Archive for October, 2007

Walmart to sell Linux PC using Ubuntu derivative

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Posted 31 Oct 2007 — by Arun
Category News, Ubuntu

Walmart is planning to sell $199 Linux PC called the “Green gPC” that is made by Everex of Taiwan, costs $199 and
runs Linux. It will be available in about 600 stores, as well as online.

The variant of Linux on the gPC is called gOS and is derived from the
popular Ubuntu variant. It’s heavily oriented toward Google’s Web sites
and online applications — such as YouTube, Gmail and the company’s word
processing program.

Walmart said it is stocking the computer in about one in eight stores to test the demand for an open-source product. The gPC has a low-end processor from VIA Technologies, plus 512
megabytes of internal memory, an 80-gigabyte hard drive and a
combination DVD drive and CD burner.

Source: MSNBC.

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KDE 4.0 Beta 4 released

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Posted 31 Oct 2007 — by Arun
Category Announcement

KDE team has released their 4th beta version of KDE 4.0. This beta version contains tons of bug fixes. Some minor features were added.

Kde4 0 Beta4

Source: KDE.

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Propeller (Netscape) spreading spam?

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Posted 30 Oct 2007 — by Arun
Category General

I have subscribed to Propeller (Netscape) news feeds for sometime now. Some of those news items are spammed, I believe. When you click on the news item, it’ll open a new tab or window and ask you install activex and then it tries to run activexsomething.exe file. I luckily don’t use Internet Explorer. I use Firefox and Firefox won’t allow you to run exe files. I forgot to take the screenshot of the spam window. I’ll do it next time I hit it. One of the news item, that I believe, was spammed is shown in the screenshot below. Netscape has removed that link now (2nd screenshot). If you are reading news from Propeller, beware!!! Do not use Internet Explorer and if possible, do not use Windows.

Propstory1

Propstory2

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Yahoo Messsenger 9 beta released for Windows

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Posted 30 Oct 2007 — by Arun
Category Announcement

Yahoo has released beta version of Yahoo Messenger 9. This version has a new theme and look. Here are some of the changes in Yahoo Messenger 9, other than the theme:

  • You can expand the contact list to see the large avatars and you can hover the mouse above the contacts to IM, SMS or call a friend.
  • New emoticons.
  • Integration with Flickr.
  • Inline media player to view Maps, Photos and Videos right in the IM window. You can watch videos from Yahoo Videos and Youtube.
  • You can forward Phone In and PC calls to home, mobile or office number.

You can download the new beta here.

Ymess9

Sources: Yahoo Blog, Yahoo.

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Wordpress 2.3.1 released

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Posted 26 Oct 2007 — by Arun
Category Announcement

Wordpress 2.3.1 was released few hours back. I have already blogged about the canges in 2.3.1 when RC was released. This release includes a security fix for XSS problem that can be exploited if your php setup has register_globals enabled.

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USB not working with Virtualbox in Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon

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Posted 26 Oct 2007 — by Arun
Category Ubuntu

I first installed Virtualbox OSE (Open Source Edition) from Ubuntu repo. I didn’t see any option to load USB devices in the settings. The OSE version was 1.5 whereas the current Virtualbox version is 1.5.2. I thought, may be the OSE edition doesn’t support USB devices, so I removed the OSE edition and installed Virtualbox from Virtualbox.org. Even that didn’t show any option to load USB devices. I then found out from Virtualbox site that Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon removed support for /proc/bus/usb. If you have the same issue, this is what you have to do to fix it (Thanks to Virtualbox for the tip).

Open a terminal and type

sudo gedit /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh

Go to the lines as shown below:

#
# Magic to make /proc/bus/usb work
#
#mkdir -p /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs
#domount usbfs «» /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs -obusmode=0700,devmode=0600,listmode=0644
#ln -s .usbfs/devices /dev/bus/usb/devices
#mount –rbind /dev/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb

Uncomment the last 4 lines and make it look like below:

#
# Magic to make /proc/bus/usb work
#
mkdir -p /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs
domount usbfs «» /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs -obusmode=0700,devmode=0600,listmode=0644
ln -s .usbfs/devices /dev/bus/usb/devices
mount –rbind /dev/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb

Close and restart virtualbox. You should see the USB options in the settings. You can add the devices you want. I have edited and added this information to the Virtualbox installation tips I wrote few months back.

If you are wondering what is the difference between Virtualbox and Virtualbox OSE, they are both same except the closed source one carries some enterprise features. Here is the list of features that are there in the closed source version, but absent in open source one:

  • Remote Display Protocol (RDP) Server

This component implements a complete RDP server on top of the virtual hardware and allows users to connect to a virtual machine remotely using any RDP compatible client.

