I've recently attended a conference in Albania (FreeSB) and one in Kosovo, (SFK10), both about how Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) can play a crucial role in the cultural, educational, economic and social development of any emerging country. Three talks from those conferences helped to prove this point.

James Michael Dupont (Mike) is a software developer that is doing a lot to promote Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) in Kosovo and other Balkan countries. This year, Mike invited a first class team to spend a couple of weeks in the southern Balkans, to explain why and how FOSS can play a great role in the social and economic development of those countries. Read how at the Stop!

THE LINUX DISPLAY ANATOMY

Preamble
This is the first in a collaborative series of articles written by members of the Linux.com community, empowering user knowledge, to detail the physical and logical structure of the Linux display/Video system as well as configuration to optimize the display, customize various display modes and configure various window managers to run on your Linux and Unix-based systems.

The members at Linux.com have an obligation to provide all users of the Linux realm essential information that will make their experience with GNU/Linux joyful and educational. Not only will you be given what you need to know, in easy to understand terminology, yet fresh imagination to implement Linux in your everyday lives.

Linux is a new system to learn for those who are converting from windows or Mac OS, or the curios. When it come to learning a new entity, it will time and lot of trial and error before you can safely assume you can manage on your own. Why go through frustration? The members at linux.com are obligated to help ease the learning transition. Lets be honest, administration will be managed by you. It will be a lot easier understanding how the system works, its make-up architechure, and troubleshooting when you have reliable informants. More importantly, you will know how to use it. Learning linux will be easy and fun, so lets get started.

The Linux Display System
The display system in Linux is straight forward. It is a system program that allows the Linux OS to display output to the screen in either graphic interfaces(GUI) or CLI(command line interface). The display system runs on top of the Linux kernel in user space which allows the kernel(the heart of a linux OS) to continue to function if the display system crashes. The display system is flexible allowing the user to configure it to suite their needs. Lets briefly dig deeper into the display structure.

Linux Display Modes
There are two different video modes that an administrator must be aware of:
* VGA video mode  - Used for CLI (Command Line Interface) modes
* X server mode - Used to display GUI (Graphical User Interface) base windows managers and applications

Current Linux and Unix-Like systems all have the capability for Video output, although some customized systems rarely use video.

VGA modes
THE VGA modes are used to choose the resolution used to display the CLI, bootloader and bootsplash screens that you are presented with prior to loading a desktop manager and a system booting up. The current VGA modes are quite limited compared to the available options for the X server Modes, but the use is quite different, so the resolution limitations are acceptable.
The various VGA modes and instructions for configuring them will be covered in a later post in this series.

X Server Modes

The X Server modes are used to display the window manager and GUI applications. The X Server Modes allow you to configure and use any resolutions that are natively supported by both your video card and monitor. To use and Configure the X Server Video Modes you must use the X Server to set the initial limitations, then you can use various applications to modify the way it interacts with your monitor(s). Commonly today, customized Linux distros are utilizing the X window server which is making Linux far more easier to use.

The Initial introduction to the X server and explanations of the various tools will be covered in later posts in this series.

X Server Configuration Utilities
Once the X server has the base configuration you may think that your work is done, this can be true, or you may want to change resolutions, setup dual monitors or hook up your system to a projector. In those cases you will need another utility to make the necessary changes to your system in the running X instance. As you can see, the X server speaks loudly to visual ability.

Several posts will be made introducing you to these utilities, various options and benefits.

I look forward to using the various tools to build useful information and also to working with the community to give you the best information possible.

If you would like to join our group and assist with future collaborative series please visit the Linux.com Bloggers group and offer your assistance.

http://www.linux.com/community/groups/viewgroup/1303-Linuxcom+Bloggers - Linux Bloggers Group

This document was written and edited by mfillpot, Istimsak and Robin.
http://www.linux.com/community/profile?userid=198 - mfillpot
http://www.linux.com/community/profile?userid=13985 - Istimsak
http://www.linux.com/community/profile?userid=4402 - Robin

The last Open World Forum explored many sides of openness beyond Open Source software. Here are some notes I took while I was there, from women in FOSS ("The day women go to FOSS, it will finally become mainstream.") to Eben Moglen's keynote ("We make software that supports Freedom; then we put that software everywhere; then we turn Freedom on"):

An article published last month explains how to generate OpenDocument spreadsheets directly from DB2 databases. Above all,  it also shows how easy it is (with any database, not just DB2) to generate dynamically from a database, for all the visitors of your website, spreadsheets and other office documents in an editable format that is immediately usable by many office suites (including Microsoft Office). Read why at http://freesoftware.zona-m.net/node/25

Hello again.

I know it's been a while since I've posted.  Now that summer is over and I'm spending more time indoors, I have been using the various applications available through Ubuntu 10.04 to help me organize my home. 

