In the spirit of Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier’s post over on Linux.com, I thought I would craft my list of 10 important open source desktop applications of the last year.  Now I know that not every Gear Diary reader is a huge Open Source fan or follower, but these are projects to watch in the coming year.  Some of this software works on Windows and Mac OS X as well so you may want to check them out if going full bore into Linux isn’t in the cards right now.  Most of this software is software I use on Linux every day.  Some of them are not just applications, but whole desktop environments or Linux distributions as well.

Note: These aren’t ranked in any order.  These are just… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

The partnership between Nokia and Microsoft that was announced the other day has caused some speculation that the Intel powered AppUp store in general, and the MeeGo in particular might be the losers in this story.

Helena and I spoke with Peter Biddle, General Manager to AppUp Products and Services, and he said that despite this partnership, AppUp and Meego will thrive. Proprietary systems have a place in the ecosystem, and so do open ones.

Further scaling the development of flexible, open software platforms and applications for all mobile devices, Intel demonstrated a compelling new MeeGo tablet user experience to be made

A while back the OpenMoko project created the goal of bringing out a Linux based smartphone called the Freerunner.  Then Google brought out what became the most successful Linux based operating system of all time, Android.  Well, needless to say, the writing was on the wall.  The clunky OpenMoko OS, with the behind the times hardware, was enough to make OpenMoko irrelevant in the smartphone arena.  Well, it seemed to be such a waste to throw out the work they did on the OS, so the next choice was to bring out another device.  This time, they didn’t even try to look at bringing out another smartphone.  They, instead, brought out the Wikireader… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

OpenMoko’s Wikireader project has let you carry the entire contents of Wikipedia in the palm of your hand for about a year now.  While the device’s design isn’t as awe inspiring as the NookColor or Kindle, it still is an interesting idea.  Thankfully the developers have been hard at work and now have released a great update to the Wikireader that is sure to get some people excited.  

This update now let’s you carry Wikipedia and all 33,000 books from Project Gutenberg all in the palm of your hand.  While you’ve been able to read the classics on Project Gutenberg on your Kindle, the Kindle would not have the storage to carry all of them at the same… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

It’s been a couple of years since I reviewed a laptop from ZaReason, the UltraLap SR.  Now I’m reviewing something a bit smaller — the ZaReason Terra HD.

ZaReason is a different type computer company; every single computer they sell runs Linux, and they only ship Linux (or no operating system at all) on all of their machines.  They care about this to the point where they even include a screwdriver in the box of every machine they sell.  That is because any system you buy is your system, and they feel that you have every right to look at what makes it tick.  That’s one of the… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

There’s been a bunch of stuff going around the web about the Droid X and the fact that it likely will not be able to run custom ROMS and may even be hard to root. I’ll try to describe, in layman’s terms, what this may mean to a prospective Droid X buyer.

What is this root and custom rom thing?

First, having root is like having the Administrator user password on a Windows machine or the root password on a Mac OS X machine or Linux machine. It essentially gives you the right to modify anything on the phone. You could, for example, enable tethering without having to pay for it on Verizon (Note: Gear Diary… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Picture Taken at SELF 2009 by Allan Metzler of tllts.org

Up until this year, I had only attended the Ohio LinuxFest being lucky enough to live in its host city of Columbus, Ohio.  The Ohio LinuxFest is an awesome community driven event that amazes me every year it’s run.  However, in 2010, I will be attending both the Ohio LinuxFest and the second year of the Southeast LinuxFest.  I am totally excited to see what the committee behind the show is planning for this coming weekend.

Southeast LinuxFest is in a new location this year in the Marriot at Renaissance Park in Spartanburg, SC.  The previous location at Clemson was not available so they had… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Image Provided by Sharism.cc

Imagine not only building your own computer, but making the boards yourself.  Yeah, it’s not something the common person would do, but Qi Hardware’s Ben NanoNote is open in a way most hardware isn’t.  This is a similar model to the OpenMoko Freerunner and has been started by former members of the OpenMoko team.

Not only can you download the Linux operating system it runs, but you can also download the Creative Commons licensed schematics for having your own version made for you if you have those kinds of resources.… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

XBMC is a full screen media center program similar to Apple’s Front Row, Windows Media Center, and Moovida.  XBMC started out running on hacked versions of the original Xbox hardware.  However, as the years have progressed and the original target, the first generation Xbox got old, the project ported the interface to Linux, Windows, OSX and Apple TV.  There is even a version bootable from a thumb drive.… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Some of you may recognize the name Joe Born from the company Neuros, whose open source products we’ve been reviewing and talking positively about for years. What you may not know is that Joe also founded the company Digital Innovations over ten years ago.  According to him, he hasn’t been “very active in it since starting Neuros, but recently they acquired a peripheral company called Micro Innovations that makes a host of commodity peripherals, and [he's] very excited about applying the Neuros open innovation formula there.”

Last night Joel and I had an opportunity to take a survey that Joe had forwarded us, showing some USB Hub concept… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

I follow Joe Born(@joeborn) and Neuros Technology(@neurostech) on twitter and I read his blog and generally love Neuros Technology as a company.  They stand behind their products.  They also run open source software on their devices and have quite a community behind their products.  I also own a OSD and one of their original products, a MP3 player.  I still use both on a regular basis.  Well, imagine my excitement seeing Joe’s tweet regarding the OSD 3:

“..it’s probably two years off, but this time Texas Instruments is involved early: discussion of the OSD3: http://bit.ly/Qt5sl”

Moovida is a media center with a smooth and slick interface, and  I really liked it when I reviewed it a couple weeks ago.  Moovida now has a plugin for Jamendo, the music 2.0 platform with all of their music under the Creative Commons umbrella of licenses.

The interface is strictly a streaming service for Jamendo.  To download music, you will have to go to the Jamendo website.… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

For those who don’t know, the primary part of the Neuros Link is the Neuros.TV website that helps you find content on your Neuros Link from the web.  Well, Joe has let me know that you are not just stuck with whatever Neuros and their hackers will give you.  Now if you know of a site where a stream of a TV show is, you can add it via a link near the bottom of the page.  The Neuros Link and its companion site are attempting to extend the tradition of users adding content similar to how the cddb (which is now Gracenote) was started.  If you know of a site that carries the content you’ve searched for, you can now added it to the Neuros.TV website… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Neuros has long offered bounties on different development projects that enhance their products; one I have been semi excited for is Netflix Streaming.  Well, sundevil98 has managed to get it working on the Link according to Joe.  He did it by installing Mediamall’s Playon software on top of XBMC.  The next version of the software on the Link should have XBMC built into it.  Eventually, Neuros will have a native client on the Link, but for now, this will allow you to stream movies from Netflix!

Joe Born has posted the first bounties for the Neuros Link.

The first bounty is $2500 for getting Netflix working directly on the Neuros Link, or $500 when working through a intermediary PC.  This bounty has some stipulations: The programmer must beat Boxee, Ubuntu or Netflix themselves with the functionality.  All of these people are working on getting Netflix streaming to work on on Linux.  Once any of them get it working, the bounty is unavailable as they can easily incorporate this into the Neuros Link.

The second bounty is the Move Networks plugin.  The lucky hacker will get $2000 if they get it working and $2500 if it works in Firefox.

The third… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...