Issue 4 (July 2005) of TUX Magazine is out. If you are new to Linux or are still considering switching to it, this is the perfect free magazine to read. Topics in this issue are:

• P2P

• Easy Does It
• How to Make Linux Perfect for the Desktop
• Letters
• Q&A with Mango Parfait

• Let a Tomboy Manage Your Notes

• Getting Started with OpenOffice.org Calc

• Introduction to Linux Security, Part I
• Scrapbooks and Albums
• Windows-to-Linux Migration with Qt

• Libranet 3.0
• Gadget Guy: Products with Drive
• Guarddog
• Liferea
• tsclient
• streamtuner

• Why Piracy Hurts Open Source

Free download is available from official page, using ED2K links or BitTorrent.

Tags: tux, magazine, linux, open source, free software

While reading blogs around the internet I’ve stumbled upon an entry titled Norway to Kick Microsoft Out? on UMMO Letters. There is a link to an article Norway goes open source in which you can read that…

The Norwegian Minister of Modernisation, Morten Andreas Meyer, has promised that his government will stop using proprietary software and transfer to open source.

If you read the news article you can also see that he understands how important are open and free document formats (like OASIS OpenDocument) and that closed proprietary formats have no place in communication between citizens and government. Too bad our Slovenian government doesn’t understand all of this.

Tags: norway, government, open source, free software

Final version of Nvu 1.0 has been released. Nvu is a free and open source web design tool that works in Linux, Windows and Mac OS. It is simple to use and is perfect for people who are creating their home or web page for the first time. One of the great things about it is that it creates standards compliant code. Included in Nvu is also a very nice cascading style sheet (CSS) editor.

You can download Nvu from the official page or you can use ED2K links.

Tags: nvu, web design, free software, open source, html, css

Programmers from Trolltech have finally released Qt 4.0, a very popular cross-platform development toolkit and framework. Qt is used to quickly develop applications and KDE Linux desktop is probably the best known Qt based product. This is the first time Qt for Windows is also available under GPL license. In Qt 4 there are five new technologies:

• Tulip, a new set of template container classes.
• Interview, a model/view architecture for item views.
• Arthur, the Qt 4 painting framework.
• Scribe, the Unicode text renderer with a public API for performing low-level text layout.
• Mainwindow, a modern action-based mainwindow, toolbar, menu, and docking architecture.

Existing modules were greatly improved and Qt Designer user interface design tool has been rewritten.

For more information about Qt 4.0 check out public announcement and introduction to Qt 4. Official release song and video are also available for download.

To download the open source edition visit this page:
Qt 4.0 Open Source Downloads

Tags: programming, toolkit, qt, free software, open source, kde

A little more then a month ago 5000th visitor came here to read this blog. And today we passed the 10000 visits milestone. Since the last report the number of visitors per day has risen from about 90 to about 140.

Web browser Firefox is still the dominant browser with 67%, and Internet Explorer has dropped to only 20%. Just keep on switching to Firefox, people! There was almost no change in the operating system statistics, except that now a lot of additional people using 64-bit Windows XP x64 for AMD64 compatible processors have visited my blog. Most are looking for 64-bit Firefox.

The largest change was in the visitor originating country stats. Slovenians now have the first place with 69%, USA is second with 15% and United Kingdom is third with 4%.

The most popular articles are:

1. emule free download
2. 64-bit Firefox for Windows XP x64
3. Graphical Portage frontends
4. Guitoo - graphical frontend for portage
5. My Windows XP x64 Edition RC2 Benchmark

Thanks to all off you who come here to read this blog. And don’t be afraid to add your comments to stories you read.

Tags: blog, statistics

If you are still spending all these huge amounts of money on Microsoft Office you should read this comparison of OpenOffice.org 2.0 Writer and Word 2003. Because both are adequate for most users’ purposes the review focuses on features for power users. After you finish reading it may turn out that you could get something better for free. This is what Bruce Byfield says in conclusion:

OOo Writer scores most of its victories in features that make the creation and maintenance of highly formatted or long documents easier.

I hope we see a similar comparison for other parts of office suits, like spreadsheet and presentation applications. It would also be very nice if other office suits like KOffice were included in comparison.

Tags: openoffice.org, writer, office, microsoft office, word

Richard M. Stallman wrote an article about the difference between patents and copyright for software users and developers in which he starts with:

If patent law had been applied to novels in the 1880s, great books would not have been written. If the EU applies it to software, every computer user will be restricted…

I highly recommend you read this and after that do whatever you can to stop software patents. If we don’t act now, huge and greedy companies will have even more power to stifle innovation and stop competition from smaller and medium companies and free and opensource software. I’m sure you don’t want this to happen. So write/phone your MEPs, put banners against software patents on your web pages and blogs and let other people know that they are in great danger. I hope together we will manage to stop software patents like they did in India.

Tags: software patents, free software, open source, european union

People from KDE have released a new version of free and opensource office suite KOffice. Two new applications have been added in version 1.4. Krita is a pixel based image manipulation application and Kexi is an integrated data management application. This version also brings support for the open standard for office documents - OASIS OpenDocument, which will also be the default format in OpenOffice.org 2.0. What this means is that you can now finally use the same format for your documents in any office application that supports OpenDocument. No more imports/exports and the loss of information or formatting that is associated with it. For details about KOffice 1.4 you should read the announcement and the complete changelog from version 1.3.

