Linux succeeded thanks to selfishness and trust

"In many ways, I actually think the real idea of open source is for it to allow everybody to be "selfish", not about trying to get everybody to contribute to some common good. Models hold up Android-based smartphones The Linux-based Android smartphone system has spread the use of Mr Torvalds' invention. In other words, I do not see open source as some big goody-goody "let's all sing kumbaya around the campfire and make the world a better place". No, open source only really works if everybody is contributing for their own selfish reasons."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18419231

"Linux is anything but a walled garden. It's almost nothing but choice, with all the good and bad that comes with it."

http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/06/20/from_mac_to_linux/index.html

Open source is not just for Linux: 14 apps that are great for Windows users

"Recently I had a client that had a need that simply couldn’t be fulfilled with proprietary software. Well, that’s not exactly true. There were plenty of proprietary titles that could do what she needed done, but none that were at her budget. So I did what any advocate of open source software would do - I introduced her to the world of FOSS. She was amazed that so much software existed that was not only quality, but very cost effective.

That little interaction reminded me that the biggest hurdle open source software faced was not an incompatibility, or lack of solid code - but the lack of recognition. The majority of Windows users out there believe if you want good software you have to pay for it. So I decided to highlight the open source projects out there that run on Windows so you could, in turn, help spread the word by using and promoting these tools to your fellow Windows users."


http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/opensource/?p=2153

XAMPP: Easy Apache, MySQL, PHP, Perl Install and Config For Linux, Windows, Mac OS, and Solaris

"To run various open source applications you might have to install Apache, MySQL, PHP, and Perl (or some combination of these). For those who have difficulties installing and configuring these separately, XAMPP might be helpful.

XAMPP is Apache distribution that contains MySQL, PHP and Perl. You really don’t need to worry about configuring MySQL, PHP, or Perl for Apache. Just install XAMPP, and everything is already pre-built and ready to go. It is that easy!"


http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2011/01/xampp-install/

A Linux experiment gone horribly...perfect!

"After doing everything I (and the consultancy I work for) would have done, I determined that the best approach was to re-install the OS. Problem is, he couldn’t find his restore discs and (as I mentioned earlier) he didn’t want to shell out the money for Windows 7. This laptop was just going to be his spare laptop for home use (it was his primary laptop at work).

I decided it was time for an experiment. I knew the laptop had a restore partition so if I left that partition alone we could still restore the machine back to factory defaults (if he could find his restore discs). So…it was time to bring out the big guns. Said big guns? Ubuntu 10.04. I was fairly certain 10.04 would work like a champ on the machine. It did. But the big test would be when the user had the machine in his hands and put it to use. ..."


http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/opensource/?p=1707&tag=nl.e011

10 obscure Linux office applications you need to try

"If you’ve ever checked out the list of applications available for the Linux operating system, you know there are tons of them out there. The only problem is determining which ones are worth trying. This is especially true of the office applications. You could dig through those apps for hours just to come up with a handful of gems. So I thought I would do the grunt work for you and highlight 10 of the more obscure applications that actually have valid use in your workplace. These tools range in scope and purpose, but each one of them offers an obvious business value."


http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=1932

10 things you can do when the drive on your Linux box is full

"What do you do when that drive is full and your operating system is Linux? Do you have to do some special incantation or magical programming trick? Or do you just need a bit of common sense to help you through? Although common sense will be a great aid in this task, it also helps to know a few things about the operating system in general and how to use it properly. Let’s take a look at some things you can do when your Linux box begins running out of space."


http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=1943&tag=nl.e040

How To Send an Email With Attachment and Body from Linux

$ ( cat body-message.txt; uuencode input-attachment.txt output-attachment.txt ) \
| mail -s "Email With Body Text and Attachment" ramesh.thegeekstuff@gmail.com

http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2009/12/how-to-send-an-email-with-attachment-and-body-from-linux/

MindRaider - Semantic Web Outliner

"MindRaider is personal notebook and outliner. It aims to connect the tradition of outline editors with emerging technologies. MindRaider mission is to help you in organization of your knowledge and associated web, local and realworld resources in a way that enables quick navigation, concise representation and inferencing. "

http://mindraider.sourceforge.net/

Sugar on a Stick

"Sugar on a Stick (SoaS) is a Linux distribution that enables kids to reclaim computers for themselves in a world of computers made and managed for and by adults. SoaS aims to make it easy for local deployers to provide each student with a thumbdrive (stick), which can be booted into the student's personalized Sugar environment from any machine. Thus, SoaS advances in achieving its goal of giving each child in the world access to its free and open source learning environment to create, explore, reflect, and collaborate on any machine - at school, at home, and elsewhere. "

