Meanwhile, thanks go to everybody at Apress HQ who helped make the book what it is.

Written by the highly-talented Rails gurus Christian Hellsten and Jarkko Laine, the book explains everything you need to know about building a Web 2.0-style online shop using Rails. It’s practical and hands-on throughout, rather than theoretical, and Christian and Jarkko have done a superb job. Put simply, it’s a great book.

It’s available from Amazon as well as all good bookstores. You can also read a sample chapter, and view the table of contents, at the book’s page at the Apress website.

Over at the On Ruby blog, Pat Eyler has interviewed Jarkko, who explains a little about himself and his goals when writing the book.

• Don’t write off Novell: Landmark deal sees Microsoft and Novell working together on cross-platform technologies. Quote: “Top executives from Microsoft and Novell convened in San Francisco today to proclaim a landmark deal that sees the companies improve interoperability between Windows and SUSE Enterprise Linux Server (SLES) on virtualization, Microsoft’s Active Directory and Novell’s eDirectory, and Microsoft Office and OpenOffice XML formats on the desktop.” Rather predictably, the FSF is already up in arms.
• Firefox 2 continues rough ride: Another nasty bug is discovered; many are refusing to upgrade and are sticking with the 1.5x release. Still, looks like Internet Explorer 7 isn’t faring much better.
• IronPython for ASP.NET: Other dynamic languages can now be easily utilized too.
• Google gets Creative: Google gives $30,000 to Creative Commons, continues its role as the AntiMicrosoft.
• IBM targets .NET devs: Quote: “The company has announced Lotus Expeditor, an Eclipse-based environment for building what IBM has called a “universal” client spanning current Lotus products and the planned “Hanover” release of its Domino email and collaboration server.”
• OpenBSD 4.0 released and reviewed: Millions of changes but primarily related to hardware support. Changelog.
• Deluge: GTK-based BitTorrent client for those bored of Azureus. Check out the screenshots.
• amaroK gets music store: New version of KDE music player/manager is first open source program to tie-in with music store, in this case Magnatune.
• Shuttleworth calls for packaging revolution: Ubuntu man wants single common software installation format across distributions, and even across all open source operating systems, including the BSDs.
• Edgy Eft fails to impress: Recently released Ubuntu 6.10 not going down well. After all the success, has Ubuntu made its first slip-up? Also see this less critical review; quote: “Edgy is a worthwhile upgrade, if you’re looking to run a desktop with the most recent versions of your favorite programs and don’t require the long-term support offered by Dapper, but it’s not as adventurous as one might have hoped.”
• GNewSense—Linux for a GNU generation: FSF attacks those on its own side in the war against proprietary software by releasing its own version of Ubuntu, but with “the addition of freedom” (ie the removal of useful proprietary bits and pieces that means Ubuntu will function correctly for many of us).
• Dell going pro-Linux? Quote: “We recognize the chicken-and-egg problem though: it has to work before many people will want to buy it; and it won’t work unless effort is put into it before people start buying it. So we’re cracking the egg, not quite making omelettes.”
• Mandrive 2007 review: Quote: “With its latest version, Mandriva returns attention to its software development and re-establishes itself as a leading desktop distribution that can give Ubuntu serious competition.”
• IE guys send Firefox guys a cake: To say congrats on the release of Firefox 2.

“I wouldn’t try to apply an Oracle operating system patch to one of my RHEL servers. That would probably lead to some instabilities,” said Tabor Wells, director of technology for Smarter Living, which runs the SmarterTravel.com and BookingBuddy.com websites.

Click here to read the article.

