Sacramento, CA, USA: May 2, 2013) The Linux Professional Institute(LPI), the world's premier Linux certification organization(http://www.lpi.org), announced a partnership program with oDesk®(http://www.oDesk.com), the world's largest online workplace, to promoteworkforce development initiatives for Linux and Open Sourceprofessionals. This partnership will connect Open Source talent through oDesk's job marketplace platform and enable LPIC candidates to display their official LPIC badges on their oDesk® profiles.

I've been educating library professionals about open source software for nearly seven years now, and sometimes I feel like I've made huge strides and other times, like today, I feel like I have so much more work to do.

Most of the time I enjoy LinuxAdvocates.com. No, really I do... but there are times I disagree with the opinions expressed by one of the primary authors there (Dietrich Schmitz). He likes to write somewhat controversial articles... and I sometimes like to comment on them. In many cases there is no problem... but if you disagree with him you may very well find your comment deleted... and all of your future comments requiring moderation. What it leads to is a complete lack of opinion diversity. Rhetorical questions: Have you ever been censored on a Linux-related website? If so, why? How did you react afterwards?

Looking for Virtual machine images for Virtualbox and/or VMware? That quick tip is for you then.

In the general discussion about “lightweight” desktop environments I have read a few times that one should disable Compositing in KWin. That’s done in Kubuntu’s low-fat settings package and also something Jos talked about in the context of Klyde. I have never seen an explanation on why Compositing should matter at all. It mostly boils down to “OpenGL is evil” and “I don’t want 3D”. So let’s leave the “educated guesses” behind us and have a proper look to the question whether Compositing matters for “lightweight”. (Remember: lightweight is a buzz-word without any meaning.)

CodeWeavers, through Josh Dubois, CrossOver product manager at CodeWeavers, proudly announced a few hours ago, May 1, that the CrossOver 12.2.0 software has been officially released for both Linux and Mac OS X platforms.

Gentoo Developers have succeeded in forking udev to eudev making it system intialization agnostic. Other Distro Developers are encouraged to enhance the project for their own implementation needs.

Shezhen, China-based Promate Technologies claims to have created the world’s first tablet-projector. The “LumiTab” sports a modest 1024×600 7-inch IPS screen, runs Android 4.2, and uses a Texas Instruments digital-light-processing (DLP) chip to render “incredibly sharp 1080p HD images” on walls and projection screens, according to the company.

What's more important: Ubuntu's success in cloud computing or on mobile devices? The answer is both, according to Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth. During a quick conversation with me at the recent OpenStack Summit, Shuttleworth said Ubuntu must succeed both in the cloud and mobile worlds. Here's why.

Well the latest Steam hardware survey is out for April and it isn't looking good again for Linux.

As an open source project trusted by hundreds of millions of people around the world, defending Mozilla’s trademarks from this type of abuse is vital to our brand, our users and the continued success of our mission. Mozilla has a longstanding history of protecting users online and was named the Most Trusted Internet Company for Privacy in 2012 by the Ponemon Institute. We cannot abide a software company using our name to disguise online surveillance tools that can be – and in several cases actually have been – used by Gamma’s customers to violate citizens’ human rights and online privacy.

The arrest of a 24-year-old Australian claiming to be the head of an international hacking ring and a Twitter hack that briefly sent Wall Street into a tailspin last week has shone the light on hackers as Perth prepares to host its first "hacker con". But the figures behind this weekend's WAHCKon conference say the term hacker has been hijacked and most hackers are simply curious people with a computer.

GNU Health, an free software hospital information system, medical record system and health information system, is rapidly becoming popular in hospitals around the world, says one of its developers, Sebastian Marro. "This project has the potential to grow really large."[size=11]Article is a few days old but of interest to our readers I believe. - Scott[/size]

Chris Knott, director of technology at Icewarp said, "What it depends on is the customer, they have to be open to change. Some customers are only looking to replace their Exchange server but keep everything Microsoft. "Once they see there is another world out there outside of Microsoft, they see that and a lot of companies are driven towards Linux because there is a certain stability, more security, faster file systems and some of these other options and a lot of companies contact us and they want to move there but they don't have really a Linux plan." Knott said that while big brands such as Microsoft will have a goodwill advantage, the trick is to get customers to see what alternatives such as its Icewarp software can do. The firm boasts an impressive roster of customers including the British Army, the US Navy and Cisco.

So you think Samsung Electronics America is just a consumer brand? Guess again. Samsung has launched a B2B branding initiative to promote its laptops, Galaxy tablets, smartphones and management software into business accounts. For channel partners, the key opportunities could involve BYOD, mobile device management, vertical market applications and plenty more.

Since we don’t have the political clout to bribe (lobby) our elected officials to break the unholy alliance between Microsoft and hardware vendors, educating Windows users on the benefits of using Linux is the best we can do – for now.

ExTiX 13 64-bit is a remaster of Ubuntu 13.04. The original system includes the Unity desktop. After removing Unity I have installed GNOME 3.6.3 and Cairo-Dock 3.2.1. The system language is English. My special kernel 3.8.0-19 corresponds to kernel.org's stable kernel 3.8.8. Among many other programs, LibreOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, Brasero, VLC, GIMP and win32 codecs are installed. In addition Java and all necessary additions in order to install programs from source are also installed. All programs have been updated to the latest available stable version as of April 28, 2013. One big difference between Ubuntu and ExTiX - there is a password for root (and you can log in as root to GNOME after an installation to hard drive).

Time for another GOL competition, this time we have 3 keys to give away for the original Postal game! Thanks to RWS for giving us the keys!

Which distribution and screenshot do you prefer most?

As the open source ethic has changed the way that we share and develop resources, crowdsourcing is redefining how we can create new resources based upon that willingness to share. One example of crowdsourcing at work for the betterment of us all is public health researchers turning to Twitter to collect real-time data about public health.