Matt Dew, a self-proclaimed “X newbie”, just finished talking about his experiences as just entering the world of X.Org development and hopes to contribute to the X.Org world by gathering up and improving X.Org documentation…
Read more at Phoronix
AMD Catalyst 10.9 For Linux Released
AMD has just released their monthly proprietary Linux driver update, which this month puts it at Catalyst 10.9. The only new “feature” of AMD Catalyst 10.9 for Linux is early support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0 (RHEL6), but there are some bug-fixes…
Read more at Phoronix
Programming Lessons From Linux Geeks in the Trenches
There’s nothing like the school of hard knocks to teach a person a thing or two, and geeks are no exception. “If you are writing a program that touches more than two persistent data stores, it is too complicated” is one such lesson, for example. “If Linux can do it, you shouldn’t” is another. Both, in fact, are words of wisdom shared in a recent post entitled “Programming things I wish I knew earlier” by programmer Ted Dziuba. Dziuba’s hard-won pearls of insight must have struck a strong chord with Linux bloggers.
Read more at LinuxInsider
Oracle Sticks to Sun’s Open Source Strategy for Java
In preparation for the upcoming JavaOne, one of Oracle’s Java experts have commented on the companies open source strategy for Java. Apparently, Sun’s approach will be retained intact
Read more at The H
MeeGo Developer Day – Day 2 at IDF
Yesterday, I attended and presented at the MeeGo Developer Day event, a side event running in parallel with the larger Intel Developer Forum (IDF) event. We had a full day and a great audience, who asked smart questions.
We had a nice tour of MeeGo netbook functionality, with a demo of most of the commonly used features from Guy Lunardi from Novell. Novell has been heavily involved in the MeeGo project, going back to the Moblin days. Guy, who uses MeeGo as his primary system, showed off some of the integrated social networking services, along with the Evolution calendar and email. He also demonstrated the media player, which uses Banshee to play videos and music.
Because our event was running in parallel with IDF, we were able to live stream Renee James’ IDF keynote for the MeeGo Developer Day attendees. Renee announced that AppUp is launching out of beta, along with partner stores from Best Buy, Dixons, Croma, and Asus. She talked about some of the AppUp developer challenge contests, and she brought one winner up on stage to present the key to his new car and had him talk about his winning soccer game app that he ported to MeeGo in only a couple of days. Renee also mentioned several vendors with interesting new devices hitting the market shortly. DeviceVM’s MeeGo Splashtop, the WeTab MeeGo tablet, and a connected TV from Amino were all featured in her keynote.
Sunil Saxena spent some time reviewing the MeeGo Architecture, along with our current thoughts on how we plan to define MeeGo compliance. The MeeGo compliance spec is still being developed, so now is a good time to review it and provide feedback.
Bill Pearson was the next presenter talking about AppUp and the Intel AppUp Developer Program, which helps developers focus on what matters: platform sexiness, making money, getting recognition, and low friction deployment, while Intel helps with boring things like validation. Developers can create applications or components that they can sell to other developers. In addition to revenue from selling applications, the Million Dollar Development Fund provides additional incentives. Robust analytics are also available on the developer dashboards, to learn more about how your application is selling.
Rajiv Ranganath gave us an overview of Qt, which has over 350,000 commercial and open source developers. Qt started out as a better way to build user interfaces with productive application logic and cross-platform APIs. These three goals, that were there from the beginning, continue to be the focus today. He also pointed out a couple of important caveats: cross-platform APIs are not the same as cross-platform apps, and not all Qt APIs are created equal. With the direction in the industry moving from keyboard / mouse to direct touch manipulation, this is a big area of focus now for Qt. Qt is also focused on cross-device APIs to enable application development for MeeGo running across various devices. You can learn more about Qt by attending an upcoming Qt Developer Days event.
