I Want One From Logitech

I’d love to see one from Logitech. Why Logitech, because I have been using their products for years and am very satisfied. The day they will come out with a version for Linux users, I am getting it for sure.

If you are reading this post, I ask you to consider this idea. Like me, a lot of other Linux users will be happy to buy one. It will be even better to have a Cordless Desktop series for Linux users.

CyMotion Master Linux keyboard from Cherry.

Congoo NetPass Now Available For Mozilla Firefox

Congoo(TM), the Web’s first free premium information network, today announced that its NetPass downloadable toolbar is now available in beta version for users of the Mozilla Firefox® web browser. The development enables millions of Firefox users to locate huge amounts of otherwise unavailable, subscription-only Web content — and to access that content free of charge.

More on this >>>>

The Free Standards Group Strengthens Linux Standardization Activities in Asia

The Free Standards Group (FSG), a nonprofit organization, today announced it is strengthening its activities in Asia.In order to prevent the fragmentation of Linux, FSG is developing and promoting open source software standards including the Linux Standard Base (LSB), and Openi18N, the internationalization standard for Linux. FSG is strengthening its activities in Asia by standardizing the handling of Asian characters and establishing the Chinese Linux certification laboratory with the Chinese government.

In line with expanding FSG activities to prevent Linux fragmentation in Asia, Japanese IT vendors including Fujitsu Limited have joined the FSG as sponsors. They will work to solve issues with Linux in Asia as well as offer their perspective on platform issues relating to Linux to the FSG. Other IT vendors already members of the FSG include HP, IBM, INTEL, and Dell. Masahiro Date, General Manager, Partner Alliances, Fujitsu Limited, was elected to the FSG board of directors last December.

FSG Executive Director Jim Zemlin will be kicking off these expanded activities in a keynote at LinuxWorld Tokyo on Thursday, June 1 at 10:10 a.m., where he will discuss the role of Linux in the Asian market and the necessity for leading hardware and software vendors to unite to prevent the fragmentation of Linux.

“Japanese vendors including Fujitsu joining the FSG is a great milestone for the organization,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Free Standards Group. “We look forward to working closely with them and representing their interests in our Linux open standards projects.”

“We believe the Free Standards Group and the Linux Standard Base are very important to growing the Linux market,” said Masatoshi Yoshida, General Manager, Linux Software Development Division, Fujitsu Limited. “The Linux Standard Base will make it easier and more stable for ISVs to support Linux and their customers. FSG is the key organization in that space and we are happy to join FSG and lend our support to FSG.”

OpenSUSE 10.1 Is Versatile, but Uneven

Novell’s OpenSUSE 10.1 is a solid, multipurpose Linux-based operating system that—in addition to being a very good distribution in its own right —offers an early peek at the SUSE Enterprise Linux Desktop product that Novell is set to ship this summer.

OpenSUSE 10.1, like all Linux distributions, bundles a broad assortment of open-source applications into an integrated package.

What has always (and still does) set SUSE apart is the measure of management homogeneity that the distribution brings to this diverse set of components—mostly through its Yast system configuration framework.

Overall, eWEEK Labs appreciated the ambitious scope of OpenSUSE 10.1’s configuration tools, but we also ran into some areas in which Yast’s reach frustratingly exceeded its grasp.

More than once during our tests, we were pleased by new management functionality we found—such as in the system’s Xen virtualization and software configuration modules—only to be disappointed by the features’ uneven execution. >>>>

Who uses Linux!

If you’re wondering what kind of person uses Linux, take a look in the mirror.

The traits that made the open-source software a favorite of hard-core techies is bringing it to all sorts of gadgets used by regular folks.

Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Sony (SNE), Motorola (MOT), Volvo and other big manufacturers are using Linux for everything from TV sets to mobile phones to autos.

“Linux has the potential to become the dominant platform,” said Trolltech Chief Executive Haarvard Nord. “The technology is ready.”

