Some of you may know a man who goes by the name of Peter Quinn. He became famous during the debates that followed the brave and smart decision of the state of Massachusetts (USA) to use only open standards and formats. They chose OpenDocument Format (ODF) and PDF and some companies didn’t like that. Increasing use of open formats for documents would very well mean they would loose the monopoly position they maintain with the help of their closed formats. Those companies tried every (dirty) trick to prevent adoption of open formats and as a result Peter Quinn also resigned from the position of CIO of Massachusetts. Fortunately the plan to move to open formats still stands strong. Peter Quinn just had a presentation at SCALE 4x and you can download his presentation where you can read more about the above mentioned events and ODF.

I’ve also read a great article about ODF at Groklaw. It was written by David A. Wheeler and tries to clearly answer the question: Is OpenDocument an Open Standard? He checked out several definitions of open standards and checked if OpenDocument Format meets the definitions. And the very clear answer is: Yes, OpenDocument is open standard!

Tags: opendocument, odf, standards, office

Again I’ve been given the task of building a new computer. And, again, not for me. It is for my dad’s co-worker this time. His budget is about 1000 € and this should include an LCD monitor. He also wishes to try out Linux so all components should have good enough support for Linux. This is what I currently have in mind:

• Motherboard: Gigabyte K8NF-9
• Processor: AMD Athlon 64 3200+, socket 939, Venice core
• Memory: 512 MiB GeiL PC3200 Value
• Graphics card: Gigabyte GV-NX66T128D GeForce 6600GT 128MiB DDR3 PCI-E x16
• Hard drive: 160GiB Hitachi GST T7K250 7200rpm 8MiB cache Serial ATA2/300
• DVD drive: NEC ND-4551A 16X with LabelFlash
• Case: GMC H60
• Power supply: LC 550W LC6550G
• LCD display: Samsung 730BF
• Mouse: Logitech B85 UltraX
• Keyboard: Logitech UltraX

What do you think? What concerns me the most is the motherboard. How well is nVidia nForce 4 chipset supported in Linux? I’ll have to check this out before settling down on the final configuration. If anyone has any experiences I’d be more than glad to hear about them.

It looks like we’ll be getting another free electronic magazine for Linux. It is dedicated to Mandriva Linux distribution and is called Mandriva Linux Inside. There will be no schedule or deadlines for publishing new issues. It will all depend on the amount of articles submitted by Mandriva community. This includes Mandriva employees and users. So if you have any great ideas for a contribution, start writing. Proposals for improvements and new articles are also welcome. See editorial of the first issue for e-mail of Gaël Duval who started this project.

Free download of the magazine:
Mandriva Linux Inside – Issue 1 – February 2006 | ED2K

Tags: magazines, mandriva

Google has just blurred the line between instant messaging and e-mail a little bit more. They just released a new version of their Jabber based instant messenger called Google Talk. In version 1.0.0.86 a feature was added enabling you to save conversation history into a special section in your GMail account. Some existing and all new users of GMail e-mail service can also notice a new feature called Gmail Chat. Basically it is an instant messenger integrated right into your GMail account and it enables you quick access to all your Google Talk and other Jabber contacts.

More info:
Google Talk chat history saving
Gmail Chat

Tags: google, gmail, google talk, gtalk, jabber, xmpp, instant messaging

The Extend Firefox Contest is now over and the finalists are selected (out of 200+ submissions). The participants had the task to craft the most innovative and useful extension they can. If I had to select only one of the finalists, it would be Sage. It is a great extension that collects articles from blogs and other web pages that offer RSS or Atom feeds. I also use Adblock to block all the pesky ads (including Flash based ones) and DownThemAll to filer and download several links from a web page. If you are designing web pages you should also check out the Web Developer toolbar. Be sure to check out other finalists and even more extensions to make Firefox even better browser then it already is.

Tags: mozilla, firefox, extensions, browsers

During this night (from midnight to about 4 am in the morning here in Slovenia) I was watching Super Bowl XL together with my sister. We were cheering up for the Seattle Seahawks who were playing against the Pittsburgh Steelers in Detroit. Both teams were playing very well, but unfortunately the mistakes in crucial moments doomed the Seahwaks and in the end the Steelers won with 21 against 10. Congratulations to the coach Bill Cowher and his team. They were working hard together for the long 14 years to come here.

And I must say thank you to Prva TV television station for bringing us Super Bowl XL and, for the first time here in Slovenia, the preceding games. Commentators were great. They were all full of enthusiasm and it was fun to listen to them. Can’t wait until the next year. Oh and if you didn’t know, we also have our own and only American football team here in Slovenia: Ljubljana Silverhawks. I must visit them some day, while they are having a training.

Tags: super bowl, seahawks, steelers, slovenia, silverhawks

During the presentation of their upcoming Linux Desktop 10 at Solutions Linux conference in Paris, Novell showed some very interesting and good looking visual effects that Xgl brings to the Linux desktop. I especially like the visual task switcher which displays the actual contents of windows. You can even see the video actually playing in the thumbnail of the window. 3D cube for switching among virtual desktops is also very nice. You can get the videos from Linux Edge.

Update: For some more information you can also see the official Novell page:
Novell Raises the Bar for the Linux Desktop

Update 2: Another movie of Xgl / Compiz in action (11m 43s, 58 MiB)

Tags: novell, desktop, x.org, xgl, opengl, graphics

I’m a regular reader of two free electronic magazines: TUX Magazine (perfect for new Linux users) and Free Software Magazine (all about free and open source software). They both come in PDF and are made professionally. I’ve already talked about them here on this blog: TUX and FSM. A couple of days ago I found another high quality free magazine: O3 Magazine. This is how publishers describe it:

The focus of O3 is on the use of Free and Open Source (FOSS) software in Enterprise Data Networking environments. Some articles in O3 will introduce open source solutions, while some are designed to demonstrate how to integrate open source solutions with leading Enterprise Data Networking hardware from a wide variety of vendors.

After reading the first two issues I added it to the list of regularly read magazines right away.

In February 2006 issue of TUX you can read about: getting Linux onto desktops and everywhere else, Hydrogen, OpenOffice.org 2.0 Impress, KDE Instant Messaging, OpenOffice.org 2.0 Base, Neverball, Mozilla Firefox 1.5 and OpenOffice.org 2.0 Math.

In January, February 2006 issue of Free Software Magazine: what’s free about free software, X Window System, browsers for Mac OS X, GRUB, Debian GNU/Linux, convincing management to approve free software, political campaigning using the Internet, 64 Studo, free matter economy and how free software liberated Venezuela.

And in January 2006 issue of O3: Linux and the IBM zSeries mainframes, networking the IBM zSeries, Grsecurity, Real time streaming protocol (RTSP), Load Balancing IDS, Deploying Localized Web Services and dNMS.

You can download these magazines from here:
TUX Magazine | ED2K
Free Software Magazine | ED2K
O3 Magazine | ED2K

Tags: magazines, free software, open source, administration, enterprise, networking

The first update release is now available for Mozilla Firefox 1.5 web browser. In version 1.5.0.1 you will get improved stability, improved support for Mac OS X, international domain name (IDN) support for Iceland, fixes for several memory leaks and several security enhancements. For details you can check out the incomplete list of bug fixes.

To update use the Check for updates command which you can find in the Help menu. If this doesn’t work yet (or if you still use some old and insecure browser like Internet Explorer) you can download Firefox from the following page:
Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.1

Tags: mozilla, firefox, free software, open source, security