Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Linux-based guitar effects processors haven't exactly been flourishing recently. Until recently, the guitar FX processors page at linux-sound.org listed twelve projects, of which the most recent maintenance date is 2006. Clearly, not a flourishing domain for Linux audio developers. Not that Linux lacks realtime effects processing capabilities: Pd can be pressed into any audio service imaginable, the JACK Rack can be configured for LADSPA-based effects, but they are not organized and optimized specifically for guitarists. However, a thirteenth entry has joined the collection at linux-sound.org, and this entry is most definitely organized, optimized, and intended for guitarists.

And to think Microsoft used to be popular with the developer crowd...Not anymore. A recent report from Evans Data shows fewer than one in 10 software developers writing applications for Windows Vista this year. Eight percent. This is perhaps made even worse by the corresponding data that shows 49 percent of developers writing applications for Windows XP. Such appreciation for history is not likely to warm the cockles of Microsoft's heart, especially when Linux is getting lots of love from developers (13 percent writing apps for it this year and 15.5 percent in 2009). The Mac? I don't have any equivalent data via Evans Data. But the Mac OS has rocketed by 380 percent as a targeted development platform, Evans Data told Computerworld.

The Fedora Project is the free community release from enterprise Linux giant Red Hat. It's a testing ground really for a lot of new ideas which usually end up in the company's commercial Red Hat Enterprise products. I've used Fedora in the past on and off but for some reason it's never quite stuck with me. I've often found it buggy and a little too unstable due to it's experimental nature.

SiteBar is a Web browser bookmark synchronization solution. One feature that sets SiteBar apart from many others is the ability to set up your own bookmark server, which keeps the whole system under your control. You can also use SiteBar through a third-party server that offers membership levels ranging from a free, ad-supported "basic" level up to an "admin" level that costs 9.99 Euros (about $15.50) per month. While SiteBar is useful for individuals, it is even more useful for corporate or other groups because it allows you to have many trees of bookmarks and have a project group collectively modify bookmarks for their project. (NOTE: Other bookmark synchronization solutions have been covered recently on linux.com.)

Phone makers who adopt Google's Android platform may see a 20 percent drop in manufacturing costs just from saving on software costs, according to Android's co-founder. Andy Rubin, who is also Google's director of mobile platforms, told the press Monday that software costs represent about 20 percent of a phone's manufacturing costs, so a manufacturer would theoretically save on that by adopting the free and open source Android platform.

Don't you find it irritating when a Web page you bookmarked or favorited returns a 404 error on a subsequent visit? Or when a Web site is temporarily down? Firefox extensions Resurrect Pages and 404: Page is Not Found? Now it will be! can help in such scenarios. While Resurrect Pages relies on several popular page cache sites, 404: Page is Not Found uses the Wayback Machine at Internet Archive to serve the dead pages. To install each extension, click the shiny green Add to Firefox button on its homepage. After the customary browser restart, you'll find the extension available from the right-click context menu.

Microsoft has made another move in its open source gambit by becoming a sponsor of the Open Source Census The move follows Microsoft's partnership with the Eclipse Foundation, where Microsoft pledged to support Eclipse open-source projects at the EclipseCon conference in March. Now Microsoft joins the Open Source Census effort as a sponsor.

The life of South African Mark Shuttleworth has been a kind of geek dream: found and sell Internet company for $500+ million in mid-20s; spend $20 million to become the second space tourist; and create a GNU/Linux distribution with a cool name that has become the most popular on the desktop. Here, he talks to Glyn Moody about Ubuntu's new focus on the server side, why Ubuntu could switch from GNOME to KDE, and what happens to Ubuntu and its commercial arm, Canonical, if Shuttleworth were to fall out of a spaceship.

Wind River will enter the virtualization software market, focusing on networking, consumer electronics, and industrial automation, it said. The company will in August begin beta-testing a hypervisor and tools aimed at letting customers flexibly deploy Linux, VxWorks, and other RTOSes symmetrically or asymmetrically on one or multiple physical processor cores.

The Eclipse Foundation's annual code blitz - this year under the name Ganymede - kicks off at the end of this month with 24 Eclipse projects co-ordinating their new releases. Now in its third year, this annual big push keeps getting bigger. Ganymede is Eclipse's largest co-ordinate release of updated projects to-date, beating last year's update by three.

