I often get the feeling that developers of the major Linux desktop environments suffer from commercial envy. It seems they’re always trying to make Linux more “user friendly” for the .01% of Windows or Mac users that might halfway consider making the switch, while ever increasingly ignoring the 99% of full time Linux desktop users who just want easy customization and solid performance. Many argue that the major environments (KDE, GNOME) aren’t for Linux power users, who should use one of the more bare bones environments available.

Read the full thing at http://onezerothrice.com/?p=233

MeeGo is a flavor of Linux, with a similar purpose as Android in the mobile computing space (being a versatile, open-source OS for phones, tablets and other mobile devices).

I root for MeeGo because it has a lot of advantages over Android and iOS

Read the full thing at http://soltesza.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/why-i-root-for-meego/

The MeeGo project released a pre-alpha version of its promised Tablet User Experience (UX), officially opening up development for the UI layer. Based on MeeGo v1.2 core and Linux 2.6.37, the preview version includes a touch-optimized user interface for tablets, as well as a new panel UI concept and a suite of built-in browser, personal information management, and media playback apps.

Read the full thing at http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/MeeGo-preview-tablet-UX/

As has been stated in the Mageia roadmap, Mageia 1 Beta1 is now available for tests. The first Mageia stable release is planned for 1st of June (which is now quite near!). Our focus is always on improving distribution content but also lots of work was done on localisation support (locales, main applications, Asian locales). Core packages versions include: kernel 2.6.38.2, KDE 4.6.1, GNOME 2.32, Firefox 4.0, … More information is available in the release notes and web announcement.

Read the full thing at http://blog.mageia.org/en/2011/04/05/try-mageia-1-beta1-right-now/

The stable release of Drizzle has generated a lot of interest in migrating previous MySQL web sites to Drizzle. The good news for people attempting such migrations is that this isn't incredibly difficult in many cases; this article will describe what to look out for and how to go about converting a web site or any other database related project.

Read the full thing at http://www.h-online.com/open/features/A-migrator-s-guide-to-Drizzle-1217810.html

The Mageia forums are online!

These are the official portal for the Mageia community: support, distro testing reports, contributions, discussions…. The default language is English but you can join any of the other local Mageia community forums

Read the full thing at http://blog.mageia.org/en/2011/03/29/welcome-in-mageia-forums/

Lennart Poettering has sent out a note warning Fedora users that they will see a new top-level /run directory soon. "In the past weeks key people from the Debian, Suse, Ubuntu and Fedora camps (and others, too) discussed the whole issue forth and back, to find a solution to stop the misuse of /dev before it becomes even more widespread. Various solutions have been suggested, but in the end it all boiled down to the fact that /var/run does not belong beneath /var and what we really want is a top-level directory /run, and that that is the only really clean solution.

Read the full thing at http://lwn.net/Articles/436012/

If you’re like me, you’ve got terrabytes of space full of digitized media extracted from DVDs and audio CDs. If not, disk space is cheap and ripping audio is pretty easy.

Mostly.

Read the full thing at http://wm161.net/2011/03/27/rippit-the-no-nonsense-media-ripper/

Firefox 4′s brand new Sync feature is one of the main attractions of the latest release. It allows you to sync browser data, such as bookmarks, preferences, history, and tabs – but not extensions – across multiple Firefox installations. Here’s how it’s done…

Read the full thing at http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/tutorials/firefox-4-sync-step-by-step/

As outlined in the Mageia roadmap, here comes Primavera, the second alpha release.

Many thanks to all those who worked on this important step towards our first, official release: packagers, translators, developers, admins and testers.

Again, this has been a very busy month: our build system is now running at full capacity and the list of available software has grown to over 6,100 SRPMS, including full integration of LibreOffice and Eclipse, rpm 4.8.1, KDE 4.6.1. Now we need your help to test the distro!

Read the full thing at http://blog.mageia.org/en/2011/03/15/mageia-1-alpha-2-primavera-is-coming/