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Industry Reviews

2006 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Award Winners Announced

Monday, February 19th, 2007

LinuxQuestionsThe results of Linuxquestion.org’s Voting for its Members Choice Awards [here] have finally been announced [here] with Ubuntu taking the lead again on the Linux Distribution of the Year Choice by the website’s users with KDE being the dominant Desktop Environment. Knoppix still leads the show for Live Distros and Firefox continues to be the king of web browsers. Mysql continues to the bag Mr. Favorite choice while GIMP is the best Graphics App of the year. Cheers to Linuxquestion.org users, great going!

Here are the official results for the 2006 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards:

  • Distribution of the Year - Ubuntu (26.44%)
  • Live Distribution of the Year - Knoppix (26.22%)
  • Browser of the Year - Firefox (74.61%)
  • Database of the Year - MySQL (61.68%)
  • Office Suite of the Year - OpenOffice.org (89.79%)
  • Desktop Environment of the Year - KDE (56.58%)
  • Video Media Player Application of the Year - mplayer (41.93%)
  • Video Authoring Application of the Year - Kino (27.81%)
  • Audio Media Player Application of the Year - amaroK (57.07%)
  • Audio Authoring Application of the Year - Audacity (67.07%)
  • Multimedia Utility of the Year - K3b (69.51%)
  • Messaging Application of the Year - Gaim (51.52%)
  • Window Manager of the Year - Fluxbox (21.44%)
  • IDE of the Year - Eclipse (34.47%)
  • Mail Client of the Year - Thunderbird (52.74%)
  • Text Editor of the Year - vi/vim (38.42%)
  • Graphics Application of the Year - GIMP (65.60%)
  • Security Application of the Year - nmap (20.94%)
  • Windows on Linux Application of the Year - Wine (50.10%)
  • Web Development Editor of the Year - Quanta (36.34%)
  • Shell of the Year - bash (89.45%)

SME-in-a-Box | FOSS for the Small & Medium Enterprise

Saturday, February 10th, 2007

Software For Business

Thanks to our friends from the UNDP-APDIP-IOSN International Open Source Network’s ASEAN+3 Node in the Philippines [here] who only recently organized the Asia Source 2 FOSS Camp in Indonesia [here] have produced a CD Package, filled with useful FOSS based free business applications titled SME-in-a-Box. I was lucky enough to be there and recieve a copy of the CD the content of which I will now be sharing through TuxWatch.org exclusively for our readers.

“SME-in-a-Box� is a toolkit designed to meet the specialized needs of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) based on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). The aim is to provide a selection of peer-reviewed software and material, which help businesses to grow. SME-in-a-Box leverages the power of FOSS for social and economic development. The collection comprises of software and manuals for general use of SMEs in their daily operations and management. Online links for each application will be conveniently included on this website directing the end-user to relevant websites and thus, gaining quick access to both downloades and advanced technical documentations and case studies.

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All that Asterisk* - Learn it Easy at Nerdvittles!

Wednesday, February 7th, 2007

nerdvittlesAsterisk [here] is a complete IP PBX in software created by Mark Spencer of Digium, Inc in 1999. Asterisk runs on a wide variety of operating systems including Linux, Mac OS X, OpenBSD, FreeBSD and Sun Solaris providing all the features of a PBX advanced features of high end/cost proprietary PBXs. It supports Voice over IP and is interoperable with almost all standards-based telephony equipment and the best part of it, it uses relatively inexpensive hardware.

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Apache Web Server faces decline of 442K sites in February 2007

Tuesday, February 6th, 2007

According to NetCraft [here], in the February 2007 survey, NetCraft received responses from 108,810,358 sites, an increase of 1.93 million from last month. Apache has a decline of 442K sites this month, and sees its share of the web server market slip by 1.47 percent to 58.7 percent. This is the first time Apache’s market share has been below 60 percent since September 2002.

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Novell could be banned from selling Linux - FSF to take action?