Get ready for the Vista/SUSE smackdown!

In one corner, we have the champ — Windows. Come January, it will come out swinging with what Microsoft tells us is the latest and greatest version ever — Vista.

In the other corner, we have the challenger — OpenSUSE 10.1, the latest shipping version of Novell/SUSE’s community Linux. Sometime this summer, its commercial version, SUSE Linux Enterprise 10, will come out looking to KO the champ.

Before this epic battle begins, let’s take a look at their training camps.

Deep in Redmond, Wash., Vista Beta 2 Build 5381 is training hard, one might even say frantically, as it tries to get ready for its January debut.

Those who have looked in on the champ have not been impressed. An experienced MS-NBC reviewer, for example, said “Installing Vista Beta 2 was one of the worst operating system experiences that I’ve ever encountered.” >>>>
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Running VMware Workstation 5.5 on SUSE 10.1

As I had VMware Workstation running on my previous SUSE distros, I decided to install the latest available version 5.5 on my SUSE 10.1 desktop. I usually use VMware Workstation to run WindowsXP, as there are few applications that I need to get my job done, as well as to test and see various Linux distributions.

The good thing about VMware Workstation is that now it can run 64-bit versions of Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris as guest OS. It also has improved support for 64-bit host OS. To run 64-bit guest OS you will need to meet certain requirements which are:

• AMD Athlon 64, revision D or later
• AMD Opteron, revision E or later
• AMD Turion 64, revision E or later
• AMD Sempron, 64-bit-capable revision D or later (experimental support)
• Intel EM64T VT-capable processors (experimental support)

My PC Specs:

• AMD Athlon64 Venice E-6 Core
• SUSE Linux 10.1 x86_64
• VMware Workstation 5.5.1-19715
• KDE 3.5.2 with kernel 2.6.16-13

As in previous times, I have noticed that people are getting problems while installing VMware on SUSE 10.1, as with the current version you also need to apply patch for Workstation to work properly.

I. Prerequisites

1. kernel-source | 2. gcc | 3. gcc-c++ | 4. make

All these are available on the CD/DVD that you used to install your SUSE from., or from “install-source” repository.

1. Now prepare the kernel modules:

# cd /usr/src/linux

# make mrproper

# make cloneconfig

# make modules_prepare

II. Installing VMware Workstation 5.5

2. Change to root and then install the rpm:

# rpm -ivh VMware-workstation-5.5.x-xxxx.i386.rpm

III. Applying Patch and Configuring VMware Workstation

3. Download the latest vmware-any-any-update???.tar.gz file from here.

4. Extract the using filemanager in your DE or by typing the following within the terminal at the location where the file was downloaded.

~> tar -xzf vmware-any-any-update???.tar.gz

(where ??? is the patch version)

5. After the file has been extracted, change to the /vmware-any-any-update??? directory and run:

# ./runme.pl

During the configuration, which automatically follows right after the patch has been applied, I accepted all of the defaults to the questions that are asked, meaning the paths to directories that were listed, “yes” wherever there was [yes] as default option, and “no” where it was [no]. When doing network configuration install, you will need to use “Shift:” -then- “q” to exit the editor mode, as well in the beginning to quit the license agreement.

As you can see from the nest line, once patch has been completed, it asks to automatically continue with configuration, that we usually do with issuing “vmware-config.pl” command. I selected yes and:

 

(I am not sure what those error logs are, but it doesn’t look serious and VMware worked nicely after complete install)

Once the modules have been compiled, the next phase is to configure networking. As I have ethernet connection for internet as well as wireless for home networking, I selected eth0 as I wantmy guest OS to have access to internet.

Once it’s all configured, the final stage follows, which creates the list of modules that are supposed to be loaded when your SUSE 10.1 starts, as well as loads them right away to start using your VMware Workstation.

 

IV. Guest USB Access

Execute the following as root to have access to USB:

# mount -t usbfs /dev/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb

 

That’s it. All very easy and smooth.

