Showing headlines posted by Sander_Marechal

Red Hat announced the availability of two new North American training offerings that are delivered by open source technology. Red Hat will offer virtual training to students in remote locations and Live Access Labs that allow students access to remotely hosted Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems. Through Red Hat's virtual training, remote students will be offered live, streamed Web delivery of Red Hat training courses. Virtual students will register for courses as though they were live students, but will receive course books and kits prior to the start of the class. Courses will initially include eight to 10, 4-hour sessions delivered over two weeks.

The first stage of developing the nation operating system in Uzbekistan on the basis of Linux has finished. The project has been initiated by the Uzbek agency on informatization and communication and the Center for training and supporting young programmers.

Sure, it’s been said before, but this time it’s true: 2007 was undoubtedly the year which saw Linux go mainstream. Linux has long accepted as a server platform and a playground for tweakers, hackers and the adventurous, but 2007 saw major events which entrenched Linux on the desktop. Let’s look at what happened.

Open wisdom-of-crowds software movements have become influential, but they haven’t promoted the kind of radical creativity I love most in computer science. If anything, they’ve been hindrances. Some of the youngest, brightest minds have been trapped in a 1970s intellectual framework because they are hypnotized into accepting old software designs as if they were facts of nature. Linux is a superbly polished copy of an antique, shinier than the original, perhaps, but still defined by it.

[More "Linux doesn't innovate" FUD, but this one not so badly articulated as the rest. - Sander]

There's one thing for certain: Now is an exciting time to be a KDE user. The much anticipated launch of KDE 4 is slated for January 11th, 2008. This is a major revamp of the look and feel of the KDE desktop, with the inclusion of a built-in compositor (think eye candy) and something called "plasmoids" (little functional widgets embedded into your desktop). It's a lot of new bling aimed at improving the desktop experience. Will it? More importantly, will it for you? What would make you choose KDE over GNOME (or vice versa)? This week we take a brief look at KDE in both its 3.5.x and 4 incarnations, and outline a few rules of thumb on choosing your desktop environment.

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 71 for the weeks December 16th - December 29th, 2007. In this issue: Dell adds DVD playback, Ubuntu Live Conference proposals, Hardy Alpha 2, a community approach to commercial training, Kubuntu 8.04 LTS status, Full Circle Magazine Issue #8, new Kubuntu members, IRSeek, a new Official Ubuntu Book, and much, much more!!

One common misconception about open source software is that it can be changed by anyone and is less secure; however, most open source is strictly governed. For example, the Apache Software Foundation has tight configuration management controls for developers. Its products are so good that most major software vendors include some Apache software in their products including Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and Sun.

EEI Corporation, one of the Philippines' leading construction companies, has opted to shift to Linux for their operating system (OS), joining several other industry giants in the country who have already turned to open source. The firm initially used proprietary systems for both OS platforms and various application packages utilized in its operations. However, due to increasing costs of licensing, the company started considering open source applications in order to minimize expenses.

I’ve always wanted to install Ubuntu on my Mac. So I decided to give myself little christmas present and finally get it done. Here’s my experiences with running Linux on Intel Mac. Other than small inconveniences with Compiz/OpenGl games and sleep mode not working, everything works like a charm. According to Ubuntu wiki sleep should work with custom kernel but I decided to skip it. Ubuntu boots pretty fast so it’s not that big deal especially with machine that’s most of the time just a portable workstation. Installation with all configuration trial & errors took about three hours.

Synovel, a startup based on Hyderabad, India founded by a group of International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) graduates, has released a preview of Spicebird, a Mozilla-based collaboration suite. Spicebird is built on Thunderbird and Lightning, the powerful extension that adds calendaring functions to Thunderbird. Additionally it seems to integrate SamePlace, a Firefox extension that provides instant messaging capabilities based on the Jabber protocol.

Efforts to promote Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) have gathered momentum in the country, mainly due to emergence of "Linux User Groups" (LUGs) and recognition by academics and government. India's computing space is witnessing a shift towards free software as more and more people are drifting away from proprietary products due to their exorbitant prices, security issues and restrictions on usage, according to experts.

Matthew Szulik became the CEO of Red Hat in November of 1999, the same year that the company went public. Since then, Szulik has been a guiding force for Red Hat, pushing the company's open source offerings into server rooms with the help of Dell, IBM, and HP. Yesterday, Szulik announced plans to step down as president and CEO for personal and family reasons, but will remain involved as chairman of the board of directors. The board has elected Jim Whitehurst, former COO of Delta Airlines (and the man who guided the airline out of bankruptcy), to fill the role of Red Hat president and CEO.

It's been a landmark year for open source, and in so many different ways that even a casual survey of the year's events will range far and wide. Here's a quick rundown of what to me were the top five open source events of the year -- not an exhaustive list, of course, but the things that best reflected how important and widely entrenched open source software (especially Linux) has become.

A low-cost laptop for children based on Intel's Classmate PC design is now shipping in computer stores in Vietnam. Hacao's Classmate PC is pre-installed with Hacao Linux 2.16 Professional, a Vietnamese-language distribution based on Puppy Linux. The Hacao Classmate PC is equipped with an ultra-low power 900MHz Celeron processor with a 400MHz FSB (front-side bus), teamed with 256MB of RAM and 1GB of Flash-based local storage. The 2.9-pound device measures 9.6 x 7.7 x 1.7 inches (245 x 196 x 44mm), and features a 7-inch WVGA (800 x 480) LCD display.

When I was very young, I used to fight with my younger brother. One day, after being made to give in, he went to my mother and complained about the fact that I had been in a fight with him, and mom told him that if he didn't want to fight, he didn't have to. He could just walk away. She also told me the same thing. I drove my brother nuts by doing exactly what my mom said. I quit competing. I started working on my inner geek, while he was off trying to figure out why I didn't engage anymore. This is why Linux makes MS nuts.

Two weeks I wrote about how the XO laptop endowed a 9 year old boy with seemingly magical powers (of intellectual curoisity and competence), and I wondered aloud whether my 9 year old daughter would fare as well. On the one hand, she does like gadget gifts such as The Littlest Petshop. On the other hand, many such gadgets wind up as nothing more than a surface waiting to be decorated with stickers or glitter glue. Would her reaction to the XO validate or repudiate Negroponte's hypothesis that his project is an education project, not a laptop project? It seemed to work pretty well for Rufus...

There are a total of 21,652 packages installed on my home workstation, an AMD64 single core processor box which has been in use since March 2006. It runs the testing stream of Debian. That's a lot of code, all of it free as in beer. A vast army of developers has given decades of precious time to make it possible for people in every corner of the globe to use a computer and not have to depend on expensive software which, in more cases than not, results in more problems than solutions...

As 2007 winds to a close, the editors of LinuxDevices.com have assembled a retrospective aimed at highlighting major trends and events in the world of embedded Linux. Of the approximately 1,200 stories we published this year, these were the most important, in our opinion.

Congratulations to all the new Christmas owners of the year's hottest subnotebook, the ASUS Eee, putting Linux square in the mainstream and right in the hands of the masses. Here's a collection of tiny – but dead useful – hints and tips to help you get the most out of it.

Jeff Campbell (aka "Mr. Zonbu") has reviewed the Linux-based Zonbu Notebook. His final review score -- 8.5 out of 10 -- balances praise for thorough features, sharp display, and excellent support, with some questions over performance and design. Following up on his generally positive review of the Zonbu Desktop Mini desktop system, previously known as the Zonbox, Mr. Zonbu now takes on the laptop model, which offers the same Gentoo Linux distribution and software offerings.