Ultra portable netbooks have proved to be the surprise hit of 2008. But with just about every major manufacturer launching a netbook into the market over the past year choosing the right one can be a challenge. Tectonic reader Jaco asks which Linux netbook would be the best buy for his mother. “I don’t want her to have too many cables and to have to muck about with modems and drivers and such. Simplicity’s the key here, as I don’t want her to dump it in favour of a better-supported Windows machine.” Because Jaco is working outside of South Africa (where his parents live) he also needs to find a company which will support the Linux-based netbook for his parents when he’s not around. What do you suggest? Leave your suggestions in the comments below and help a fellow reader out.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

With just a couple of weeks to go until 2009 it seems an appropriate time to look back on the year that was. We dug through the archives and came up with the ten most popular posts on Tectonic over the past 12 months.

Sadly, this was one of the last things that our friend and fellow open source activist, Uwe Thiem, wrote before he passed away in July. A long-time open source advocate and a core KDE contributor, Uwe was a key figure in open source software in Africa. The debate may have moved on since Uwe wrote this in July, but his contribution is still valuable. It is fitting that his final contribution reached so many people.

By now most Ubuntu fans already know what Ubuntu 8.10 offers. But as one of the first predictions of what the developers were aiming for, this post sparked huge interest and, mostly, got it right.

One of the big decisions developers made for Ubuntu 8.10 was to leave OpenOffice.org 3.0 out of the default install (see Ubuntu explains OpenOffice.org 3.0 decision below). This article preceded the release of 8.10 but is still proving popular as Ubuntu fans look for ways to get OpenOffice.org 3.0 running.

Microsoft’s done a great deal of work over the past year to assure open source fans that it is not in fact the evil empire. But every so often a Microsoft exec mouths off in frustration and the result is not pretty.

This goes back all the way to January of this year and a project by Ubuntu to give new users a helping hand with Ubuntu. It’s now a little outdated - it was written for Ubuntu 7.10 - but still worth checking out.

Not including OpenOffice.org 3.0 in the default Ubuntu 8.10 release was one of the more controversial decisions of the year. This interview with Ubuntu’s Colin Watson shed some light on the reasons for that decision, and was met with a number of robust responses.

It sounds like just another story but clearly Photoshop is something that the open source world desperately wants to work on Linux. And so this news makes it into the top ten for 2008.

Most users have already got there hands on OpenOffice.org 3.0 so this is a little dated, but before the open source office suite was actually released there was enormous speculation over exactly it would look like. This helped users get a first taste.

Netbooks were the surprise hit of 2008. Almost out of nowhere these tiny wonders began to be the single biggest topic of discussion. Combine that with Ubuntu and you have a massively popular story.

At least the five apps you need if you run an … er … open source website. Nevertheless, this proved hugely popular and still has some pretty good tips.

Tectonic reader Ken sent us a link to this story. Dell customer Zvi Devir from Haifa in Northern Israel, was recently able to do what most open source fans just dream about: He managed to get Dell to give him a refund for the Windows software shipped on his new laptop which he didn’t want because he was planning to run Linux.

Vista’s end-user license agreement stated that “by using this software, you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the software. instead, contact the manufacturer or installer to determine their return policy for a refund or credit.” Which is what Devir did.

Intially he was fobbed off but after taking the issue to the small claims court, Devir was finally rewarded with a cheque for $137 (R1 386).

Full story

With the end of the year just a few weeks away it’s time for a break … and a bit of relaxation before a new year of Tectonic fun kicks off.

But before you take off for your holidays please give me a little help.

Every year around this time I begin to think of the things that can be added to Tectonic to make the site better and more useful to the many regular readers that it has. Because I usually take some time off from regular posting I have the time to play with new ideas and plans. Last year I migrated the site from a homegrown CMS to Wordpress, which has proved to be among the best ideas I’ve had to date.

I’m not looking for any other big projects like that just yet, but I am looking for ideas. That’s where you can help me. If you can spare a couple of minutes then please answer the ten short questions below. They’re pretty straightforward but will help a lot in planning for next year.

