Kubuntu Computer Geeks

Spam and Scapegoats

2008-08-22T08:54:00.002-04:00

Well its about to happen again I am about to receive a "timeout" for the freespire forums for speaking my mind about the beyond pitiful job the Freespire mods do on moderating especially there spam. They seem to think that it is unacceptable to expect spam to delete within 60 minutes. I don't see how that is a unreasonable request. If they can't do it in that amount of time with there current mods maybe its time to get some the are committed to it or at least get some more mods. I realize they are so busy with the activity of Freespire at the moment that its hard to check on the forum ever once in awhile to delete spam, but maybe its about time they actually give a little effort instead of saying "its obvious what threads are spam so just avoid them".

Zimbra Shakes Hand with Canonical

2008-08-11T07:35:00.001-04:00

Zimbra, a Yahoo company, has announced that Canonical, sponsors of Ubuntu, will give users direct access to Yahoo Zimbra Desktop, which provides a centralized hub to manage multiple e-mail accounts and calendars online and offline, through the Ubuntu Partner Repository.According to Zimbra, with Yahoo Zimbra Desktop, Ubuntu users will have access to Yahoo Mail, Gmail, AOL Mail and any IMAP or POP enabled e-mail account, such as work, personal and school accounts, from the same place, even when they are not connected to the Internet. Additionally, Yahoo Zimbra Desktop allows people to use the iCal standard to take their calendar offline.Zimbra also offers document and spreadsheet functions, as well as mashup features with services like Flickr, Amazon.com, and Yahoo Maps."The addition of Yahoo Zimbra Desktop to our Partner Repository gives millions of Ubuntu users instant access to best-in-class messaging and collaboration," said Malcolm Yates, global ISV partner manager at Canonical. Yahoo Zimbra Desktop Beta Version 3 is available for free download at Zimbra.com/desktop. Anyone with access to Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS), Yahoo Mail, Gmail(TM), AOL Mail, or an IMAP/POP enabled server can use Zimbra Desktop.

http://www.sda-asia.com/sda/news/psecom,id,20048,srn,4,nodeid,1,_language,Singapore.html

VMware joins Linux Foundation

2008-08-07T13:16:00.001-04:00

Virtualization, the ability to run software in virtualized containers so multiple OSes or versions can run on one physical machine, is becoming more prevalent in IT environments. At its core, virtualization is enabled by software called a hypervisor, and can help drive down datacenter costs, among other benefits.

The announcement is VMware's latest embrace of open source. Last year, the vendor open-sourced a number of its tools, and in 2006 opened up the specification for its Virtual Machine Interface, which enables guest operating systems to communicate with the hypervisor.
Those moves as well as VMware's move to join the Linux Foundation mean good news for end-users on one level, as they point to a general rise in openness and collaboration among virtualization vendors even as the competition tightens around higher-end tools, according to one industry observer.
"VMware has been focusing on standardization efforts much more seriously of late. They realize that the actual hypervisor functionality is being quickly commoditized, or near-commoditized, and like every other virtualization vendor, they're eyeing virtualization management as the source of green-field revenue," said Michael Coté, an analyst with Redmonk. "IT management is by its nature a heterogenous undertaking, and even for market leaders like VMware, that means promoting standards and openness, at least at the lower levels of the stack."
While VMware is the biggest virtualization player, it is facing increased pressure from companies like Microsoft. To stave off this competition, VMware recently said it would offer a small-footprint version of its ESX virtualization software free.
In other news Wednesday, VMware unveiled new certification and education services aimed at helping IT professionals better build and deploy virtualization environments.
A new certification available to IT consultants and other professionals is the VMware Certified Professional, which is given to people who demonstrate a certain level of expertise in deploying virtual infrastructure.
Another more advanced certification, the VMware Certified Design Expert, is available for network architects and consultants who are responsible for planning and designing VMware enterprise deployments.
VMware also is offering new Live Online and Flex Online courses to help IT professionals achieve the certifications and deploy virtual environments, the company said. Professionals also can take courses at VMware Authorized Training Centers.

Freespire to return to Debian Roots

2008-08-06T10:59:00.002-04:00

Well it looks like Freespire is finally going in the right direction now that Xandros has purchased it and a company that seems to know what they are doing has taken over. It was announce today that the next release of Xandros Freespire 5 due out by the end of 2008 will be based on Debian Lenny 5.0. I personally use Debian Lenny and it is a very stable release even though it is still the testing branch of Debian. It uses KDE 3.5.9 which in my opinion is the most stable branch of KDE right now. Back when Freespire was based on Ubuntu (which I always thought was a mistake) I feel like there was too much pressure to keep up with the 6 month release cycle whereas Debian's release cycle is roughly 18 months which should be a lot easier to maintain and make improvements along the way. I give the Xandros and Freespire communities a thumbs up for this move.

Security Vulnerability in Pidgin

2008-08-06T08:19:00.001-04:00

I know that a lot of Linux users use Pidgin for the IM needs so here is the security notice i just received:

A security issue has been reported in Pidgin, which can be exploited by malicious people to conduct spoofing attacks.The problem is that the certificate presented by e.g. a Jabber server at the beginning of an SSL session is not verified. This can be exploited to spoof valid servers via a man-in-the-middle attack.Successful exploitation requires that Pidgin is configured to use the NSS plug in.The security issue is reported in version 2.4.3. Other versions may also be affected.

Mandriva linux one 2009 beta 1 KDE 4.1

2008-08-02T17:33:00.002-04:00

Today I tried Mandriva 2009 beta 1 with KDE 4.1. One you first pop in the live CD they ask you certain question like language, keyboard settings, and time. Once you answer these questions the desktop loads very quickly I might add. it comes with all the tools you would expect (GIMP, Firefox, Kmail, and Kopete). The default file manager as you would expect is dolphin. They do however are still using Firefox 2.0.0.16 instead of firefox 3.0.1. Hopefully that will change by the time of the final release. Other then that it was a very user friendly and stable experience something I didn't really expect from a RPM distro:) Till next time happy linuxing.

Kubuntu 8.10 Alpha 3 is released

2008-07-28T20:12:00.002-04:00

As you probably know by now Kubuntu 8.10 Alpha 3 is out. I am downloading it now as we speak and I will have a post later on what I find. However in the mean time I would like to talk about the fact that they have changed the file used for the KDE settings from .KDE4 to .KDE which makes downgrading to KDE 3 almost impossible for the average computer user. Hopefully they change this before it get released in October, but if they don't and you hate KDE4 you might want to stick with Kubuntu 8.04.

Debian 4.0r4 is released

2008-07-28T20:06:00.000-04:00

Debian has released the fourth update to Debian 4.0 named etch. The main focus on this release was better hardware support. As many of you know Kubuntu the distro I use on all my systems is based off of Debian so better hardware support for Debian means better hardware support for my favorite distro and in my opinion the best distro.