FSM Newsletter 24 March 2008

Hello readers, and welcome once again to Free Software Magazine's fortnightly newsletter, keeping you up to date with all things free software... AND the top 10 FSDaily announcements for this week! Enjoy!

General announcements

Top ten Free Software Daily stories this week

  1. India's Final Vote On MS Office File Standard Is 'NO' --Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), has made a final decision on the document file format OXML (Open eXtended Markup Language). Out of 19 members, five of them did not attend the meeting, one of them abstained, five voted in favor of ooxml, and the rest voted against. Read more...

  2. OpenOffice.org 3.0's new features, an early look --OpenOffice.org 3.0 is 167 days away, but who's counting? Maybe the software developers are counting because they have a whopping 2,278 issues targeted for this release. Even though OpenOffice.org 2.4 is not yet out the door, let's see how far they've come with OpenOffice.org 3.0. Read more...

  3. Down with Windows! Russian schools turn to free software --A free online alternative to the Windows operating system is set to be introduced in schools in three Russian regions by 2009. If the pilot project proves successful, all schools across the country will make the switch a year later. Read more...

  4. Microsoft ‘tax’ on Linux in schools must end says Becta --Becta has recently shown that it is unafraid of speaking out on behalf of schools. Unhappy with the value for money schools were getting regarding software licencing they first referred Microsoft to the government’s Office of Fair Trading then sent shock waves through schools when it issued its advice not to upgrade to Windows Vista or Office 2007. Read more...

  5. Windows Vista Incapable --"Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) is shipping and what we know so far is that it is incapable of running on many types of machines. In fact, Microsoft is being sued for putting stickers all over machines claiming that Vista could run on them, when in fact, it cannot. Read more...

  6. Firefox 3 goes on a diet, eats less memory than IE and Opera --Firefox 3 goes on a diet, eats less memory than IE and Opera Read more...

  7. The Internet Archive Keeps Book-Scanning Free --"While Google has made headlines over the last two years for scanning thousands of copyrighted works for its Book Search project, the Internet Archive is quietly digitizing around 1,000 public domain titles every day. Read more...

  8. FSDaily hidden feature: Live Discussions --No doubt many of our regular readers have already discovered this feature of FSDaily, but for those who haven't... Read more...

  9. Boycott Novell Support Bruce Perens' Fight Against "Invasion of the Borgs" --Several months ago we wrote very extensively about Microsoft’s motives in joining the OSI. By following the links, you can locate old posts that obviate the need to repeat old arguments. Bruce Perens, as you are probably aware, is one of the louder and best-known protesters against the Microsoft/Novell deal. He continues to focus on this issue, which he has not forgotten. Read more...

  10. Has Microsoft Disavowed Vista? --Technically, Vista is pure misery. It eats system resources like an elephant does peanuts, Windows applications break and its so-called improved security is a joke. I know it. You know it. Even Microsoft's most devoted yes-men know it--although they won't admit it--and perhaps Microsoft knows it as well. Read more...

Thanks to santhosh, snotbutter, mark, cpoliticas, can.axis, dave, komrad, and dako3256 for these stories!

Latest content

Asus Eee PC (Part Two): Setting up the full KDE GNU/Linux Experience --By Gary Richmond. In Part One of my Eee PC series I looked at the hardware specifications of this miniature marvel. In such a small space Asus have managed to cram in a lot and at a price that is so low that it ought be illegal. However, it is a cliche to recall that hardware without software is junk—unless you have a fetish for silicon Read more...

How do you replace Microsoft Outlook? Groupware applications --By Ryan Cartwright. How do you replace Microsoft Outlook? Do you go for Evolution or Kontact? Can a combination of Mozilla Thunderbird and Lighting do the trick? Do you split the features and are there any compromises to be made? Read more...

If the pen is mightier than the sword, is the touchpad greater than the mouse? --By Gary Richmond. Can you give RSI the boot and let your touchpad take the strain instead? Read more...

