickTime and DirectShow9, improving KDE’s multimedia support on Windows and Mac OS.

New platforms

• OpenSolaris support in KDE is currently straightened out. KDE mostly works on OSOL, although there are some showstopper bugs left.
• Windows developers are able to download previews of KDE applications for their platform. The libraries are relatively stable already, although not all features of kdelibs are available on Windows yet. Some applications already run quite well on Windows, others might not.
• Mac OSX is another new platform KDE is entering. KDE on Mac is not yet ready for production use. While Multimedia support through Phonon is already available, hardware and search integration is not finished yet.

Screenshots

Dolphin

Dolphin’s new treeview gives you quicker access across directories. Note that it’s disabled in the default setting.

Nepomuk provides tagging and rating in KDE — and thus in Dolphin.

Icon preview and information bars provide visual feedback and overview.

Find your files easier with the filter bar.

Gwenview

You can browse directories with images with Gwenview. Hover actions put common tasks at your fingertips.

Opening files from your harddisk or the network is just as easy, thanks to KDE’s infrastructure.

The new thumbnail bar lets you switch between images easily. It is also available in full screen mode.

Gwenview’s sidebar provides access to additional information and image manipulation options.

Marble

The Marble desktop globe.

Marble’s new OpenStreetMap integration also features public transport information.

KWin

KWin’s desktopgrid visualizes the concept of virtual desktops and makes it easier to remember where you left that window you’re looking for.

The Coverswitcher makes switching applications with Alt+Tab a real eye-catcher. You can choose it in KWin’s desktop effects settings.

KWin now also has the mandatory wobbly windows (disabled by default).

Plasma

The new folderview applet lets you display the content of arbitrary directories on your desktop. Drop a directory onto your unlocked desktop to create a new folderview. A folderview can not only display local directories, but can also cope with locations on the network.

The new panel controller lets you easily resize and reposition panels. You can also change the position of applets on the panel by dragging them to their new position.

With KRunner, you can start applications, directly email your friends and accomplish various other small tasks.

Plasma’s Kickoff application launcher has had a facelift.

You can choose between the Kickoff application launcher and the classic menu style.

Known issues

• Users of NVidia cards with the binary driver provided by NVidia might suffer from performance problems in window switching and resizing. We’ve made the NVidia engineers aware of those problems. However, no fixed NVidia driver has been released yet. You can find information on how to improve graphics performance on Techbase, although we ultimately have to rely on NVidia to fix their driver.

Meanwhile, KDE’s Release Team scheduled a number of bugfix and translation updates. KDE 4.1.1 will be made available on September 3rd, 4.1.2 will be out on October 1st, and 4.1.3 will be there on November 5th. KDE 4.2.0 will in 6 months, the release date is set to January 27th 2009.

Try KDE 4.1 Now, without installing Linux

An openSUSE-based KDE Four Live CD have been available throughout the whole cycle, and final versions of them are also available now.

If you are an openSUSE user like me, and want to get the latest KDE 4.1, then head here.

Also, read the following posts on KDE 4.1:

• Videos: Dolphin, Gwenview & More in KDE 4.1
• KDE 4.1 - Are You Ready to Switch?

This weekend I’ll be playing and customizing the long-long awaited KDE 4.1. What are your thoughts and experience?

Cast Your Vote:

The KDE team has created a special page highlighting the pros and cons of the release, or better said, the changes and the still missing features in comparison to KDE 3.5/KDE 4.0.

KDE 4.1 is scheduled for release at the end of July 2008. This is a significant milestone for the KDE 4 series and for KDE in general, but as an early release in the KDE 4 cycle, it does have some known issues which will not be fixed in KDE 4.1. Huge progress has been made in KDE 4.1 which is listed in the KDE 4.1 Feature Plan.

Some of the more obvious issues are listed below. If these issues are important to you, you should stay with KDE 3.5 (KDE 3.5.10 is scheduled for release in August) or KDE 4.0 until KDE 4.2 when most of these issues are scheduled to be resolved.

It is possible that distributions will work around some of these issues before distributing to users. KDE 4.2 is currently scheduled for release in February 2009.

A factor that will affect whether KDE 4.1 is ready for you to use is whether the KDE programs you use have been updated yet. So far all applications written for KDE 3.5 will continue running on 4.x, but, sooner or later, you will want versions that can take advantage of the new release’s features. As liquidat puts it right:

“Basically, there are two areas users should have a look at: the applications and the desktop. While KDE comes with many good applications, the real power lies within the 3rd party apps. And there many are not in KDE 4 land yet: digikam (currently beta), Konversation (in development), Amarok (currently alpha), KOffice (currently alpha) and k3b (in development). The desktop on the other side is what you would expect it, however the panel does not support auto-hiding, and currently the feature for having different wallpapers on different virtual desktops is missing. Also, FolderView is there, but the icon-handling is not as most users are used to from KDE 3.5. So in case users cannot stand FolderView they should better wait for KDE 4.2. In the end, the page only summarizes what is already known, but it does make sure that every user can easily see if a feature important to him/her is missing.”

