Ubuntu Live 2008 cancelled, May 21, 2008

If you were planning to attend Ubuntu Live 2008 in July, we have some bad news for you: the event has been canceled. Speakers were quietly notified earlier this week and the event's Web site was updated late this morning.

Once upon a time, you found Linux as a server in two places in the enterprise: on the edge, as a Web server, and in the branch office, as a file and print server. That was then. This is now.

I moved my mother from Windows to Ubuntu Linux, and the experience was a surprisingly smooth one.

All in all, Ulteo looks promising, and it offers a few important advantages compared to Web-based office suites like Google Docs and Zoho.

... when we move from talking about Vorbis to talking about Theora, we come to a screeching halt. Outside of Linux-land, hardly anyone uses it, and Theora encoding is in a sad state, especially for those computer users (estimated at 95%+) who prefer a GUI to command-line work.

OggConvert is a simple, GUI-based video transcoder that outputs only to the free Theora and Dirac formats. It couldn't be any easier to use, and it's the quickest way to get a feel for the still-new Dirac codec. No need to tweak pages of arcane settings -- just drag, drop, and watch.

Thomas Howe is a telecommunications developer and consultant who is passionate about the role of open source software in the telephony industry. He calls open source the "next generation" of telecommunications, and works with large enterprise companies to help them design phone systems that fully integrate with their business flow. "Only open source can do that," Howe says.

Pardus developers describe the Linux distribution as advanced yet easy to install and use. Let's see how well it lives up to the hype.

Although China's Linux market as a whole doubled from 2003 to 2006 to $20 million per year, sales of Linux desktop software grew more slowly. In fact, the market share of Linux desktop software in China dropped from 16% to 12% in the same period.

Designed specifically for writing professionals, this application suite includes a few clever features that make it a must-have tool, whether you write for a living or for fun.

Many people still question whether Linux will ever make it fully into mainstream computer acceptance. A $199 computer now available on a major superstore's shelves just in time for Christmas might change all that. Anyone who wants a computer to just to send email and instant messages and watch YouTube videos should like the Everex gPC, which is powered by a nifty Linux distribution called gOS.

Dimdim calls itself the world's first free Web meeting service based on an open source platform. Users can share their desktops and files while chatting and videoconferencing with meeting participants. Dimdim was originally licensed under the Mozilla Public License (MPL), but the possibility of a big deal with a university made Dimdim executives eventually change to the GNU General Public License (GPL) instead. By changing the software's license from the MPL to the GPL, "we are making it easier for the community to use our product," says Dimdim founder DD Ganguly.

Linux is now mainstream -- so mainstream, in fact, that two of the top three Linux distributions are commercially successful operations, and the third aims to be. Every day, more and more old-school IT firms shake off their initial doubts, get in line behind their customers, and try Linux and other free software projects.

How is the third version of the GNU General Public License (GPLv3) being received four months after its official release? Not well, if you believe the Evans Data survey released on September 25.

Uruguay's government this week announced the results of a study indicating that XO computers from the One Laptop Per Child project were a better value for the nation's schoolchildren than Intel's similar offering, the Classmate PC.

The Linux-based eX2 in-flight entertainment system (IFE) from Panasonic Avionics was the big winner at this year's Avion Awards, sponsored by an IFE trade group. The Best Overall IFE awards went to Emirates, Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific Airways, all running variants of eX2.

iFAX, a commercial company that is built on open source fax server software HylaFAX, was recently included in Inc. Magazine's 2007 list of the top 500 fastest growing companies in the United States.

Contrary to yesterday's report, the lawsuit against Monsoon Multimedia for violating the GNU General Public License (GPL) in its distribution of BusyBox may not be headed for a quick settlement. Nor will the settlement necessarily be out-of-court.

GNOME 2.20 was released yesterday. Even though I use GNOME regularly, I normally don't get excited over new releases, because most seem to offer little more substance than previous versions, with most of the work being done under the hood. This time, though, GNOME has a solid list of new features and upgrades. It's worth taking a look at even if you aren't a fan of this desktop environment.

This small city on Florida's Gulf Coast runs one of the most cost-effective municipal IT departments around. I last wrote about Largo's Linux-based client-server network in 2002. A lot has changed for Largo's computer-using city employees since then, and even more changes are in the works.