I’m not promising you’ll win a prize (though the 10 000th respondent might be in for a surprise ) but your time won’t be wasted. It’ll help make the site and its content better than ever.

Thank you for your time.
Alastair

(If you have any problems with the form below you can also answer the survey here)

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Cisco. The FSF’s complaint alleges that in the course of distributing various products under the Linksys brand Cisco had violated the licences of many programs on which the FSF holds copyright, including GCC, binutils, and the GNU C Library. In doing so, Cisco has denied its users their right to share and modify the software.

Most of these programs are licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), and the rest are under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). Both these licenses encourage everyone, including companies such as Cisco, to modify the software as they see fit and then share it with others, under certain conditions.

One of those conditions says that anyone who redistributes the software must also provide their recipients with the source code to that program. The FSF has documented many instances where Cisco has distributed licensed software but failed to provide its customers with the corresponding
source code.

“Our licences are designed to ensure that everyone who uses the software can change it,” said Richard Stallman, president and founder of the FSF. “In order to exercise that right, people need the source code, and that’s why our licences require distributors to provide it. We are enforcing our licences to protect the rights that everyone should have with all software: to use it, share it, and modify it as they see fit.”

“We began working with Cisco in 2003 to help them establish a process for complying with our software licences, and the initial changes were very promising,” explained Brett Smith, licensing compliance engineer at the FSF. “Unfortunately, they never put in the effort that was necessary to finish the process, and now five years later we have still not seen a plan for compliance. As a result, we believe that legal action is the best way to restore the rights we grant to all
users of our software.”

“Free software developers entrust their copyrights to the FSF so we can make sure that their work is always redistributed in ways that respect user freedom,” said Peter Brown, executive director of the FSF. “In the fifteen years we’ve spent enforcing our licences, we’ve never gone to court before. We have always managed to get the companies we have worked with to take their obligations seriously. But at the end of the day, we’re also willing to take the legal action necessary to ensure users have the rights that our licences guarantee.”

A copy of the complaint is available at http://www.fsf.org/licensing/complaint-2008-12-11.pdf.

Music fans get ready. Amarok 2.0 is here. After almost two years of development the latest version of the media player was released yesterday and sports a long list of enhancements.

The most obvious of the changes over previous releases is the new interface which is based on a wholesale overhaul of the old Amarok look. Part of that change comes from the migration from the KDE 3 to KDE 4 framework which includes new technologies such as Plasma, Phonon and Solid.

Underneath the skin, Amarok 2.0 also includes tighter integration with online services such as Magnatune, Jamendo, MP3tunes, Last.fm and Shoutcast. The player also exposes an overhauled scripting API and plugin architecture.

The user interface has been redesigned to make context information like lyrics and albums from the same artist more accessible and allow users to decide which information they want to see by adding applets to the Context View in the middle.

The new Biased Playlists also offer a way to let Amarok take care of playlists in an intelligent way similar to Dynamic Playlists in previous versions.

Download Amarok 2.0.

Adoption of GPLv3 has surpassed many older licenses in a short time, according to licence watcher Black Duck Software, reports The Register.

According to Black Duck, GPLv3 is now the fifth most chosen licence in the open source community, used in 6 300 projects, and is expected to snatch the number four slot from BSD in “a year or two”.

The move past BSD would represent a doubling of GPLv3’s use. BSD is employed in 6.51 percent of projects compared to GPLv3 in 3.98 per cent. The numbers are based on Black Duck’s repository of 170 000 open-source projects from nearly 4 000 sites.

Full story

Sun Microsystems says MySQL 5.1 is proving popular with users, despite the controversy surrounding its release.

Ten days ago, when MySQL 5.1 was first officially released, MySQL founder Monty Widenius posted a warning on his blog that 5.1 was not ready for wide use.

Widenius wrote:

The reason I am asking you to be very cautious about MySQL 5.1 is that there are still many known and unknown fatal bugs in the new features that are still not addressed.

