On September 28th, 2010, The Document Foundation was announced. The last six months, it feels, have just passed within a short glimpse of time. Not only did we release three LibreOffice versions within three months, have created the LibreOffice-Box DVD image, and brought LibreOffice Portable on its way. We also have announced the LibreOffice Conference for October 2011 and have taken part in lots of events worldwide, with FOSDEM and CeBIT being the most prominent ones.
People follow us at Twitter, Identi.ca, XING, LinkedIn and a Facebook group and fan page, they discuss on our mailing lists with more than 6.000 subscriptions, collaborate in our wiki, get insight on our daily work in our blog, and post and blog themselves. From the very first day, openness, transparency and meritocracy have been shaping the framework we want to work in. Our discussions and decisions take place on a public mailing list, and regularly, we hold phone conferences for the Steering Committee and for the marketing teams, where everyone is invited to join. Our ideas and visions have made their way into our Next Decade Manifesto.
We have joined the Open Invention Network as well as the OpenDoc Society, and just last week have become an SPI-associated project, and we see a wide range of support from all over the world. Not only do Novell and Red Hat support our efforts with developers, but just recently, Canonical, creators of Ubuntu, joined as well. All major Linux distributions deliver LibreOffice with their operating systems, and more follow every day.
One of the most stunning contributions, that still leaves us speechless, is the support that we receive from the community. When we asked for 50,000 € capital stock for a German-based foundation, the community showed their support, appreciation and their power, and not only donated it in just eight days, but up to now has supported us with close to 100,000 €! Another one is that driven by our open, vendor neutral approach, combined with our easy hacks, we have included code contributions from over 150 entirely new developers to the project, alongside localisations from over 50 localizers. The community has developed itself better than we could ever dream of, and first meetings like the project’s weekend or the QA meeting of the Germanophone group are already being organized.
What we have seen now is just the beginning of something very big. The Document Foundation has a vision, and the creation of the foundation in Germany is about to happen soon. LibreOffice has been downloaded over 350,000 times within the first week, and we just counted more than 1,3 million downloads just from our download system — not counting packages directly delivered by Linux distributors, other download sites or DVDs included in magazines and newspapers — supported by 65 mirrors from all over the world, and millions already use and contribute to it worldwide. With our participation in the Google Summer of Code, we will engage more students and young developers to be part of our community. Our improved release schedule will ensure that new features and improvements will make their way to end-users soon, and for testers, we even provide daily builds.
We are so excited by what has been achieved over the last six months, and we are immensely grateful to all those who have supported the project in whatever ways they can. It is an honour to be working with you, to be part of one united community! The future as we are shaping it has just begun, and it will be bright and excellent.
An interesting development is Amazon’s Cloud Player (though Cannonical may be credited for thinking of the idea first for Ubuntu One). Since Ubuntu One is dependent on the OS (and not the browser) this makes Amazon \s version more of a mobile Cloud Player (as it seems to be an Android app and not an app that is independent of any platform, os or browser.
Since Android and Ubuntu are both Linux flavors, I am not sure if Cannonical has an exiting mobile app for Ubuntu One. Apple’s cloud plans also seems kind of ambiguous compared to Microsoft (Azure et al)
I guess we will have to wait for a true Cloud player.
Purchase a song or album from the Amazon MP3 Store and click the Save to Amazon Cloud Drive button when your purchase is complete. Your purchase will be saved for free.
Click the Launch Amazon Cloud Player button to start listening to your purchase. Add more music from your library by clicking theUpload to Cloud Drive button from the Cloud Player screen. Start with 5 GB of free Cloud Drive storage. Upgrade to 20 GB with an MP3 album purchase (see details). Use Cloud Player to browse and search your library, create playlists, and download to your computer.
Install the Amazon MP3 for Android app to use Cloud Player on your Android device. Shop the full Amazon MP3 store, save your purchases to Cloud Drive, stream your Cloud Player library, and download to your device right from your Android phone or tablet.
