Showing headlines posted by dave

Welcome to this year's 22nd issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The new Ubuntu "Dapper Drake" with long-term support will be finally unveiled later this week; before that happens, however, enjoy the latest DistroWatch Weekly! The highlight of this issue is an interview with Andreas Jaeger, SUSE Linux project manager and release coordinator, who reveals the secrets of developing a complex operating system and gives us some hints about what we can look forward to in version 10.2. Also in this issue: Freespire presents its first release roadmap, Debian continues work on a graphical installer, FreeBSD seeks volunteers to maintain the Ports Collection, and Gentoo and PCLinuxOS release new documentation. Finally, a note on Picasa and a reminder about the DistroWatch IRC channel. Happy reading!

Welcome to this year's 21th issue of DistroWatch Weekly. Lots of activity on the Mandriva front - the new Kiosk, public release of Mandriva One, and many Cooker updates hint at the beginning of an exciting new beta testing period for the French distribution maker. In other news, we link to a number of interesting SUSE articles, inform about a much improved new version of Debian's APT, provide an update on the Kororaa controversy, and say good-bye to both Libranet and FreeBSD's Alpha port. In the Interviews section, we talk to Miklós Vajna, the project founder and lead developer of Frugalware Linux. Happy reading!

Welcome to this year's 19th issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The long delayed SUSE Linux 10.1, which is expected to be released on Thursday, should be the highlight of the week, but FreeBSD 6.1 is also likely to hit the download mirrors within the next day or two. In other news, confirmation of the Debian "etch" December release date target, an introduction to an Ubuntu-based live CD with a collection of genealogy software, and an announcement by a project developing a range of Gentoo-based virtual machines for VMware and Xen. In the interview section, we talk with the two lead developers of Damn Small Linux about their new product - DSL-N. Finally, don't miss the chilling opinion piece by Robert Storey who appeals to all US citizens to fight against the newly proposed COPE legislation. Happy reading!

Welcome to this year's 17th issue of DistroWatch Weekly. This issue focuses on Linspire, or more precisely Freespire, a new distribution built with the same user-friendly aspects as its commercial partner, but without the price tag; besides revisiting the Freespire press release, we also bring you an interview with Kevin Carmony, the company's CEO. The news section then informs about all the recent BSD releases, brings news from the Slackware current changelog, and provides updates on the development of Kubuntu. Robert Storey is back with his "tips and tricks" column, advising on how to use GRUB with the XFS file system. Finally, its our pleasure to announce that the April 2006 donation of US$260 goes to the Doxygen project. Happy reading! Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch

So there you are, dutifully wading through the documentation for whatever gnarly Linux application you're rassling into submission. You're running commands and editing configuration files and things are working and life is good. Until -- yes, you knew the good times weren't going to last -- until you hit the dreaded "send the process a SIGHUP" instruction.

Unfazed, you motor onwards. What is a SIGHUP and how do you send it? Is it like a bouquet of flowers that you send your sweetheart?

Welcome to this year's 17th issue of DistroWatch Weekly. A flurry of distribution releases and related announcements were the highlights of the past week. The Ubuntu project has released the complete set of betas of all their derivatives, including the newly added Xubuntu, and also made an initial announcement concerning the development of Edgy Eft, the code name of its next release. Similarly, the Fedora project has announced an estimated release schedule for the development of Fedora Core 6. Also in this issue: updates on the status of Mandriva's Cooker repository, new minor release by Linspire, a comparison of journalled files system on Debian, and an interesting interview with the lead developer of Elive. In the First Look series we share our first impressions of CCux Linux 0.9.8. Finally, a little statistical titbit: with the recent addition of Xubuntu, the DistroWatch database now contains exactly 500 distributions. Happy reading! Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch

Portable Document Format (PDF) is set to displace PostScript as the standard print job transfer and processing format for Linux, though Linux will maintain PostScript support for a long time to ensure backward compatibility.

