Gnome 2.2
Friday, I finally bit the bullet and upgraded my work
computer to Gnome 2.2. The anti-aliased fonts are
a definite welcome. Also included in the upgrade (using
Debian Unstable) is Evolution 1.4 beta. Again, having
nice fonts (on a par with every other desktop computer)
in the e-mail client is worth the trouble.
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Open Source Legal Perspective
Here's a very good summery of Open Source/Free Software
from a legal perspective. Don't worry, it doesn't read
like a legal document. One thing it makes very clear
is that the
GPL is a copyright which carries penalties
if violated. Also explains very clearly the meaning
of "Free" in
"Free Software."
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Firefox 2 Upgrade
There's a bit of a flap within Debian regarding Mozilla and their
products. The problem revolves around copyrighted trademarks and
names. And so there is currently not a Debian package available
for Firefox 2 in any of stable, testing, unstable or backports.
No problem, I just downloaded the tar ball and unpacked it to my
/opt directory. Uninstall Firefox 1.5 (apt-get remove Firefox)
and make a link from /opt/firefox/firefox to /usr/bin/firefox. Now
you can click on your Firefox icon and it should run, find your
themes and extensions and upgrade them and then come up. It
appears to run faster and looks a little crisper. Cool!
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Samba Leader Resigns from Novell
And is promptly hired by Google. Groklaw has
Jeremy's letter of resignation with some commentary. Well
at last we have one of Novell's Open Source experts leaving over the deal
with Microsoft. Will there be any more?
It is also interesting that windoze Vista
does not work with Samba out of the box. The forked tongue
of the great Borg from Redmond has clearly raised it's head a bit.
despite going to various Open Source conventions and trying to sound
like a nice guy, they are clearly pointing their biggest weapons at
what is their strongest competitor. In other words, the Borg is
getting a bit scared of the Open Source geeks and is starting to
raise the stakes.
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Mr. CEO, Tear Down the Wall, Let Java Go!
Good open letter by Eric Raymond to Sun. This is a quick
read and to the point. But it's also a good case for
Open Source against critics who think there's no revenue
to be made by adopting an Open Source strategy. Here's a
little quote:
But the casual equation between "open source" and "zero revenue" suggests that
on another level you don't really know what you're talking about. Open source
is hardly a zero-revenue model; ask Red Hat, which had a share price over
triple Sun's when I just checked. Or ask IBM, which is using Linux as a lever
to build a huge systems-integration business in markets like financial services
that Sun has historically owned.
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Firefox Rocks
I've been using the latest release of
Mozilla Firefox
for the past couple of weeks. This is preview release 1.0 (almost ready
for prime time v1.0 in other words) and it is really nice.
Today there is
increasing speculation that Google will
release a browser based on Firefox. Now even though it's an
open source application and has no big company behind it to
do marketing, the Mozilla people are not ignoring this. They
have collected enough money to
launch an add in the NYT. They
are hoping to achieve 10 million users. If the Google stuff is
true, they might make 10 million and more. Can you say, "Browser
wars II"?
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Debian Package a Day
If you are using Debian (or finally get up the nerve to try),
you will notice the tremendous amount of software available
in the Debian package format. In fact, there are 7 CD's
included in the current stable release (count on many more
for the upcoming stable release). So how do you make sense
of all those packages? Well, you can browse the package
repository using apt-cache search. You can also look
at the
packages
at the Debian site. But here's a more
serendipitous way to explore: the
Debian Package a day blog! I have already found a couple of
new gems just by checking this blog occasionally.
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