OStatic

There are a number of full featured open source content management systems out there. Content management systems (CMS) are used increasingly in lieu of more traditionally managed web pages, on various sites with diverse audiences and very different goals. They can be updated quickly, easily, and require very little (if any) knowledge of how the inner plumbing works.

There are, of course, proprietary CMS platforms. Many -- from individuals to businesses -- opt for open source alternatives. Cost is naturally a factor, but having used both closed and open CMS platforms, it's been my experience that the open alternatives offer better features, an increased ability to modify and customize easily, and behave with more consistency in different browsers than most of their closed counterparts.

Finding the right open CMS for your needs is the hardest part. But there are a few considerations and rules of thumb that can make this decision a little easier.

Alan Cox, long-time kernel developer at Red Hat, announced last week that he would be leaving Red Hat in January for Intel, where he can concentrate more on areas of low-level development.

As you'd imagine from such a statement, this doesn't end Cox's involvement with the Linux kernel or open source development.

If you were unable to attend (or follow along with) the events at the Ubuntu Developer Summit, the highlights and more controversial proposals are now being discussed in the wider community.

One proposal for Ubuntu's Jaunty release was to unify notification display and interaction between GNOME and KDE. It's an idea that's been met with nearly every reaction imaginable, but Mark Shuttleworth has a very reassuring post on his blog that explains some of the reasoning behind this proposal.

The end of the year is a self-indulgent time, when those who write about technology stop making lists of the best, worst, and most mind-numbingly mediocre applications they find and pause to make lists about tech trends in the upcoming year.

Assessing the past is easy: it has been an interesting year for open source software. Predictions that come to pass, unless suitably vague, just fall into the lucky guess category. The one prediction I am sure of for 2009: Open source software will hold its own when it comes to growth and adoption.

My other predictions? What do you think?

On Thursday, the Linux Foundation announced it had appointed Ted Ts'o as Chief Technology Officer. In this position, Ts'o will lead all of the Foundation's technical initiatives, and be the technical point of contact for Linux Foundation members and its Technical Advisory Board.

On Thursday, the openSUSE project will make available its stable 11.1 release. I was fortunate enough to take a sneak peek at the new release this week, and while the changes aren't quite as dizzying as those between 10.3 and 11.0 (understandably), they work nicely to make this new release both eye-catching and functional.

Though the final releases will be offered in a variety of architectures with DVD, network install, and liveCD images, I used one of the DVD install images. openSUSE offered an installer with the 11.0 liveCD, and in its 11.1 beta versions, and I imagine this has not changed. The DVD install process is slightly different than liveCD installers, but is just as straightforward and offers more from the get-go.

Over at ChannelWeb, Kevin McLaughlin gathered some industry insights on the significance of Linux netbooks. In some ways, the subject seems as though it's reached critical mass and there's not much more to say, but McLaughlin's article highlights a few points that aren't often mentioned and are easily glossed over.

Earlier this year I wrote about the Chumby internet appliance/open source alarm clock. Though Chumbys have been available in the US for a little over a year now, Chumby Industries hasn't been able to officially sell these products internationally.

Chumby Industries intended all along to open sales outside the US, but electronics standards (and approval procedures) vary from country to country, and it's been time consuming. Some international users turned to friends in the States or third party shippers, but now, at least in a few countries, this is no longer necessary. Chumby is available at select retailers in Japan, and a Japanese language Chumby portal was launched last month.

Last week, Net Applications reported Microsoft's operating system share had fallen below the 90 percent mark on the 40,000 or so websites where it gathers its traffic statistics. InternetNews is reporting that Net Applications made another interesting, if puzzling, discovery.

It seems the statistics gathered from Google.com (this only includes Google employees -- not the public using the search engine) were showing that a third of these users were accessing sites with an unknown operating system. It's more interesting when you consider that proxy servers block all identifying information, but the Google.com unknown systems only had the operating system information obscured.

Theories abound, of course, as to what Google might have up its sleeve. There's the Google is bringing Android to the PC school of thought, and the networking application infrastructure development theory.

Boxee is just one of several open source media center applications. Sam recently compiled a round up of some of the most popular, and I have been using MythTV for over a year now as a TiVO/DVR alternative.

I like MythTV for several reasons. It's not a project for the faint of heart, but it's less the fault of the software than the wild array of hardware that can be conceivably used in nearly every imaginable configuration. It is quite stable, and doesn't require hefty system specs. I didn't think overly about Boxee when I first heard of it. MythTV worked for me.

One thing that MythTV can't do, of course, is stream Netflix movies. I've all too frequently, now, run into problems with Netflix disks being a little too rough to run in my MythTV box's DVD player. This isn't the fault of MythTV -- it's a hardware/media issue.

Boxee is bringing Netflix onboard. There are a few catches, and a few bits that are a little unclear, but this might lead, at the very least, to Boxee running alongside my MythTV installation.