[wplug] TUX Desktop Watch for August 15

[Zach]

                        TUX Desktop Watch for August 15

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  Welcome to the TUX Desktop Watch

   This Week: Going back to Cali, Cali, Cali

   LinuxWorld is this week at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.  Most
   definitely it is the biggest and most important conference for Linux in the
   world.  For those of you who are going, then it's shaping up to be an
   exciting time.  What's that you say, you live near San Francisco and you're
   not going! What! Didn't you hear? There were free exhibit passes available,
   so there was really no reason not to at least stop by.  Well the deadline
   was Sunday, so that will be something to remember for next year.  If you
   like things risky, you might want to stop by anyway and try to social
   engineer your way in.  "What I'm not registered! But I filled out the stupid
   online form!" She said with anger creeping onto her face.  "I drove a
   hundred miles to be here.  What do you expect me to do now? Turn around and
   go to work? LATE?" As anger slips from her face and sorrow takes over.  "My
   boss told me to come here and learn as much as I could because we were going
   to be migrating all of our enterprise over to Linux.  What am supposed to
   tell him now?" Obvious worry and guilt weighs down her shoulders and
   face...Who knows? It could work.

   If you are already registered, then if I were going (unfortunately
   commitments won't allow it) I'd definitely want to see "The State of Mobile
   Linux", Larry Lessig's "Free Culture: What We Need From You", "The Golden
   Penguin Bowl", the "Free as in Beer Bash", and of course the must see Linux
   Journal booth.  Stop by to demand your subscription to TUX and, of course,
   say hello to all the cool cats there.  I'll be watching the blogosphere for
   the latest news and blogging about what seems cool.  The "Open Source and
   Your Business Track" looks pretty interesting too.

   By the way, I wanted to thank everyone who pulled a chair up to the table
   and joined into the TUX conversation.  I'm still working through the
   responses, but from the scanning I did, there are some great suggestions.
   We also got even more suggestions from our recent subscription announcement.
    Once again, I've seen some great ideas, and I really hope that we can
   synthesize everything that has been suggested and announce some specific
   actions.  I can't wait to implement some of the ideas, because I believe
   there are some potentially very exciting changes.

   With best regards,

   Kevin Shockey
   Editor in Chief, TUX Magazine


  Feature Links of the Week

   Linux Everywhere? by Phil Hughes
   http://www.tuxmagazine.com/node/1000214
   Phil talks about the various places where you can now find Linux, as well as
   why the AJAX approach to Web-based applications will only make Linux ever
   more prevalent.

   Looking Back 25 Years by Phil Hughes
   http://www.tuxmagazine.com/node/1000215
   Phil takes a look back at IBM's decisions surrounding the IBM-PC in the
   early days.  He wonders, what would have happened if IBM had decided to make
   the PC proprietary or if Microsoft had either given IBM exclusive rights to
   the MS-DOS software or had decided to give it away the same way Linux is
   given away.


  From the Field

   This is where you will find tech tips that come directly from you, our
   readers.  Please send us your fantastic desktop-Linux tips and tricks to
   ed at TUXMagazine.com.  If we publish your submission, we'll send you a free
   t-shirt or other great Linux gear!

   Here's an submission by Wayne from somewhere in cyberspace:

   Command Line Amusements
   A lot of people are afraid of using the command line.  I prefer using
   console to install programs on my Xandros machine instead of Xandros
   networks.  (Makes me feel like I am actually doing something.) One program
   that makes me laugh is "cowsay".  It gives you a simple drawing of a cow
   saying whatever you type in.  Some distros have cowsay already installed and
   others you just have to apt-get [Debian's main tool for installing and
   removing software -Ed.] it or what ever your distro uses.  Once installed,
   open a console and type "cowsay" and then whatever you want the cow to say,
   and then hit enter.
   There is a screenshot here: http://www.tuxmagazine.com/files/cowsay.jpg


  From our sister publication, Linux Journal

   Google: the Godfather of Open Source? by Glyn Moody
   http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000076
   Glyn discusses the implications of Google's gathering of mucho Linux talent
   under its roof.


  Last But not Least: Tech Tip!

   Converting CD Tracks to Other Audio File Types
   Want to listen to your favorite CD tracks on your HDD, MP3 player or any
   other electronic gadgets?  One simple command in Konqueror quickly converts
   each track to five different file types -- CDA, FLAC, MP3, Ogg Vorbis and
   WAV.  In addition, you will have the option of recording the full CD as one
   file in any of those five audio file types.  One more thing, the command
   gives you a text file with information about the CD such as Disc ID, Disc
   Title, Disc Year, Disc Genre, Track Titles, Extra Disc and Track Title Info,
   and finally Play Order.  What is this command?  Simply type "audiocd:/" in
   the Location Field of Konqueror and hit Enter.

   -This Tech Tip was provided by Nathan from CoolBird Systems and
   Services...it should go in From the Field, but we want to get all of your
   great tech tips out into circulation!

   NOTE: Though everything above is true there are a few prerequisites.  To be
   able to encode libogg, lame and flac formats, the respective codecs for them
   need to be installed on your system.  The files are encoded when you drag
   and drop them into a directory on your hard disk.  This tip is very handy
   for finding the song names of tracks and ripping a few tracks but for
   ripping a large number of CDs I reccomend using KAudioCreator, which also
   comes with KDE.  More information can be found at:
   http://docs.kde.org/development/en/kdebase/userguide/audio-cd.html.
   -- Webmaster, TUX Magazine

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