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While at the HP Technology Forum 2010, a particular breakout session stood out in that it was all about Linux. In fact, I've stolen the title of the presentation and made it the name of this article. Bdale Garbee, a very comprehensive and impressive individual (also the HP Open Source & Linux Chief Technologist), gave a talk on the basics of Linux and HP's involvement in it.

I was lucky enough to receive an invitation to the HP Technology Forum 2010 via OSAlert and just spent most of this last week in Las Vegas with five thousand other nerds of varying caliber. The tech forum is focused more on enterprise technology than that of the consumer, and-- let's face it-- even if any of us could afford a $30,000 rack of servers, most of us have little idea of what we'd do with so many resources except brag. Despite the focus on an area not quite as natural to OSAlert and many of its readers, there was a plenitude of good and interesting information shared-- aside from that, the forum was simply fun. There were a few subjects that were especially eye-catching, though many of them not necessarily comprehensive enough to base an entire article on; thus this overview.

It's been a while since any of us have seen head or tail of the Open Graphics Project, but they haven't been just sitting around twiddling thumbs. Enjoy an in-depth interview between OSAlert and Timothy Miller, the founder of the Open Graphics Project and the main man behind the drive that keeps it going, and Michael Dexter, Program Director at Linux Fund and a key player in Linux Fund's partnership with the OGP. Though it's been some time since there has been much public action, much of the work that the OGP has been putting into the OGD1 is finally coming to fruition.

Take a step back in time to use Google in your command line interface. GoogleCL "streamlines tasks such as posting to a Blogger blog, adding events to Calendar, or editing documents on Google Docs." Aside from Blogger, Calendar, and Docs, it also provides CLI access to your Google Contacts, Picasa, and YouTube. Whether you're in it for the sheer joy of feeling like it's 1984 again or for the ease of doing a load of tasks in a batch or even incorporating it into your scripts for uber functionality and friendliness with your other apps, this nifty little program is for you. The app is native to Linux, but Mac and Windows users can use it with a bit of fenangling-- all you'll need is Python 2.5 or 2.6, and Windows users will need to add Cygwin to the mix.

A few weeks ago, we asked for the OSAlert community to help with some questions we were going to ask Aaron Griffin from the Arch Linux team, and the response was glorious and somewhat phenomenal. We added those questions to our own and sent them on over, and then we were surprised by receiving not only Aaron Griffin's responses but answers from various individuals from the team.

We recently asked the OSAlert community for input to create questions to send over to the folks at Linux Fund. The questions were compiled and sent over to Michael Dexter, program director at Linux Fund, and he graciously complied in addressing them and clarifying just what it was we all wanted to learn.

"Microsoft says it has now recovered the personal data lost when its Sidekick servers suffered an outage on 13 October. Microsoft Corporate Vice President Roz Ho says that all data will be restored, beginning with personal contacts. She believes that only a minority of Sidekick users are still affected. 'The outage was caused by a system failure that created data loss in the core database and the back up,' she wrote in an open letter to customers. The number of customers affected was not released, but Sidekick is believed to have more than one million subscribers overall. Microsoft says it has installed a 'more resilient back-up process' to safeguard against a repeat incident."

Micro kernel Mona with KVM virtio-net driver 0.3.0 has been released. This is the first release of Mona for daily use. You can listen to music, run a web server and do some work with an interactive shell. Major changes since 0.2.0 are ported uIP httpd, added KVM virtio-net driver, Added Scheme-based Shell, libc implementation, ported a Squirrel programing language, added standard I/O and pipe, improved thread APIs, added sound player and driver, improved CD-ROM access speed, improved console drawing speed, supported build on gcc 4.1.x, added VFS, support build on Linux, added APM support, ported Mesa, added Stack auto expansion, improved memory management, boot from CD-ROM. Also see the catalog of applications.

Those who enjoy the popular television show will be happy to know that November 8, 2009 will feature a variety show from the makers of Family Guy, and it will play for its entire allotted time without any commercial interruption-- courtesy of Microsoft. The company has made a deal with Fox to have Windows 7 propaganda integrated into a special entitled "Family Guy Presents: Seth & Alex's Almost Live Comedy Show," which will include varied live-action Family Guy musical performances, animated shorts, and celebrity guest appearances. Just how the show will be used to advertise Windows 7 is unclear, but the folks at Microsoft say that "you'll see us deeply integrated into the content... you'll hear a lot about how Windows 7 can help you simplify your PC -- it's simple, fast and easy to use." So sit back in the lazy chair on November 8th, take a bite out of your Windows-branded toast, and enjoy.

"Back in June, the Linux Foundation started their individual membership program and they're now expanding it with new hardware discounts. Starting this week, those who pay the $99 for an individual Linux Foundation membership will also get up to 40 percent off of Lenovo devices and employee purchase pricing from Dell and HP... When the Linux Foundation started the $99 yearly fee provided users with their very own Linux.com email address. Now users can lock-in their email address for $150, for what the foundation calls a 'permanent' address."

"Sun Microsystems announced the Solaris 10 10/09 Operating System. The Solaris 10 OS has been extended with new performance and power efficiency enhancements, more streamlined management of system installations, updates and fixes, new updates for Solaris ZFS and advancements to further leverage the functionality of the latest SPARC and x86 based systems. Solaris 10 10/09 provides new features, fixes and hardware support in an easy-to-install manner, preserving full compatibility with over 11,000 third-party products and customer applications, including Oracle database and application software."

"Imad Sousou is the director of Intel's Open Source Technology Centre, which is behind the Moblin project aimed at providing optimized Linux technology for netbooks and mobile Internet devices. ZDNet Asia's sister site ZDNet UK caught up with Sousou at the Open Source In Mobile 09 event in Amsterdam last month to discuss the nature of Moblin and the hardware on which it will run." The interview also covers Intel's views on the netbook and MID market, Windows 7, ARM as a competitor, and Google's Chrome OS and how Intel is working with Google.

Remember those nearly pointless USB 3.0 cables one could buy way back in the golden days of April? If you were one of those who bought one by mistake or merely wanted to use its USB 2.0 speed until you had an actual 3.0 device and controller, now is your chance. Buffalo is offering what they claim to be the "world's first!!" shipping USB 3.0 hard drive in delicious 1TB and 1.5TB flavors come late this month, and a 2TB model is in the works. Since one would obviously need a controller as they don't come standard on motherboards just yet, the company is also offering one of NEC's world-firsts: the handy dandy USB 3.0 controller. Together these'll cost you over US$285 at the very least, but sometimes you just have to have shiny pieces of the world's first before anyone else.

"Speaking at CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment in San Diego today, FCC head Julius Genachowski has said that he wants to 'close the spectrum gap' -- the difference between the spectrum it's making available for wireless data versus enormous usage projections (400 petabytes a month by 2013, he says) that'll be brought about by smarter, easier-to-use devices and ubiquitous high-speed data through a handful of initiatives including the promotion of the smart use of existing spectrum through the use of femotcells, WiFi, and smart antennas, and -- more importantly -- reallocation of existing spectrum. Genachowski says there are 'no easy pickings' for reallocation, but the Commission is aggressively pursuing additional airspace that can help keep 4G rollouts on track. He's gone on to say that they'll be adopting the widely-discussed 'shot clock' policy for placement of new towers, giving locales a limited window to protest placement of cell sites that'll help spread 4G services over wider footprints. The guy seems genuinely concerned about keeping 4G rollouts rolling, so let's see just how far the guys in Washington are willing to go to do that."