  • USB support

VirtualBox implements a virtual USB controller and supports passing through USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 devices to virtual machines.

  • USB over RDP

This is a combination of the RDP server and USB support allowing users to make USB devices available to virtual machines running remotely.

  • iSCSI initiator

VirtualBox contains a builtin iSCSI initiator making it possible to use iSCSI targets as virtual disks without the guest requiring support for iSCSI.

What I initially suspected (USB not supported in OSE edition) seems to be true and may not work even after you follow the steps given above.

Source: Virtualbox

Virtualbox13

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Lightning and Sunbird 0.7 released

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Posted 25 Oct 2007 — by Arun
Category Announcement

The Mozilla calendar team  has released Lightning and Sunbird 0.7 today. According to the calendar weblog, the notable improvements are:

  • It is now much easier to switch between the mail and calendar parts of Thunderbird thanks to a user interface redesign
  • A redesigned event/task dialog has been enabled to gather feedback
    from the community. It offers a much cleaner user interface and
    additional functionality including:

    • Events/Tasks can be created in different timezones
    • Attendees can be added from a local or corporate LDAP directory
    • Free-Busy information is available for users of the Sun Java Calendar Server
    • Integrated display of recurrence patterns, reminders and attendees
    • Custom recurrences and reminders
    • Clear separation between tasks and events
  • The new event summary dialog lists all the details of tasks and events for calendar which are read-only
  • The Today Pane gives a quick overview over your current tasks and
    upcoming events. The Today Pane can be enabled/disabled by a toolbar
    button
  • Colliding events (events in the same time slot) are shrunk so that
    they fit into the display of a day. This no longer affects other events
    on the same day
  • Localized releases of Lightning and Sunbird in Chinese
    (simplified), Georgian, Lithuanian, Portuguese (European), Spanish
    (Argentina) and Turkish

Lightning 0.7 and Sunbird 0.7 are available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

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Wordpress 2.3.1 Release Candidate 1 available

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Posted 25 Oct 2007 — by Arun
Category Announcement

Wordpress has released the 1st release candidate for Wordpress 2.3.1. There are over 20 bugs that were fixed in Release 2.3.1. Some of the important fixes according to Wordpress are:

  • Tagging support for Windows Live Writer
  • A login bug that affected those with a Blog Address different than
    their WordPress Address is fixed
  • Faster taxonomy database queries, especially tag intersection queries
  • Link importer fixes

Click here to download Wordpress 2.3.1 RC1.

Source: Wordpress.

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GIMP 2.4.0 released

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Posted 24 Oct 2007 — by Arun
Category Announcement

GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) 2.4.0 was released today. It has some cool improvements/addition.  Here are some of the changes in GIMP 2.4.0.

  • New Tango style icons across all platforms
  • The tool options now include a brush size slider that affects both the parametric and bitmap brushes.
  • The selection tools have been rewritten from scratch to allow resizing of existing selections.
  • Selecting individual objects on images is easier now with a new foreground select tool.
  • New Align Tool to align or distribute a list of layers, paths or guides.
  • In the new version of GIMP, some menu entries have changed their names and position.
  • Improved Zooming effect.
  • Support for Photoshop ABR brush format.
  • 16/32 bit bitmaps and alpha-channel support in BMP.
  • 24 bit and Vista icons can be opened and saved.
  • Full screen editing.
  • GIMP now provides full support for color profiles.
  • Printing has been largely improved.
  • Auto-magic filter to remove red eye from your shots.
  • A new Perspective Clone Tool has been added to GIMP.

For more detailed information, refer to the release note.
At the time of writing this blog, GIMP 2.4 was not ready for Windows. The source version was available.


Source: GIMP.

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Gizmo 4.0 beta with video support – Windows only

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Posted 22 Oct 2007 — by Arun
Category Announcement

Gizmo Project has released a beta version of Gizmo 4.0 with video conference support. Video support, from what I could tell, is for Windows only. Send me the download link if I’m wrong. Here are some of the fixes and improvements according to Gizmo forum:

Fixes:

  • Hanging up video call intermittently freezes app
  • Presence information not always correct
  • Video on low-end PCs peg CPU usage at 100%
  • Locking issue when stopping/restarting video
  • Screen goes black when in fullscreen mode on video call and other party hangs up
  • Added new incoming call indicator

Improvements:

  • Video preferences have been implemented in Options window
  • Improved Calls Tab
  • Replaced icons on chat window (IM)
  • UI fixes on Call/Video window
  • New graphics throughout client
  • Added tooltips for all buttons

If AMSN could implement the video support for Linux, I don’t understand why Skype and others take so long to implement it. It would be nice if Gizmo, Skype etc provide video support for Linux too.

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