And there we are, the KDE team has released KDE Software Compilation 4.4, formerly known as, well, KDE. Major new features include social networking and online collaboration integration, the new netbook interface, the KAuth authentication framework, and a lot more.

 

One of the major additions is the Plasma Netbook interface, which has been in development for a while now. "Plasma Netbook shares many components with the Plasma Desktop, but is specifically designed to make good use of the small space, and to be more suitable also for touchscreen input," the KDE team writes, "The Plasma Netbook shell features a full-screen application launcher and search interface, and a Newspaper which offers many widgets to display content from the web and small utilities already known from Plasma Netbook's sibling."

 

A lot of work has also been done to integrate social networks and other online services into Plasma, making it easier to manage those via Plasma widgets; there's a widget for posting to various social networks, as well as a widget for following what your friends are doing.

 

full story > http://www.osnews.com/story/22851/KDE_SC_4_4_Released

Someone installed WindowsXP on my Lab Terminal, it had a copy of Suse 11.1 previously installed now its not showing as the boot loader is gone or may be the partitions is not marked active anymore. I don't know what happened for sure because the drives on which Suse was installed is still present and I wasn't the one who installed Suse previously, so I have no knowledge of how was the grub loader stored. Please recommend suggestions on how to get into Suse without formatting it. I don't want to loose windows either.

For the longest time, the default search provider in Ubuntu Linux has been Google, but this is going to change in the next release, Lucid Lynx, scheduled to release April 29. The change comes after Canonical has signed a revenue sharing deal with Yahoo!, so you can imagine who the new default search provider will be.

 

The change was announced on the ubuntu-desktop mailing list by Rick Spencer. The gist of it all is that the default search provider in the little Firefox search box will be changed from Google to Yahoo!. In addition, Firefox' default home page (the search page thing) will respect the user's choice of default search provider.

 

Spencer was adamant to emphasise that users cans till change the default search provider to Google with just two clicks. "It's literally 2 easily discoverable clicks to change this setting, a simple matter of switching to that search provider in the [search box] by clicking on the icon and choosing the desired provider," he explains, "Note also that Yahoo! does not share any personally identifiable or usage information."

 

The reason for this change is obvious and understandable: Yahoo! has signed a revenue sharing agreement with Ubuntu, which is good for the Linux distribution. "I am pursuing this change because Canonical has negotiated a revenue sharing deal with Yahoo! and this revenue will help Canonical to provide developers and resources to continue the open development of Ubuntu and the Ubuntu Platform," Spencer explains, "This change will help provide these resources as well as continuing to respect our user's default search across Firefox."

 

sudo apt-get remove firefox-3.5 is my favourite command anyway, preferably executed right after installing Chrome, so it bears no relevance on me. I know I'm a minority though, so how about all of you? How do you feel about this change?

 

via > http://www.osnews.com/story/22798/Ubuntu..._to_Yahoo_

Ok guys, I'm sorry because you probably have tons of these posts but with all the resources online I can't find a clear cut answer for what I want.

 

I am by no means an advanced computer user but I would say I am comfortable on one. I am looking to put linux on my computer as a duel boot so that way while I'm learning linux, I can still do all the other stuff I like to do (and know how to do) from Microsuck. I would like to learn linux because I want to become more advanced with computer skills. I was looking into Ubuntu but I am worried that it is too "user friendly." (if I'm wrong let me know) I would like something that isn't TOO difficult and will run right off the bat and doesn't take a lot of tweaking to get working. Also something, that if I want, I can do a lot of tweaking when I'm more comfortable.

 

any other distro suggestions would be much appreciated. an explanation into why you would suggest it for me would be great too.

 

thank you,

cheeseman

LWN.net founder and kernel contributor Jonathan Corbet offered an analysis of the code contributed to the Linux kernel between December 24 2008 and January 10 2010. 18% of contributions were made without a specific corporate affiliation, 7% weren't classified, and 75% were from people working for specific companies in roles where developing that code was a major requirement. "75% of the code comes from people paid to do it," Corbet said.

 

via > http://www.osnews.com/story/22786/75_of_...Developers

This week, both YouTube and Vimeo opened up beta offerings using HTML5 video instead of Flash to bring video content to users. Both of them chose to use the h264 codec, which meant that only Safari and Chrome can play these videos, since firefox doesn't license the h264 codec. Mike Shaver, Mozilla's vice president of engineering, explained on his blog why Mozilla doesn't license the h264 codec.

 

Shaver explains that h64 is not a suitable codec for Mozilla, because of two main reasons: licensing cost, and the codec's closed nature.

 

The h264 codec is patented up the wazoo by the MPEG-LA, and while Google, Apple, and Microsoft have paid for a license to include the codecs within their products, the Mozilla foundation has not, and will not do so. Without this license, it is illegal (in many countries) "to use or distribute software that produces or consumes H.264-encoded content. Indeed, even distributing H.264 content over the internet or broadcasting it over the airwaves requires the consent of the MPEG-LA, and the current fee exemption for free-to-the-viewer internet delivery is only in effect until the end of 2010."

 

Mozilla has a number of clear and well-argued reasons for not buying the license. First, it's very limited. Google, for instance, paid for a license that transfers to users of Chrome, but if you build Chrome from source yourself or extend the browser, the license does not apply. What's even worse is that the license would not carry over towards, for instance, Linux distributors - not acceptable, of course, for Firefox.

 

"Even if we were to pay the USD 5000000 annual licensing cost for H.264, and we were to not care about the spectre of license fees for internet distribution of encoded content, or about content and tool creators, downstream projects would be no better off," Shaver explains.

 

The second important reason not to license the h264 codec is a more ideological one. "We want to make sure that the Web experience is good for all users, present and future," Shaver writes, "I want to make sure that when a child in India or Brazil or Kenya discovers the internet, there isn't a big piece of it (video) that they can't afford to participate in. I want to make sure that there are no toll-booth barriers to entry for someone building a whole new browser, or bringing a browser to a whole new device or OS, or making and using tools for creating standard web content."

 

more > http://www.osnews.com/story/22787/Mozill...cense_h264

Phoronix has covered some details on the progress of Fedora 13 development before and now has more details on the recently approved features. Features are approved by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee, a fully elected community of members in the Fedora community. The full list of Fedora 13 features is here and it is planned to be released on May 11, 2010

This month Boxee announced the availability of its public beta release, a major new version of the popular media center software. The update brings significant improvements to the user experience and delivers an impressive degree of aesthetic refinement, but the program lacks stability and will need more work before it is ready to conquer the living room.

 

Boxee is a multimedia player application that is designed primarily to be used on home theater PC (HTPC) systems. It has a television-friendly user interface that can be seen easily from a couch and operated with either a remote control or conventional input devices. It is based on the open source XBMC media center application. One of the distinguishing features of Boxee is that it has an integrated social networking service that allows users to share what they are watching and see recommendations based on what their friends are watching. The program also has extensive support for playing audio and video content from popular streaming media Web services, including Hulu.

 

via http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/reviews/2...mpaign=rss

"The Ubuntu development community announced today the availability of Ubuntu 10.04 alpha 2, a new prerelease of the next major version of the Ubuntu Linux distribution. This alpha is the first Ubuntu release to completely omit HAL, a Linux hardware abstraction layer that is being deprecated in favor of DeviceKit."

 

via http://www.osnews.com/story/22743/Ubuntu...el_Changes

So, I'm working on our webhost via SSH (it's a dedicated virtual server) with root credentials ... and I type a command that may have just ruined my life.