Sun Microsystems, which bought MySQL for US$1 billion in January, says, however, that there have been more than 250 000 downloads of the MySQL 5.1 software in the first ten days of its release.

Sun says that MySQL 5.1 features a number of new enterprise-class enhancements, including:

Table and index partitioning;
Row-based and hybrid replication;
An event scheduler for recurring tasks; and
A new MySQL query analyzer to improve performance.

MySQL 5.1 can be downloaded from here.

A consortium of technology companies, including IBM (IBM), will today launch a new initiative designed to help shield the open source software community from threats posed by companies or individuals holding dubious software patents and seeking payment for alleged infringements by open-source software products, reports Fortune.

The new programme, called Linux Defenders (site not live as of writing), will include a call to open source developers all over the world all over the world to submit their software inventions to Linux Defenders so that the group’s attorneys and engineers can help shape, structure, and document the invention in the form of a “defensive publication”.

“The idea is to create a defensive patent shield or no-fly zone around Linux,” says Keith Bergelt, the chief executive officer of Open Invention Network, the consortium launching the site. The core members of that group, formed in 2005, are IBM, NEC, Novell, Philips, Red Hat and Sony.

Full story

For some, Ubuntu 8.10 was something of a disappointment. Not because it is bad, which it is not, but because is feels more like slightly refreshed Ubuntu 8.04 rather than a new release.

For one, Ubuntu’s promised desktop interface overhaul is still not in evidence and that was promised two releases ago. And then there is the fact that apart from a few minor tweaks it looks every but the same as ubuntu 8.04. Which is not good considering the ongoing talk from founder Mark Shuttleworth of how the Linux desktop must be as appealing as Mac OS X. Right now it feels as if Ubuntu is making no ground on that goal.

Fedora 10 on the other hand, does feel a fresher and slightly more exciting but then it is hard to draw too much from the comparison because the default Gnome versions on both of these desktops is the latest 2.24.1 release. So they both benefit from great new features such as the new tabbed file manager and a host of new default applications.

One of the things that Ubuntu does get right with this release is the much improved networking tool. In fact both distributions use the same base tool but each have additional tweaks in it. Ubuntu’s approach has been to improve its 3G capabilities, which it has done exceedingly well. In most cases inserting a 3G card or USB modem will automatically kick off the connection tool and connect the user to the relevant network. This alone makes Ubuntu worth a try.

Fedora on the other hand has added the capability to create ad-hoc networks using machines in a specific vicinity. So, for example, users in a common office could create an ad-hoc network between themselves without needing to have a dedicated router. Which is ideal for occasional situations but not a long-term solution.

Much of the differences between Fedora and Ubuntu now come down to the way that the two manage applications and the need to install new packages. Fedora still has an RPM-based system while Ubuntu has an APT-based system for managing software.

Given recent developments with RPM, choosing between the two is relatively hard. APT has, for sometime now, had the upper hand when it came to resolving package dependencies automatically. But with the inclusion of PackageKit - first introduced in Fedora 9 but now greatly improved - Fedora’s package management system looks like it could be every bit as good as Ubuntu’s in the next couple of releases.

One consideration when choosing between the two distributions is the amount of support that new, and seasoned, users can expect. Because both are open source community projects this is not a case of paying for support. Rather it comes down to the amount of support available online.

There is a strong case to suggest that Ubuntu wins this battle with ease. A simple search on Google for any Ubuntu support topics turns up tens of thousands - or even hundreds of thousands - of results. Typically, Fedora also has many thousands of results for the same search but it tends to be ten or 20 percent fewer than for Ubuntu.

In most cases, choosing between Fedora and Ubuntu comes down to personal preference, although Ubuntu’s support and package management make it a contender for the best Linux distribution.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

Time to get testing. The Firefox developer team has announced the release of Firefox 3.1 Beta 2.