For this reason, the release of new versions of KDE PIM, with Kmail, KOrganizer, Akregator, and other personal information management tools may be a major influence on whether you migrate to KDE 4.1.  In addition to the PIM applications being introduced in 4.1, the Akonadi PIM storage framework will provide an efficient way of storing and retrieving e-mail and contact data across applications, according to its developers.

The Kickoff application launcher menu has a new look and is more optimized, and the run command dialog has been given a makeover. Underneath the hood, the core KDE libraries have also been improved with KHTML getting a speed boost and WebKit is added to Plasma to allow Mac OS X Dashboard widgets to be used in KDE. The use of the Widgets on Canvas feature of Qt 4.4 makes Plasma more stable and lightweight, according to the developers. Phonon, the cross-platform media framework, gains subtitle support and can now use GStreamer, DirectShow 9 or QuickTime. Developers can now create KDE applications with Python and Ruby and the new Phonon integration for GStreamer, QuickTime and DirectShow9, improves KDE’s multimedia support on Windows and Mac OS.

Overall, KDE 4.1 has enough gaps in customization and supporting applications that it will probably not stop the controversy that surrounded KDE 4.0, and it does offer enough features and stability that it should reduce the ferocity and number of complaints enough that more serious assessment of the changes in KDE 4.1 can begin.

The KDE community dedicates this release to Uwe Thiem, a long-time contributor to KDE who passed away recently after a sudden kidney failure. The death of Uwe was unexpected and was a shock to his fellow contributors.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

In this context, a one-liner is a set of commands normally joined through a pipe (|). When joined by a pipe, the command on the left passes its output to the command on the right. Simple or complex, you can get useful results from a single line at the bash command prompt.

ls | wc -l

ps -eo user,pcpu,pid,cmd | sort -r -k2 | head -6

cat /etc/passwd | sort

cat /etc/passwd | sort | cut -d”:” -f1

cat /etc/passwd | sort | gawk ‘$3 >= 500 {print $1 }’ FS=”:”

for f in *.php; do cp $f $f.bkp; done

tar cf - . | (cd /usr/backups/; tar xfp -)

tar cf - . | ssh smith@remote.server tar xfp - -C /usr/backup/smith

cat incoming_emails
2008-07-01 08:23:17 user1@example.com
2008-07-01 08:25:20 user2@someplace.com
2008-07-01 08:32:41 somebody@server.net
2008-07-01 08:35:03 spam not recived, filtered
2008-07-01 08:39:57 user1@example.com
…

grep ‘@’ incoming_email | gawk ‘{print $3}’ | sort | uniq

somebody@server.net
user1@example.com
user2@someplace.com

alias p5=”ps -eo pcpu,user,pid,cmd | sort -r | head -6″

Here is a nice collection of several videos done by youtube users gabooooh and Aikurn, with first one showing Dolphin file manager in KDE 4.1:

Gwenview, the default image viewer in KDE 4.1:

KBreakout is a Breakout-like game:

Video showing some features of the Folder View widget:
- Moving and resizing
- Showing a remote folder (ftp)
- Drag&Drop support

Simple screencast showing how to change Plasma’s theme:

For years now, Apple has been slowly but surely gaining dominance in the market of online digital music distribution. Their iTunes Music Store now accounts for approximately 85% of all legal digital music purchases made on the Internet. Unfortunately for Linux users, there has been no way to play the songs purchased from the store due to the FairPlay DRM implementation - Until now!

(25 July, 2008) “Today, We are proud to announce El Tunes - a way for Linux users to
play their Fairplay DRM-encumbered media from the iTunes Store.  El
Tunes comes in the form of a GStreamer plugin that will decode M4P
files and allow you to use any GStreamer-enabled media player –
Songbird, Rhythmbox, Totem, Amarok, or others — to listen to the
music you own. Today’s release is a free preview that enables music
playback but may not yet be feature complete.

I hope you enjoy the preview, and also hope that you signup for this
mailing list as the best is yet to come!

http://www.el-tunes.com

Cody Brocious
CTO”

This is definitely great news and a must have tool that people with DRM protected music collection would love to have and use. As for limitations, the current version has no Pause / Seek support and cannot de-authorize a machine for playback, but a future version should hopefully cure those two quirks and add support for purchased video content and audio streaming to an AirTunes device.

• Ubuntu Hardy Heron: Binary DEB | Source Package
• Generic Linux Tarball: Download Tarball

If it indeed does what it says, I think, this plugin must be featured with all music players such as Amarok, Rhythmbox, Audacious, Mplayer, etc. and available from repositories of different distributions. As I have never purchased DRM protected music, it would be nice for someone who has them to test this plugin out and let us know how well this really works.

In 2005, Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems quipped that open source software was “free like a puppy is free.” Just as you can pick out a puppy from the pound without paying expensive breeder fees, you can download and use open source software without buying a single license. But puppies become dogs, and dogs need food, toys, training and lots and lots of love. Even with all this attention, there’s no guarantee your cuddly puppy won’t develop a vicious streak. Will you need endless obedience classes and a chain and muzzle to control it? The same goes for open source software. As soon as you introduce open source into your organization, the real costs, commitments and risks become clear.

