The release schedule for Ubuntu 14.04 – the next long term support (LTS) release of this popular Linux distribution – has been published on the Ubuntu wiki.
According to the schedule, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS should be released in mid-April 2014.
The Document Foundation (TDF) has announced the release of LibreOffice 4.1.1, for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. This is the first minor release of the LibreOffice 4.1 family, which features a large number of improved interoperability features with proprietary and legacy file formats.
According to the developers, the new release is a step forward in the process of improving the overall quality and stability of LibreOffice 4.1. However, for enterprise adoptions and production environments, The Document Foundation recommends LibreOffice 4.0.5.
LibreOffice 4.1.1 is available for immediate download from http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Change logs are available at the following links: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.1.1/RC1 (for bugs fixed in 4.1.1.1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.1.1/RC2 (for bug fixes in 4.1.1.2).
Ebook management software Calibre has now reached version 1.0, seven years after it was first released and a year since the last major release. Lots of new features have been added to calibre in the last year — a grid view of book covers, a new, faster database backend, the ability to convert Microsoft Word files, tools to make changes to ebooks without needing to do a full conversion, full support for font embedding and sub-setting, and many more, which are listed below. However, it should be pointed out that many of the features listed below were actually introduced during the lifetime of Calibre’s 0.9.x series.
The developers of Calibre also believe now is an appropriate time to express their thanks to all the developers who have contributed many of the major new features listed above. An incomplete list of contributors is available here.
Calibre 1.0 is now available for download for Linux, MacOS and Windows.
Today, 16th August 2013, marks the 20th birthday of Debian GNU/Linux, one of the Linux world’s most venerable and respected distributions.
Ian Murdock founded the Debian Project back in 1993 and since then it has turned out to be a truly free community project aiming to build a free Linux operating system – something that would have been impossible without Debian’s strong community of users and developers.
In the intervening 20 years, Debian has grown to be one of the most influential and largest open source projects, used as a base in many popular Linux operating systems, such as Ubuntu.
Dubbed the “universal operating system” Debian is available in over 70 languages and supports an enormous range of computer types, with over 20,000 software packages for more than 10 different computer architectures.
I use the latest version of Debian – codenamed ‘wheezy’ – on my laptop, whilst my main desktop machine runs Mepis, a Debian derivative featuring the KDE desktop. Over the years, I’ve found Debian (and derivatives) very stable, reliable and secure.
Why not treat yourself on Debian’s birthday? Go and grab a disk image and install it! 🙂
In a recent anti-trust submission to the European Commission, a coalition led by Microsoft falsely claimed that the distribution of free software free of charge hurts competition. FSFE has written a letter to the European Commission’s competition authorities to refute this claim and point out that free software is critical for an open, competitive IT market.
In its letter, FSFE urges the Commission to consider the facts properly before accepting these allegations at face value. “Free software is a boon for humankind. The only thing that it is dangerous to is Microsoft’s hopelessly outdated, restrictive business model,” says FSFE president Karsten Gerloff.
In essence,the so-called “FairSearch” coalition is asking the European Commission to favour a restrictive business model over a liberal one – exactly the opposite of what competition regulators should do to achieve a fair and open market.
“Free software is not about price, it’s about liberty, a guarantee of competition and vendor independence. Asking to cripple free software in order to allow proprietary vendors to sell their locked-down systems is just absurd” says Carlo Piana, FSFE’s General Counsel. “The most substantial threat to competition in the mobile space today are software patents, and we have repeatedly urged anti-trust authorities to address this problem,” he adds.
FSFE is asking the European Commission to dismiss the “FairSearch” coalition’s unfounded claims on predatory pricing and not make them part of whatever steps it decides to take in response to the group’s filing.
The GNOME project, one of the purveyors of the 2 main desktops and software for Linux, has announced that it reached its goal last weekend of raising $20,000 to help make its software even more secure and privacy aware.
Individual software projects will now be invited to bid to secure some funding to make their products more secure and private. Areas that the GNOME project is interested in pursuing include the following:
Today’s a sad day in the IT news world: The H is closing down. For the last few years it has been an excellent source of IT news in the fields of free and open source software, security and software development, or as it said in its own words: “The H brings you the in-depth coverage of the world of IT, communications, data security and the politics of technology.”
Earlier today editor DJ Walker-Morgan (aka Codepope. Ed.) posted the message below on The H’s website.
Although The H has produced many widely read stories, it has not been possible to effectively monetise that traffic to produce a working business model.
Because of this, after four and a half years as The H and six years online, The H is, sadly, closing its doors. We thank all our readers for their deep interest and engagement. Work is taking place to create an archive to ensure that the content of the site will remain publicly accessible.
Best regards
DJ Walker-Morgan and the entire team at The H
The H was produced in association with Heise Online, a major German IT news site and one I’d recommend.
So farewell, The H and thanks for providing quality news for the last few years and best wishes for the future; you’ll be missed.
KDE is one of the 2 major providers of GUIs and applications for Linux systems (some KDE applications are also now available for Windows too! Ed.).
It’s currently holding the KDE Akademy 2013, a free, non-commercial event organised by the KDE community, in Bilbao in the Basque Country of Northern Spain from 13th to 19th July.
The local public transport company has also picked up on this event and is advertising it on its ticket machines; and in 3 languages too!.
Would London Underground or the UK’s train operating companies do likewise?
I’ve written before of my dislike of advertising (posts passim), but advertising for community-based projects – even if those communities are scattered throughout the world – is something for which I’ll make an exception.
When it comes to advertising, I agree with George Orwell who wrote the following in Keep the Aspidistra Flying in 1936:
Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill-bucket.
However, virtually every news site on the web is infested with advertising ranging from the restrained to the impossibly annoying (you know the ones – distracting Flash animations. Ed.).
It was with a great sense of relief that I greeted the arrival of browser plug-ins that blocked advertisements. For years I used Adblock Plus, which is available for Firefox, Chromium/Chrome, Opera and is currently being developed for Internet Explorer. However, I was disappointed that Adblock Plus still allowed some ‘acceptable advertising’ and there was no way of turning off that particular setting.
Needless to say, I was most gratified to discover Adblock Edge, which is a fork of the Adblock Plus version 2.1.2 extension for blocking advertisements on the web.
Adblock Edge was primarily branched off from Adblock Plus 2.1.2 source code package “http://adblockplus.org/downloads/adblockplus-2.1.2-source.tgz” created by Wladimir Palant.
Adblock Edge provides the same features as Adblock Plus 2.X and higher but without “acceptable ads” feature.
Try it with your browser today!
At the end of last week, The Document Foundation blog announced the call for papers for the 2013 LibreOffice Conference, which will be held from 25th to 27th September at the Department of Computer Science of Milan State University in Italy.
The Document Foundation is inviting members and volunteers to submit proposals for papers and wants to hear from people, whether they are seasoned presenter or just have something interesting to share about LibreOffice.
The Call for Papers page is available at: http://conference.libreoffice.org/2013/en/call-for-papers.
Proposals should be submitted by 4th August 2013 to guarantee their consideration for inclusion in the conference programme. Detailed instructions on how to file proposals are available at: http://conference.libreoffice.org/2012/archive/support-information. These instructions should be followed carefully.
The conference programme will be based on the following tracks:
Presentations, case studies and technical talks will discuss a subject in depth and be 30-45 minutes long (including Q&A). Lightning talks will cover a specific topic and will last 20 minutes (including Q&A). Workshops and panels will last longer (but should not exceed 90 minutes) and will discuss a topic or an issue. Sessions will be streamed live and recorded for download.