Nokia buys Symbian, will open Symbian OS.
Symbian, the company behind the popular proprietary mobile/embedded operating system of the same name, just turned 10, but it won't see its next birthday. Nokia, which had long owned a substantial portion of Symbian, announced today that it would be buying the rest of the company, 52% for about &euro264 million, or approximately $410 million. In addition to purchasing Symbian, Nokia says it will be open-sourcing the Symbian operating system. more... and Nokia Launches a Full Scale War for the Mobile OS and Mobile Linux groups merge and Two Linux mobile groups merge to pool efforts.

Acer Aspire One.
Acer says the Aspire One is not a laptop. It might look and smell like one, but the company has gone to great lengths to promote the message that the One is an 'Internet device'. Others, such as Intel, refer to it as a netbook more... and ASUS Eee PC 901 Linux Edition Review.

Netgear's open wireless-G router for open source hackers.
NETGEAR has announced a wireless router specifically targeted at the Linux community. The WGR614L is based on a MIPS CPU with 16M of RAM an 4M of flash, along with 802.11g and 10/100 ethernet connectivity. more... and NETGEAR Launches Open Source WGR614L Wireless-G Router.

PackageKit finds sweet spot in quest for universal package tools.
Different GNU/Linux distributions provide incompatible systems for package management, and to date no one has quite figured out a foolproof way to get the best of them all. But where the alien utility tries to convert between major package formats, and Smart and Klik try to imagine new, universal forms of software installation, PackageKit has the more modest goal of supplying a universal front end that leaves the native package systems intact underneath. more...

Do we really need another packaging system?
Recently I've been quoted by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols for questioning the need for the LSB Package API. The kind of conversation going on over the LSB Package API has been a recurring theme ever since I started using Linux, and it contains quite a few fallacies I would like to put down. Most importantly, the most common theme I've heard is that this fancy new system could usher in a new era of easy package installation for users. Let's go over some of these myths. more...

Tru64 Advanced File System Released as Open Source.
In a bid to further Linux file system innovation, HP has announced it is opening up its Tru64 Advanced File System (AdvFS) to the open source Linux community. The AdvFS file system, which has its roots in Digital Equipment Corporation's Digital Unix, is used in mission-critical deployments. HP, which gained AdvFS through a series of acquisitions, has its own flavor of Unix, HP-UX, and that has its own file system. more...

Big Buck Bunny builds a better Blender.
Big Buck Bunny is the colorful product of the Peach open movie project: an animated short released online and on DVD. But in addition to the 'toon itself, Peach has produced an altogether different yield: improvements to the Blender 3-D modeling application. Like its predecessor Project Orange, Peach pushed the open source tool forward with the demands of a real-world media production, in a way that hobbyist usage cannot. more...

Magazine.
Full Circle - the Ubuntu Community Magazine Issue 14 and pdf.

Misc.
Software Freedom Day 2008.
Is Open source a synonym for Free software ?
Ascii Table and description..
PasswordMaker: Strong Passwords at your Fingertips.
Open-Source Reshaping the Software Industry.
Linux Mint 5 review.
openSUSE 11.0 - Smooth Outside and Rough Inside.
Open Source Data Recovery Tools To The Rescue.
Guide to Linux File Command Mastery.
VMWare Workstation 6.5 features list download beta2.
42 of the Best Free Linux Audio Software.
Top 10 Linux financial tools.

How To Tips.

See you next Thursday 7 P.M. at 420 Cafe, 420 Washington Ave, Eau Claire, WI.

EC_LUG