The Ubuntu One Music Store is integrated with the Ubuntu One service making it a cloud-enabled digital music store. All purchases are transferred to your Ubuntu One personal cloud for safe storage and then conveniently downloaded to your synchronizing computers. And don’t worry aboutgoing over your storage quota with music purchases. You won’t need to pay more for personal cloud storage of music purchased from the Ubuntu One Music Store.
An Ubuntu One subscription is required to purchase music from the Ubuntu One Music Store. Choose from either the free 2 GB option or the 50 GB plan for $10 (USD) per month to synchronize more of your digital life.
5 regional stores and more in the works
The Ubuntu One Music requires Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and offers digital music through five regional stores.
The US, UK, and Germany stores offer music from all major and independent labels.
The EU store serves most of the EU member countries (2) and offers music from fewer major label artists.
The World store offers only independent label music and serves the countries not covered by the other regional stores.
Here are some cool games I like to play on my Ubuntu 10.10 – I think they run on most other versions of Linux as well. 1) Open Arena– First person Shooter– This is like Quake Arena- very very nice graphics and good for playing for a couple of hours while taking a break. It is available here- http://openarena.ws/smfnews.php ideally if you have a bunch of gaming friends, playing on a local network or internet is quite mind blowing entertaining. And it’s free! 2) Armagetron– This is based on the TRON game of light cycles-It is available here at http://www.armagetronad.net/ or you can use Synaptic packages manager for all the games mentioned here
If violence or cars is not your stuff and you like puzzles like Sudoko, well just install the application Sudoko from http://gnome-sudoku.sourceforge.net/ Also recommended for people of various ages as it has multiple levels.
Gweled is a GNOME version of a popular PalmOS/Windows/Java game called “Bejeweled” or “Diamond Mine”. The aim of the game is to make alignment of 3 or more gems, both vertically or horizontally by swapping adjacent gems. The game ends when there are no possible moves left. Here are some key features of “Gweled”: · exact same gameplay as the commercial versions · SVG original graphics
7) Hearts – For this card game classis you can use Ubuntu software to install the package or go to http://linuxappfinder.com/package/gnome-hearts 8) Card Games- KPatience has almost 14 card games including solitaire, and free cell. 9) Sauerbraten -First person shooter with good network play, edit maps capabilities. You can read more here- http://sauerbraten.org/ 10) Tetris-KBlocks Tetris is the classic game. If you like classic slow games- Tetris is the best. and I like the toughest Tetris game -Bastet http://fph.altervista.org/prog/bastet.html Even an xkcd toon for it
That’s all for holiday season folks, the top 10 lists is based on almost 3 decades of gaming experience, but beauty is the eye of the beholder- so happy gaming for free.
Dap is a small statistics and graphics package based on C. Version 3.0 and later of Dap can read SBS programs (based on the utterly famous, industry standard statistics system with similar initials – you know the one I mean)! The user wishing to perform basic statistical analyses is now freed from learning and using C syntax for straightforward tasks, while retaining access to the C-style graphics and statistics features provided by the original implementation. Dap provides core methods of data management, analysis, and graphics that are commonly used in statistical consulting practice (univariate statistics, correlations and regression, ANOVA, categorical data analysis, logistic regression, and nonparametric analyses).
Anyone familiar with the basic syntax of C programs can learn to use the C-style features of Dap quickly and easily from the manual and the examples contained in it; advanced features of C are not necessary, although they are available. (The manual contains a brief introduction to the C syntax needed for Dap.) Because Dap processes files one line at a time, rather than reading entire files into memory, it can be, and has been, used on data sets that have very many lines and/or very many variables.
I wrote Dap to use in my statistical consulting practice because the aforementioned utterly famous, industry standard statistics system is (or at least was) not available on GNU/Linux and costs a bundle every year under a lease arrangement. And now you can run programs written for that system directly on Dap! I was generally happy with that system, except for the graphics, which are all but impossible to use, but there were a number of clumsy constructs left over from its ancient origins.
sounds too good to be true- GNU /DAP joins WPS workbench and Dulles Open’s Carolina as the third SAS language compiler (besides the now defunct BASS software) see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAS_language#Controversy
Dap was written to be a free replacement for SAS, but users are assumed to have a basic familiarity with the C programming language in order to permit greater flexibility. Unlike R it has been designed to be used on large data sets.