Tags: koffice, office, opendocument, open source, linux, kde

In about eight hours (at 19:46:09 GMT) the first solar sail spacecraft, Cosmos 1, is going to be launched. It is a joint project of The Planetary Society and Cosmos Studios. Cosmos 1 doesn’t have any engine. It can move because lots of fast light particles (photons) from Sun reflect off giant mirror-like sails. The spacecraft then keeps accelerating over very long distances. Hopefully propulsion technology like this will enable us to visit other stars. The Russian built (by NPO Lavochkin) spacecraft will be launched from a submerged Russian Delta III nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea. We should be able to easily see it on the night sky. Check out Heavens Above website to see where to look for. If you would like to follow the developments around Cosmos 1 be sure to check out their weblog.

Tags: space, astronautics

Issue 4 of Free Software Magazine is out. In May 2005 edition you can read these articles:

• Editorial

• What is the next (r)evolution?

• Unix Power Tools 3rd edition by Shelley Powers, Jerry Peek, Tim O’Reilly and Mike Loukides

• The risks of writing proprietary software
• The risk of using proprietary software
• Finding alternatives in developing software

• A server for education
• Worst case scenario - protecting your computer
• Make it right using Tcl

• net.labels
• Graphic icons
• Free software: working together
• The social implications of free software

Free download of the magazine in PDF format is available from official page. You can also download it with eMule, xMule, aMule or any similar client supporting ED2K links.

Tags: free software, open source, magazine

OpenOffice.org is the only missing 64-bit application on my computer. OpenOffice.org 2.0 is about to be released in a month or two and they are finally working on porting it for AMD64 and compatible 64-bit systems. Currently it builds (without Java or Python). Some things that work are: first time installation, splashscreen, about window, opening new documents. I hope they make everything work for the final release.

You can find more info in this blog entry from Pavel Janik:
OpenOffice.org@AMD64: Current Status

Tags: openoffice.org, amd64

After more than three months in development the new version, 2.6.12, of Linux kernel is out. This is the first stable release after the source code management has switched from BitKeeper to Git sometime in April. Read the announcement and changelog (not complete) for details.

You can download the source code from here:
Linux Kernel 2.6.12 | Patch

UPDATE: I have also updated the Linux kernel release on eMule Content Database so you can download the new kernel with aMule, eMule, eDonkey2000 or any other compatible client.

Tags: linux, kernel

StumbleUpon is an extension for Firefox web browser that I’ve been using for quite some time now. Since everyone, who hears about it from me, seams to like it, I decided to tell more about StumbleUpon here. Who knows, maybe it is exactly what you needed.

Here is what it does: You click on Stumble! button and Firefox opens some web page that someone else with StumbleUpon has positively rated before. Because everyone can rate and comment on pages, you can do it too. The nice thing is that there are topic groups (like physics, astronomy, Linux, open source, …) and you can select the ones you are interested in. So you only get pages that belong to these groups.

There is also an option to build social networks. You can invite friends to install StumbleUpon and then you can have instant access to web pages they mark as interesting. You can even explicitly send some page together with a short description to your friends through StumbleUpon. By searching for people that like to visit similar pages you can also get some new friends with similar interests.

So this is a quick introduction to StumbleUpon. By using it I have stumbled upon some very interesting new sites. The best way to see how it works is to get it right now and install it. By the way, I have a nickname JRepin on StumbleUpon and you can find my profile page here.

Danes (četrtek, 16. junij) je bila uradno obelodanjena ustanovitev Iniciative programski patenti.

Gre za neformalno skupino organizacij, ki se zavzemajo za spremembo besedila direktive o računalniško izvedenih izumih in podpirajo amandmaje, ki so jih predlagali poslanci evropskega parlamenta.

Prvi projekt iniciative je spletna stran www.patenti.si, ki je namenjena informiranju o posledicah direktive, aktualen pa je tudi E-Referendum, kjer lahko vsak glasuje za trenutno besedilo ali za amandmaje, glasovi pa bodo posredovani evroposlancem.

Uradni PR je dostopen tu, k promociji spletne strani pa so vabljeni vsi zainteresirani. Na voljo so reklamne pasice. Če imate svoj forum, blog, brlog ali stran svojega podjetja ste vabljeni, da na njih objavite povezavo na patenti.si!

A new version of popular GNU/Linux distribution Fedora is out. In Fedora Core 4, codenamed Stentz, you will get KDE 3.4, GNOME 2.10, OpenOffice.org 2.0 and Linux kernel 2.6.11. There is a new document viewer Evince, which support multiple formats (like PDF and PostScript) from the same application. For developers they have included a popular integrated development environment (or IDE) Eclipse 3.1. Another interesting feature is the integration of the virtualization technology Xen. Everything in Fedora Core 4 has been built using the new GCC 4.0 compiler collection. For more information check out the Release Notes.

Fedora Core 4 is available for computers with x86, AMD64 and PowerPC processors. You can also download it using any BitTorrent client (I highly recommend Azureus).