• Perl catches criminals: Wired reporter creates script to match National Sex Offender Registry entries to MySpace user profiles. Despite the congratulatory tone of the article, surely this is a computerized witch hunt?
• Better than PDF?: Microsoft’s new PDF replacement—XPS—could end-up being more open-source friendly than PDF. We can file this one under The Changing State of Software Today.
• Oracle Linux?: Is Oracle on the brink of releasing its own Linux distro, possibly in the form of an application stack?
• Rails from a Java Perspective: Quote: “Java developers should learn some lessons from the Rails framework and seek to build or enhance Java frameworks.”
• Sunbird and Lightning 0.3 released: Latest releases of Mozilla’s superb calendar application; Sunbird is standalone and Lightning integrates into Thunderbird. Also worth checking out is the RC3 release of Firefox 2, which now seems to be compatible with most plugins.
• PlayStation 3 will run Yellow Dog Linux?: Article alleges that Sony was mulling over putting OS X on there!
• SUSE 10.1 “Remastered”: In an unusual move, SUSE is having another try at releasing SUSE Linux 10.1, this time with the show-stopping bugs in the installation and update system fixed.
• Use OS X Dashboard Widgets on GNOME: The very cool Jackfield project claims to let you run Apple OS X’s Dashboard widgets under GNOME on Linux, and claims it will soon be compatible with most other widgets too!
• Jokosher: Quote: “Jokosher is a simple yet powerful multi-track studio. With it you can create and record music, podcasts and more, all from an integrated simple environment.”
• Ebay locks out Linux users: Update to Sell Your Item wizard is incompatible with Linux-based browsers, including Firefox. Ebay is apparently aware of the bug and advises Linux users to use older, inferior version of Sell Your Item. Thanks guys!
• Microsoft opens virtual disk format: Microsoft’s virtual hard disk format—VHD—is now available for all to use without a commercial license, courtesy of the “Microsoft Open Specification Promise”.
• Slackware 11 review: Quote: “Slackware can be a fine desktop system or LAMP system if you’re willing to do a little tweaking. The bottom line is that Slackware is a distro that caters to users who prefer an old-style, Unixy way of doing things.”
• Koffice 1.6 released: Improvements to the image editor, database, formula tool, and much more; take a look at the changelog.
• Logo know… or no?: A quick little test to see how well marketing campaigns have placed their logos in your head.

The main themes for feature development in this release will be improvements to hardware support in the laptop, desktop and high-end server market, and aggressive adoption of emerging desktop technologies.

Ubuntu’s Feisty release will put the spotlight on multimedia enablement and desktop effects. We expect this to be a very gratifying release for both users and developers.

All this is a little late, considering SUSE and Mandriva already have these features built in. Rather unexpectedly for those who considered Ubuntu the Best Hope Yet for the Linux desktop, Ubuntu is now playing catch-up, not only compared to other Linux distros but also compared to Windows Vista.

But I don’t want to moan (yes, really). I’m just happy one of my favorite distros will be getting some eye-candy love.

If you’re visiting, why not come and say hello? If you’re not visiting, why not?! It’s £15 on the door but it looks like the LinuxWorld 2006 site is still accepting registration for FREE entry.

Highlights at the Apress stand will include a daily raffle to win books, t-shirts, a Robosapien and more. Plus, if you buy two Apress books at the Foyles bookshop stand, you’ll get a free Apress t-shirt!

See you there!

Keir

Things of interest that the Inside Open Source team have come across on their travels:

• Songbird: Very cool Mozilla-based media player. Mozilla already handles my browsing, calendaring and email, so I don’t see why they can’t handle my media too.

• GPS + Google Maps = fun: Got a GPS unit? Want to see exactly where you are using Google Maps? Here’s 42 lines of Python code to let you do just that (and half those lines are comments!).

• Beryl shows off: Yet more insane cartoon-inspired eye candy, this time via Beryl and AIGLX, running on Ubuntu (video link).

• PalmSource becomes Access Linux: Simple renaming exercise but the future of Linux on Palm-style devices is far from clear.

• Weird bug: ... although one that affects many developers, I think (WARNING: Adult humor and sexism ahead). Best quote from article: “A little-endian problem, perhaps?”