Here is a screenshot of working VMware Workstation 5.5 on my SUSE 10.0 x86_64 desktop with Ubuntu 6.06 RC AMD64 version (don’t like the orange color theme):

 

 

 

 

Xara – Open Source Vector Graphics App

After only nine weeks of operation, the open source Xara Xtreme project — which is building a commercial-standard vector graphics program — has reached a 0.5 version status with Xara LX for Linux. All tools are fully functional, and users can now save and export files as bitmaps, according to the project team. The features deemed most critical to the 0.5 milestone were “save” and “export” of designs as bitmaps, according to the project, as well as additional features also reached completion

While work remains to bring the program up to the polish of the commercial Xara Xtreme, the Xara team estimates it is more than halfway to an official 1.0 release.

An example of a commercial-standard vector graphics program is Adobe Illustrator.

“Linux needs a top-tier commercial-standard graphics program,” the team wrote in the release announcement. “The Linux desktop has come on leaps and bounds in the last year or so, but it still lacks any vector or general purpose graphics program to genuinely compete with Windows and Mac commercial products.“And although desktop Linux is evolving at a rapid rate, the platform is behind in the graphics market. We intend to change that,” the team added.

This milestone was achieved due to the contributions of open source developers across the globe, who contributed numerous hours of time to over 1,000 builds in the past several weeks, the team said.

You can download your own copy of Xara Xtreme 0.5 here and view some screenshots here.

Free Information Free Software and Revolution

The purpose of this article is to put forward a thesis about a general tendency of what is coming worldwide in the near future in political terms, how it is going to come about, and what the revolutionaries should do to promote the changes and to shed light about the best way to do it. We foresee the generalization of political turmoil, and actual revolutions of various sorts, all over the world, specially in places where people have access to the Internet and to alternative communication media, especially in the so called developing countries with those conditions. In rich countries we also see political revolutions, characterized by the questioning of traditional parties, the upsurge of new political organizations, connected with plain people and popular movements like women, ecological, immigrant, worker, human rights, antiwar, workers, new religions and other movements. The loud complaints about the status quo are going to increase everywhere, but a defining characteristic of what is going to happen is that actual takeover of power of new, popular movements is going to happen significantly all over the world, some in whole countries, others, and notably, in localities, with a strong hold looking for a new political and economic models characterized by participation of the people. The political upheaval of people will claim for participative democracy and participative economics (at least at the interior of the firms, with cooperatives being the benchmark). Lastly, there is going to be a strong increment of networks of popular movements and political and economic new institutions led by the people across nations and the world, sometimes well beyond the figure of the nation state.

In the next sections we argue why we see such tendencies, and motivate the main reason, which serves as title to the article: information sharing as a sparkling light. In the last section we briefly propose an agenda of action for the revolutionaries, and conclude.

Complete Article

Linux Trumps OS X and Still Trumps

Linux, says Jasjeet Sekhon, associate professor, Travers Department of Political Science Survey Research Center at UC Berkeley.

What does the Apple crowd have to say about that?

“I joke that my webserver survived the digg onslaught and my mailserver the Apple fraternity onslaught,” Sekhon told p2pnet. “Joking aside, the response from the fraternity has been mostly but not entirely civil. A running issue has been that they don’t think it is fair to compare OS X with Linux because the latter is a specialty operating system. I find this claim to be bizarre.

Linux Trumps OS X 

“A running issue has been that they don’t think it is fair to compare OS X with Linux because the latter is a specialty operating system,” the author, Jasjeet Sekhon, associate professor, Travers Department of Political Science Survey Research Center at UC Berkeley, told p2pnet at the time.
Sekhon followed up his first study and, “Notwithstanding extensive algorithmic improvements (many of which were suggested by a generous and talented programmer working at Apple), a Linux performance advantage remains, although it’s substantially smaller,” he says.

Linux (still) trumps OS X