In this tutorial we will see how to install Adobe Flash in Debian Etch/Lenny/Sid. Adobe Flash (previously called “Macromedia Flash”‘) is a multimedia platform created by Macromedia and currently developed and distributed by Adobe Systems. Since its introduction in 1996, Flash has become a popular method for adding animation and interactivity to web pages; Flash is commonly used to create animation, advertisements, and various web page components, to integrate video into web pages, and more recently, to develop rich Internet applications.

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Watch out Windows and Solaris, says ZemlinWith the new year under way and all of the problems in the old year still largely unsolved, people in the IT sector are looking around for a little good news and some prospects for growth. There are a lot of clouds out there right now, and Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, thinks the rain is going to be good, particularly for Linux.…

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A typical Linux system comes with all kinds of help documentation built-in, and a lot of users don’t even know it’s there. Juliet Kemp is your guide to finding man, info, and HTML help pages.

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Free Software Foundation Europe is asking people what they can do in 2009 to improve things for themselves and others in the sphere of software freedoms. The best way is to join the successful Fellowship programme, through which Fellows work to support software freedoms - and have fun doing it! Have a look at the site for more reasons to join!

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As always, KDE will have a presence at next year’s FOSDEM in Belgium on 7-8 February 2008. This is earlier in the month than usual. We are looking for people to give talks in the KDE or cross-desktop devroom. FOSDEM is the European meeting of free software developers, with over 4000 visitors, 200 lectures and lots of stalls to visit over a 2 day period. You can come and listen to a plethora of interesting talks about anything related to free software, and meet the people behind the nicknames.

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The IEEE has again ranked companies in different sectors to estimate the power that these companies have based upon their patent portfolio. Unsurprisingly, Microsoft came top in the “Computer Software” category and IBM tops the “Computer Systems” chart.

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German Linux integrator Millenux is launching a series of monthly workshops for Linux developers and IT managers on open-source Linux topics including high availablity (HA), Debian, and kernel development. The initial January 7 event in Munich will address “mobile computing,” plus NoMachine’s “NX” Xhosting technology.

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The Obama administration has made a pledge to spend $50 billion dollars on Health IT, yet it is unclear how they will come to grips with proprietary health IT software, a problem I will call the ‘Some Dude’ phenomenon. In my now lengthening health IT career, I have frequently come across a remarkably destructive and unfortunately abundant person called ‘Some Dude’. Some Dude is the proprietary license holder of an entrenched piece of health IT software that needs to be interfaced with other software. Some Dude is entirely and in my experience usually capable of: stonewalling, obstructing, fleecing, lying, tollboothing, and ignoring any effort to interface with their proprietary software. There are few to no penalties or consequences to the proprietary license holders for such destruction. There are many real consequences and penalties for patients and practitioners by such obstruction.

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Chris Mason, the founder of the Btrfs file-system, had previously stated he hoped to merge the first bits of this much-improved Linux file-system into the Linux 2.6.29 kernel. With the 2.6.29 merge window still open, earlier this week he started a new thread entitled Btrfs for mainline.Chris shares that the Btrfs file-system is currently working against the latest kernel Git tree and not much has changed with this file-system code since early December…

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Netbooks run either Windows or Linux, and both are readily available in shops all over the world. The Linux variants chosen by several netbook manufacturers are usually derived from desktop distributions, and obviously, Windows is a desktop operating system as well. However, netbooks have small displays, and both Windows and GNOME/KDE and some of their applications aren’t always suited well for such an environment. Enter Android, Google’s Linux-based phone operating system. It is suggested that Android-based netbooks will appear on the market in 2010, maybe even sooner.

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One more new filing from Wednesday, this one from SCO v. Novell. Here’s the docket entry:..

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Google’s Android OS has been pretty well received thus far, and the presence of the Market, where users can download applications, has fared pretty well except it has missed one thing: paid-for apps. While it might sound like a bad thing that users will have to start paying for applications, the incentive for developers (ie cash) means that the whole experience should now get a little better.

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The Debian developers have decided to release the upcoming Debian 5 (Lenny) with proprietary firmware files to expedite the completion of the Linux distributions next release. The vote itself had several options for dealing with proprietary firmware, from a complete elimination of it, even if it meant more delays for Lenny, to an explicit waiver of the source code requirement for firmware files. The winning option was “assume blobs comply with the GPL unless proven otherwise”, a principle which declares proprietary firmware as undesirable, but allows for the earlier release of Debian 5 to take priority over the removal of questionable firmware.

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Google is planning to use Android for any device — not just the mobile phones. Don’t be surprised if netbooks will come pre-installed with Google’s Linux OS.