Linux will be a top OS in MIDs (mobile Internet devices), suggests a report from Forward Concepts. The report, aimed at quantifying MID-related opportunities for chip makers, identifies TI and Qualcomm as well-positioned in an emergent market expected to reach 40 million unit shipments globally within four years. Intel coined the term "MID" in April of 2007, when it launched the MID concept at its Beijing Developer's Conference. At the time, it projected a global market of 180 million units annually in the sector by 2010.

We’re done. Firefox 3 is going to be launched very soon. In anticipation of this long-awaited event, the folks in the Mozilla community have been writing extensively about the new and improved features you’ll see in the browser. The new features cover the full range from huge and game-changing to ones so subtle you may not notice them until you realize that using Firefox is just somehow easier and better. The range of improved features is similar — whole back-end systems have been rebuilt from scratch, while other features have been tweaked slightly or redesigned in small ways.

I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw a item entitled “Maybe we should charge for Linux” in an established GNU/Linux site like Linux Today, and from the managing editor no less! Well I just couldn’t let it pass without comment. The author of that piece (Brian Proffitt) asked us to “put the pitchfork and torches away”. Well don’t worry Mr Proffitt, I’m not a fan of pitchforks. I did read your piece in full before writing this so what follows is — I hope — a measured response.

Firefox has risen from humble beginnings -- it was assembled from the scraps left over when Netscape was left for dead -- to become a real thorn in the side of Microsoft. Now, as it prepares to go live with its third version, the open source project's leadership promises more innovation.

The rumor has it that Carlos Ghosn, the French-Lebanese business genius who turned Nissan-Renault into the 3rd or 4th worldwide automaker, made a point of using properly chopsticks shortly after he became CEO of NISSAN, so that to gain respect from his co-workers. Little things do matter.

The local community will get a first-hand account of South Korea's open source experience from government and private executives visiting a national meet in Cebu later this month. Different groups from South Korea -- including Hansoft, one of Korea's biggest software firms -- will be attending the national open source conference on July 23 and 24. This was confirmed by Bonifacio Belen, executive director of the Cebu Education Development Foundation (CEDF-IT), a private-government IT consortium in the province. The Korea IT Industry Promotion Agency (KIPA) will also send a group of executives to the conference.

Firstly, Firefox 3 is imminent. Although beta versions have surfaced – and even considered stable enough for inclusion in Ubuntu’s “long term support” 8.04 release – it really has been several years since the last major revision was published. Some are still sceptical we’ll actually see it but Mozilla are confident to set the naysayers right. In fact, this coming June 17th is marked as Firefox 3 download day. Yes, on June 17 you’ll be able to download a shiny new Firefox 3. It doesn’t matter if you are a Linux, Windows or Mac user; there’s a build of Firefox 3 for you.

A new breed of extremely small and light (2 pounds or so) laptop has emerged just in time for summer travel. Called mobile Internet devices (MIDs), and also known as mini-laptops, mini-notebooks, or mini-notes, these lightweight laptops are practically naked, stripped of all extraneous features. And starting at around US$400, they're far cheaper than other mobile PCs.

LXer Feature: 15-Jun-2008

First off, It is Father's Day in the U.S. and I want to wish a Happy Fathers Day to my beloved Father and to all the Dads across the world. In this week's Roundup we have stories from the big OOXML vote fiasco that has been brewing. We have an LXer Feature written by Thomas King entitled "The future is bright for Linux filesystems", How to buy the wrong color laser printer, a review of Slackware 12.1, IBM rolls out Symphony support, The inevitability of open source Windows, Richard Stallman attacks Oyster's 'unethical' use of Linux, Are there any evil distros? and last but not least I end things with a couple of very funny articles that should bring a smile to your face. Enjoy!

Sometime last night I started a "21 bug salute": pick 21 bugs and fix them one after the other. Closing bugs that are already fixed, are upstream bugs or are WONTFIXes don't count. Only bugs closed with patches do. Currently the count is 11 down, 10 to go. The goal is to be done before the weekend is through. I keep getting interrupted, however, by the continuing fallout from what has become one of the biggest faith-in-the-community destroying events I've experience. Having read a couple more angry FUD filled blog postings on this matter, proving squarely just how confused people are at the moment, I figured a picture might help.