Eugenia Loli Archive

Speech-enabling your software is easy, says Stephen Morris. If speech is added in a sympathetic fashion, it can raise the standard of your user interface in subtle but powerful ways. This approach potentially opens up new markets to your software products; for example, reaching visually impaired users. Developments in web standards are also dictating that speech-enabled software is essentially a commodity item. Read on to find out more.

"Screen savers have always been a staple free software for RISC OS, with the likes of the venerable Out to Lunch, AlphaSave, and the now GPLed Delirium all acting as saviours of the CRT for many years. However, it was not until RISC OS 4 that graphical screen saver capabilities shipped as a standard part of the OS." More here. Additionally, RPCEmu has been ported to the Mac OS X platform, allowing RISC OS 4 to run alongside Apple's shiny desktop.

Here are some screenshots of the new test version of Ubuntu, and a video showing no slowdown after loading over 40 applications on a 1 GB RAM, P4 desktop.

This howto will show you how to store your users in LDAP and authenticate some of the services against it. It will not show how to install particular packages, as it is distribution/system dependant, instead it will focus on pure configuration of all componenets needed to have LDAP authentication/storage of users. The howto assumes that you are migrating from a regular passwd/shadow authentication, but it is also suitable for people who do it from scratch. On other business/networking software news, check this review of the Hula calendaring server and app.

After a year from last 1.0.4 version, new one brings a lot of changes, new features and bugfixes. Details about changes and download links can be found here.

Version control systems are commonly used by programmers, but their benefits can easily be exploited by regular users as well. Learn how to install, configure (step-by-step) and use Subversion at home to improve control over your own set of documents.

The Amiga changed the computer industry. It was based on a multitasking operating system, rivaled the graphics power of some workstations and was affordable enough for home users. Unfortunately, Commodore struggled to maintain Amiga's lead, and through a number of bizarre business decisions (refusing to license the Amiga design to Sun), went bankrupt. Read about the history of the Commodore Amiga at Low End Mac.

"Unless you have been living in a cave somewhere in Redmond you would no doubt have heard of Ubuntu and its many derivatives, touted as 'Linux for human beings'. Ubuntu has become the darling of the Linux media and has stolen the limelight from other prominent distributions such as the stalwart Red Hat and, the now Novell owned, SuSE. The question is why?" More here.

Magnatune has the right idea and we love their motto: "We Are Not Evil". They are a real record label but they give away 128 kbps mp3s of all their artist's songs for free. If you like what you hear you can purchase higher quality DRM-free FLAC, Mp3, OGG, AAC, WAV versions at a price you set! If you don't, you can always keep, share or delete your legally downloaded 128 kbps mp3, your choice. They are sharing revenues 50/50 with their signed artists and they allow consumers to share their purchased songs with 3 friends. What sets them apart from other "free music" web sites is that they actually sign artists that are able to produce high quality music and are serious about their work (rather than just being a random mp3 hosting site). Also, artists keep all of their work's rights.

The Gentoo release team has just announced the launch of their 2006.1 version, so TechGage is going to take a look at what's new. Included in the updates is an improved installer/LiveCD with Networkless mode, smarter partitioner, updated compiler and more.

Charles Hannum, co-founder of NetBSD posted to 3 major BSD lists saying that "The NetBSD Project has stagnated to the point of irrelevance. It has gotten to the point that being associated with the project is often more of a liability than an asset. I will attempt to explain how this happened, what the current state of affairs is, and what needs to be done to attempt to fix the situation."

Linuxlookup.com is reporting on the release of Gentoo Linux 2006.1. Building on the strengths of previous releases and featuring all of Gentoo's well-documented flexibility, performance and portability, this release is now available on all supported architectures. The most popular architectures now use GCC 4.1, glibc 2.4 and baselayout 1.12.1, as well as including a new profile layout, with seperate desktop and server profiles.

Guy Martin is a distinguished member of technical staff within Motorola's Mobile Devices business. He helped establish opensource.motorola.com, and works with groups inside of Motorola to better interface with the Open Source community. Guy also co-manages a version of SourceForge.net inside of Motorola, to take advantage of the best practices of Open Source methodology within the company. Read in our interview with Guy below about the future of Motorola's Linux phones and expect later this week our review of the Linux-based RoKR-E2 feature phone.

The next version of Windows Server may still be using its code name, but this episode helps explain some of the ways it will help you run your systems and services better.