Practical Technology

I’m a big believer in “It’s not broke, then don’t fix it.” So is leading Linux company, Red Hat. The company has just announced that it is extending the production lifecycle of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5 and 6 from seven to 10 years in response to enterprise customer demand and Red Hat’s hardware original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partners.

For any company, upgrading to a new version of an operating system requires detailed advance planning. Red Hat has extended the Red Hat Enterprise Linux lifecycle so customers can remain on their current version longer. With the new Red Hat Enterprise Linux lifecycle, customers will benefit from continued feature enhancements while Red Hat’s application binary interface (ABI) and application programming interface (API) compatibility for their existing application.

In addition, quite a few RHEL customers have only relatively recently adopted the Linux operating system. For many business users, RHEL 5 was the first Linux product that they had deployed in their infrastructure.

Red Hat extends Red Hat Enterprise Linux lifecycle to ten years More >

In a brief note, Ed Brill, an IBM product line manager, announced that IBM has likely seen its last release of Symphony, its OpenOffice fork. Later, in the blog’s discussion thread, Eric Otchet, Symphony’s product manager, seemingly confirmed that this was the end of the road for Symphony when he wrote about Apache OpenOffice the IBM Edition as if that would be IBM’s successor to Symphony.

IBM to close down Symphony, its OpenOffice fork More >

Google has unified its privacy policies, Facebook is rolling out its Timeline feature, and the FBI is looking for help to monitor all the social networks. All that has people feeling a little twitchy about the personal information they’ve placed online. And, now some people have noticed that LinkedIn, the business and jobs social network, may use some of your public information, including your head shot, in advertising. Whoops!

A note that’s going around LinkedIn circles reads: “I received the following message from a contact and I am posting it for your awareness and consideration. Without attracting too much publicity, LinkedIn has updated their privacy conditions. Without any action from your side, LinkedIn is now permitted to use you name and picture in any of their advertisements.”

That’s sort of true. Actually LinkedIn has long claimed the right to use your name and picture in advertisements.

How to keep your face out of LinkedIn ads More >

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski recently announced a plan that would expand the Universal Service Fund’s Lifeline program to include broadband Internet service.

The concept of universal service dates to the Communications Act of 1934 and was expanded by the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Today, the Lifeline program provides land-line telephone service to people who can’t afford it. Those people use it for everything from finding a job to coordinating childcare to calling 911 during an emergency. Isn’t the Internet just as much of a fundamental need?

That might seem crazy, but think it through. Today, when you need to read the news, do you turn to a newspaper? Probably not. Many areas no longer even have a local newspaper. You don’t care about the news? Fine. Then think about how you find a job. You go online, to Craigslist, Dice or LinkedIn, right? What other choice do you have in 2012?

For the good of the nation, broadband for all More >

When Ubuntu announced that it was going to switch to Unity for its primary Linux desktop, some users were outraged by Ubuntu’s shift to a new interface. Many turned to Linux Mint in place of Ubuntu. So, when Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth announced that Ubuntu would be moving from Unity to Head-Up Display (HUD), I expected Linux users to be even more annoyed. I was wrong. Instead, they are taking a wait-and-see attitude to HUD.

Welcome to Ubuntu 11.10’s Unity (Photo Gallery)

HUD, in case you haven’t heard about it yet, seeks to say good-bye to the “menu” in the Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer (WIMP) interface, which has defined desktops for the last thirty years. HUD replaces this with a search style interface. HUD uses use a vocabulary UI (VUI). In it you’ll start to type or say a command and, starting in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, the HUD starts a smart look-ahead search through the app and system (indicator) menus. This uses fuzzy matching, combined with a learning function so HUD will prioritize the actions you use do.

While HUD is still alpha software, Jono Bacon, the community manager for Canonical, Ubuntu’s parent company, assures me that HUD’s code is well along its way. Casual users will get their first taste of it in Ubuntu 12.04 on April 26th. More adventurous users can try it now in Ubuntu 12.04’s daily builds. If that’s you, you’re also invited to help test HUD out with Ubuntu.

Linux users cautiously optimistic about Ubuntu’s Head-Up Display desktop More >