I understand that there are laws, but something about this story just seems sad.

Without sounding insensitive…here is a good example of why Linux is perfect for education.

FOXNews.com - Gorbachev Pleads to Bill Gates for Piracy Leniency for Teacher - Technology News | News On Technology
The former leader of the Soviet empire is reaching out to computer czar Bill Gates, pleading with him to “show mercy” toward a poor school teacher accused of software piracy.

There are a number of changes and upgrades that come along in this Linux Distro.. I have enjoyed Fedora in the past, so of course I will give this one a go!

Start your downloading engines!
DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD.

Earlier this morning, I turned on my Laptop to get some work done. I first clicked on Firefox. I flipped over to another machine to check our internal mail. When I flipped back (kvm) I noticed that Firefox wasn’t starting. I clicked on Thunderbird. No go. Then finally I rebooted….and that is where the trouble started. I saw that Ubuntu couldn’t shut down some services, and upon reboot, I got the famous “run FSCK manually” message.

Wouldn’t you know it…this morning I actually held my disks in hand, and thought…nah…I won’t need them. Well I did. I needed my Ultimate Windows Boot Disk, or Knoppix…I had neither. So I downloaded Knoppix 4.0.

FSCK tried but found a TON of errors. I told it to repair, but a reboot afterwards was a no go. I ended up booting up on Knoppix and could find all my data in the Lost+Found under an obscure numbered folder (due to repair) and was able to get all my data copied off.

So, my hats off to Knoppix for giving me access to my Drive. Thanks Knoppix!

Specifically, Imagemagick Rocks. I just re-sized and converted 225 Tiffs to Gifs in about 1 minute or less. Then I wrote a script to normalize the filenames to the standard I was shooting for in about and ran it in 2 minutes.

I just had to throw that out there today.

As you can see from the quote below, it looks like Ubuntu wants to release something that will compete with Windows Vista when it comes out. From what I have seen using Ubuntu…it could happen.

Announcing: The Dapper Drake - OSNews.com
With Breezy Badger on its way its time for the announcement of what the next 1 release will be called, and the Ubuntu team has decided that the next 1 release (6.04) will be called The Dapper Drake. This release of Ubuntu will be supported for 3 years after release, and the Ubuntu developers are going to work as hard and as long as possible on Dapper Drake, as it’s what they’re going to release in response to MS’s release of Windows Vista.

I have really wanted to see this in action…however I have had trouble with getting it running myself. I do think that this will eventually be an important project.

Beagle Desktop Search Reviewed
An open-source alternative, Beagle provides fast indexing and searching of all your files. Kevin of the LinuxForums.org content development team has used it, abused it and reviewed it.

Well, I am a fan of Ubuntu Linux. I have been looking for something to use instead of Fedora. Not that anything is wrong with Fedora, I just wanted to try something different. Ubuntu has been everything I was looking for. Easy to install, use, and I can get my hands dirty when I want.

Well I recently read that they would ship you for free a copy of Ubuntu Linux on CD. So I took them up on it. Today I received a package that contained 10 packs that had an Install CD and a Live CD each.

That is pretty awesome, and that is why I like Linux so much. Not just for Gnome, KDE, bash, flexibility, but for the sense of sharing that Linux promotes.

Found this via Newsforge. I can talk to a MS-SQL server from linux using the Zend IDE, but I havne’t tried using unixODBC…

Green Leaf Technologies - Connecting to a SQL Server database from a Linux box with UnixODBC/PHP
This article explains how to connect from a Linux (or Unix) based server to an MS SQL Server using a combination of unixODBC and PHP. PHP’s documentation covers connecting to a SQL Server from a Windows machine running PHP, but not a Unix/Linux machine.

I have done this once, and it worked….

Linux.com | Sync your Pocket PC with Linux
You can use a Pocket PC with Linux, but the integration of a device such as Hewlett-Packard’s iPaq with Linux software such as Evolution requires add-on software. If you wish to use a Windows CE device with Linux you will need to install SynCE, a set of open source tools. You can download the software from SourceForge.net.

I don’t see a problem with this. If there wasn’t a Linux Trademark, all kinds of slimy idiots would be trying to claim they own Linux, and that has already happened. Further, if Linus and LMI don’t actively enforce the trademark on some, then they forfeit it.

BTW the numbers they are talking about are like $200 - $5000. That is pocket change for companies that are making money on something that was free to them anyway. Besides, this isn’t a fee to use Linux, it is a fee to use the trademark.

Trademarking Linux: Some Pay License Fee, Some Don’t
Should companies be paying a license fee for the use of the Linux trademark?