Other than the recipe manager, I am also using a password manager. I won't mention any specific one, they all work in the same way... choose which ever is compatible with your desktop. This is especially useful since we can keep the endless passwords in one place on our desktop instead of on paper.  Of course, you need a master password to enter.... keep that written down somewhere ! Good for keeping pin numbers, too.... they are encrypted. Saves alot of time and frustration, when trying to find or remember a password.

Notepads like Kjots are good too, you can make notes of things you want to do, either offline or online...  delete as you finish each chore.

I've also found the CD disc burner useful for copying important documents.. needed as a back up, since sometimes these yellow with age and become unreadable.  Same for photos, instead of huge photo albums, with photos that get yellow with age.

Spreadsheets like those that Open Office or Gnumeric have, are good for keeping track of expenses, of course there are also various applications that can be used for more complicated bookkeeping,  with spaces for accounts, savings, etc.  I often multi-task, by using the calculator to figure the days receipts, then add it to the spreadsheet. Each application shows up on the desktop and this can be done simultaneously.  These can also be burned on a cd, then you don't need all that paper clutter.  Well, that's all for now... oh, on Sunday the new Ubuntu 10.04 comes... so I've been told through the Facebook group. For those who are looking for something new... but this one is LTS, so no need to change. I 'm just getting to learn it anyways.  Bye...

Many of you use everyday virtualization products to emulate other machines and run specific tasks on them.

As many of you already know I only use Linux machines at work, it ain't that easy if you need to survive in a corporate Windows forest (AD controller and windows environment) but I'm still fighting for it. Sometimes you need to use certain Windows apps or developer tools and you don't want to install WINE or something like that, as many of you I use customized and virtualized Windows machines. VMWare player outside "mainstream" distros have some lacks or troubles, expecially when you deal with GTK.

it happens to have mouse garbled, or if you move it inside VMPlayer window it disappears or acts in a weird mode, the same happens to the keyboard (not proper working), after a while I've figured how to solve it, it's not that strange or particular, it's a quite known problem and the fix is quite easily available if you use google for a while.

If you work with the latest version of Gnome your VMWare Player won't work well because it was supplied with previous version of GTK, even if you have "grab when cursor enters window" option set. It won't grab the pointer and it looks strange when moving it inside the VM Window, I hope this workaround will help you until VMWare solves compatibilities with the GTK library (and even release a VIC/vsphere like client for linux !!!).
You need to force VMPlayer to use shipped version of GTK. here's what you need to do:

• locate vmplayer program path (`which vmplayer`), /opt/vmware/player/bin/vmplayer in my linux gentoo distro
• It's a text file so you can edit it with your favorite editor (nano or whatever)
• add a line with  `  export VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_GTK="force"   ` after "set -e" line, so it will look like:

# is installed.
#

set -e
export VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_GTK="force"

ETCDIR=/etc/vmware

line "export VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_GTK="force"" is what you need to add, it works even with "export VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_GTK=yes", choose whatever you like

Now when you run it you'll see an application with a bad look, the older GTK version is used there and it ain't that nice but at least it works fine

Now run your favorite virtual machine and you'll see no mouse garbling now. This solved my troubles on Gentoo but even with other distros. Hope it helps

Glad to read your comments

Andrea (Ben) Benini

Can you believe this? After a similarly absurd proposal 7 months ago, now Microsoft says that in order to prevent computers full of (Windows!!!) viruses from spamming the whole Internet, governments should establish and enforce "health certificates" for computers as necessary prerequisites to have Internet access. Why not just install Linux or anything else that's not Windows instead? See http://stop.zona-m.net/node/188 for details.

"I got by Rony another Free Software script for automatic generation of OpenDocument invoices, or any other ODF text with a fixed structure... I'm happy to host it here because he's proving what I thought when I started the ODF scripting section of this website: the OpenDocument format is not only really open, it's also so simple that everybody can save lots of tedious, manual office work thanks to it!"
Full story and source code at http://freesoftware.zona-m.net/node/24

We are pleased to announce our new Issue 143 of openSUSE Weekly News.

This Week:

• OSC2010 Sneak Peaks – Take an LPI exam at openSUSE Conference 2010
• Uwe Gansert: AutoYaST and Image Creation/Installation
• Nelson Marques: Marketing @ openSUSE Conference, Across Borders!
• Techthrob: Softlinks vs. Hardlinks: A Quick Explanation
• Andreas Jaeger: New design of lizards and avatars

Like ever we have now finshed just the english Version under: http://en.opensuse.org/Weekly_news. From now on starts the translating Process. You can see the actual results under: http://en.opensuse.org/Weekly_news#Translations. If any Translation is ready the Translation Team moves the Language up to "Available".

No we hope you enjoy the reading :-)

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