The BUZZ - Free/Libre Open Source Software

Ubuntu Unity is a bold step for Ubuntu caretaker Canonical and its Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook remix. It offers a completely new user interface built on the backbone of key features due in GNOME 3 including Mutter and Zeitgeist. Russell Barnes tests it to breaking point (and found that it did. Regularly.)…

To activate the fullscreen mode in a virtualbox machine, we need to install Guest additions in the guest OS. If you are testing Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick meerkat in virtualBox , you may notice that guest additions are not working, it seems that the problem is the new xserver they put in ubuntu10.10, the modules are not build against this new version (See screenshot). To fix this issue, try this solution, this methode consist on installing a new xserver display packages which works well.

With Android already on millions of devices, the upcoming Google Music service will have a waiting audience, but is Google prepared to run a commercial music service?

People are resistant to change. This is a fact and it is not going to change any time soon. Because of this they will not want their entire computer to change on them all at once. An important fact that a lot Linux Advocates miss is that the conversion to Linux starts on Windows or OSX.

Eben Moglen's LinuxCon keynote was met with a standing ovation. Watch this to hear what he says it will take to defend FOSS against patents and how to protect freedom.

Launching a mobile application could be considered the latest get-rich-quick scheme. And I suppose for some it might be their best chance at riches and fame. Reality indicates that most developers don’t make back their investment by publishing an application to the App Store or Android Market. In fact, when you view some of the comments posted for a particular application it can be a bit depressing.

Wind River announced a series of Wind River Linux-ready development kits developed in partnership with eight different embedded board vendors. Embedded Development Kits are now available from Emerson Network Power, Eurotech, and Kontron, with more kits due in the fourth quarter from Advantech, Adlink, Curtiss-Wright, GE Intelligent Platforms, and RadiSys, says Wind River.

The Linux Foundation rolled out it's speaker lineup for its invitation-only 2010 End User Summit slated to be held October 12-12, 2010 in New Jersey. The event is designed to bring CTOs and other business executives together with high-level maintainers and developers in the Linux community to discuss critical issues surrounding using Linux in the enterprise. Presenters at this year's summit include IBM's Gerrit Huizenga talking about public and private clouds, a panel of key Linux kernel developers discussing storage and filesytems, and a keynote from British Telecom’s Chief Scientist JP Rangaswami on "Why the Cloud Rocks." Of course, Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation will be giving a keynote at the event as well. We caught up with him this week to hear what he has to say about the upcoming Summit, what message attendees will take away, and what he'll be talking about onstage this year.

Linux Mint based on Debian Testing has been released yesterday. Besides being based on Debian and not Ubuntu, there's something else very special about the new Linux Mint Debian: it's a rolling release distribution!

Avant Window Navigator is an application for Linux that emulates the newer task bars included in Windows and MacOS. It can be freely downloaded from the Ubuntu repositories.

It's been long time since I tried Linux Mint for the 1st time and loved it. Only problem is that it was Ubuntu based. Well, I love Ubuntu, but it's not 100%, and after my upgrade from 8.04 to 8.10 without a full reinstall that didn't went well, it came down a few points in my consideration. I had one bad night, since i needed the pc fully operational next day (its a work PC). So I tried everything else on market, but can't handle with anything else than Debian based OS

This guide explains how to integrate XCache into PHP5 on a Fedora 13 or CentOS 5.5 system (with Apache2). From the XCache project page: "XCache is a fast, stable PHP opcode cacher that has been tested and is now running on production servers under high load." It's similar to other PHP opcode cachers, such as eAccelerator and APC.

A full review of the Debian version of Linux Mint 9. Each time Ubuntu is updated, we get also get another version of Linux Mint. I usually end up reviewing most of the Linux Mint derivatives of Ubuntu. This time around though, we’ve gotten a delightful surprise from the Linux Mint developers. A Debian version of Linux Mint! Yes, there is now a rolling release Linux Mint distro!

Zenwalk Linux is a Slackware based distribution introduced in early 2004 that aims to be fast, easy, modern. Zenwalk tends to have a very loyal user-base in addition to leaving most distro hoppers and reviewers impressed. Most agree with Zenwalk's latest tagline: It just works.

Recent years have seen the Ubuntu Linux distribution, led by Canonical, experiencing rapid growth in both users and features. With the upcoming Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat release, set for October, Ubuntu developers will continue to push the boundaries further of both server and desktop Linux. Sitting at the upper rung of Ubuntu's engineering efforts is Matt Zimmerman, Canonical's CTO, who helps to lead Ubuntu's technical direction.

SETI or Search for Extra Terrestrial Life is a project that started some 50 years ago. SETI is one of those science projects that had caught the public's imagination like no other. But with the escalating costs and dwindling manpower, SETI needs a new vision. And if things happened during SETIcon, a weekend conference organized by the SETI Institute to honor SETI’s 50th anniversary, are any indication, the new vision could just be 'Open Source'.

In this interview, Walker discusses his relationship with the community and how a product built on Microsoft .NET ended up as open source. Shaun Walker is co-founder and CTO at open source web content management vendor DotNetNuke. Walker developed the original version of DotNetNuke, which is built on the Microsoft .NET platform. We asked him about managing an open source product while staying commercially viable.

Videos and presentations from LinuxCon and the Embedded Linux Conference provide information about the development status of Btrfs and about problems between kernel hackers and the makers of Android. With the latest stable kernels, Linux 2.6.34 has reached the end of its life; furthermore, there are signs that maintenance of 2.4 and 2.6.27 will soon be discontinued or reduced.

KDE’s visual effects for windows and menus technically dates back to KDE 3. Experimental programs like kompmgr provided drop shadows and transparency for windows, and the KDE desktop itself had built-in support for basic menu transparency, shadows, and other effects. With the coming of KDE 4, the number of effects has multiplied, and KWin (KDE’s window manager) is now on par with Compiz (a window manager with numerous desktop effects). Moreover, KWin’s primary advantage over Compiz is that it is part of KDE and integrates perfectly with the rest of the desktop. While support for Compiz has been added, there are still some outstanding glitches when run on top of KDE.

Cloud storage services offers Ubuntu users an ever increasing range of features. Most users have heard of Dropbox, the online storage application which makes it easy to save files in the "cloud". As far as consumer-facing cloud storage solutions Dropbox is about the best there is.