The Studio to Go! software series provides a complete introduction to the amazing world of Linux Audio and features a integrated audio and compositional environment on a single bootable disk. The new 2.0 release includes many usability improvements that add up to make this the most complete and best-integrated release yet of the original and finest Linux Audio bootable CD distribution.

Studio to Go! - Home

This looks worth the small fee for downloading. Unfortunately the last time I tried to run an audio distro the soundcard was not detected but then it was a fairly recent realtek hd model.

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Tags: linux, music, audio

Featured Linux Download: Speed up your Linux box with a thumb drive - Lifehacker

SwapBoost is a surprisingly short bash script that increases your virtual memory by the amount of free space on the USB drive. SwapBoost isn’t identical to ReadyBoost since ReadyBoost does more than just turn a USB drive into swap space, however SwapBoost is surprisingly easy to get going:

A very cool idea this one. I’d be intrigued to see if the performance of the USB key needs to be at a certain point for it to give a benefit. I once went through three USB keys before finding one that Windows Vista considered to be good enought for ReadyBoost.

Featured Linux Download: Record screencasts with recordMyDesktop - Lifehacker

RecordMyDesktop solves the screencasting problem Linux users have faced for a long time. RecordMyDesktop creates high quality recordings of your screen with or without sound. While it is a terminal application, when paired with gtk-recordMyDesktop, a graphical frontend for recordMyDesktop, recordMyDesktop becomes a robust tool for easily creating screencasts. RecordMyDesktop can be tweaked to your hearts content by changing the sound and video quality, frames captured per second, mouse cursor style, compression, and whether to record the current window or the entire desktop.

What can I say but wow! I’m looking at starting some help videos and this will be very useful for Linux. I might have used Virtual PC but some distros have been a little funny about the graphics in VPC. I ‘m looking forward to trying this out.

Linux.com :: Flock 0.9 lands gracefully

The Flock project has been building a “social Web browser” since 2005. The upcoming Flock 0.9 release adds new blogging features, integrates media streams into the browser, and includes an overhaul of the Flock bookmark system. It’s not perfect yet, but Flock 0.9 is a big leap forward.

I liked Flock a lot when I first installed it but the memory leak problem forced me back to Firefox. Hopefully they’ve fixed this problem and I can go back to it again.

Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine Expert: Ben Stanley - A New Adventure! Windows Mobile and Ubuntu Linux

Despite my generally positive experience with Ubuntu, I was almost sure that there would be no way to synchronize my Windows Mobile Outlook information (contacts, tasks, schedule, etc.) with Ubuntu. But after a bit of tinkering this morning I’m amazed to report that I am able to synchronize with Ubuntu! Not only is this fact amazing standing by itself, it is even more incredible when one considers that I cannot even synchronize this data with Vista (see my complaint to this effect here)!

I was rather encouraged to see this story. I have preferred Palm as a mobile platform anyway but it’s good to have the choice when using Linux.

Review: Excito Bubba home server - Personal Computer World

The Bubba server is the closest we have seen to a computer that fulfils this dream of sharing files, networking a printer, streaming media, downloading files and Bit Torrents as well as organising emails and acting as a web and ftp server.

This server has had me excited in a way that no hardware has managed for many years. Small, quiet, plenty of storage space and very low power requirements make it everything I’ve wanted from a home server. And it runs Linux. I almost hesitate from saying this too loud because the words server and Linux too close together scare most ordinary users but the Bubba is a triumph of intelligent design. It can be controlled entirely through a well designed web interface so the underlying OS is not such an issue.

Of course, this does not mean that the OS choice is unimportant. Linux reduces the cost and delivers performance way beyond what I would expect from Windows on a similar platform.

Read the review for the full story, I’m off to try and calm down!

» Five crucial things the Linux community doesn’t understand about the average computer user | Hardware 2.0 | ZDNet.com

Why is it that the average computer user still chooses to spend hundreds of dollars on Windows or Mac when there are countless Linux alternatives that they could download, install and make use of completely free of charge?

It’s always tempting to praise articles you agree with, but bear with me. The reasons here match with my own experience, especially concerns about the number of distributions. Sometimes it is not just the number that is the problem but the intensity that people defend their choice. Surely this is just missing the point of Linux. What’s more important is that people try rather than whether they agree on distribution.

Mark Shuttleworth » Blog Archive » Microsoft is not the real threat

Much has been written about Microsoft’s allegation of patent infringements in Linux (by which I’m sure they mean GNU/Linux ). I don’t think Microsoft is the real threat, and in fact, I think Microsoft and the Linux community will actually end up fighting on the same side of this issue.

I’m in favour of patents in general, but not software or business method patents. I’ll blog separately some day about why that’s the case, but for the moment I’ll just state for the record my view that software patents hinder, rather than help, innovation in the software industry.

Beyond knowing he is behind the Ubuntu distribution I didn’t know much about Mark Shuttleworth but I’m very impressed by this article, not least because it is one of the most reasoned approaches to co-existing with Microsoft I have read in a long time.

Sadly, I still worry that the only people who will benefit from a patent war will be the lawyers. Still given the cold war analagies flying about over Mutually Assured Destruction patent policies, at least someone will compared to nuclear war….

Ubuntu Linux 7.04 Feisty Fawn Review: Problems with Ubuntu Fiesty Fawn

The good stuff aside, I had a number of problems with this release. Fiesty Fawn was supposed to make multimedia easier. Strangely enough I ran into some difficulties with multimedia, as well as with some of the other new features. Here’s a list in no particular order: [I’ve editing for brevity, click on the link for the full text - TS]

1. Firefox does not have Flash installed by default.
2. My Nvidia drivers were not installed by default.
3. When I popped a DVD into my computer, Ubuntu did try to search for the appropriate codec. However, I was not able to get the DVD to play.
4. The Windows Migration Tool did not detect my Windows Vista installation and account settings.

There has been a lot of talk about Ubuntu on the forums I lurk in but I still find it hard to see what the fuss is about. Both OpenSuse and Mandriva have impressed me more although some of the issues quoted above still apply, including the graphics drivers.

I know it sounds overly harsh but sometimes I wonder if the whole Linux community REALLY wants to go mainstream. Perhaps I’m too ready to accept a free but non opensource solution when I should be holding out for true opensource, but I can understand Nvidia (and other hardware manufacturers, let’s not single any one particular company out) wanting to hold on to trade secrets.

Still lets be positive, Ubuntu has done sterling work in raising the profile of Linux, especially with the free delivery offer.

One man writes Linux drivers for 352 USB webcams

A LONE HOBBYIST programmer sitting at his home in France is responsible for adding 352 USB webcams to the list of those supported by Linux. He tells the INQUIRER about this often unknown and unrecognised achievement.

A very impressive achievement. Hats off to Michel Xhaard.