In many ways, OpenMoko's platform strategy mirrors the diversity of the Linux desktop software ecosystem. There are a multitude of parallel options with many layers and varying degrees of overlap. This provides end users with an enormous amount of flexibility, but it also creates a lot of complexity. The choices are difficult to navigate, and the lack of a cohesive direction contributes to fragmentation and redundancy. OpenMoko's potential for success will be heavily predicated on the ability to turn choice and diversity into an asset rather than an impediment.

Openmoko, developer of the first open mobile computing platform today announced that on Friday, July 4, it will open the online store for purchase of the Openmoko Neo FreeRunner, a mobile device that the company says will help to enable ubiquitous computing for the 21st century. Shipping to customers will commence on July 7, 2008.

The Openmoko Neo FreeRunner utilizes GNU/Linux and comes with core software for dialing, SMS and recording contacts. Openmoko will supplement these features with periodic downloads beginning with a software suite that takes full advantage of the phone's hardware platform. The new software, debuting at Linux World in August, will provide exciting new location based applications.

Several people have noticed that Linux has a bad tendency of killing floppy drives. These failures remained completely mysterious, until somebody noticed that they were due to huge layers of dust accumulating in the floppy drives. This cannot happen under Messy Dos, because this excuse for an operating system is so unstable that it crashes roughly every 20 minutes (actually less if you are running Windows). When rebooting, the BIOS seeks the drive, and by doing this, it shakes the dust out of the drive mechanism. CWdiskseekd simulates this effect by seeking the drive periodically. If it is called as CWdiskseek, the drive is seeked only once.

You might be surprised to learn that Microsoft licenses are nearly twice as expensive in Brazil in absolute terms. I imagine Microsoft charges about the same and Brazil's brutal tax burden makes up the rest (the taxes are built into the price). But the interesting result is the relative price of licenses in each society, captured as % of GNI per capita. As a proportion of national incomes, business licenses are nineteen times more expensive to Brazilian society and home licenses are fifteen times more expensive. While GNI per capita is not a perfect figure, it reflects the incomes people make, how much they spend to live, and how much they pay in taxes. It is a crucial number when it comes to public policy; it's not hard to understand why rational policies must dodge licensing costs when possible. If there's any hope of widespread computer access, then surely we can't expect people to spend 7.8% of their annual income on Microsoft software licenses alone. The burden on small businesses is also prohibitive. This order-of-magnitude difference is a fundamental problem that can't be solved by piecemeal license giveaways. Suppose Microsoft gave out Windows and Office wholesale to all schools. Then what happens if those kids need a computer at home or in their parents' business? License costs are simply out of whack with respect to most of society. Using Linux in public schools, rarely attended by richer kids, seems inescapable.

The script checks out Drupal, sets up a database and settings.php, adds a single record for the admin user with a preset password (admin/potrzebie) and generates some content using Jeff Eaton's patched generate-content.php for devel.module.

The script must be edited for a couple of important values before being run. A future version will probably be smart and check.

Anyway, execute it from the command line as php -e install-drupal.php

http://turmoil.logrus.com/files/test-installer.tar.gz

Next steps:
Installing a patch file.
Installing simpletest.
Running a very simple test.
Extracting patches from project issues.
Auto posting followups to project module.

After that:
Xen! If Boris says it, I'm Right There.

There's also some talk of virtualization in there. I think it is a great idea.

I'm doing something similar locally because I want to get into the swing of participating in the Drupal community after spending so many years on the sidelines. I'm sick of OS X and have a virtualized Linux instance and now I'm looking to automate by way of a shell script that installs Drupal (with the option of specifying versions), installs whatever modules are needed (in case I want to work on a contrib patch), applies the patch and generates some content. After that, I'd play with the site, make sure it worked as it should and then I'd be done. In the event I had to modify anything, a second script to generate an updated patch would be called. Afterwhich, I'd run another script to run a cleanup.

I should even throw in the simpletest things that are mentioned above.

Linux Kernel Development: How Fast it is Going, Who is Doing It, What They are Doing, and Who is Sponsoring It

The report is packed with all kinds of interesting information like the following:

• The Linux kernel is growing about 10% per year. Glyn Moody is not so happy.
• 26 developers contribute more code to the kernel than Linus
• The Linux kernel averages 2.7 months between releases.
• On average, there are 2.83 Linux kernel patches accepted each our
• Canonical doesn't appear on the list of around 30 companies sponsoring Linux kernel development in a substantial way. I don't know why that is.
• The number of kernel contributors per release has grown to over 1000 very recently, but was under 700 just two and half years ago.

As you may know, Google uses Wine to implement Linux support for Picasa. Beyond that, Google has been supporting Wine in several other ways.

Perhaps the biggest news is that we hired Codeweavers to make Photoshop CS and CS2 work better under Wine. Photoshop is one of those applications that Desktop linux users are constantly clamoring for, and we're happy to say they work pretty well now. Perhaps not coincidentally, apps like Flash 8 are now starting to work in Wine, too. We look forward to further improvements in this area.