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There are 10 sorts of distributions in the world. Those that have specific releases, where it is better to reformat and reload with each new release and rolling distributions. Even still the specific release distributions can, in some cases, be upgraded to the newest release when it becomes available but this does not always work. The biggest advantage (or disadvantage depending on your viewpoint) is that stable (sic) versions of programs are chosen for that particular distribution release and are maintained throughout the life of that released distribution.

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Writers at VentureBeat decided to test the idea that Android would make an ideal operating system for netbooks by porting the, Google developed, open source operating system to their Asus EEE PC1000H. Using information from the Android Porting Google group, and encouraged by the news that a Google developer had ported Android to an EEE PC701, the writers set about the porting work and managed to get it up and running after a number of hours work.

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The Boston Globe has an article on the difficulties President Obama will face with spending $50 Billion in Health IT: “As Barack Obama prepares to spend billions on health information technology as part of his plan to revive the US economy, some specialists are warning against investing too heavily in existing electronic record keeping systems…If America’s physician practices suddenly rushed to install the systems of their choice, it would only dramatically intensify the [tower of] Babel that already exists,” wrote David Kibbe, a senior adviser to the academy and a longtime proponent of health information technology, and Bruce Klepper, a healthcare market analyst…”

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Like other Operating systems, there are some great Instant messengers for Linux. These IM’s comes with features like any other, including custom emoticons, web-cam support, nudges, themes, plugins, customizations and lots more. Here’s a list of 10 Best Instant messengers for Linux, I hope it comes in handy.

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Many Linux newbies fear the terminal and worry that they will have to learn how to use it, but is it really necessary any more? Can everything be done from the GUI or is it still necessary to delve into the terminal just to get things done?

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The end of the year tends to be a time of reflection and retrospective for many people. So I too thought about writing up my thoughts on the most important events in 2008. There’s plenty to talk about with OLPC’s (largely just perceived) move to Windows XP, Walter Bender leaving OLPC and subsequently founding Sugar Labs, olpcnews announcing the “post-1CC era”, the announcement of the XO-2 design, the release of Sugar 8.2, the return of G1G1 at the end of the year, etc.

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A new GNUmed live CD is out. With the help of this CD one can testdrive GNUmed without altering the currently running environment such as operating system. No installation neccessary. Just download the CD image (http://www.gnumed.de/downloads/live-cd/) and either burn it to a CD or set up VirtualBox, Vmware/Vmplayer, QEmu or the likes to accept the CD image as a virtual CD drive.

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It seems like every other operating system and desktop environment has some form of widgets, except Ubuntu. Luckily, you can change that quite easily.

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Bringing a more accessible, easy-to-use and fast way of doing business and home computing in a web 2.0 flavour is what we are going to achieve by the beginning of the new year. Sabayon Linux 4 offers an easy-to-use and attractive desktop coming with thousands of tools and applications.

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Psion (the mobile device maker that eventually fell off a cliff) may wind up haunting netbook makers. Apparently, Psion Teklogix holds a trademark on the netbook term and is sending cease and desist letters to some folks. The VAR Guy wonders: Are Linux Netbooks at risk?

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pv (Pipe Viewer) - Shell pipeline element to meter data passing through. pv (Pipe Viewer) can be inserted into any normal pipeline between two processes to give a visual indication of how quickly data is passing through, how long it has taken, how near to completion it is, and an estimate of how long it will be until completion.To use it, insert it in a pipeline between two processes, with the appropriate options.

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Almost every year end, most blogs - magazines - publications and so called “Linux gurus” makes mostly positive predictions about the future of Linux and it’s market share. Following this tradition, it’s only fair that I too share with you my Linux predictions for 2009.

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The Free Software Foundation have announced that they are to start shipping new, bootable, membership cards in January. The cards resemble a credit card and feature a USB connector and memory loaded with the gNewsense Live! Linux distribution and advocacy tools, such as speeches by Richard Stallman and videos about free software. The FSF online announcement page shows a picture of Richard Stallman’s card, member number 0. Associate membership of the FSF, which entitles a member to one of these new membership cards, is $120 per year.

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Logitech MX Air promises to let you control your computer from your couch, just by pointing it at your screen. The question is: does it work and does it work with Linux?

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How to use SSH Via HTTP Proxy using Corkscrew in Ubuntu. If you want to ssh your vps server or your home computer from your work place (assuming you are using http proxy).You need to use Corkscrew.corkscrew is a simple tool to tunnel TCP connections through an HTTP proxy supporting the CONNECT method. It reads stdin and writes to stdout during the connection, just like netcat.

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Whatever you do, 2009 is looking to be a big year. That no exception when it comes to Linux. Applications and large projects continue to develop and make major releases multiple times per year. And while every year people predict that the next might be “The Year” for Linux adoption, here’s a list of some major products and trends that will play a part in attracting new attention to Linux in 2009.

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