Breaking News: Debian moves to LibreOffice

Debian has dropped OpenOffice and included LibreOffice. LibreOffice has been available in testing since March and I’ve been curious when it was going to be stable, now it is and I’m glad. After all Debian is kind of the standard for distributions setting a mark for stability. After most other distributions have moved to LibreOffice, the inclusion of LibreOffice into Debian kind of seals the deal in my opinion. In the release announcement, Rene Engelhard, the Debian LibreOffice maintainer, said “I am sure Debian and its users will benefit greatly from this transition; I expect not only an improved collaboration but also quicker development cycles.” It seems that this is just another calculated step in the right direction for Debian.

Full instructions are available at Debian.org

Sabayon 6.0 Available For Download

Sabayon has come with another release. Sabayon 6.0 is now available for download at Sabayon.org. I downloaded the KDE version and am pretty excited about the live, install and first hour of use. After all Sabayon is known for putting out some beautiful stable releases.

Some of the top features you can expect to run into in Sabayon 6.0 include:

• Linux Kernel 2.6.39.1
• New Artwork and Intro Music
• Natively Supports btrfs Filesystem
• Better Widescreen Support
• XBMC Integration Improved
• Installer Improvements
• UFW Firewall Added
• Updated to GRUB 1.99
• X.Org Server Updated to 1.10
• Updated to GNOME 2.32.2 and KDE 4.6.4
• And Many More…

For a full list of features visit the Sabayon 6.0 release announcement. You can also Download Sabayon 6.0 or buy the Sabayon DVD online.

The Speed of Firefox 5.0

I’m a Google Chromium (right now version 12.0.742.91) user because of the speed. I found previous versions of Firefox to be just a little too slow. Especially when starting the browser. Through the grapevine I heard people discussing the better speeds of Firefox 5.0, which was released this week. This makes me re-consider using Firefox as my default browser. I took a look at the speed and several of the new features. Here are the results.

Note: I’m using a modest desktop setup running Linux Mint 11. Firefox 5.0 may behave differently on your machine. These are just some notes of my trial use of Firefox 5.0 over only a few hours.

Speed – Chromium wins at start up. It’s just faster for me. Another thing I noticed was that Firefox loads the majority of the page before displaying anything. While Chromium starts displaying the page top to bottom immediately. Sometimes text shows up first and images load after. Firefox 5.0 loads all at once. I don’t like this because it causes that blank white page that appears while loading a page to show for longer. I want to dive right in and start reading, I’ll look over the pictures in a few seconds or whatever it takes.

Features – Firefox 5.0 has over 1,000 improvements and performance enhancements. Here is a full list of features.

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/features/

OpenSUSE 11.3 Released

Whether you use OpenSUSE or not you undoubtedly have heard what today is. And if not, it’s the release of OpenSUSE 11.3! OpenSUSE uses the KDE desktop but presents a nice version of GNOME, XFCE, and for the first time in version OpenSUSE 11.3 you’ll find a LXDE version. Before you install OpenSUSE 11.3 you’ll need to download or buy OpenSUSE 11.3 on DVD or CD. XFCE is only available on the OpenSUSE 11.3 DVD release. During Installation you’ll find a new feature that allows the use of the the BtrFS filesystem which is a cutting edge option with several high end features and advantages. BtrFS is a highly experimental feature however, so use it with caution.

Here’s a list of the other popular features you’ll find in OpenSUSE 11.3:

• GNOME 2.30.1
• KDE SC 4.4.4
• Btrfs filesystem
• Netbook support
• the 2.6.34 Linux kernel
• SpiderOak file syncing
• Rosegarden audio editor
• Mozilla, Firefox, GoogleCL and Thunderbird Updates
• And Much More. (Read the official Release Announcement)

You can find a full OpenSUSE 11.3 Review over at EasyLinuxCDs. Don’t forget to share your comments and opinions about OpenSUSE 11.3 in the box below.

Shared Wire Connection in Ubuntu

In today’s increasingly connected world, sharing an internet connection has made the jump from helpful to imperative in many situations. Luckily, sharing a wired connection within Ubuntu can be done with minimal hassle by creating an ad-hoc wireless network.

To successfully share your connection you’ll need to set up the ad-hoc wireless network from scratch. Besides an active wired internet connection at the time of setup, here’s what you’ll need:

Network Manager 0.7 or later release
dnsmasq-base installed; a DNS proxy and DHCP/TFTP server

NetworkManager comes pre-installed with all Ubuntu releases since 8.10 so the only installation requirement should be that of dnsmasq-base; you can install easily by using this command:

sudo aptitude install dnsmasq-base

Once you’ve confirmed installation of both Network Manager and the dnsmasq-base package you’re ready to move on. Access the network management screen by clicking on the Network Manager icon and select “Create New Wireless Network” to begin setting up your ad-hoc wireless network. Enter the network name and choose the wireless security level when prompted to complete the network creation. Once you finalize the settings you should see a new available SSID, enabling you to share your connection with no further customization or network settings needed.