Showing headlines posted by Sander_Marechal

The company I work for is HUGE and has more business segments than I will ever know. Being a company this big means there is, more often than not, has its fare share of of bureaucracy and red tape. Sometimes the easiest things in life become major accomplishments. So, I figured I was in for a headache trying to use Ubuntu - especially when the official company Linux distribution is Redhat. So it was a big (and welcome) surprise to find not one but two groups within the company putting together distributions of the IBM desktop products for Ubuntu.

[The company in question is of course IBM - Sander]

Avi Kivitiy postednumerous KVM updates which Linus Torvaldsmerged into his mainline kernel source tree to be included in the upcoming 2.6.24 kernel. Avi summarized:"Highlights include in-kernel pic/lapic/ioapic emulation, improved guest support, preemptibility, an improved x86 emulator, and a fair amount of cleanup."The changes outside drivers/kvm/ and include/linux/kvm*.h fix the CR8 mask definition (which is not otherwise used in the kernel) and expose some ioapic register definitions even if ioapic support is not compiled in. The diff is appended below."read more

"I've never looked at the Reiser code though the comments I get from friends who use it are on the order of'extremely reliable but not the fastest filesystem in the world'," Matt Dillon explained when asked to compare his new clustering HAMMER filesystem with ReiserFS, both of which utilize BTrees to organize objects and records. He continued,"I don't expect HAMMER to be slow. A B-Tree typically uses a fairly small radix in the 8-64 range (HAMMER uses 8 for now). A standard indirect block methodology typically uses a much larger radix, such as 512, but is only able to organize information in a very restricted, linear way." He continued to describe numerous plans he has for optimizing performance,"my expectation is that this will lead to a fairly fast filesystem. We will know in about a month :-)

LXer Feature: 14-Oct-2007

In its second year, T-Dose, the Dutch Open Source event aimed at developers takes place in Eindhoven. Your two LXer editors went there to find out what's happening and what's new in open-source land. Todays topics include QTopia for PDA's and smartphones, open source software in the iLiad digital paper device, KDE4 application programming, the Lodel publishing tool, efficient data structures and how to overtake proprietary software without writing code.

The power and flexibility of Ubuntu and Gnome. The magnificence and beauty of E17. Perfect and fast even for a Virtual Machine. Finally a fully functional Enlightenment Desktop. Geubuntu is a complete and fully functional operative system, available as a Live CD, based on the popular Linux Distribution Ubuntu. Geubuntu, a project started and designed by the Italian artist Luca D.M. (aka TheDarkMaster) is perfect for any Desktop, Laptop PC or even for a Virtual Machine. Geubuntu mixes the power and simplicity of Ubuntu and parts of the Gnome Desktop with the wonder and astonishing eye-candy of Enlightenment DR17

Open source software has a lot to offer the business world. Aside from the fact that they’re generally free, many open source programs are more secure, reliable and customizable than their proprietary counterparts. In fact, many large companies, including big names like Amazon, Google, and Yahoo, run their servers with Linux rather than Windows. Open source software is often some of the best software for the job, even when cost is no consideration. So how can you make open source software work for your business? Here are 50 apps that can help your office get on track to join the growing numbers of businesses that have made the switch to open source.

Over the past few releases, Fedora has gained a reputation amongst the various distributions for having some of the best artwork out there. This time around, responsibility has been handed over entirely to the community Art Team, and they've done themselves proud! Read on to find an interview with Mairin Duffy. Fedora Art team lead and previews of some of the key elements belonging to the infinity theme.

Douglas Gilbertannounced the 1.02 release of the sdparam utility. Originally written for Linux, it has also been ported to FreeBSD, Solaris, Tru64 and Windows. Douglas described the program:"sdparm is a command line utility designed to get and set SCSI device parameters (cf hdparm for ATA disks). The parameters are held in mode pages. Apart from SCSI devices (e.g. disks, tapes and enclosures) sdparm can be used on any device that uses a SCSI command set. Almost all CD/DVD drives use the SCSI MMC set irrespective of the transport. sdparm also can decode VPD pages including the device identification page. Commands to start and stop the media; load and unload removable media and some other housekeeping functions are supported.

Last year the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) held a joint meeting to discuss the feasibility of using free and open source software (FOSS) as a means to bolster the growth of technology in developing countries. Delegates were intrigued by the information presented by such notables as the Free Software Foundation's Richard Stallman, Intel's Danese Cooper, and IBM's Bob Sutor, and asked to hear more about the real-world practicality of FOSS. In response, event organizers at UNITAR put together a one-day seminar scheduled for October 16 that will present case studies of successful FOSS implementations in various environments.

