Archive for September, 2007

Intel plans to show Ultra mobile PC running Ubuntu

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Posted 19 Sep 2007 — by Arun
Category News

Intel plans to show ultramobile PC devices based on its upcoming Menlow chip platform running AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) and the Ubuntu Linux distribution at the Intel Developer Forum today.

Intel hopes to see many of these devices run Linux instead of Windows, and Anand Chandrasekher, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Ultra Mobility Group, is scheduled to be joined on stage by Mark Shuttleworth, the CEO and founder of Canonical, to show a device running on an alpha version of Ubuntu Mobile, a Linux distribution designed for ultraportable PCs.

Source: Infoworld.

Out for next 2 weeks

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Posted 14 Sep 2007 — by Arun
Category General

I’ll be out on Vacation all of next week and then I’m leaving on 23rd to attend an Oracle conference in Las Vegas. I’ll be back on 28th and back to normal working schedule from October 01st.

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Bloglines beta 1.0.2

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Posted 13 Sep 2007 — by Arun
Category Technology

Bloglines has added one more feature to it’s Bloglines Beta. The new feature allows you to edit the feed details inline. While reading the feeds, you can click on Edit option at the top and edit the Feed Name or other settings as shown in the figure below.

editfeed.JPG

I have one more issue with the new Bloglines. If I uncheck the Mark as Read option and scroll down to read the rest of the feeds, it marks the unchecked feed as read again. It doesn’t happen with the current stable release. I think it’s the issue with the new Ajax format. I hope Bloglines will fix this in their next beta release.

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Microsoft changes files without user permission

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Posted 13 Sep 2007 — by Arun
Category News

Scott Dunn of Windows Secrets reports that Microsoft has begun patching files on Windows XP and Vista even when the automatic updates are turned off.

This is not a major problem for individual users, but for companies, it might cause lot of headaches. Companies tend to install patches and updates after they test them. This helps them fix any incompatibility the patch or update might cause to their system.

According to Scott, Windows Update (WU) started altering files on users’ systems without displaying any dialog box to request permission. Though the files updated in recent days are used by Windows update itself, it is possible for Microsoft to change other files without user permission.

“For users who elect not to have updates installed automatically, the issue of consent is crucial. Microsoft has apparently decided, however, that it doesn’t need permission to patch Windows Updates files, even if you’ve set your preferences to require it.” wrote Scott.

Thanks to my brother for the info.

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AjaxWindows – Yet another Web OS

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Posted 11 Sep 2007 — by Arun
Category Technology

I read in CNet news today about AjaxWindows – another web based OS. I thought I would give that a try. Creating an account is pretty simple. All you need to do is, enter an email address, password and the security code and you are all set to go. This web OS differs from other web OSes in the sense that it provides you with an online office suite and it allows you to synchronize your data with GMail. This allows you to store the files in your GMail account. It also gives you an option window where you set your preferred email program like Yahoo Mail, GMail, Hotmail etc and your start page preference.

I created an account and logged in. It took quite a long time to load the first time. It started the tutorial window, synchronization window, preferences window etc. You can add or remove programs through Add or Remove program option. You can also add or remove widgets as shown below.

ajaxwindow.JPG

The first time it asked me to sync with my Google account, I didn’t do it. When I tried to save my options, it said I had to setup my gmail account first. Once I entered my GMail account username and password, it worked. I then installed couple of widgets and they worked fine. I then tried to install Google Earth and got the errors shown below. It was cribbing about Java. I have Java and Javascript enabled in my system.

ajaxwindow1.JPG

ajaxwindow2.JPG

ajaxwindow3.JPG

The start menu didn’t work, so I had to close the window. Closing the window without logging off won’t remember the settings. I logged in again after restarting the browser. None of the desktop icons worked when I double clicked them. The start menu didn’t work. I couldn’t log out, so I had to close the window again. I logged in once again and this time, the start menu worked the first time. It didn’t work after that. I could install Google Earth this time. I double clicked the Ajax Write (Office suite from AjaxWindows) and it opened a browser window, but it gave an error ‘could not connect to the server’.

Here is my conclusion. It’s quite buggy and sluggish. It didn’t carry a beta tag, so I assume it’s a stable version. I didn’t see the stability when I checked it.

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IBM joins OpenOffice

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Posted 10 Sep 2007 — by Arun
Category News

The OpenOffice.org today announced that IBM will be joining the community to collaborate and contribute to the development of OpenOffice. This follows the IBM support to ODF format in it’s war against OOXML format proposed by Microsoft.

“IBM is very pleased to be joining the OpenOffice.org community. We are very optimistic that IBM’s contribution of technology and engineering resources will provide tangible benefits to the community membership and to users of OpenOffice.org technology around the world,” said Mike Rhodin, General Manager of IBM’s Lotus division.

Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu, the Linux distribution, said, “We are excited about IBM joining Sun and other contributors to the OpenOffice.org community in pushing development of OpenOffice.org and the OpenDocument Format. We are firmly committed to help set, drive and promote open standards like the ODF world-wide to free all users from
any dependency on single vendors and proprietary software. The OpenOffice.org community is showing that it is possible for large, competing companies to collaborate and deliver extraordinary value to all of their users.”

Source: OpenOffice.org

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KDE 4.0 release schedule revised

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Posted 07 Sep 2007 — by Arun
Category Announcement

KDE team has revised the schedule for release of KDE 4.0 Here is the updated schedule:

  • October, 2nd: KDE 4.0 Beta 3
  • October, 19th: Total Release Freeze, only critical bugfixes are allowed to get in.
    If in doubt, ask the release coordinator.
  • October, 30th: KDE 4.0 Release Candidate 1
  • November, 14th: KDE 4.0 Release Candidate 2
  • December, 11th: KDE 4.0

Source: KDE News.

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ATI driver to be open sourced – Strategies explained

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Posted 07 Sep 2007 — by Arun
Category News

You might have already read the news about the new release of ATI 8.41 Display Driver for Linux with better 3D support. The new driver was 50-90% faster than the old one in some tests.

AMD today announced a major strategic initiative to support the Open Source development community for ATI Radeon™ graphics processors. The week of September 10th, AMD plans to provide an open source information and development package supporting the ATI Radeon™ HD 2000 series as well as ATI Radeon™ X1000 series of graphics processing units (GPU) on Linux desktops.

To accelerate this initiative, AMD partnered with Novell’s SuSE Linux engineering team. The initial release includes source code and hardware specifications to engage the Open Source community for collaboration on 2D graphics drivers. Over the following months, AMD will work with the community to enable 2D, 3D and video playback acceleration to provide the best possible experience on the Linux desktop.

According to Phoronix, The fglrx driver will continue full steam ahead with their monthly releases and will be for those who want a stable driver with top-notch performance. The new open source driver will be written from scratch.

It’s a welcome move from AMD.

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KDE 4.0 Beta 2.0 released

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Posted 06 Sep 2007 — by Arun
Category Announcement

KDE team has released KDE 4.0 Beta 2. This release marks the beginning of the feature freeze and the stabilization of the current codebase. For more information, take a look at KDE release page.

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Geneva Public Library moves to Ubuntu

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Posted 06 Sep 2007 — by Arun
Category News, Ubuntu

Geneva Public Library in Geneva, Alabama has moved to Ubuntu. They were using Windows 98 on older systems. Microsoft stopped supporting Windows 98 last year. The computers in the library are old, so they didn’t have the capabilities to run XP or Vista. The library made a sensible decision to move to Ubuntu. This saved them lot of money and they don’t have to worry about viruses. Watch the news on the local channel here.

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