As you may have noiced, we have recently changed our hosting service. Changing provider can be difficult—I had to effectively install a brand new server, and move all the data and configuration across. It was a time consuming and risky move: we had never dealt with 3fn before and, as far as we knew, the move could have been a disaster. After 2 weeks with them, I can honestly say that I am deeply impressed. This interview was not part of the deal we had with them—it was my own initiative, after seeing just how fantastic they were.

Allow me to set the scene: There I was this morning, reading The Melbourne Age online and drinking a cup of decaffeinated coffee (just don’t ask), when suddenly, I saw it. Again. An advertisement in the technology section that any first year media student worth their salt could trample all over. And I wondered, how do these travesties of advertising happen?

[Cue fade-out and chimes; cut to (day)dream sequence; fade-in…]

A long time ago in a classroom far, far away…

The IcedTea project has been launched by GNU Classpath. It’s goal is to make Sun’s recently freed Java implementation, called OpenJDK, work in free software environments. This involves replacing some binary blobs with code from GNU Classpath, and making or adapting a free software build system for OpenJDK.

Web developers are sometimes forced to travel. Unfortunately, lugging a big, bulky laptop around with all their programs is the only way to develop on the road. After all, using another computer is out of the question since it doesn’t hold all of your favorite programs. Luckily, there is a best of both worlds. Thanks to John T. Haller, the Apache Friends, evolt.org, winPenPack.com, and a host of others, you can carry an Apache server, a MySQL (and SQLite) install, a PHP install, a Perl install, a mail server, an FTP server, two popular web browsers, an FTP client, an HTML editor, an image editor, and a vector graphics editor on a 512MB flash drive to be used with any Windows computer. All using free software.

A few weeks ago, I promised to explain how to create your own custom live CD with Fedora’s new tools. Well, last week Fedora 7 was launched and all the tools you need are available in the repositories. This even includes a brand new graphical tool, put together by the people at Fedora Unity, called Revisor, which will allow you to spin your own live CD or installation material in an unbelievably user friendly manner.

Well, I suppose I’ve had a (not quite so) brief hiatus from blogging, and it’s time to come back into the fold.

I’ve been looking for a good GNU/Linux thin-client for my employer, a school district in the US. We have scores of aging desktops (primarily Intel PII 350 MHz and PIII 800 MHz systems) and looking more into the mobile arena for most computing needs. We currently utilize Citrix’s MetaFrame Presentation Server for most client applications, so we could substitute the current Windows XP OS for GNU/Linux.

In part one, I looked at the Beagle search tool on the command line and the graphical user interface and in part two I want to look at alternative front-ends for it. First out of the stable is…

Yabi

The GNU project has released Emacs 22. For the curious, now is a good time to try the World’s greatest software package. There is even an Emacs tour for people to take a look first.

This week we are giving away a copy of Using Samba, Third Edition by Gerald Carter, Jay Ts and Robert Eckstein AND a copy of Beginning Ubuntu Linux by Keir Thomas

All you need to do to enter is…

Ever since I first fired up KDE on openSuSE, I’ve been in love. The KDE interface just swept me off my feet. But there’s always been one nagging thing. Firefox and Thunderbird stick out like two sore thumbs. They don’t look like KDE apps (see figure 1 and figure 4), they don’t work with KDE programs (like KPrinter), and they just don’t feel like they belong in KDE. Luckily, since both of these apps have support for add-ons, it is easy to remedy this.

The GPLv3 process has entered it’s final stage with FSF releasing GPLv3 discussion draft 4. Some particularly good news is that this draft is finally compatible with the Apache licence.

Accompanying this “last call draft” is:

• An essay by RMS: Why Upgrade to GPL Version 3
• The rationale document of the changes
• The press release

Here, we have a mug-shot of Steven Anthony Ballmer—the same Ballmer who has been ranting and raving that the Free Software Movement has “stolen” code from his precious Microsoft Windows OS, and incorporated it into software which we… uh… “give away” for free.

Question please, Mr Ballmer;

If we “stole” our operating systems from Microsoft, then how come our operating systems never “crash” in the monotonously regular fashion that every Windows OS has done since Windows 3.11?

OpenOffice.org is probably the biggest free software project in existence today. It certainly is the biggest single piece of software one can download and compile in one go, with the core package hitting over the 100MB mark (while bzip’d) and the total sources going over 200MB.

It directly competes with Microsoft Office, is a bit more easy to install than KOffice, and is very complete.

But what will you get?