• Peek at Firefox 3: Firefox 2.0 is just around the corner but planning is already taking place for Firefox 3.0; see what the devs are dreaming up.

• Source code management: Nice round-up and explanation of current source code management solutions, courtesy of IBM DeveloperWorks.

• Portland 1.0: For the first time ever, Linux/Unix has a common set of desktop interfaces and tools, which should make support for applications across GNOME and KDE a lot easier.

• Fedora Core 6 slips: Too many critical bugs; looks like Debian Etch will slip too, for similar reasons.

• European Union boosts OS use: New Open Source Observatory and Repository will “encourage European administrations to use each other’s software and develop common projects.”

• Han Reiser arrested: Brains behind ReiserFS charged with wife’s murder; linux-watch.com speculates that poor pay for OS developers could be a factor. In an entirely coincidental move, Novell has announced that it’s moving its SUSE products to ext3, and away from ReiserFS.

• Nexenta: New operating system combines OpenSolaris, GNU utilities and Ubuntu. Quote from article: “It might sound like an odd combination, but after more than a year of development, it actually works well, and is shaping up to be a very interesting operating system.”

• Gael Duval talks: Ex-Mandriva man gives some details about forthcoming Ulteo project after some details leaked out.

• Friday fun: I bet this conversation has actually taken place at least once (puts me slightly in mind of the Dilbert Unix guru cartoon).

Things of interest that the Inside Open Source team have come across on their travels:

• Eric Raymond joins Freespire: The man everybody loves to hate joins the Freespire Leadership Board (Freespire is the community version of the commercially sold Linspire). Eric’s move is perhaps not surprising considering his recent thoughts on embracing multimedia codecs; Freespire has a uniquely pro attitude toward certain proprietary components.
• Open source OCR: Google makes the Tesseract OCR software open source. Quote from article: “How well does Tesseract compare to the open source competition? The difference is night and day. This is an OCR engine that actually works.”
• All About Upstart: Article examining Upstart, the new Ubuntu replacement for the init boot procedure that will see light in the Edgy Eft release. Initial reports are good; Upstart significantly decreases boot times.
• New Mandriva: Boasts new eye candy, via AIGLX and XGL, new software management tool, plus partnerships with some proprietary vendors that bring antivirus and legal DVD playback to the desktop.
• Pixel power: Image editor that’s a genuine competitor to Photoshop and runs on Linux, FreeBSD, OS X and others. Has a good feature range, including CMYK support, and features a interface very similar to Photoshop.
• Slackware 11: Long-awaited new release of the venerable distro; for those who think that Debian is getting just too user friendly… (Seriously, congratulations to all involved.)
• 20 Firefox Extensions For Web Designers: Does what it says on the tin, even if the site’s header does spell Firefox wrong.
• Why Some Free Software Projects Are Doomed: The problem of being popular, successful, but not having a dime to your name. Quote from article: “A lot of successful, mid-sized free software projects turn into abandon-ware. Their members end up arguing (stress does that), or they simply let go of the project.”
• A VERY liberal license: Forget about BSD; this is the ultimate no-restrictions license. (NOT SAFE FOR WORK or those who are offended by swearwords. I’m serious.)
• Vigor: The Vi text editor has a new friend: Clippy, the Microsoft Office assistant. Check out the screenshots. Not sure if this is a joke or not…
• Try Some Eye Candy: Sabayaon Live CD, based on Gentoo, offers just about every open source eye candy add-in out there, including AIGLX, XGL, Beryl and Emerald.
• Don’t Mention the Fox: Annoying copyright issues mean that Debian (and possibly Ubuntu) might not be able to call the Firefox browser by its official name. No problem in changing the name—this is open source, after all—but desktop distros get a lot of momentum out of the Firefox name. It would be a shame to lose that. The phrase “Includes a browser based on Firefox” isn’t as powerful as “Includes the Firefox web browser”.