Showing headlines posted by Sander_Marechal

Songbird is a cross-platform, Mozilla-based music player with high ambitions. The app is still undergoing heavy development, but it has come a long way since we looked at the 0.1 release in 2006. Songbird today can sing a pretty sweet tune, but to push its way into the big leagues, it needs to get over its own interface.

Security is the No. 1 reason why companies in the Asia-Pacific region are adopting open source software, according to the latest IDC study. Compare your salaryUse the IT salary benchmark wizard and know the average salary differences between different job functions. Join activeTechPros.http://www.activetechpros.com

In this week’s Creative Commons Artist Spotlight, we interview French artists Monsieur Madame about their CC-licensed album Et Maintenant, available at Jamendo.com.

PatientOS is an open source healthcare information system physicians, nursing, pharmacy, laboratory and ultimately all departments in a hospital, physician practice, or any other healthcare facility. Version 0.12 adds the foundation code to support the creation and maintenance of a formulary. It has also added a lot of infrastructure to development process, including automated test cases, user documentation. Videos are available to show how easy the installation is on windows or linux.

Greg KH posted three emails titled "State of the Linux Driver Core Subsystem", "State of the Linux USB Subsystem", and "State of the Linux PCI Subsystem", noting that for each there were no known regressions then going on to list which patches were bound for the upcoming 2.6.24 kernel. Greg pointed out that the USB subsystem patch queue was particularly large,"yeah, there are way too many there, I've been really slack in trying to work through them. If anyone wants to help out, feel free :)"

My article 7 Reasons Why Linux Won't Succeed On The Desktop jump-started anew the debate over why the open-source operating system hasn't made significant inroads on the client side into Windows' user base. The real reason, it seems, is something much more basic than confusion about Linux distros, annoying fanboys turning off potential adoptees, or resistance from average users. What it all boils down to is the almighty dollar. Linux is deceptive in coming across as a free option. Yes, the OS itself can be obtaining for no cost, or, if you buy a commercial version, for a pittance as compared to Windows. The real cost of Linux starts after you install the executable. That's the investment you have to spend in user training, and the support contract you have to purchase.

A user or sysadmin posts about problems with a brand new Vista PC on a support forum. Within minutes, a "helpful" soul suggests a fix: "Install Linux!" Enthusiasts have always touted Linux as the best operating system, and they've become more strident and shrill since Vista's launch. Despite Microsoft's optimistic predictions and fervent proselytizing, Vista has received a chilly reception in the marketplace. The reasons are legion: its price tag, the lack of driver support, legacy applications not working on Vista, and the list goes on. Is Linux really better than Vista? Sure. Linux is free, while a flavor of Vista can be as low as $99.95 and as high as $399.95. Linux has a cute penguin for its mascot. Does Vista even have one? Even if it does, it's surely not as adorable as Tux? Let Test Center count the ways.

Linspire, the company behind the Linspire commercial and Freespire community desktop Linux operating systems and CNR.com, a free Linux software delivery service, has announced the immediate availability of its first commercial paid support offerings for Freespire 2.0 users. Freespire 2.0 was released in early August. This Ubuntu 7.04-based distribution differs from other Linux distributions in that it makes no bones about using proprietary software, drivers and codecs. It includes, as options, essentially all proprietary software that's currently and legally available for Linux.

The folks over at Tux Games have opened up a repository containing a collection of old software titles ported by Loki Games. This repository contains game updates as well as demos for some of their games ported during their short lifespan. At present there are 15 Linux game demos available and 22 folders of updates for software written by Loki.

People apparently are already tuning in to IBM's Symphony. The company reported Wednesday that its free rival to Microsoft's Office suite was downloaded 100,000 times in the first week of release. "To be honest, we were surprised at the speed with which people jumped on this," said Mike Rhodin, general manager of both IBM Collaboration and Lotus Software, in an interview Wednesday. To keep up with the number of people interested in downloading Symphony, IBM tripled the number of download servers it had for the suite of productivity applications in the first few days of its release, he said.