New features and changes in this release include:

• Support for 54 languages;
• A new Private Browsing Mode that allows users to browse without Firefox storing any traces of where they’ve been;
• New functions to remove the history of the past few hours of browsing, or remove all traces of a website;
• The new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine is now on by default for web content;
• Improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering;
• Removed the new tab-switching & preview behavior based on feedback from Beta 1 users;
• Support for new web technologies such as the <video> and <audio> elements, the W3C Geolocation API, JavaScript query selectors, CSS 2.1 and 3 properties, SVG transforms and offline applications.

Download Firefox 3.1 beta 2.

• Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid optimised for XO Laptop
• Why the IBM Linux desktop will fail
• How Windows users are changing Linux and what we should do about It
• AbiWord version 2.6.5 works with Word 2007 and OpenOffice Writer
• Is the recession hurting Google’s innovation?
• What’s new In Python 3.0

Want more? Check out our Daily Links or suggest a link worth following.

Readers choice: Last week Python users got a new version of the language to play with. And Perl 6 is still on the horizon with big changes. But which is your preferred language? Vote and tell us why in the comments.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

Back in June Nokia bought up the remaining portions of Symbian that it did not already own and said that it would release the mobile operating system as open source software.

Now ComputerWorld UK reports that the Symbian Foundation, established following the Nokia deal, is planning to release the first test versions of Symbian open source in the first half of 2009. The entire OS is expected to be released during the course of 2010.

Nokia’s agreement to purchase the balance of Symbian was finalised a week ago.

The Symbian Foundation now lists 64 members including Nokia, Motorola, NTT DoCoMo, LG Electronics, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, AT&T and AOL.

The initial Symbian code released in 2009 won’t be entirely open source and will be released to members of the foundation. That code will include elements of Symbian and of Nokia’s Symbian-based S60 platform.

The version of the operating system expected to be released in 2010 will unite Symbian with S60 as well as two other platforms built on it: UIQ and NTT DoCoMo’s MOAP.

More at ComputerWorld UK.

Perl 6 will break backward compatibility, says founder Larry Wall. Of course, programming language Perl 6 has been the subject of speculation since it first got underway in 2001 and still no-one knows when it will finally be released.

This week in Sydney for the Open Source Developers Conference, Wall said that Perl 6 will not be compatible with previous versions of the language but will open up a new world of custom “languages” and interpreters.

Wall said that while Perl 6 will break backward compatibility it was important to simply the language. And in order to do that developers need to “get rid of old cruft, particularly the regular expression cruft,” Wall said.

“A lot of the unreadability of Perl is related to the regular expression syntax - and we didn’t do that, we got it from Unix. It needs to be end-of-lifed. Regular expressions are not strings, they are a sub-language. We took it and made it worse. There is this two-pass nature that is evil.”

Wall said that the developers “want to preserve as much of the Perl culture as we can so it’s still recognisably Perl, but nicer.”

Full report at ComputerWorld.

Sun may be getting a bit of a hammering on the markets but the company is still keeping itself busy. Over the past two days Sun has released not one but two major releases: OpenSolaris 2008.11 and JavaFX.

In the first, Sun rolled out OpenSolaris 2008.11. The latest release of Sun’s open source version of its Solaris operating system includes GNOME 2.24, Firefox 3, Songbird and OpenOffice.org 3. The applications more specific to OpenSolaris include the Image Packaging System which has a new look. OpenSolaris developers also say that the OS will boot a lot faster than previously, something everyone in the market is trying to get right.

See Internet News blogs for more on OpenSolaris 2008.11.

In the second big release of the week, Sun released JavaFX, a new version of the Java programming language that is apparently easier to use as well as being well-suited to rich media Internet applications.

To some extent this sounds a lot like Sun’s original plans for Java more than a decade ago: a multi-platform system that can be run anywhere. Of course all those years ago Java lost out to the more lightweight Javascript and today JavaFX is just one of a good handful of such platforms, including Silverlight, Adobe Air and Flash and the open source Moonlight.

