Think! Open Source

FreeBSD is a popular open source OS like linux. It has many variants. The thing which distinguishes it from linux is the license under which it comes. You can use FreeBSD to create your own closed source commercial project, software or OS. While GPL v. 2, the lisence under which linux kernel is distributed requires that you should open source all the modifications and original code as it was open source before.
FreeBSD has launched its official community forums, it would be a good thing for FreeBSD community now, to build and to cooperate with each other will be much easier and productive.

Adobe has released it flash player's next 64 bit version for an alpha stage on linux. Ok this statement looks just fine with out any amazement but the fact is this, Adobe released this pre alpha version only for linux. Astonished? Adobe is very much sympathetic on linux users since MS Silver Light and Java FX, the competators to Adobe Flash entered the scene. I can still remember the time when Adobe refused to relsease a flash player version 9 for linux while it was available for windows and other platforms.
Anyhows time doesn't remain equal, there are ups and downs and perhaps this is a down of Adobe and up of opensource world, they are benefitted although all this is due to competation with other corporate and technology giants.

It is a plugin intended to replace the skype user interface. You can play with your skype contacts from within your Piding, Audium etc. Every thing which can be done with Skype is also possible with this plugin. It is a free software and you are free to modify its source code. More interesting is that it is available for Windows as well as Linux. If you want to install it, there is a tutorial available at Ubuntu Geek.

Skype for Linux looks like Windows 98 compared with XP. It lacks lots of features of windows version. But we can hope for betterment in future. So looking at positive side, we have Skype for Linux and it is available officially for many distributions. You can get packages for your distor from here.
Keep in mind these relatively less focussed details of hardware and software.

• Hardware requirements
• 1 Ghz processor or faster
• 256 MB RAM.
• 20 MB free disk space on your hard drive.
• Microphone and speakers or headset.
• Internet connection (broadband is best, GPRS is not supported for voice calls, and results may vary on a satellite connection). .
• Video card driver with Xv support.

• Software requirements
• Qt 4.2.1+
• D-Bus 1.0.0
• libasound2 1.0.12

Technical details
Version 2.0.0.72

Hocket and Bankwell is a comic book which is intended to teach linux i.e. the popular linux distro Ubuntu in a fun way. Its first issue is about 30 pages long and introduces to the basics of Ubuntu very well. So give it a try.

tangoGPS is a fast, lightweight and easy to use application for use with or without GPS. It runs on Linux platform like eeePC and Openmoko phone. It is licensed under GPL version 2. A very interactive interface and ability to download GPS maps for offline use make a very handy application.
Its current version is 0.9.3 and packages for popular distributions are available at official site.

OPLC i.e. One Laptop Per Child has announced that they are going to sell their XO mini laptop computers on Amazon.com. It will be started from Monday. The program originally designed to sell these laptops was OPLC, in which the bulk orders from different govts of third world countries were to provide these laptops. But the poor interaction policy of OPLC couldn't get enough orders. This program is slightly changed and Amazon.com will offer $400 per laptop and 1 piece will be offered to a poor child from this cost.
XO runs on XP, although a Fedora based Linux desktop is also there. Its screen is 7.5 inch having 900 pixels, a digitel camera, a WiFi card, Flash storage. It is almost like Asus eeePC. A new version may be provided in 2010 which will have faster processor and more flash storage.

I was getting some problems while signing in from Ubuntu 8.10 and Firefox 3 on Hotmail as it every time displayed a message to upgrade the browser to IE, Firefox or Safari. I ignored that message and then it worked with old interface. Some news about this problem are also on internet, looks MS dropped support for Firefox on Linux, or perhaps hotmail is so advanced now that it is unable to run on "older" linux system.
Computer World Says
Linux Watch

Puppy 4.1 is a tiny distro. People say that puppy is for low power pcs having lesser Ram, Processing Power and space. But this 93 mb distro is great. It has all the features you can think in a Linux system. And more the proprietary constraints didn't blocked MP3 and Flash here. There is a built-int Flash, MP3 support along with Gparted the partitioning software, HTML editor, Samba sharing, backup software and Wireless support.
Puppy's live cd boot doesn't seem that it is being run through a cd. Excellent support for mounting the harddrives, accessing internet and working with varous files is a great thing in this minimalistic distro. So give it a try.