After Rajiv, I took the stage to talk about the MeeGo community. My presentation is posted online, and it focused on several aspects of the MeeGo Community. I define the MeeGo Community with a broad, inclusive definition, encompassing all of the people who participate in the MeeGo project, across all of our many community tools. I talked about how people can get involved with technical and non-technical contributions and gave a quick overview of some of the numbers and metrics for the community:
- 12,600 MeeGo.com members (9626 at the end of June)
- 8,400 mailing list posts
- 10,230 wiki page edits
- 8,600 forum posts
- 470+ people in #meego IRC most days
We also had some time for people to provide demos of some interesting MeeGo devices and applications, and we had a repeat of Bob Spencer’s and Horace Li’s hands-on SDK lab that I attended on my first day of IDF. We wrapped up the day with an evening meetup of the San Francisco Bay MeeGo Network.
Thanks to everyone who presented, attended, and helped make this a great event. We look forward to seeing you at other upcoming MeeGo community events.
Read more at MeeGo
Linux File Structure
The main directory is called the root directory, and it’s denoted with a single slash (/). This concept may seem strange, but it actually makes life easy for you when you want to add more space. As an example, lets say you are running out of space in your home directory, in Linux you can hook a new hard drive up to your computer, copy the files from your home directory to it and mount it as your /home directory. This functionality allows a lot less modification and trouble when expanding your system.
Now we will talk about the standard directories under the root directory.
- bin – This directory contains the binary or executable files that launch applications, all users have access to these applications. These represent the bare minimum set of programs required for a user to use the system.
- boot – This directory contains the files necessary to boot up your computer including the boot loader and kernel activation files.
- dev – This directory contains the file pointers for character and block devices, which means the pointers to hard drives, flash drives, multimedia cards, external devices and system ports.
- etc – this directory contains the system configuration files and scripts.
- home – This directory contains the user profiles, desktops and user files, it functionality is similar to the “Documents and Settings” directory in MS-Windows.
- lib – This directory contains library files that are necessary for all programs to work.
- media – This directory is used by hal, the Linux auto-mounter, to load external devices for navigation such as floppy disks, cd-roms, dvd-roms, flash drives, etc…
- mnt – This directory is used to load external devices on system that do not use hal.
- opt – This directory contains optional software packages. Usually the contents of X11 and your window manger and loaded into opt, but you can add whatever programs you wish to this directory.
- proc – This directory is unique because it is not necessarily part of the file system, but a virtual file system that provides access to kernel or system information.
- root – This is the home directory for your root or system administrator. It is kept separate from the other users in case the partition that home is mounted on fails.
- sbin – This directory has a functionality similar to bin, which means it contains application executables, but rather than allowing all users access to these programs it restricts access only to the root or administrator.
- tmp – This is the temporary storage location. All users have read and write rights to the contents of this directory.
- usr – This is the largest directory on a Linux system. Pretty much everything that does not belong in the other directories is placed here. The contents usually includes program, documentation and the kernel source code.
- var – This directory contains most of the frequently changing files such as logging files, cache file and record locks.
For information about other directories in your root directory refer the the documentation for you chosen distribution.
This document was originally posted by me on my LUG’s website at http://www.twuug.org/mediawiki/index.php/Linux_File_Structure and was reposted with the permission on the site owner of www.twuug.org.
A Roundup of Geeky, Useful, and Fun Android Apps
The huge number of apps available for Android is both a joy and something of a trial. Finding an app that does the thing you want can be something of a hit-and-miss experience. Here’s a roundup of a few of the most useful ones.
Are You Building a Community or a Club?
I’ve never been much for clubs. When I was young, I made a lousy cub scout. I wasn’t a real “joiner” in high school or college either (just enough to get by) and I still don’t get actively involved in many professional associations today.
But I’m a sucker for a noble mission. I find myself getting drawn into all sorts of things these days. Good causes, interesting projects, even big ideas like the reinvention of management all share my extra attention, brainpower, and resources.
I love to contribute to things I believe in.
Read more at OpenSource.com
Video Editor Kdenlive 0.7.8 Offers Improved Colour Correction
The new version of Kdenlive has 28 new features, better colour correction tools and more easily adjustable transitions
Read more at The H
Fedora 14 to Use Upstart Not Systemd
Various problems have caused the Fedora project to defer the switch to systemd by half a year to Fedora 15. Earlier plans were to use systemd as an alternative to SysV Init and Upstart
Read more at The H