"15 partitions (at least for sd_mod devices) are too few," Jan Engelhardt suggested along with a patch to try and make the mounting of an unlimited number of partitions possible. H. Peter Anvin proposed as an alternative, "now when we have 20-bit minors, can't we simply recycle some of the higher bits for additional partitions, across the board? 63 partitions seem to have been sufficient; at least I haven't heard anyone complain about that for 15 years."

A look through most department store catalogues reveals a bevy of alleged “deal” laptops; you know the type – cheap and cheerful, sub-$1,000 – but far from bleeding-edge specs. These may be naff at resource-hungry Windows apps but can be a great Linux machine for no extra cost. But can you check out any hardware gotchas prior to purchase, and be sure the Penguin will run?

I feel that is important for me to further analyze the benefits of open source software. In a previous post, I highlighted the cost-savings of open source and did not mention any of the other advantages that it provides. This post should provide a more balanced view of open source and the intrinsic benefits that free software provides.

This year, the iPhone has been all the rage. Rumors flew for years before its release, ads flew after. Everywhere you look you can spot the chic slic shine of the iPhone, from TV, to movies, to the streets of every major city (and everyday more and more outside the city). But AT&T and Apple’s decision to not only lock the phone but also actively discourage users from unlocking themselves, has left more than a bitter impression of the device’s parents in my mind. In light of this, I’d like to discuss, The Great Hope, the open-source alternative, the OpenMoko.

I've been engaged with the OpenOffice.org community for a number of years, and I'm as aware as anyone that it has had some historic issues with its contribution processes. However, all the signs I see suggest those have been or are being addressed - most notably via the Engineering Steering Committee, but with a number of other important changes (including huge improvements in responsiveness on patch integration in response to earlier complaints). I hear there's more to come, too - Jim Parkinson, the VP who employs all Sun's contributors to OpenOffice.org, has a blog on the blocks about a new OpenOffice.org Advisory Board.

After reading the feedback from our readers here and at various websites around the world in regards to my recently published article "How to Quit Windows & cope with Windows Withdrawal Syndrome", I have identified a few more fears which home users have when they quit Windows and switch to Linux. I believe that Microsoft has gained a strong hold in our minds based upon many myths and fears which I already discussed in my above mentioned article. These myths are fears will haunt us for ages until we openly accept and adopt the freedom of Open Source, even with some of its apparent shortcomings. Following are a few myths and facts which play a role in whether a home user shifts from Windows to GNU/Linux.

For quick and effortless web development - Quanta Plus is steadily becoming a worthwhile competitor to the commercial web editors on the market. Quanta Plus's features include multi-document interface, WYSIWYG editing and templates. Among the advanced features your will find team development, plug-in support and a PHP debugger. The objective of the team behind Quanta Plus is simply to developer the best tool for web development.

Rob Weir of IBM has just posted a lengthy reply to concerns raised by Marbux and Gary Edwards (OpenDocument Foundation). There is so much to be said to not only complement but also correct Rob’s assessment, but here we shall only refer to the parts which are associated with Novell and the other relationships Microsoft has formed in order to combat ODF adoption and make ODF a second-class citizen.

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #60 for the week September 30th - October 6th, 2007. In this issue we cover the freeze of the Gutsy archive, a Gutsy countdown script for websites, Philipp Kern joining the MOTU Team, the release of UbuntuBolivia by the Bolivian LoCo Team, Ubuntu Forums interviews, and, as always, much much more!

Linus Torvalds has launched a blistering attack on security programmers who object to adding the Smack application to the upcoming 2.6.24 Linux kernel. In an often heated exchange, Torvalds accused security programmers of being too concerned with theoretical problems and not enough with practical applications. Smack uses Linux Security Modules (LSM) which some researchers believe could be used to aid attacks on systems using the code. The researchers would prefer to see Security-Enhanced Linux as the option of choice.

Novell fired its first legal salvo against the bankrupt SCO Group when it sought to lift the Lindon company's bankruptcy protections so it can recover millions of dollars in licensing fees it claims SCO wrongfully "hijacked." The Waltham, Mass., software developer is seeking to lift a bankruptcy stay on litigation against SCO so a federal court trial in Utah can proceed to determine the amount of licensing fees Novell is entitled to, and for a constructive trust to be put in place to protect those funds. SCO CEO Darl McBride said in bankruptcy court papers that Novell has claimed the licensing fees could amount to more than $37 million plus interest.