Saturday, February 3rd, 2007

MicrovellJim Finkle reports [here] from Boston (Reuters) that the Free Software Foundation is reviewing Novell Inc.’s right to sell new versions of Linux operating system software after the open-source community criticized Novell for teaming up with Microsoft Corp. According to Eben Moglen, FSF’s General Counsel, “The community of people wants to do anything they can to interfere with this deal and all deals like it. They have every reason to be deeply concerned that this is the beginning of a significant patent aggression by Microsoft”. The foundation controls intellectual property rights to key parts of the open-source Linux operating system.

I would also definitely agree with the FSF since on one side, Novell took the contributions of the FOSS community to build its Operating System offerings and on the other side opted to bring on Microsoft that in originality has always taken Linux as a threat, to protect those contributions which in its own is a pretty silly way to manage IPR.

Improve Linux Performance - Reduce your Linux memory footprint

Tuesday, January 30th, 2007

TuxAn interesting article from the IBM Website [here] that a lack of physical memory can severely hamper Linux performance. In this article, learn how to accurately measure the amount of memory your Linux system uses. You also get practical advice on reducing your memory requirements using an Ubuntu system as an example. A much-touted benefit of Linux is that it is more efficient than Microsoft® Windows®, and will therefore perform better on less than cutting-edge hardware. This performance makes Linux a very attractive upgrade for the many people who have old Windows 98-era boxes still sitting around that are no longer being treated to the latest and greatest software (particularly security patches).

The article walks readers through the basics of memory, choosing the right desktop environment with appropriate applications, removing unwanted services and settings, appropriate planning and then how to optimize your system.

EnGarde Security Linux - SELinux Security with Web Based Administration for Online Services

Sunday, January 28th, 2007

engardeAccording to the Guardian Digital-EnGarde Secure Linux website [here], the EnGarde Secure Community is a secure distribution of Linux engineered from the ground-up to provide organizations with security required for creating a corporate Web presence and conducting e-business online. EnGarde can be used as a Web, DNS, E-mail, Database, E-commerce and general Internet Server platform with security as a primary concern. I call it “Linux Truly Secure By Design” since it complies to SELinux security audit measures as well as follows the principle of Linux application design, that is, “Secure By Design” though many may disagree.

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FreedomHEC 2007 - Hardware Conference Soon!

Saturday, January 27th, 2007

FreedomHEC2007FreedomHEC is the hardware conference [here] where you’ll learn how easy it is to make your hardware compatible with free, open source operating systems such as Linux, and available to new markets such as servers, next-generation entertainment devices, and more.

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Naughty Naughty Naughty - Microsofts Attempts to Conquer the FOSS World

Friday, January 26th, 2007

torvalds vs gatesThanks to TuxMachine [here], I came accross some very interesting links showing Microsoft’s attempts to interfere with the FOSS and Linux movement and possibly conquer it by:

1. Microsoft’s CodePlex [here] is an attempt to become FSF’s Savannah or SourceForge.net but if you go through their terms and conditions, you will be amazed how they treat Intellectual Property Rights. I hope the developers joing this site have a good eyesight vision, hey how many fingers are these?

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Strengthening Your Basics - FOSS A General Introduction by IOSN on Wikibooks

Thursday, January 25th, 2007

iosngeneral

“FOSS A General Introduction” serves as an introduction to various aspects and dimensions of FOSS issues, including, FOSS in education, FOSS and government policy, localization, open standards and licensing. This book has been donated to Wikibooks by the International Open Source Network (IOSN) [here] and the UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (UNDP-APDIP) [here].

The Wikibook gives a detailed introduction to FOSS, presents various FOSS Success Stories, discusses Linux, Intellectual Property Rights and Licensing, covers Localization and Internationalization of software and has a Glossary and list of various FOSS Licenses in its annextures. Wikibooks [here] is an open-content textbooks collection initiative and contains information and knowledge on a number of other areas of great importance.