It’s Friday, so what better way than to end the week with a little controversy and argument? A lot of readers had a lot to say on the Microsoft-Unisa deal this week. And interestingly the story has got a whole lot of Microsoft Live users to join in. So welcome to our Microsoft fans! Another Microsoft-related story getting some attention this past week was the one about ex-Microsoftie Keith Curtis’ book on open source software. He came in for a little flak but to his credit Keith join in the discussion to clear things up. For more comments, check out our ongoing discussions page or leave your thoughts suggestions on our open thread.

How many times have you heard that open source support is hard to find? If I had collected a couple of cents for each time I’d heard it I would be basking in the Bahamas on a yacht right now, not running this website.

The reality is that there are tons of open source support companies in the market. It’s just that very few people know where to find them. So now Tectonic has a new feature (to add to our growing list such as Daily Links, discussion tracker): the Tectonic Open Source Business Directory.

Phase one of the directory, which is a listing of companies providing a range of open source services,  is now open and the good news is that listing your company (or finding one to help you) is completely free. And it will remain free for the foreseeable future. Of course if anyone wants to sponsor the directory then get hold of me.

During this launch phase the directory is open to all companies operating in South Africa and providing open source services. Whether you are a trainer, a developer, provide support services or install Asterisk, the directory is there to be used. So use it.

For the initial phase of the directory I have decided to limit the listings to companies and individuals providing services in South Africa specifically. In future phases, and depending on demand, we will look at expanding this to other regions.

Comments, thoughts, suggestions are most welcome - use the comments below.

IBM and Canonical yesterday announced a virtualised software bundle with Lotus desktop applications running on top of Ubuntu Linux.

The pair of companies say that the Ubuntu-based system is far cheaper than running Microsoft’s Office suite on conventional Windows PCs.

The release  the latest salvo in IBM’s ongoing battle to break Microsoft’s stranglehold on the desktop.

The virtualised system runs multiple Ubuntu desktops from a Linux-based server.

The system is based on Virtual Enterprise Remote Desktop Environment from virtual Bridges and runs Ubuntu Linux. It will run IBM’s Open Collaboration Client Solution software based on IBM Lotus Symphony, IBM Lotus Notes and Lotus applications. IBM Lotus Symphony is built on the OpenOffice.org open source office suite.

Others talking about this: Computer World, ZDNet

For years Microsoft denied that open source software was a competitor to its business. And then suddenly a year or so ago it began to talk “standards”, “interoperability” and other good things. It even went so far as to give money to open source projects.

But, just as we were starting to think that the company was ready for a new course it comes out with a piece of PR that sounds as if Steve Ballmer could have written it himself.

In a release titled Microsoft Gives Businesses Lower TCO Versus Hidden Costs of Open Source Microsoft offers us a Q&A with UK company Speedy Hire’s infrastructure and support manager, James Fleming.

In the release Fleming makes a number of intriguing comparisons between open source software and what Microsoft has on offer.

He says, for example, that the company switched from Linux desktops running OpenOffice.org to Microsoft Office, Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Dynamics. Which is a little like deciding that SAP is a better choice than Microsoft Outlook Express.

He also goes on about the “needs of the enterprise” and how open source support is hard to find. He then likens open source software to the stuff that you get on a CD on the cover of a magazine: “You save money up front, but over the long haul you’ll pay more. The message is, if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. Sure, you can get a CD off a magazine cover, stick it in a machine, and there’s your operating system. But if you want to actually do anything with it and make it bulletproof enough to withstand the rigors of corporate use, it’s going to cost a lot of money and require considerable work.”

He’s got that last bit right, though. It does cost money to make sure your IT can withstand the rigors of corporate use. And if you get your enterprise IT infrastructure off a magazine cover disk then you pretty much deserve what you get.

As far as marketing goes, it is a ham-fisted and poor attempt which is worth a read only for its use of phrases such as “incredibly broad, deep network of experienced, enterprise-savvy partners” and other tongue-twisters.