OStatic

Today marks the final installment in our series that takes a look at educational versions of popular Linux distributions ideal for students returning to class in the next few weeks. We've already talked about Edubuntu and openSUSE Education, so today let's take a look at Debian Jr.

While many distros provide educational software for students all the way up to college-age, Debian Jr.'s age-specfic apps top out around the 12-year old mark. According to the project's Web site, Our goal is to make Debian an OS that children of all ages will want to use. Our initial focus will be on producing something for children up to age 8. Once we have accomplished this, our next target age range is 7 to 12. By the time children reach their teens, they should be comfortable with using Debian without any special modifications.

If you followed the box office success of the Pixar film called Up, you may have heard that it was the 10th animated box office success in a row for Pixar. Animated films are big business, and part of the reason they're succeeding is because of many types of improved technology.

Not everyone realizes, though, that open source software plays a big, behind-the-scenes role in how animated films are created. Partly as an acknowledgement of that fact, Sony Pictures Imageworks, the visual effects and digital character animation unit of Sony Pictures Digital Productions, is launching an open source development program focused on software for use in creating films. To launch the program, the company has announced five new open source technologies for anyone to use, where they will join many other ones.

While the native screenshot applications found in most Linux distributions are fine for quick screengrabs, you need something heftier if you plan to highlight, annotate, resize or otherwise tinker with images. Shutter is a great little open source app that lets you take quick snapshots of your computer screen and dress them up all sorts of ways.

Use Shutter to take a timed or instant screenshot of your entire desktop, a single window, or a particular area of your screen. You can even dispatch it onto the Internet to take a snapshot of a Web site and bring you back the results.

As Computerworld's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols explains, Canonical has always offered commercial support for Linux, though its services largely targeted the enterprise market. Today, Canonical is announcing its plan to extend commercial support services to Ubuntu desktop users: individuals and small- and mid-sized businesses desiring a dedicated helping hand with Ubuntu installation, data migration, and network configuration.

Canonical offers three levels of support -- starter, advanced, and professional (the comparison chart breaks down coverage nicely) -- for one- or three- year periods.

Back when Microsoft was actively pursuing an acquisition of Yahoo!, only to withdraw its bid, many observers felt that the withdrawal was good news for Yahoo!'s many open source and open initiatives. But we made the point back then that the game might just have begun. From Yahoo!'s open strategy for developers, to its Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI), to the company's reliance on Hadoop for advanced fast queries, Yahoo! has always been a strong supporter of open standards. Yahoo!'s entire site runs on FreeBSD--a free operating system descended from AT&T Unix.

Microsoft still isn't acquiring Yahoo!, but it has struck a far-reaching search deal with the company. What are the implications for Yahoo!'s many open source and open standards initiatives?

SpringSource takes on Java goliaths. The company is proving that commercial open source can peacefully coexist with community involvement.

Microhoo lessons for open source. Yahoo?s open source projects are now held by a company that is cash poor.

Acer: Android netbook on track for Q3. The company has wavered on whether it will deliver one, but it apparently is on track, and may dual-boot with Windows.

The Gap moves from Windows to Red Hat Linux. The company needed to revamp its entire end-to-end business technology platform.

Dell: New Ubuntu desktop PC launching soon. There?s a high probability that it will debut the week of August 2nd.

While the native screenshot applications found in most Linux distributions are fine for quick screengrabs, you need something heftier if you plan to highlight, annotate, resize or otherwise tinker with images. Shutter is a great little open source app that lets you take quick snapshots of your computer screen and dress them up all sorts of ways.

Use Shutter to take a timed or instant screenshot of your entire desktop, a single window, or a particular area of your screen. You can even dispatch it onto the Internet to take a snapshot of a Web site and bring you back the results.

Microsoft Project is pretty handy project management software but it's not right for everyone. Some have philosophical objections to it, while others simply just can't afford it. Fortunately, there's an open source alternative to Project that has all the features but none of the restrictions or costs.

Open Workbench does pretty much everything you'd expect good project management software to do. Use it to plan all the details of multiple projects, then delegate tasks and track their completion. The calendar feature keeps everyone on the team aware of meetings and deadlines, and the scheduler automatically manages the tasks of projects and subprojects.