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Linux and Windows - Was There Really A War?

Wednesday, January 24th, 2007

torvalds vs gatesOne thing that has been constantly pinching me is the perception found in the industry that maybe Linux and Windows are at war or members of both camps are in competition with each other. This is one area where I would like to make a clarification that there is no war nor competition and there never was unless Microsoft camp perceives that on its own which is a very usual anticipation from that camp.

Linux was founded out of hobby by Linus Torvalds and Windows by a company for commercial purposes. Yes, when the Linux Kernel or GNU/Linux was picked up by various commercial vendors and corporations, a competition clearly emerged in the corporate world of business and industry globally between today’s giants like Red Hat, Novell, Microsoft etc.

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Microsoft Vista Could Lose Market & Linux Desktop Usage Will Boost!

Saturday, January 20th, 2007

torvalds vs gatesThe Microsoft launch of its new operating system Vista could possibly loose its previously held Window’s market share due to the fact that Vista carries a whole new set of Graphical User Interface features and enhancements that will require the new end-users of Vista to first receive a significant amount of training to manage the new interfaces. Secondly, Vista may be trying to copy a number of features from products developed by the FOSS community including the Firefox browser.

Third, Vista will not be living up to its promise of including new ground breaking enhancements such as a new file system so people will be getting more of a resource hungry eater than a full of new features operating system. Fourth Vista is going to be one of the most resource hungry Operating Systems ever and you can say goodbye to all your old low-performing hardware equipment like Pentium-4 and below whereas Linux has the capability to even make such low-performance hardware become effectively useful.

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FOSS in South Asia - Part 4

Thursday, January 18th, 2007

tuxwatch exclusive sa

Part- 4. India Plays “IT” Big

Further adding to local FOSS Ecosystem development initiatives in India, the Indian state of Tamil Nadu has been making headlines [here ] the world over as the state goes for FOSS due to concerns over security and the high costs that Microsoft offers for Windows. The Indian state is not new to FOSS as the local government been running Red Hat Linux on various backend servers coupled with JBoss application server and PostgreSQL databases.

Mr. C.Umashankar the Managing Director, Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (Elcot is a state-owned IT supplier) has clearly announced that

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FOSS in South Asia - Part - 3

Wednesday, January 17th, 2007

tuxwatch exclusive sa

Part- 3. India Plays “IT” Open

India has been very prominent on the FOSS world news bulletins due to the fact that with one of the largest populations in the world, the country has been on preference list for Information Technology and Software Business Process Outsourcing for the western or developed world. Adding to this, almost every major FOSS development corporation has either Research and Development center in India as well as country operations including giant brand names like Red Hat, Novell, IBM etc. In India, the Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) [here ] has been leading FOSS initiatives in the country.

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FOSS in South Asia - Part 2

Tuesday, January 16th, 2007

tuxwatch exclusive sa

Part- 2. Pakistan Brings Nation Closer To Realization

To take FOSS efforts to the next level in Pakistan, the Government initiated a project worth Rs29 million titled “Open Source Resource Center” (OSRC) [here] was established at the through the Ministry of IT’s [here] implementation arm the Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) [here] in January 2004 in Islamabad to facilitates stake holders and investors in the software industry, should they decide to shift their businesses from vendor-dependent proprietary software to open source software technology. It aims to create a culture of open source software use in Pakistan through media awareness and training workshops, and act as a virtual community for experts in this field.

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Are you tired of Windows crashing , removing spyware, viruses, and proprietary lock-in? Are you frustrated with licensing fees and software activation demands? Are you dreading the arrival of Windows Vista, with its increased hardware requirements? Are you willing to try something different?

Tux Watch will search the web for the best resources of software, top articles and tips and even have tutorials to get you started. Linux is a free and open-source operating system that has seen tremendous growth in the past several years. Linux is stable, secure, and very powerful. It is also has tremendous capabilities, far beyond those available with other operating systems. .

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