want easy linux? try Ubuntu...

I know this is not the first one to use but i am a newbie to Ubuntu and also installing Linux after about 4 to 5 years.I like you to use Linux and forget windows because Linux is free,open,simple,learning station.It doesn't hides anything from you.

Are you a windows user like me who dont qwant troubles of installing linux?Reason can be any but its a trouble i know.

We need to format the disk, remove windows ,install linux with great care and then again install windows over it becasue you can't leave without it.

Actually i want to get rid of windows and want to move on linux.But its not easy as my development and aother things are to be set on linux.

Then i seen site of wubi, the installer which installs linux on windows like any other software you do.i found it too easy.I just downloaded the latest ubuntu 8.04 LTS (long term service) ISO file from internet.When i loaded it into virtual drive, wubi popped up.

And your task done. Just give it a Drive having 8 to 10 GB space, give 8 to 10 GB space for installation,choose your username & pass. and click 'install'! simple!

It will install ubuntu in the drive,backup the ISO file,and asks for reboot.When you reboot, it will show you 'ubuntu' with windows XP in windows MBR!its great.And after choosing ubuntu from the OS choice menu, it will install it in 15 minutes.

Loing and enjoy linux of you know it.Learn new things,try to used to terminal!And you can simply unistall it from windows' add/remove menu.Isn't its great?

best thing about latest Ubuntu 8.04 is,

-easy install/unistall from windows.
-network configuration for internet is autodetect in most cases.
-easily you can add/remove programs from system.It will download new packages from internet to install.
-includes most needed programs pre-installed.(Firefox,pidgin etc.)

And i suggest you to get below listed packages from add/remove first to get your multimedia on,

-restricted media formats
-VLC

suggest me if you know better things about ubuntu as i am also newbie to it. :)

GIMP for Windows 2.4.4

GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc. GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.

Features and Capabilities:

Painting
- Full suite of painting tools including Brush, Pencil, Airbrush, Clone, etc.
- Sub-pixel sampling for all paint tools for high quality anti-aliasing
- Extremely powerful gradient editor and blend tool
- Supports custom brushes and patterns

System
- Tile based memory management so image size is limited only by available disk space
- Virtuallya unlimited number of images open at one time

Advanced Manipulation
- Full alpha channel support
- Layers and channels
- Multiple Undo/Redo (limited only by diskspace)
- Editable text layers
- Transformation tools including rotate, scale, shear and flip
- Selection tools including rectangle, ellipse, free, fuzzy and intelligent
- Advanced path tool doing bezier and polygonal selections.
- Transformable paths, transformable selections.
- Quickmask to paint a selection and more...

What's New:

• fixed typo in stock icon name
• fixed handling of PSD files with empty layer names (bug #504149)
• merged TinyScheme bug-fixes
• removed duplicate entry from Tango palette
• corrected parameter range in Chip Away script (bug #506110)
• reduced redraw priority and speed of the marching ants (bug #479875)
• fixed out-of-bounds array access in Convolution Matrix plug-in
• reduced rounding errors in Convolution Matrix plug-in (bug #508114)
• fixed potential crash on missing CMYK color profile
• fixed crash in Bumpmap plug-in when called from some scripts (bug #509608)
• Equalize should not equalise the alpha channel (bug #510210)
• increased the number of points the ImageMap plug-in can handle (bug #511072)
• adjusted the priority of the projection renderer (bug #511214)
• smooth the brush mask to get a simpler cursor boundary (bug #304798)
• show the selection even if the image window is invisible (bug #505758)
• allow to commit a pending rectangular selection using Enter (bug #511599)
• fixed bug in image dirty state logic (bug #509822)
• improved GIMPressionist preformance and reduced startup time (bug #512126)
• fixed a crash in the Convert to Color Profile plug-in (bug #512529)
• merged some other minor fixes from trunk
• translation updates (de, it, lt, ru, sv, uk)

Home Page

UbuntuStudio - multimedia editing/creation on Ubuntu

Ubuntu Studio is a multimedia editing/creation flavor of Ubuntu. It's built for the GNU/Linux audio, video, and graphic enthusiast or professional.

UbuntuStudio HomePage

GPLv3 upgrade on Friday

A controversial update to the GNU GPL (General Public License) is set to be released Friday by the Free Software Foundation, a representative of the organization said on Tuesday. GPL version 3 is arriving 16 years after version 2 of the license for open-source software. Questions remain, however, about who exactly will adopt it. Among improvements is a copyright technology not found anywhere in the world with the goal of providing uniformity in different jurisdictions, said Brett Smith, licensing compliance engineer for the foundation.

"There's a lot of copyright laws that talk about distribution, but they don't mean the same thing," in different places, he said. "Now, GPL talks about propagation and conveying," Smith said. With this new provision, the terms are the same everywhere worldwide, he said. Version 3 also works to ensure that users can modify software installed on personal computers or in household devices. If software is conveyed inside a device, users must be given enough information so they can modify the software in the device, Smith said.

InfoWorld

VirtualBox 1.4.0

InnoTek VirtualBox is a general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is now the only professional-quality virtualization solution that is also Open Source Software. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU Public License (GPL). Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows and Linux 32-bit hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), and OpenBSD.

VirtualBox Home Page

JkDefrag 3.8

Free (released under the GNU General Public License) disk defragment and optimize utility for Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista/X64. Completely automatic and very easy to use, fast, low overhead, with two optimization strategies, and can handle floppies and USB disks/sticks. Included are a Windows version, a commandline version (for scheduling by the task scheduler or for use from administrator scripts), a screensaver version, a DLL library (for use from programming languages), and versions for Windows X64. JkDefrag is based on the standard defragmentation API by Microsoft, a system library that is included in Windows 2000, 2003, XP, and Vista. All defragmenters are based on this API, including commercial defragmenters. JkDefrag is therefore very solid and there is no risk of losing data. You can stop the program at any time, it will finish the current file in the background. If your disks use NTFS then you're even safe when the computer crashes in the middle of defragging. Nevertheless, it's still a good idea to backup before defragmenting, just like with other defragmenters, because the heavy use of the harddisk may trigger a hardware fault.

JkDefrag Home Page

Free Software Group May Bar Novell From New Code

The Free Software Foundation is considering banning Linux software distributor Novell Incorporated from using new versions of a group of programs known as the GNU operating system, to punish the company for signing a patent deal with Microsoft Corporation. Novell and bigger rival Red Hat Incorporated have made a profitable businesses out of selling their own versions of Linux bundled with technical support, maintenance and other services. Novell would likely have a tough time keeping its version of Linux competitive with Red Hat if it lost access to future upgrades of GNU software. The Free Software Foundation released a draft of a licensing agreement, known as GPLv3, on Web site gplv3.fsf.org Wednesday for discussion for 60 days. If the foundation decides to ban Novell from selling the GNU programs, it could incorporate that provision into the license before it goes into effect at the end of June.

Source: InformationWeek