Synchronise Linux releases, says Ubuntu head, May 18, 2008

Canonical head and Ubuntu founder, Mark Shuttleworth, says that he would be prepared to adjust the release dates of Ubuntu if it meant they would match those of other major Linux distributions.

In a press release issued late last month analyst heavyweight Gartner made a series of technology predictions for the coming years. Things such as software as a service and Apple gaining significant ground by 2011 may not be completely unexpected.

The Mint Linux team made a final release this week for its community edition distribution, while Mythbuntu and Ubuntu both added new alphas in on the way to Hardy Heron’s release in April.

Microsoft yesterday announced a beta of its Microsoft Office Live Workspace beta, an online platform were users can store documents and share them with others. Reviews of Microsoft Office Live Workspace have been varied but if you’re running Linux you won’t get to use the Live Workspace at all.

The Mandriva development team yesterday announced the first release candidate for Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring. Codenamed Serapias

Linux Warehouse has been appointed as official local distributor for the popular MySQL database in Southern Africa.

I tend to hammer my Ubuntu laptop. Running a website like Tectonic means I am constantly installing new applications to try them out. Many of which I later have to remove or lie forgotten on the hard disk until I start to wonder where the +40GB of free hard disk space went to.

Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet? Or, more importantly, would as many people stop to smell a rose by a different name? In an open letter to Ubuntu Linux founder Mark Shuttleworth, published yesterday, the suggestion was made to rebrand all the forms of Ubuntu as different editions of the distribution.

In the latest Ubuntu weekly newsletter the Ubuntu folks announced the release of the Ubuntu 7.10 Desktop Course. The modular course should take two days to complete all 10 of the lessons offered, but it is possible to cover topics and lessons independently of each other, learning whatever is of interest.

The Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum has announced the completion of the LiPS Release 1.0 specifications (download it here), with the intention of enabling mobile industry players to achieve basic interoperability for applications and services deployed on Linux-based phones.

Living in Africa we have abundant sun, a power source we rarely consider when we buy yet another gadget. Along comes the Aleutia E1, an ultra low power computer setup that can be run from a roll up solar panel or car battery and runs Puppy Linux.

Linspire, the developer of the Linspire and Freespire desktop Linux distributions, yesterday announced the launch of CNR.com (Click-n-Run) beta, a free Web-based Linux package management system for desktop Linux users.

DataDyne punts EpiSurveyor as a free, open source tool that can be used to make hand-held data entry forms, collect data on a mobile device and then transfer the data back to a desktop or laptop for analysis.

A recent crack-down on piracy in Kenya has driven a number of internet cafes to open source.

A week before the workshop the South African government became the latest country in the world to adopt the OpenDocument Format (ODF) as a government standard for information exchange.

In his latest blog post the chief executive of Sun, Jonathan Schwartz, offered "heartfelt congratulations" to Google on the announcement of its new Java/Linux phone platform, Android.

Here, for the first time, are pictures of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) coming off the production line at the Quantas factory in China. Thanks to Morgan for the tip-off.

South African Linux and open source specialist Synaq has been contracted to manage and maintain the Linux-based network infrastructure for The Pro Shop, a national supplier of golfing product and services.

Linux vendor Novell is heading off after the small business sector now with its latest release, the Novell Open Workgroup Suite Small Business Edition (say that in one breath).

Ubuntu founder and IT entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth tells Computing SA that picking open source software was not only good for South Africa but also important for the rest of the African continent.