An indepth look at OpenOffice.org Office Suite

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OpenOffice.org is arguably the finest office suites available in the public domain. It is a direct competitor of Microsoft Office. It includes a Word processor (OpenOffice.org Writer), a Spreadsheet (OpenOffice.org Calc),a Presentation program (OpenOffice.org Impress), a Drawing program (OpenOffice.org Draw) and a Database (OpenOffice.org Base).

Sun Microsystems merges with Oracle

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Sun Microsystems gets acquired by Oracle. This is the hot news making rounds on the net. This is a news which could have wide ramifications for the Open Source crowd. Why? Because Sun Microsystems creates some of the most well received, robust open source software around. Just to put it in perspective, let me list some of them which come to my mind.

GNOME Do - An intelligent launcher tool for GNOME

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GNOME Do is an intelligent launcher tool which makes all your default menus and panels in GNOME redundant. Since last time I had written about GNOME Do, it has gotten only better. Just a glance through the numerous plugins available for GNOME Do will be enough for any sceptic to fall in love with it.

Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope makes its debut

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Ubuntu 9.04 code named Jaunty Jackalope has made its debut as a release candidate. This is a pre-release of Ubuntu which is almost ready for general use. On first glance, this release of Ubuntu looks very promising.

Debian ceases to be just a Linux distribution

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Take the name of Debian and the first thing that comes into ones mind is a robust, user friendly Linux distribution which has helped spawn numerous other Linux distributions. But things have subtly changed. Recently, Debian team added two new architectures to Debian, namely - kFreeBSD for i386 and x64. That is right, Debian can now use the FreeBSD kernel. The tools surrounding the kernel are the same GNU tools found in Linux. So the end users running Debian with the BSD kernel won't find much of a difference in the feel of the operating system. But then, if you are running Debian using a FreeBSD kernel, you can seldom call it GNU/Linux .... you should call it GNU/kFreeBSD.

Source : Debian Announce List

What does it mean to be free ? - We're Linux contest winner announced

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Linux is Free. Do you know what that means ? If you don't, the following video will teach you the true meaning of Free.

Adobe's free gift to unemployed developers

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Are you an unemployed developer? Did you get the pink slip because your company found it costly to retain you after the economic down turn? Then cheer up because Adobe has decided to provide some succor by releasing it's flagship product Adobe Flex Builder Professional for free. The catch is that - of course, you have to be unemployed and, you can use the software only for personal use to improve your programming skills.

New features in Linux kernels 2.6.28 and 2.6.29

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Linux kernel has in recent times seen numerous advances. And the latest versions of the Linux kernel namely 2.6.28 and 2.6.29 have some fabulous features in-built into them.

Topping over 10 million lines of code, the current day Linux kernel is no push over and is forming a serious threat to its competition.

Some of the features that are there in the more recent Linux kernels are as follows:

Install Linux in your Dropbox account using VirtualBox

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Dropbox is a very popular online storage service which provides 2GB of free space to store all your files, and selectively share them with the public. What is really nice about Dropbox is that it provides tools which integrates with Windows, Linux and Mac OSX and makes uploading and downloading files to and from your Dropbox, and act as a conduit for backing up all your important files - a seamless affair.

LinuxHaxor has a nice writeup on how to use your free 2GB Dropbox account to install your choice of Linux distribution via Sun's VirtualBox. Make sure the Linux distribution you choose is less than 2GB in size when installed as you will be limited by the 2GB space on Dropbox.

The writeup walks one through the installation of Damn Small Linux on Dropbox using VirtualBox. Read the article.