The Official CASE Blog

Ever wondered why a top software developer would spend his time helping out non-profit organisations? Is it possible to be involved in a court case with Microsoft for 10 years and come away happy? Did CASE really teach a Masters level course in Free and Open Source software development at the Australian National University?

Hear what Andrew Tridgell has to say when CASE Management Committee member Sam McKeon and Darrell Burkey get together for a conversation about all of the above and more.

It’s a fairly casual podcast this time around but we quickly get to the heart of the matter.

You can listen to this podcast by heading over to our podcast page and selecting Episode 5!

Chris Smart, Australian Linux guru, has started writing for Linux Magazine. This week he’s looking at the Linux graphical user interface “KDE”.

“KDE stands for the K Desktop Environment and was first released in 1998 by Matthias Ettrich, who was a student at the time. Ettrich saw a need for the Unix world to have a unified desktop environment which had a consistent look and feel, rather than just multiple applications looking and behaving however they wanted to…Now in its 11th year, KDE has come a long way in a short amount of time and recently celebrated the release of version 4.0, marking a turning point in the development of the project…”

If you’ve been thinking about giving Linux a shot, maybe the new KDE will give you the confidence to go ahead with it. Chris also runs Make The Move, kind of like an Apple version of “Make the Switch”, only Chris’s solution is thousands of dollars cheaper!
Read his article “KDE 4: The Komplete Desktop?” here.

A workshop presented by CASE will be held on Tuesday 5 August 2008 from 10.00am – 12.00pm at ACTCOSS.

The overall goal of this workshop is to ensure participants receive practical information that can be used immediately to enhance their computer network infrastructure and information systems.

The role of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and how it can be used to implement robust, secure and affordable IT systems will be discussed in a non-technical manner.

• Is your organisation’s approach to technical support reactive or proactive?

• Are your technical systems up to date?

• Are you confident that your systems are secure?

• Does your budget buy you the level and quality of support that you need?

• Can you recover from a disaster such as theft, fire or floods?

Practical answers to the above issues will be discussed during this workshop along with providing a forum for participants to express concerns and ideas. Darrell Burkey and Amanda Plowright will outline the systems and techniques that have been used by CASE to support member organisations.