This review is a summary of practically all the features and changes in the latest version of Ubuntu. It covers such stuff as: major improvements on a desktop; compiz fusion overview; screen, graphics and driver preferences improvements; new default desktop search instrument; changes on printing service and Firefox 3 features. As always, new version of Ubuntu is better than previous. But probably this version did the most powerful step forward than any other.

This is the first in what I hope will be a series of interviews with major GNU/Linux distribution lead developers. This interview is with Clement Lefebvre the lead developer of Linux Mint and he talks with me about his project, development, the community, and his views on free vs open source software.

I like to back up the data on my laptop computer as often as possible, just in case I have trouble with it. I have some large files on the laptop that prevent me from scheduling an Internet backup to my home machine, so I have written a script that reminds me to periodically plug in an external USB drive; then upon clicking continue, the reminder script runs my custom backup script.

Noting the approaching 2.6.24 merge window which will follow the upcoming release of the 2.6.23 kernel, MultiMedia Card (MMC) subsystem maintainer Pierre Ossman described what he plans to push upstream, "this release will probably be one of the biggest ones for the MMC layer so far. The major pieces are SDIO and SPI support, but there are several small nuggets as well." Regarding the new Secure Digital Input Output (SDIO) stack he noted, "gone are the days of having to rely on proprietary stacks for SDIO support in Linux. So no more spotty support for hosts and possible GPL problems. SDIO will now be a standard feature of Linux." He also described three working drivers already ported to the new stack.

In the future, Linux might very well have a fighting chance on European soil, against Windows. Following Microsoft’s Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Brad Smith did not rush to anticipate a worry free outcome for the Redmond company over the pond. Although the dismissal of the company’s appeal by the Court of First Instance of Luxembourg, was a clear indication of the full support of both the European Commission’s 2004 antitrust ruling against Microsoft, and of the €497 million financial penalty, Smith argued that additional third-party claims could follow.

Autodesk on Tuesday announced it will release as open-source software a tool that can convert geographic coordinate data from one format to another. If you're not a map nut, that's the challenge one might encounter switching, for example, from latitude and longitude to Universal Transverse Mercator--or from geocentric latitude to geodetic latitude, for that matter.

Over at my health care blog, I’m asking whether open source is the cure for what ails health care IT. It’s not my question. It’s really the question of Bruce L. Wilder, a 66-year old doctor, lawyer, and music lover who says the real issue here is control of the doctor-patient relationship. Wilder’s article was sent me by Fred Trotter, a consultant on open source health care software who has contributed code to leading projects in the space. Wilder, writing in Advance for Health Information Executives, notes that current Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems can cost $44,000 to install, and $8,500/year to maintain, per doctor. But his argument for open source goes beyond cost.

The days of the monolithic upgrade are over. Five years, $6bn later and what do the ingrates do? Ask for a downgrade to Windows XP. Even Newham Council, which over the past couple of years veered from Linux pilot poster child to Vista case study as one of Microsoft's five key public sector accounts in the UK, has now delayed the upgrade of 1,500 desktops by 12 months. The council is now in the bizarre situation of facing a deployment of 1,500 CP desktops next spring, which will be over a year since Vista's launch. These desktops will then be upgraded to Vista sometime at the end of 2008.

Very worried. It may well be true, as Paula details today, that desktop Linux is going nowhere fast in the U.S. Microsoft’s willingness to let users back-off upgrades and stick with XP may have stopped the potential rot in its market share. But it is taking enormous effort for Microsoft to hold its server market share against Linux’ inroads in the enterprise. Another important point. The U.S. is not the world, and Microsoft sells more than just Windows.

A free Unix-like OS need not be feared as something that isn't accessible or usable on a desktop. At least that's the hope with the latest release of PC-BSD version 1.4. The release includes a long list of fixes and improvements, with a focus on making the desktop BSD OS easier to set up and use. The official codename for the release is da Vinci, but that doesn't necessarily mean the release is a masterpiece.