It has been designed so as to cope with very large data sets; even when the size of the data exceeds the size of the computer’s memory
The Document Foundation is happy to announce the release candidate of
LibreOffice 3.3.1. This release candidate is the first in a series of
frequent bugfix releases on top of our LibreOffice 3.3 product. Please
be aware that LibreOffice 3.3.1 RC1 is not yet ready for production
use, you should continue to use LibreOffice for that.
Writer is the word processor inside LibreOffice. Use it for everything, from dashing off a quick letter to producing an entire book with tables of contents, embedded illustrations, bibliographies and diagrams. The while-you-type auto-completion, auto-formatting and automatic spelling checking make difficult tasks easy (but are easy to disable if you prefer). Writer is powerful enough to tackle desktop publishing tasks such as creating multi-column newsletters and brochures. The only limit is your imagination.
Calc tames your numbers and helps with difficult decisions when you’re weighing the alternatives. Analyze your data with Calc and then use it to present your final output. Charts and analysis tools help bring transparency to your conclusions. A fully-integrated help system makes easier work of entering complex formulas. Add data from external databases such as SQL or Oracle, then sort and filter them to produce statistical analyses. Use the graphing functions to display large number of 2D and 3D graphics from 13 categories, including line, area, bar, pie, X-Y, and net – with the dozens of variations available, you’re sure to find one that suits your project.
Impress is the fastest and easiest way to create effective multimedia presentations. Stunning animation and sensational special effects help you convince your audience. Create presentations that look even more professional than the standard presentations you commonly see at work. Get your collegues’ and bosses’ attention by creating something a little bit different.
Draw lets you build diagrams and sketches from scratch. A picture is worth a thousand words, so why not try something simple with box and line diagrams? Or else go further and easily build dynamic 3D illustrations and special effects. It’s as simple or as powerful as you want it to be.
Base is the database front-end of the LibreOffice suite. With Base, you can seamlessly integrate your existing database structures into the other components of LibreOffice, or create an interface to use and administer your data as a stand-alone application. You can use imported and linked tables and queries from MySQL, PostgreSQL or Microsoft Access and many other data sources, or design your own with Base, to build powerful front-ends with sophisticated forms, reports and views. Support is built-in or easily addable for a very wide range of database products, notably the standardly-provided HSQL, MySQL, Adabas D, Microsoft Access and PostgreSQL.
Math is a simple equation editor that lets you lay-out and display your mathematical, chemical, electrical or scientific equations quickly in standard written notation. Even the most-complex calculations can be understandable when displayed correctly. E=mc2.
LibreOffice also comes configured with a PDF file creator, meaning you can distribute documents that you’re sure can be opened and read by users of almost any computing device or operating system.
Lyx releases new version- now if only there was a SIMPLE way to put R code in a Lyx existing text class (having tried Sweave and sweaved myself into knots ! 😦
and I hope Ubuntu Linux 10.10 netbook fixes the curious case of disappearing menu bar in Lyx
We are pleased to announce the release of LyX 1.6.9
Beta Release: LyX 2.0.0 beta 4 released.
February 6, 2011
We are pleased to announce the fourth public pre-release of LyX 2.0.0.
Except usual bugfixing we fixed random crashes connected with the new background export and compilation feature.
As far as new features is considered it is now possible
to set the table width,
customize the language package per document,
export LyX files as a single archive containing linked material (e.g. images) directly via export menu.
Since this is most probably the last beta release we also added convertor for old (1.6) preference files which are automatically checked on the startup now.
2) 
5) Pacman/Njam- Clone of the original classic game. Downloadable from 
6) 
8) Card Games- KPatience has almost 14 card games including solitaire, and free cell. 
9) Sauerbraten -First person shooter with good network play, edit maps capabilities. You can read more here- 
10) Tetris-KBlocks Tetris is the classic game. If you like classic slow games- Tetris is the best. and I like the toughest Tetris game -Bastet 
Even an xkcd toon for it 
What does LibreOffice give you?
DECISION STATS 