There are still a few weeks left before the deadline that demands Oracle appoint a community liaison for their OpenSolaris operating system that is capable of communicating their future intentions to the OpenSolaris community (like where the hell is OpenSolaris 2010.1H) or else the OpenSolaris Governing Board will return control of the community back to Oracle. However, some OpenSolaris community developers have already had enough: they've begun work on a new project.

Pinguy OS is a remastered Ubuntu with a lot of useful default applications - great for those who don't like to do a lot of tweaking and want an OS that "just works". Pinguy OS doesn't rebrand Ubuntu, so you'll have the same Plymouth theme, the Ubuntu logo for the menu and so on. It's just Ubuntu with a lot of default applications and PPAs enabled by default. You'll probably think you don't need Pinguy since there's already Linux Mint which does a great job at enhancing Ubuntu, but you'll notice a lot more useful stuff in Pinguy OS. And you won't miss Linux Mint either because Pinguy OS comes with the Linux Mint main menu and even the Mint repositories enabled by default.

The Linux scheduler, in both the mainline and realtime versions, provides a couple of scheduling classes for realtime tasks. These classes implement the classic POSIX priority-based semantics, wherein the highest-priority runnable task is guaranteed to have access to the CPU. While this scheduler works as advertised, priority-based scheduling has a number of problems and has not been the focus of realtime research for some time. Cool schedulers in this century are based on deadlines instead. Linux does not yet have a deadline scheduler, though there is one in the works. A recent discussion on implementing the full deadline model has shown, once again, just how complex it can be to get deadline scheduling right in the real world.

Music education is a field of study connected with the learning and teaching of music. Music is an essential part of the fabric of our society, and the intrinsic value of music is widely recognized. Human culture uses music to carry forward its ideas and ideals.

The Black Hat security conference attracts the creme de la creme of the security industry. This year the organizers even offered a paid live stream for those unable to make the trip to Vegas. Called Black Hat Uplink, the service carried a $395 price tag. But as security expert Michael Coates found out, the price could be waived entirely, ...

Japanese mobile Linux software firm Access announced a major push toward Android, joining the Open Handset Alliance (OHA), and releasing a free "Graffiti" handwriting recognition app for Android, among other developments. Meanwhile, Access' IP Infusion subsidiary has added MPLS-Transport Profile support to its ZebOS Network Platform software, says the company.

We have recently covered how to use your Android phone to access the internet on your computer. This process is known as tethering. By connecting your phone, via a USB cable, to your computer you are able to use the phone’s data connection to browse the web on your computer. In places where there aren’t any wireless hotspots, tethering is incredibly useful.

In this quarterly update, the project manager of opentaps Open Source ERP + CRM discusses recent changes to make opentaps easier to set up, configure, and customize.

Nearly Consulting, which specialises in community relations and free software strategy, has published the results of its GNOME Census. According to Nearly Consulting founder Dave Neary, the census report analyses how developers participate in the GNOME project and looks for patterns within the project itself.

The old "Ubuntu doesn't contribute back" argument cropped up again when Dave Neary released a report of the talk he gave at GUADEC on the contributions made to the GNOME desktop environment. He found that Red Hat and Novell contributed the most and that Ubuntu and Mandriva (primarily a KDE distribution) was among the lowest. A firestorm of debate ensued and Shuttleworth was accused of name calling and guilt to try to win the argument.

Back in March an announcement came out of NVIDIA as they were getting ready to launch the GeForce GTX 400 "Fermi" graphics cards that they would be dropping support for the xf86-video-nv driver. The xf86-video-nv driver really didn't provide much of a feature set and was far behind the Nouveau KMS and Gallium3D drivers even though these were reverse-engineered by the open-source, so NVIDIA announced they would be discontinuing this open-source DDX driver and advised its customers to just use the VESA driver until they are able to download and install NVIDIA's proprietary Linux graphics driver. However, today they have decided to release an updated driver.

As Linux has become more widely used in embedded systems, the number of file systems which work directly with the flash storage (i.e. via MTD device as opposed to some block device hardware emulation layer such as the one present on most DiskOnKey devices) has grew substantially.

In my grumpier moments their relentlessly positive, cult-like Kumbaya-or-else approach makes me want to turn the hose on them. But I don't remember them attacking anyone else the way they've been attacked.

This is the second installment of a two-part series on setting up the OpenVPN server on DD-WRT router firmware. This is a great way to set up secure connections to your network for road-warriors or to remotely connect offices. This a cost-effective solution can support a dozen or two VPN users. In Part 1, we uploaded the DD-WRT firmware to the router, changed the router's IP and subnet for compatibly reasons, and created the SSL certificates for the OpenVPN server and clients.

"Popular Canadian rock band 'Sum 41', doesn't like Facebook perhaps for technical and practical reasons, not really political reasons, but it's still awesome."

Steve Coast, a cofounder of the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company founded the OpenStreetMap community mapping project in 2004, and CloudMade draws its data from OpenStreetMap. Through application programming interfaces and other tools, CloudMade helps developers take advantage of OpenStreetMap’s geographical data to power their own location apps, then takes a share from the apps’ advertising revenue.

Two of the most notable trends in systems management are DevOps and the related and partially redundant Agile Operations movement. These initiatives are popular in many Web 2.0 and cloud computing oriented companies like Twitter, Google, Yahoo! and Facebook where the companies’ products are highly dependent on IT. Though in reality the same practices are just as well-suited to the IT administrator in the traditional organization with massive infrastructure, unrealistic workloads and businesses that needs to improve efficiency to meet their business goals.

Two of the most notable trends in systems management are DevOps and the related and partially redundant Agile Operations movement. These initiatives are popular in many Web 2.0 and cloud computing oriented companies like Twitter, Google, Yahoo! and Facebook where the companies’ products are highly dependent on IT. Though in reality the same practices are just as well-suited to the IT administrator in the traditional organization with massive infrastructure, unrealistic workloads and businesses that needs to improve efficiency to meet their business goals.

A recent VentureBeat article put the blogosphere and smartphone industry on its heels when a reported score of wallpaper Android apps were accused of being malicious by mobile security software maker Lookout at a Blackhat 2010 hackers conference. We had a chance to talk with the developer of the wallpaper apps in an exclusive interview, his name is Jackeey Wu.

GNOME and KDE are teaming up again to host the 2011 Desktop Summit in Berlin, Germany. Due to the success of the 2009 Desktop Summit the projects will co-locate GUADEC and Akademy once again in August, 2011 for the largest free software desktop event ever. The 2009 Desktop Summit was a fantastic opportunity for the leaders of the free software desktop community to share talks, address common issues, and build relationships between the communities with combined social events.