Read on and find out how to manage the risks associated with open source software (you’ll need to register to download the white paper).

Related: 3 open-source challenges: cloud computing, open Web, mobile

Last September MadWiFi was abandoning their proprietary HAL and really the driver itself for that matter. The developers behind the popular MadWiFi Linux driver were ceasing work on it in favor of starting up a new driver called ath5k using OpenHAL. Two of the key developers were also hired by Atheros, the wireless chipset company itself. Through these recent improvements, Atheros has went from a company being criticized for their lack of Linux support to one with impeccable possibilities. Atheros has hired Luis Rodriguez and Jouni Malinen, who are going to continue to work on the driver. That means this release isn’t a simple code dump to look good on paper.

We are pleased to announce Atheros has released ath9k to the community. This driver is aimed at inclusion to the Linux kernel and supports all Atheros IEEE 802.11n devices. This represents a major shift in terms of support from Atheros with respect to Linux. The ath9k driver comes shortly after Atheros hired two key Linux wireless developers — Luis Rodriguez and Jouni Malinen.

We have been informed Atheros does plan to add access point support to ath9k and to work with the community to enhance and complete access point support in the Linux kernel. It is understood there is plenty of work required on the wireless stack to complete full access point support. Jouni Malinen will help drive this process within the community while Luis helps enhance regulatory compliance in the Linux kernel.

We are eager to work with Atheros with ath9k and applaud their efforts for properly supporting Linux.

The ath9k driver includes supports for the following chipsets:

• AR5418+AR5133
• AR5416+AR5133
• AR5416+AR2133
• AR9160
• AR9280
• AR9281

For now, further information can be found here. ath9k-related information will be added to madwifi.org soon.

The ath9k driver currently lacks access point support, but it’s coming and as a whole this driver seems to be fairly complete. The 802.11n Atheros products supported by this new WiFi driver are the AR5418+AR5133, AR5416+AR5133, AR5416+AR2133, AR9160, AR9280, and AR9281 ASICs. This driver is open-source and Atheros is targeting it for integration into the Linux kernel.

If you go shopping for a new wireless card, laptop, or router, it’s probably a good idea to see if it uses the Atheros chipsets. Then you’ll know that any Linux or BSD should have no problems supporting the device.

P.S. Around 2 months ago I got the WRT350N Gigabit Wireless-N router with the WMP300N Wireless-N PCI adapter, based on Atheros chipset, from Linksys. With this driver now available I will be testing them out in coming weeks, and hope to see good results.

The module kdeutils is one of the modules that has been around since the very beginning of KDE. At the time of KDE 1.0 the module kdeutils was already well populated and consisted of KArm (now KTimeTracker), KCalc, KEdit, KFloppy, KHexedit, KJots, KLJetTool, KNotes, KTop (now KSysGuard) and KZip (now Ark). The observant will see that nearly all of these programs are still part of KDE and kicking. Only three of them are no longer in development: the very specialised program KLJetTool (used for configuring HP Laserjet printers) was removed from the development branch before KDE 3.1 due to being obsolete, and KEdit and KHexEdit were removed only recently before KDE 4.0, due to being unmaintained and with substitutes (KWrite and Okteta).

Over the times a younger module has drawn away some of the programs: KTimeTracker, KNotes, and with the upcoming KDE 4.1 also KJots are now part of the module kdepim. Any removal has been balanced with completely new programs. The two freshest members of kdeutils, which entered it in time for KDE 4.1, are Okteta and the Printer Applet. The latter also makes an interesting premiere, being the first program in the mainline KDE modules which is not written in C/C++, but in Python.

• Ark - Archiving tool
• KCalc - Scientific calculator
• KCharSelect - Font character selector
• kdessh - Front end to ssh
• KDiskFree - Free disk space viewer
• KFloppy - Floppy disk formatter
• KGpg - GPG frontend
• KTimer - Time controlled program starter
• KDE Wallet Manager - KDE wallet management tool
• Okteta - Hex editor
• Printer Applet - Applet to view current print jobs and configure new printers
• SuperKaramba - Version of Karamba with python scripting
• Sweeper - Cleaner for unwanted usage traces in the system

Each program has a description page, a page with an overview of the program’s development (like activity or progress with translations) and a contact page. Over time more content will be added. If you are interested to help out with that, please get in contact.

If you have been developing a utility based on the KDE platform outside of the KDE repository and you think it would be a good addition to this module, do not hesitate to contact. If you, contributor or user, are interested in some of these programs, go and find all information at http://utils.kde.org/.

- kde.news

Our Open Source consulting business, The Open Learning Centre, has been very busy of late. We’ve been working with a household name hardware manufacturer and a very well known high-street retailer to deliver a really exciting and innovative product to the consumer market.

The webbook is manufactured by the UK electronics company Elonex and is being sold exclusively by The Carphone Warehouse.

The webbook is a high specification UMPC that has a 1.6Ghz Via C7 processor (x86), 512Mb of RAM and [currently] an 80G HDD. The screen has a very usable 1024×600 resolution and it has the usual assortment of USB, LAN and an SD socket, plus built in WiFi too. We have setup a blog specifically for the webbook