In June 2006, Creative Labs was reported developing linux support of X-Fi driver and it was released in the second quarter of 2007. They admitted of neglecting linux drivers due to vista's and therefore the planned support for ALSA and OpenAL 1.1 could not be added. In Last months of 2007 at last Creative labs released a binary only linux driver which was 64-bit supported only.
Long list of developments but the interesting news is that they have opensourced the (about) 13000 lines code of their driver.

eee-control is an easy-to-use utility that aims to be a one-stop solution for all special Linux Eee PC needs. It allows you to configure hardware and hotkeys, switch between performance levels (very much like Asus' Super Hybrid Engine) and more.

Currently the models 701/701SD, 702, 900, 900A, 901 and 1000/1000H are supported.

Eee PC is quite popular while we talk about sub-notebooks and it is widely used with linux as well. 3 out of ten eee pcs are reported to have used with linux. The above said tool is a utitlity for linux users to handle Eee PC more easily. And obviously the most favourite distribution Ubuntu's packages are there in download page.

FL_TeacherTool is an award winning teachers helper tool which is developed on C++ and used with a linux terminal server client. It was developed for K12LTSP now K12Linux distribution mainly but now works with other FLTK systems as well.
It has many features, a list is available at official site. Screenshots also describe its use. 0.62 sources are available from official site and obviously your distribution will also have in repositories.

VLC Media Player :: The popular opensource, cross platform media player for Linux, Mac and Windows.
Apache:: The most used OpenSource web server which is a sign of trust among webmasters and developers.
WordPress:: I love this blogging software, ever green system of blogging which amazes me on every next release of it. The plugins and the themes are thousands and changes it from a blog to every thing that could be possible with a regular website.
Amarok:: My love on KDE, I like this piece of software and wish I could have it on Windows as well. Great application which is mile ahead from its competators on Linux.
Pidgin:: A multi purpose instant messenger I like to use of Windows and Linux both.
OpenOffice.org:: The version 3 is increasing its productivity, this free suit of office applications is awesome. Stable, productive, pwerful and elegent.
And FIREFOX:: The thing I always require when I am on my computer. I am in love of this web browser.

Command line is a way of life for linux buddies. APT is an essential tool for Ubuntuers and Debian fans. They like to use it for everyday installation and uninstallation, upgrades etc. dpkg is another useful utility which works along with apt for .deb packages. A few tips I found on apt and dpkg and would like to share.
To list all install packages
dpkg –get-selections
Or the output can be directed to a text file
dpkg –get-selections > abc.txt
The '>' sign direct the out put of terminal in the specific file and works for other commands as well.
dpkg -L package
tells the files installed by a specific package. e.g. dpkg -L banshee
To get installed all the sources of a given package, it is a good thing to install them by apt.
apt-get build-dep banshee
will install all the packages required by banshee to be built or compiled on your system. These packages may differ according to version or the requirement of the program you are going to build.

Bootchart is an application, according to official site,

Bootchart is a tool for performance analysis and visualization of the GNU/Linux boot process. Resource utilization and process information are collected during the boot process and are later rendered in a PNG, SVG or EPS encoded chart.

It is basically a shell script which runs in background and collects the information about the processes and booting etc. Then this scrip provides this information in the form of png, svg or eps charts.
The official download page provides link to packages of popular linux distors.

Ubuntu Open Week is announced, it will be a session of Question and Answers on IRC for a week. The motive of this week is to provide help on the new occassion of new Ubuntu release Interpid Ibex.