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick

rPath Makes Applications Portable

"rPath is a startup with a bold idea: portable applications that can be deployed and maintained anywhere on any platform or any target: physical servers, hypervisors, or the cloud. Automatically, with no manual configuration or certification required."

http://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/16497-rpath-makes-applications-portable

http://www.rpath.com/corp/

Make Human

"MakeHuman(TM) is an open source (so it's completely free), innovative and professional software for the modelling of 3-Dimensional humanoid characters. Features that make this software unique include a new, highly intuitive GUI and a high quality mesh, optimized to work in subdivision surface mode (for example, Zbrush). Using MakeHuman, a photorealistic character can be modeled in less than 2 minutes; MakeHuman is released under an Open Source Licence (GPL3.0) , and is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux."

http://www.makehuman.org/blog/index.php

Back In Time

"Back In Time is a simple backup tool for Linux inspired from “flyback project” and “TimeVault”. The backup is done by taking snapshots of a specified set of directories."

http://backintime.le-web.org/

AlternativeTo - Alternatives to Windows, Mac, Linux and online software

"AlternativeTo is a new approach to finding good software. Tell us what application you want to replace and we give you suggestions on great alternatives! Instead of listing thousands of more or less crappy applications in a category, we make each application into a category. Think of it like forever evolving blog posts about good alternatives to the software that you're not satisfied with. And the "blog posts" are generated by you through suggestions, comments and votes. "

http://alternativeto.net/

Ramdisks - Now We Are Talking Hyperspace!

"Ramdisks are usually spoken of in hushed tones when sysadmins get together. Some view them with awe because of their performance and some view them with skepticism and say they are only useful for creating benchmarks. Almost all of them agree that using them on a regular basis must be done with care because of the problem of losing power shuts immediately shuts down the ramdisk erasing the contents of the ramdisk. However, there are uses for ramdisks besides running benchmarks. More over there are storage devices that use RAM as the storage media that can reach rarefied levels of performance of millions of IOPS."

http://www.linux-mag.com/cache/7388/1.html

Convert pdf to jpg

This command will convert all .pdf files in a directory into a 800px (wide or height, whichever is smaller) image (with the aspect ratio kept) .jpg.

for file in `ls *.pdf`; do convert -verbose -colorspace RGB -resize 800 -interlace none \
 -density 300 -quality 80 $file `echo $file | sed 's/\.pdf$/\.jpg/'`; done

http://www.shell-fu.org/lister.php?id=627 

Ubuntu Netbook Remix

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UNR


https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromImgFiles

Works well on my eee, by the way.  YMMV as they say.

I was especially impressed when it went off and found my network printer without having to be told its IP address.  Does it scan every IP looking for a printer?

Linux Keyboard Shortcuts - Safe way to exit during system freezes

"In Linux, when your entire system freezes, there are plenty of safe ways to exit and get back on track immediately. Alt + SysRq + (a selection of other keys) will do the magic trick. Note: 'SysRq' key is equivalent to the 'Print Screen' key.

Alt + SysR + K
Kill all processes (including X), which are running on the currently active virtual console.

Alt + SysRq + E
Send the TERM signal to all running processes except init, asking them to exit.

Alt + SysRq + I
Send the KILL signal to all running processes except init.

Alt + SysRq + L
Send the KILL signal to all processes, including init.

Alt + SysRq + S
Run an emergency sync (cache write) on all mounted filesystems. This can prevent data loss.

Alt + SysRq + U
Remount all mounted filesystems as read-only. This has the same effect as the sync combination above, but with one important benefit: if the operation is successful, fsck won't have to check all filesystems after a computer hardware reset.

Alt + SysRq + R
Turn off keyboard raw mode. This can be useful when your X session hangs. After issueing this command you may be able to use .

Alt + SysRq + B
Reboot immediately without syncing or unmounting your disks. Using this, you will likely end up with filesystem errors, so this is not highly recommended.

Alt + SysRq + O
Shut the system off right away.

If all these ‘Alt + SysRq’ keyboard combo are hard to remember, you can press Alt + SysRq + H to display a helpful list of the shortcuts above."


http://www.junauza.com/2009/01/linux-keyboard-shortcuts-to-exit-safely.html

Testing the KDE 4.2 release candidate on Windows

"The popular open source desktop environment has moved beyond Linux and is becoming increasingly robust on other platforms. Even KDE's Plasma desktop shell is now Windows-compatible."

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/01/testing-kde-42-release-candidate-on-windows.ars


http://windows.kde.org/

Dasher Poject - Tips for Novices

"don't drive forwards until you have identified where you want to go!"

http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/MoreTips.html