OStatic

Doctor Who meets open source. Peter Murray-Rust explains how the open chemistry group known as the Blue Obelisk has evolved what he calls the Doctor Who Model of Open Source.

What is the best Linux distribution for beginners? Linux Mint has quite a lot going for it.

Recording music with Linux on an EEE PC. This tutorial will show you how to install and setup a linux recording environment on your EEE PC or other netbook.

Will Google Wave reshape enterprise IT? Within enterprise IT departments, starved for compelling ways to collaborate on application development, it could have a big impact.

How much do desktops matter? Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation insists they don?t.

Firefox 3.5, Release Candidate 1 is available now. It's being delivered as an automatic update, and the release notes and download are here.

Google: We want Chrome to grow the Web. Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products and user experience, weighs in on browser innovation.

Will Google Wave revolutionize free software collaboration? What impact might it have on free software users and developers?

A Mozilla update on open video codecs and quality. How does video encoded with Theora compare to video encoded by YouTube?

Will Ubuntu remain a minor player? It has problems in the channel.

Though the Opera browser isn't open source, it's free and its new server-in-a-browser feature, Unite, is really making significant inroads toward online collaboration. If Chrome and Firefox are to keep their edge over Opera, their development teams had better sit up and take notice.

Opera's Unite technology lets users run chat rooms, host Web sites, and share files that even people not using Opera can access. The interaction is all done via a central Opera Unite server ? Opera Unite uses a proxy between the server and its clients (found at operaunite.com) to avoid the need for any special firewall configuration, writes the development team. Unite launched today with six features but is calling on the Opera community to design and create any new services they'd like to see available.

Read on to have a look at what Opera unite can already do and why Google and Mozilla haven't cornered the market on browsers just yet.

There's little question that donating your time and talent to local volunteer organizations is a worthy cause but finding a place that needs your help isn't always easy. All for Good, a new open source project backed by big names like Google, Craigslist, AARP, and Habitat for Humanity, hopes to make it easier to pair people with the projects that need them.

Ever since last year, Google has been working on an open source project called Native Client, which is designed to run software applications downloaded from the web on x86 processors--running them natively, rather than within a browser. There are several advantages to running applications natively. For example, web-based applications rely heavily on JavaScript, and often technologies such as Flash, which are known to provide performance bottlenecks compared to the speed you can get when running applications natively.

Running downloaded applications natively also introduces problems, though, especially security problems. Nevertheless, Google has ambitious plans for Native Client, including Chrome integration.?

After months of waiting, Linux (and Mac) users woke to the happy news this morning that Google is inching ever closer to a usable version of its Chrome Web browser for Linux. Usable is the keyword here because the new developer version Google released last night is anything but. At least it gives us a peek, though, at what to expect when the much-anticipated browser is finally ready for prime time.?

To make sure Web pages load quickly and perform as expected, Google uses a Firefox add-on called Page Speed. It's integrated with Web development toolkit Firebug and provides immediate feedback on ways to improve sites that are sluggish to load. Google has announced a decision to open source Page Speed and share it with the Web-building community.