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If you want to know how to build, configure and install a custom Linux kernel on your machine then I have a great link for you: Linux Kernel in a Nutshell teaches you all that and it’s available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license for free download. This made me wonder what else is available on the web under similar licenses and I found a great site: Free books on technology subjects - I have enough to read now for a long time…
I am a long term KDE user and have tried many KDE based distros in the past in order to find my personal favourite. A while ago I settled with Kubuntu. I like it but there’s room for improvement. I always hoped Canonical would put more weight behind it. Then Mark Shuttleworth announced that he was now using Kubuntu on his desktop machine and said he wanted Kubuntu to move to a first class distribution within the Ubuntu community. But not much happened since - except that Jonathan Riddell is now employed by Canonical to work on Kubuntu. However, there’s news on this now: Mark Shuttleworth writes about his ideas for Kubuntu:
quote:
This is an invitation for the Kubuntu and KDE community to join us at LinuxTag on 6 May in Wiesbaden near Frankfurt to chart the future course of Kubuntu. We will hold a series of meetings and presentations on the structure of Kubuntu and Ubuntu, the goals of the project, and an open discussion on how Kubuntu can come to represent the very best example of KDE in action.
I believe that the KDE community does phenomenal work, and having a community-driven distribution to showcase that work will help attract users and developers to the project. Our overall goal in the Ubuntu project is to further the adoption of free software on the desktop and the server, and we recognise that KDE is an essential part of the mix of desktop environments that allows people to find the best environment for their needs.
During the course of these discussions I would like us to nominate a core leadership team for Kubuntu which can take overall technical responsibility for the desktop, as well as teams to drive artwork, documentation, quality assurance, translation, marketing and distribution.
quote from egovmonitor.com
Bristol City Council is set to save 60 per cent on software costs over five years following its decision to switch from Microsoft Office to Sun’s StarOffice.
The decision was taken following a full evaluation of the costs and benefits of both platforms that included staff retraining, migration and support costs of switching the 5,500 users from a mixture of predominantly Microsoft systems to StarOffice.
The council had identified a need to simplify the mixed environment of Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect and Microsoft Office. Too much time was spent on converting documents, even for internal sharing, and without a corporate licensing agreement there were many versions of each product in use. Many of these tools did not support the newer features of Microsoft Office, and this made collaborating with partners more difficult.
The obvious solution was to standardise on Microsoft Office, but the decision by Microsoft to make changes to its volume licensing terms, removing upgrade rights and introducing Software Assurance, significantly increased costs for Bristol Council and provided an opportunity, and another incentive, to explore the other options available.
Ultimately the decision was made to move over to Sun’s StarOffice office suite. Not only was this a key win for the supporters of ‘open source’ software (OSS), it also closed the door to the dreaded vendor lock-in that plagues some of its ‘closed source’ counterparts. Such proprietary software is upgraded and updated regularly, requiring other vendors to have to continually play catch up to ensure continued interoperability. This places pressure on users to remain with the proprietary software and pay for upgrades frequently. OSS uses an Open Standard format which makes the development of compatible products simple and interoperability is guaranteed by design, thus reducing costs in the long term.
Recently I played around with AJAX. AJAX means Asynchronous JavaScript And XML as I am sure you know. However you don’t have to use XML for the data exchange. There is a more lightweight data interchange format available called JSON. It’s well suited for use on the web but it’s not limited to web applications. Have a look at it - you might find it usefull. I created a german translation of the introduction to JSON.
It was posted on the dot but just to be sure nobody misses it: Please consider donating to Quanta Plus if you are a user of it. Eric and Andras are great guys (amongst others) who deserve a thank you!