Welcome to this year's 16th issue of DistroWatch Weekly and happy Easter Monday to all our readers who observe the popular Christian holiday. As usual, we'll start with re-visiting some of the interesting news events of the past week, including the release of SUSE Linux 10.1 RC1, the election of Anthony Towns as the new Debian Project Leader, and the announcement about a new 64-bit edition of Arch Linux. This is followed by links to a handful of interesting articles: an interview with Bruce Perens about reviving UserLinux, a new review of the latest alpha release of Ubuntu, and a useful tutorial about keeping a FreeBSD server farm up-to-date. Finally, a special report from Japan analyses the current state of Linux adoption in the country. Happy reading! Join us at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch

I started experimenting with Linux for fun, first with Slackware, but in the last few years more with Debian and its derivative distributions. Lately I've been using Linux increasingly in my job. As I've gotten more experienced with Linux, I've started teaching Linux courses to colleagues. Connectivity and fast package and file management are important components in my administration toolbox.

Linus Torvalds first released the Linux Kernel in September of 1991 under a very restrictive license requiring that the source code must always be available, and that no money could ever be made off of it. A few months later, he switched to the GPL, or GNU General Public License, the license that has been used for the Linux kernel source code ever since. A recent thread on the lkml discussed some of the gray areas of legality where it's not explicitly clear what the GPL allows. Alan Cox [interview] was one of many kernel developers to offer some insights:

Designed for business users who have so far been reluctant to leave the Microsoft comfort zone, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop features a fast and effective Graphical User Interface (GUI) and integrated desktop search. Until recently, any talk of a viable Linux desktop was scoffed at by many in the industry. Martin Fink, VP of HP's Linux wing and Barksdale Garbee, CTO of Open Source and Linux, told IDM at LinuxWold this year that “a general purpose Linux desktop is not likely in the near future.”

Is Firefox 3.0 really out? An anonymous reader wrote in to let us know that Firefox 3.0 builds have been sighted in the wild, but don't get your hopes up.

Novell President Ron Hovsepian believes the market for Linux on desktops will become ripe in the next 12 to 18 months.

Microsoft says there will be no change to its existing technical collaboration agreement with JBoss; Red Hat says customer demand will drive all existing Red Hat-JBoss partnerships.

When you are the wealthiest company in the world (in terms of cash on hand and ongoing quarterly profits), you have some options that other companies just don't have when it comes to dealing with competition. And last week, at the center of the LinuxWorld maelstrom of open source projects and products, Microsoft threw a few surprises at the Linux and virtualization camps when it announced that not only would it be giving away the latest iteration of its Virtual Server 2005 software for free, but that it would also provide technical support for Linux running inside virtual machines inside VS 2005.

Desktop Linux has finally turned into the real deal--and that can only mean real headaches for Microsoft, says Jon Oltsik.

I'm a student who does freelance PHP coding and pixel art. I've always wanted a dedicated computer for my work, but that would take a considerable investment on a student's income. I found the perfect solution in the pairing of an older Compaq Deskpro and Damn Small Linux (DSL).

On October 16, 2005, the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) announced the creation of a new initiative called the Mobile Linux Initiative (MLI) to focus on accelerating the adoption of Linux in the rapidly growing mobile market. The OSDL's Ibrahim Haddad files this report on the progress of MLI.

Novell may be passionately evangelising Linux and Open Office on the desktop but more than half of its own employees can still boot Microsoft Windows and Office if they wish. Ron Hovsepian, Novell’s president, speaking at a press event in Sydney, conceded that "about 2,000 employees right now out of 5,000 are single-boot only, which is Linux only, the rest are dual-boot." He said that a project to migrate the 3,000 dual-boot workers to open source is likely to be completed over the next year or so.

The Open Source Developer Labs (OSDL) is aiming to make it easier for open source developers to write code for Linux systems by uniting the two main Linux graphical user interfaces in development work. Project Portland, announced at last week's LinuxWorld conference in the US, aims to bridge the divide between the Gnome and...