Patrick E. Bennett, Jr., Computer Consultant ... computing support for small business

If a quick test of the beta by LinuxTrends is any indication, this new Ubuntu version could be the most user-friendly, full-featured desktop Linux distribution ever.

Of the 12 new changes to the standards, the best part of the new PCI DSS rules is a change to rule 2.2.1, which specifically allows for virtualization. Such as using a VPS running Linux with Xen.

Tech Drive-in: "Songbird is still open source, but developers behind Songbird have decided to discontinue support for Linux and the concentrate on Mac and Windows versions of Songbird."

Systemd, an alternative to Upstart or System V init, has made big strides since it was announced at the end of April. It has been packaged for Fedora and openSUSE, and for users of Fedora Rawhide, it gets installed as the default. There are still bugs to be shaken out, of course, and that work is proceeding, especially in the context of Rawhide. The big question is whether Fedora makes the leap to use systemd as the init system for Fedora 14.

This artcile provides insight on how and why our current Internet-2.0 and cloud based applications are a worse compting platform than even the worse tyrants of the closed source software vendors. The article then suggests a model that promotes open data access and cloud services co-operation instead of today's status where the biggest cloud vendors are in a "lockin competition"

Since the announcement that we will discontinue development of Google Wave as a standalone product, many people have asked us about the future of the open source code and Wave federation protocol. After spending some time on figuring out our next steps, we'd like to share the plan for our contributions over the coming months.

One of the inescapable facts of free software is that it involves a lot of law - far more than innocent hackers might expect when they settle down for a light bit of coding. That's in part because it is built on the foundation of licences like the GNU GPL, which depend upon copyright for their efficacy (although that doesn't mean that free software couldn't survive without copyright - see my earlier discussion of this point with Richard Stallman.) Unfortunately, it's also because software is impacted by the surreal world of patent law, which seems to spend most of its time considering how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, and what exact rhythms they are tapping out with their angelic plates of meat.

Das U-Blog by Prashanth: "This is how I felt when testing Kubuntu 10.04 Trinity. It's a weird mishmash of old-school and new-school KDE."

Right now I'm facing what I'd consider the most outrageous case that I've been involved so far: A manufacturer of Linux-based embedded devices (no, I will not name the company) really has the guts to go in front of court and sue another company for modifying the firmware on those devices. More specifically, the only modifications to program code are on the GPL licensed parts of the software. None of the proprietary userspace programs are touched! None of the proprietary programs are ever distributed either.

On top of the busiest time we've ever encountered, we need to move from our current digs. On September 18th, we are having a recycle day out at our shop in Lakeway. We tentatively have a Boy Scout troop coming out to help but that is not yet nailed down. If you have some time to come out and help us sort through the mountain of stuff to get recycled, I would appreciate your participation. So, as you all know, this is going to cost us some money. Instead of just posting our current needs, we've decided to open a store of sorts to raise the money we need. We have some cool and useful stuff and more will be added in the next two weeks.

Every Linux distribution has to strike a balance between being up to date and being stable, between including the latest versions of software packages and retaining better tested, more mature versions. Fedora, for example, is known for having the very latest software, whilst Debian GNU/Linux has a reputation for being a particularly stable distribution, with the software included in each new release already well cured.

Tuxradar: "Ubuntu is dominating the mindshare for desktop distros, but there's still a place for rivals � even those built on the Ubuntu foundation � to take things in different directions."

It happened today... Bricsys released the official version of bricscad V10. No long in beta stage is now commercial with version 10.6.3-2 (windows version is 10.4.18-1). So now Linux users have a CAD software capable of handling DWG file format. Now there is no excuse to stay with windows just because you need Autocad. Bricscad is a very capable software and in many case can do better.

It's probably not true to say that everybody hates Facebook. But there are many millions (of the hundreds of millions that use the site) that claim to hate Facebook's cavalier approach to privacy and founder Mark Zuckerberg's equally vague approach to the future of our privacy. There are even groups dedicated to encouraging users to leave Facebook (some on Facebook itself, ironically).

In the first of a series of three exclusive interviews about Google’s latest and greatest developer tools, Linux User & Developer talks App Engine with Google’s Fred Sauer…

We've talked a little bit before about ways to bring your new Linux users along so that their migration experience is positive. Here are a few more tips to help make the switch to Linux a pain-free experience for you and for them.

Ubuntu Musings: "Utilities. They're what help make computing a lot easier and more convenient, no matter what operating system you use."

How you can monitor your server and performs usage? With Bijk you get online 30 graphs about Load, CPU, memory, traffic, Apache, PostreSQL and others with Alerts. Bijk can be used on Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, RedHat and with Cloud providers.

I have upgraded my Ubuntu 10.04 to Ubuntu 10.10 beta. Chromium Web Browser was the first thing I installed in my new upgraded Ubuntu 10.10. When I finally launched Chromium, it had a small surprise in store for me. Chromium prompted me with a choice of popular search engines I could use.

Qwit is Qt based twitter client also working for another social network like identi.ca, and you can add custom social network if you know the API source for it. Supporting many link shortener by default using u.nu one of the smallest link shortener.