It wasn’t a good week to be an Alaskan vice-presidential candidate, an online publication or even a multinational science project — as all were compromised by hackers this week.
Inexpensive add-on applications that will provide audio codecs and a DVD player to expand the multimedia capabilities of the four-year-old Linux operating system are now available for purchase in the Ubuntu online store. Previously, users could run into compatibility troubles while trying to play DVD movies or some types of audio tracks.
In some tests the stock Eee Linux distribution was running quite slow and placing far behind Mandriva, Fedora, and Ubuntu, but when it came to the solid-state disk performance Xandros had the lead. Overall though, it appears that Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha 4 had delivered the best performance on the Intel Atom architecture.
Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth announced Wednesday that his company, Canonical, will hire professional designers and interaction experts to improve the usability of the Linux desktop software ecosystem. They will work closely with upstream developers to bring a better experience to users of the open source operating system.
I think gOS 3 has some merits. Trying to free some of the Web applications from the browser sometimes makes sense. Adding WINE is also a plus for new Windows switchers. Having MP3 playback and Flash working out of the box is also helpful for newbies. Other than a few minor issues I didn’t have any problems running the system.
Ubuntu overlord Mark Shuttleworth announced today that the codename for Ubuntu 9.04, which is expected to arrive in April, will be Jaunty Jackalope. Ubuntu releases are issued every six months and include the latest versions of popular open source software applications. Shuttleworth believes that Ubuntu is ready to compete with Windows and Mac OS X and he expects to see the open source Linux distribution ship on millions of devices in the coming year.
Linux Mint 5.0 (”Elyssa”) is available in a lightweight flavor suitable for older hardware, thanks to its use of the ultra-lightweight XFCE window manager. At the same time, the release features the option of fancy Compiz desktop graphics, for those who like eye candy.
A few weeks ago, I reviewed the Acer Aspire One notebook, the variant which came with an Acer-modified version of Linpus Linux. A few days ago, however, I realised Linux wouldn’t be ideal for me on my netbook. Due to pragmatic reasons, I’m now running Windows XP.
As we all know, there are a vast amount of applications available for Ubuntu. People outside the Linux scene will probably have heard and used the most famous open source apps (such as Firefox), but there are a select few programs that are either insanely cool and innovative, or just extremely polished. They might not even be well known within the Linux community, but they make the overall experience that much better for everyone.
The new beta of MEPIS 8, like MEPIS 7, is based on Debian rather than Ubuntu. Creator Warren Woodford decided to switch to Debian in the summer of 2007. Specifically, MEPIS 8 is being built on the forthcoming Debian 5, Lenny.