Impossible thing #4: Funding community enterprises like Blender and the Orange and Peach Movie Projects --By Terry Hancock. The bazaar development model turns out to be amazingly versatile: it seems that most software, even things you wouldn’t think would be feasible, can be developed using such an approach. Read more...

Advertising

It is not just programmers' work that makes up the price of a software license. A large proportion of it is spent on advertisement, i.e. listing in popular software directories.

The main idea of our project is that a substantial share of our commission is returned to the user in the form of attractive discounts. By lowering our commission rates we can encourage return trade and ensure the utmost satisfaction for all our customers.

Best regards, the www.Dissoft.com Discount Software team.

Latest content continued

Property and commons --By Mauro Bieg. How do peer productions and free content work out? Read more...

Social inclusion with Xubuntu: A tale of free software changing lives --By Ryan Cartwright. M6-IT, a Community Interest Community in the UK, are part way through a project to equip socially excluded families with computers running Xubuntu. I was recently able to interview Richard Rothwell of M6-IT about this project and its progress. Read more...

Getting the login right: moving from xdm to gdm or kdm --By Terry Hancock. For years now, I have been clinging to xdm as my display manager; years ago, I spent several days tweaking the configuration files of xbanner and xdm to get it to look “just so”, and I didn’t want to change it. Read more...

Making KDE look good --By Colin McGregor. Out with the drab, in with the pretty! Read more...

Twinkle: My favorite SIP program --By Andrew Min. I’ve been looking for an SIP program for a long time. Linphone, OpenWengo, and Gizmo all failed to work with my Logitech AK5370 USB microphone (ah, the joys of drivers!). Eventually, after about half a dozen programs, I gave up. Then, out of the blue came Twinkle, a Qt-based VoIP phone. Read more...

Reminders

You can read this and previous newsletters online here

Comments Your comments on articles, issues, and blog entries are very welcome. They provide other readers with insightful suggestions, further information, and the feeling that they are not alone. They also provide our authors with the feeling that they are being heard.

Avatars Avatars are a great way of expressing your personal identity, whether it be a photo or an image that you feel represents the you you want to be. Read more about avatars here. To add an avatar: log in, go to “my account” in the menu on the left, go to the “edit” tab and scroll down to where it says “Upload picture”. Now, hit the browse button, find the image on your computer that you want to upload and go to the bottom of the page and hit the submit button. That’s it; you now have an avatar image.

Invite a friend Share Free Software Magazine with your friends! We have a really strong community and we want it to grow and grow, and with your help, it can! When you are logged in to Free Software Magazine, you should have a feature called “Invite Your Friends” showing on the left hand side in your navigation menu. If you click on this feature, you will be taken to a page where you can insert your friends’ email addresses and a personal message, and they will receive an invitation from you! You can also keep track of which of your friends have accepted your invitations. Go on, spread the free software word today!

Subscriptions Ever wanted to follow that story, or blogger, or be informed when a change appears to some content that you want to keep up with? Now you can. Using our new “Subscribe” feature, you can receive an email update every time a blog or page is updated or when a comment is added, so you can keep up with all the latest changes. You can manage your subscriptions by logging in and going here.

Donate As you might know already FSM is a low profit project with all funds raised going back into producing the fine magazine you can read for free.

Think about how much you would normally have to spend buying a magazine of this quality. We provide it for free!

Your donations will help us to continue spreading the word about free software and producing more fantastic issues.

Contacting us If you’d like to contribute to FSM: read our Write for us page. Then send your proposal to proposals@...

If you have some feedback for us about our site or its content, then drop us a line at input@...

If you are interested in advertising on our site, or in our magazine or newsletter, you can find more information on our Advertise page or send an email to advertise@...

If you need help with your account for any reason, please send an email to helpdesk@...

Please add freesoftwaremagazine.com to the ends of the email addresses above. Sorry for the inconvenience but spammers make this necessary.

Thanks

Thank you for subscribing to Free Software Magazine. You are a part of a growing community who help to raise the awareness of, and educate new users in, the joys of free software. Without you we would not have this community and without you we would not have a magazine. Happy reading!

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.