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OpenLogic Moves To Help Prevent License Lawsuits

Until just over two years ago, the General Public License, the all-pervasive Open Source license used by tens of thousands of Open Source projects, had never been the subject of a violation lawsuit — not once in its eighteen year history. September 2007 brought an end to that, unleashing a flurry of lawsuits against some of the biggest names in technology, a flurry that is still underway. In an effort to end the violations — and the litigation that comes with them — one company has officially launched its own resource for Open Source compliance.

Even Self-Appointed Benevolent Dictators Need a Little Change

Out of all the titles Linux leaders are known by, we must admit that one is our favorite. The one that makes us smile is attached to Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth, affectionately known as the Self-Appointed Benevolent Dictator for Life. While that title is secure, one of his others will soon be dropping away.

Creating Slide Show Backgrounds in XFCE

Continuing in this series of slide show backgrounds, in this article I will explain the process of creating a set of desktop backgrounds that will transition like a slide-show in XFCE. Note that I am using XFCE version 4.6.0 in this tutorial. Other versions may be able to use this tip, but the screen shots may look different. See corresponding howtos for GNOME, and KDE3 also.

Announcing LinuxCon 2010

The Linux Foundation — the non-profit organization dedicated to all things Linux — is involved in a number of conferences throughout the year. Among those, the newest is LinuxCon, which will be celebrating it's second year in 2010.

Custom Transitioning Backgrounds In KDE3

My recent article about transitioning slide show backgrounds in GNOME garnered quite a bit of attention, so here's my first reminder of how to do the same thing in other desktop environments. This one will show you how to create a custom slide show backgrounds in KDE3.

Tech Tip: Periodically Update Your MOTD with update-motd

This tech tip provides you with information on how to customize your motd (Message Of The Day) message to display the output of one or more scripts. This uses the update-motd package, which updates the motd message when run. I use this method on Ubuntu 9.10, but not all systems provide this package so extra effort may be required to use it on other systems.

Give the Gift of Membership

When you hear the phrase "Give One, Get One," your mind may turn to the ill-fated promotion from the One Laptop Per Child program. This holiday season, the Linux Foundation is shaking up the phrase with a "Get One, Give One" program, helping you share the benefits of Foundation membership with lucky students.

Tech Tip: Add Latitude/Longitude Information to Photos

I wanted to store geolocation information in the photos I take with my digital camera. That way I wouldn't have to specify the photo locations manually when I upload them to the Picasa webpage. Since my camera doesn't have built in GPS support, I wrote this script to add the location information to the pictures when they are on the computer already.

Tech Tip: Using Twitter and Facebook from Pidgin

In the vast world of communication, instant messaging is a long-standing medium. Facebook has entered the scene relatively recently, as has Twitter. If you use these newer mediums of communication and you're a Pidgin user then you may want to look at the Pidgin plugins for accessing them.

The CinelerraCV Project

Continuing my tour of Linux-based video editors this week I've profiled Cinelerra. Specifically I've reviewed the community-supported version produced by the CinelerraCV project.