Showing headlines posted by Sander_Marechal

The release of OpenOffice.org 2.3 brings several significant improvements to the open-source office productivity suite, including easier upgrade paths for existing Microsoft Office users, improved measures to prevent security breaches, and an array of snazzy new features introduced in the suite's word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and database applications.

gOS, the hot new Linux distribution, has been generating a lot of buzz because it comes with the Everex Green PC, sold at Wal-Mart for $200. Linux reviewers are totally in love with it, and are praising it to the skies. Naturally, Carla Schroder had to find out if it lives up to the hype.

Open source has at its heart a big idea, which some find uncomfortable and others find liberating: it's about collaboration. It's about getting involved. It's all about having lots of people working at making useful things: you pay with your time, and you get paid with the time of thousands of others. If you're happy just using open source, then no problem. But if you want to contribute, because you have a problem that nobody else is fixing — or simply because you want to do your bit in exchange — it can be difficult to know where to start. The following suggestions might just inspire you to join in.

The U.K.-based company Sharp and Tappin Technology (STTech) is readying two PCs based on Via's recently introduced pico-ITX motherboard. The picoPC1 and picoPC2 measure as little as 5 x 3.4 x 1.5 inches, and feature separately available cases fashioned from billet aluminum, according to the company. The systems will be available with STTech's own "customized, optimized version of Gentoo Linux," according to spokesman Ben Sharp. Sharp added, "We are considering/evaluating a few other distros as possibilities to ship with the PicoPC range, including gOS"

Novell is shipping the first real-time SUSE Linux enterprise data center operating system, SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time 10. SLERT is the high-end—and significantly higher-priced—version of Novell's open-source real-time operating system for running high-performance, time-sensitive data center applications. A key difference between SLERT and the regular SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 is that SLERT allows pre-designated mission-critical business applications full I/O priority at all times, something regular SLES can't do.

Now I'm not quite sure what to make of this at the moment but a United States-based Nigerian-owned company has sued OLPC for an alleged patent infringement about multilingual keyboard technology. As MarketWire.com puts it: "The patent infringement lawsuit was filed on November 22nd, 2007 as a result of OLPC's willful infringement of LANCOR's Nigeria Registered Design Patent # RD8489 and illegal reverse engineering of its keyboard driver source codes for use in the XO Laptops."

With Windows Vista turning fewer heads than XP SP3, and Apple's Leopard exhibiting spotty security, companies and individuals would do well to ask themselves whether 'tis the season of desktop Linux. With the fall release of three of the most popular leading-edge Linux-based operating systems—OpenSUSE 10.3, Ubuntu 7.10 and Fedora 8—behind us, the case for running Linux on mainstream desktops is stronger than ever. However, plenty of integration work remains to be done.

For Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software to be accepted by IT, it needs to be very stable and reliable -- after all, in a very literal sense, ERP software runs businesses. After eight years of development and over a million downloads, the open source Compiere ERP has proven that it fits the bill for many. Next week, Compiere is set to release a major update to its namesake ERP software as well as a reorganization of its commercial support offerings. All told, the effort amounts to a new push from the open source vendor to capture a bigger slice of the multi-billion dollar ERP market.

For nearly a year, Fresno Unified school officials searched for a laptop that wouldn't clutter a student's desk. Thursday, school officials said they purchased 1,000 wireless laptops that fit on a desk alongside textbooks and notebooks, as well as give students the opportunity to build a digital portfolio of essays, drawings and other creations. Fresno Unified hopes the laptops will help students increase test scores through the ability to research information on the Internet, as well as halt five years of declining enrollment by enticing parents to send their children to the district's schools.

Compellent has been shipping its SAN appliances to small to medium-sized companies for three years, growing from $4 million in annual sales to more than $23 million last year. Part of the reason for that growth, says cofounder John Guider, is that Compellent executives have recognized the value of making an open source operating system one of the building blocks of the company's SAN offerings.

It's been at least a week since the last bout of Microsoft FUD hit the wires, so I guess it was time for a new wave. Today's FUD comes from an article Microsoft released on how its security compares with that of Linux. It should come as no surprise that Windows comes off as the Second Coming while Linux is left on the wrong side of Acheron. It's amusing to watch Microsoft attempt to claim the moral high ground with security.

Two highly touted, kid-friendly, low-priced laptops slug it out to become king of the ultraportables. While it's not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison (the XO and the Eee PC are intended for two different markets, after all), there's enough similarities between the two to merit a head-to-head comparison. Here's how these two cheap but innovative portables stack up in seven categories.

ETCorp has introduced a new version of its automation controller system for industrial surveillance. Based on a standard PC running Debian Linux, GPAC version 3.0 process management software is said to integrate devices, sensors, cameras, and subsystems to remotely operate device networks and monitor infrastructure.

What do Linux users want from their desktop? The Linux Foundation's survey has the answers. While the LF's third annual desktop Linux survey doesn't officially end until November 30th, the number of daily respondents have shrunk to a trickle and the Foundation is working on analyzing the results. This is an early look at the raw data.

The Macedonia Ministry of Education and Science will deploy more than 180,000 workstations running Canonical’s Edubuntu 7.04 as part of its "Computer for Every Child" project. The Macedonia "Computer for Every Child" project is one of the largest known thin client and desktop Linux deployments ever undertaken. Half of elementary and secondary Macedonia students attend school in the morning, and half attend in the afternoon, so 180,000 workstations will allow for one classroom computing device per student for the entire Republic's public school population. The first 7000 computers pre-installed with Ubuntu were shipped on September 4th 2007

"You know, every so often it is tempting to get wrapped up in minutia and having it obscure the bigger picture. Sometimes its easy to forget we are surrounded by incredible, genuine, inspiring individuals, and this is a privilege and not something we should take for granted." The point being, we often can’t see the wood for the trees, and sometimes lose sight of the incredible people that form our community. Well, I wanted to take this concept and push it a little further.

If you have a fondness for old arcade games and want to play them again, try the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME), a free emulator that lets you recreate the look and feel of old arcade game systems in software. While it's written for Windows, you can run this open source application under Linux. MAME produces highly accurate video and audio emulation of every component of the original arcade games. Since the emulated games are usually older ones, which originally ran on 8- or 16-bit CPUs at (by today's standards) slow speeds, a 1GHz Pentium is fast enough to run MAME, though you'll want a faster machine for more recent games.

n this week's KDE Commit-Digest: A Calculator and Show Desktop Plasmoid, units conversion and contacts "runners", enhanced composite-based effects, a "dashboard" view and applet hover handles in Plasma. Updated artwork for "about" pages. Support for quick user switching in Kickoff. New imagery for KTuberling and KMahjongg. OSS device hotplugging in KMix. A bandwidth scheduler plugin in KTorrent. Interface work, including per-protocol UI specification in Kopete. Hardware database for an enhanced audio device experience in Phonon. KDE 3.96 tagged, comprising Release Candidate 2 of the development platform (hopefully final), and Beta 5 (or Release Candidate 1) of the Desktop.

Without ado, here's a bunch of screenshots of how KDE 4.0 currently looks like. Please note that this is very recent, and not all of it is part of the just-released KDE 4.0 RC1. It's that fresh.

They need to rapidly develop and deploy new applications. They need to build a flexible infrastructure--one that can rapidly adjust to the needs of the business. There are many key benefits inherent in Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The latest release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, version 5, often coupled with other Red Hat open-source solutions, transforms the economics of IT by eliminating the need to purchase, integrate and maintain the proprietary server software stack.