Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Fossnews 12
Fossnews 12
FossNews Weekly
Issue : 12
Team : T.Shrinivasan ( tshrinivasan@gmail.com ) , K.Balavignesh ( kbalavignesh@gmail.com )
Date : 17102008
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Contents
1. Mandriva Linux 2009 Released
2. Debian Lenny might be late
3. A baby named Linux
4. Venezuela adopts ODF for government
5. OpenOffice.org 3.0 is released
6. Linux on Brazilian Voting Machines is a Big Success
7. Ubuntu: Using Localization to Beat Windows?
8. Online library offers 1.5 million works and counting
1. Mandriva Linux 2009 Released
Thursday, October 9th 2008 – a special day for all
Mandriva users. Why? Because the MANDRIVA S.A.
just released into the wild the new and greatly improved version of the Mandriva Linux operating
system. With the 2009 edition, Mandriva Linux will try to compete with the upcoming Ubuntu 8.10
(October 30th), and even to "steal" some of its devoted users. We remind everyone that Mandriva
Linux is a freely available, communitybased Linux distribution based on the RPM (Red Hat
Package Manager) package management system. It includes popular desktop environments, such as
GNOME 2.24 and KDE 4.1.2, and also the newly added LXDE, a lightweight and modern desktop
that fits like a glove on old computers.
Read a review here : http://news.softpedia.com/news/MandrivaLinux2009Released95309.shtml
get Mandriva Linux 2009 here : http://www.mandriva.com
2. Debian Lenny might be late
Debian project leader Steve McIntyre has dismissed claims that the next stable version of
Debian – codename Lenny – could be delayed until June 2009. Based on the number of
outstanding releasecritical bugs and the time it has taken to fix them on previous
releases, Debian developer Bastian Venthur estimated it will take a further eight or nine
months to bring Lenny up to release quality.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/10/debian_lenny_late/
Free Open Source Software News 2
3. A baby named Linux
Christian Nielsen Sweden announced that he and his
girlfriend have named their baby Linux, after the operating
system.
Nielsen says he and his girlfriend Veronica considered a few
names during the pregnancy, "but when he finally arrived
none of them seemed right. We both thought that he looked
like a little Linux as soon as we saw him and decided to go for
that name."
http://www.linux.com/feature/149992
4. Venezuela adopts ODF for government
The South American nation of Venezuela is the latest country to adopt the Open Document Format
(ODF) as a national standard. Venezuela joins a growing list of countries which have adopted the
open format as a method for exchanging documents within government and with citizens.
As documents and services are increasingly transformed from paper to
electronic form, there is a growing problem that governments and their
constituents may not be able to access, retrieve and use critical records,
information and documents in the future. To enable the public sector to have
greater control over and direct management of their own records,
information and documents, the ODF Alliance seeks to promote and
advance the use of OpenDocument Format (ODF).
Note :
• ODF is the default file format in OpenOffice application.
• Doc,docx,xls,xlsx,ppt,pptx are the proprietary formats which hides information in the files.
They need the MS Office to be installed to get information from those files.
http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=3334
Read on ODF : ODF: The inevitable format (http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2007/07/25/odfthe
inevitableformat/)
Free Open Source Software News 3
5. OpenOffice.org 3.0 is released
OpenOffice.org 3.0, which is being released today, is not the great leap forward in look and feel that
version 2.0 represented, but it justifies its label as a major release with dozens of changes, some
major, some minor, but in all more than can be easily summarized.
Some of the improvements are,
• Native Support for Mac OS
• Support for Msoffice2007 (docx) format
• Zoom view
• Collaborative note making system
• Improved crossreference
• 1,024 columns in spreadsheet (Calc)
• Add tables directly on presentation
(Impress)
• PDF Import extension for Draw, so that you can edit PDF files
• Sun Report Builder extension
• and more ...
Read more on:
http://www.linux.com/feature/148435
http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=3354
Download at http://www.openoffice.org
6. Linux on Brazilian Voting Machines is a Big Success
Just 10 days ago, 130 million brazilian voters were turned into
users of one of the largest Linux deployment worldwide: the
400,000 electoral sections in all of the 5,563 brazilian
municipalities were running electronic voting machines, and the
Linux kernel was running in all of them.
http://brlinux.org/english/linuxvotingmachines/
Free Open Source Software News 4
7. Ubuntu: Using Localization to Beat Windows?
One of the three fundamental principles of the Ubuntu philosophy is the availability of software in a
user’s native language, whatever that happens to be. Ubuntu 8.04 is available in more than 150
translations. How does that compare to Windows? The numbers may surprise you. Details from
Works With U, the independent guide to Ubuntu.
http://www.workswithu.com/2008/10/13/ubuntuandthepoweroflanguage/
See here for the list and status of translations.
https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/hardy/+translations
8. Online library offers 1.5 million works and counting
The Universal Digital Library, at Carnegie Mellon University, a bookscanning
project backed by several major libraries across the globe, has completed the
digitization of 1.5 million books and on Tuesday made them free and publically
available.
http://news.cnet.com/Onlinelibraryoffers1.5million
worksandcounting/21001025_36220358.html
http://www.ulib.org/
Thanks
http://linux.com
http://fsdaily.org
http://lxer.com
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