Akregator is a news feed reader available for Linux, where we can access our common feeds from a KDE desktop. Even though it was designed for KDE, Akregator is also available from Ubuntu download center making it possible using in Gnome.
If you usually access and use RSS to get the latest news from sites and blogs, you should know that the way we are retrieving the information is crucial for not missing anything important. If we don’t have a simple GUI in the application we are using, probably we just won’t read anything.
Akregator’s simplicity brings the simple features we may need in a RSS reader: organizing feeds in folders, quick preview, full search possibilities, etc.
You can download Akregator using this link.
Mandriva Linux, one of the most known distributions, it’s preparing the new version and already has an alpha (previous stage for a beta): Mandriva Linux 2010 Alpha 1.
Mandriva was originally called Mandrake Linux (started in 1998), but after a litigation about the name (related, of course, with Mandrake the Magician) was forced to change it; and at the same time MandrakeSoft acquired Conectiva Linux (my first Linux installation ever), so the combination of those two did all the rest, and Madriva was created.
Related to Mandriva 2010, here are some of the improvements related with previous versions:
- Boot time improved.
- Clean and complete grub and install menu (failsafe, init3 entry, recovery entry, check tool for istallation media)
- Use of Plymouth and fallback on Splashy for non supported chipsets
- Switch to Tomoyo as security framework, provide GUI for common setup, integrated also in msec tool
- Guest account created on the fly when needed
- Packaging of Moblin, use it as default environment if stable enough when light hardware configuration is detected
- Manage end of life distribution through mdkonline applet
- Autodetection of local urpmi repositories
- Improved hybrid isos use
I know what you are thinking, Why I would even consider to install an Alpha Linux distribution? Well, there’s no direct and simple answer to that one. As I mentioned before in 40 years of Unix post, the history of Linux has a long way and it is responsible for several other projects like Mac OS X, BSD and Sun operating system. The spirit is what did all the work.
And that’s the idea, go ahead, download it, test it, give your feedback, contribute and improve the work; that’s the spirit.
Final version for Mandriva 2010 will be available in October 21st.
Yes, the operating system that you’ve never wanted to use is celebrating 40 years of life. As you may know, Unix represents the basis for all Linux distributions; but did you know that also Mac OS X based their operating system versions in Unix? Well, what this operating system represents it’s a lot more that you may think.
Born in 1969 as “Unics” from two guys named Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, has a long way and a lot of history. Written originally in Assembler programming language, quickly changed the code since one of the founders also developed the “C” language. Bill Joy, in 1978 created 1BSD, operating system also based in Unix, that will later represent in other important developments like BSD, FreeBSD, SunOS and Mac OS X.
Other ramifications of this development, produced Minix OS for academic proposals, that later Linus Trovalds will use to build the first Linux distribution in 1991. Here’s a very nice picture that will help you understand a lot more of these ramifications:
Closing the article, here’s a quote from Joel Spolsky that talks about Windows and Linux:
“What are the cultural differences between Unix and Windows programmers? There are many details and subtleties, but for the most part it comes down to one thing: Unix culture values code which is useful to other programmers, while Windows culture values code which is useful to non-programmers. This is, of course, a major simplification, but really, that’s the big difference: are we programming for programmers or end users? Everything else is commentary.”
