Showing headlines posted by Sander_Marechal

As recently reported on Slashdot, Apple, in its infinite wisdom, has added a checksum to the iPod database apparently to restrict non-iTunes products (like Amarok via libgpod) from having the ability to add music. To me this sounds pretty familiar. This is the same thing they did to iTunes 4.5 to make it harder for other apps to read off their DAAP shares, they changed it again in iTunes 7; open source apps are still unable to read iTunes 7 DAAP shares. But there's better news on this iPod front. The guys from #gtkpod reverse engineered the hashes.

[Site is being slashdotter and dugg, so may take a while to load – Sander]

We all know how far open source software has progressed, but has it come so far to not only challenge Windows, but replace it? Can you really install Linux and open source software in place of Windows, and want for nothing? In the first of this multi-part series we send in Ashton Mills to take on the challenge of using nothing but Linux and open source software... for absolutely everything. Will he find nirvana in the process, or lose all his hair in frustration? Follow him in and find out.

So, it's finally happened. Unhappy with other media players being better than iTunes, Apple have apparently decided to stop them from working with the new range of iPods. There's no iTunes for Linux, so popular Linux iPod management tools like gtkpod and Rhythmbox will not work with the new range of iPods. The iPod keeps track of the songs and playlists in your iPod with a database file. At the very start of the database, a couple of what appear to be SHA1 hashes have been inserted which appear to lock the iTunes database to one particular iPod and prevent any modification of the database file.

This is release 0.9.45 of Wine, a free implementation of Windows on Unix. What's new in this release:

* Many improvements to the crypto dlls (should make iTunes work).

* The usual assortment of Direct3D improvements.

* A number of fixes to sound support.

* Many more WordPad features.

* Lots of bug fixes.

Embedian has started shipping a tiny embedded processor module available with Linux and a development board with LCD. Roughly half the size of a credit card, the COM-7211 is based on an ARM9 processor, and targets industrial automation, portable devices, POS, transportation, medical, and defense applications. The COM-7211 is shipping now, preinstalled with a Debian ARM filesystem and Linux 2.6.18.1 kernel.

So in my tradition of one post per month (which, I know, needs to change), I present you with some updates from the world of Awn. There have been lots of cool applets popping up, especially since the python bindings were committed a week or so ago. The move to launchpad has also created some very cool branches of Awn by other people which focus on new ideas, or new ways to implement existing ones.

Today is second day of my OpenMoko 2007.2 testing. I do it as part of my work for OpenedHand and this gives me possibility to discuss bugs with applications authors before reporting to get some details. Today I'll be looking at the new UI.

This week I have generally been diving a bit deeper into the Amarok and even kdelibs code to debug some pretty serious issues. The KIO system is in a bit better shape than it was at the beginning of the week, thanks to KDE dev. Thiago, and as I use this intensively for the services, Magnatune not least of which, this is really good news.

"An ongoing study on datasets of several Petabytes have shown that there can be 'silent data corruption' at rates much larger than one might naively expect from the expected error rates in RAID arrays and the expected probability of single bit uncorrected errors in hard disks, began a recent query on the Linux kernel mailing list asking where the errors might be introduced. Alan Cox replied, "its almost entirely device specific at every level. He then continued on with some general information, tracing the path of the data from the drive, through the cable and bus, into main memory and the CPU cache, as well as over the network, "once its crossing the PCI bus and main memory and CPU cache its entirely down to the system you are running what is protected and how much. Note that a lot of systems won't report ECC errors unless you ask."

Today we’re proud to introduce a new feature: Creative Commons Artist Spotlight, which Red Hat Magazine will be producing in association with jamendo.com. Every week, we will introduce our readers to emerging musical artists who choose to release their work under Creative Commons licenses. This week’s band, Convey, hails from Acton, Massachusetts. Their debut EP can be found at jamendo.com.

If you expect me to argue with the 13 reasons Kim Brebach gives for why the Linux desktop is unlikely to make it to a desktop near you any time soon, prepare to be disappointed. He's right. No, you didn't mis-read that. Brebach may be a Linux newbie -- well a newbie who's getting up to speed at a remarkable rate -- but he hit the nail right on the head with his 13 reasons for why the Linux desktop isn't likely to make it. But, what he doesn't do is look at some of the reasons why Linux may yet become a popular desktop despite itself.

Having recently rediscovered itself as a systems company, Sun Microsystems has been welcomed into Microsoft's vast and growing family of OEM partners. Expanding the companies' three-year-old interoperability pact, Sun has agreed to ship Microsoft's dated but important Windows Server 2003 operating system pre-installed on its x64 machines. The companies will also co-operate on go-to-market activities for the machines. Also notable: the deal does not stretch to Microsoft's planned Windows Server 2003 replacement - Windows Server 2008 - meaning Sun will be shipping an operating system that's several years old.

When asked what the top goal for their life was, many people claimed it was to get rich. In technology, many of the great innovators and inventors got a job that secured them financially, but the main reason for taking those particular jobs was not money, but the amount of time the job gave them. They spearheaded the technological revolutions with their ideas and work, not to get rich, but because they wanted to see it happen. This is where open-source software comes in. The people who develop these programs are not doing so to get rich, but because they want to see their ideas happen

SUN paid a high price for positioning itself as the technology candyman to all those dotcom darlings consumed in the crash. Its pugnacious front man, Scott McNealy, also lost some gloss in the dotcom aftermath as the company struggled with how to position its Java and Solaris software efforts and maintain sales momentum and margins on its server boxes. In early 2006, boomer McNealy handed the CEO baton to Jonathan Schwartz. Since taking day-to-day control at Sun, Schwartz has presided over a turnaround at the proud Silicon Valley server manufacturer, which has lifted margins and returned to profitability.

Public service and administration minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi has accepted an invitation to become patron of the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA). At yesterday's Pretoria meeting, FOSSFA executives explained to Fraser-Moleketi that her support could help the organisation to gain access to her African counterparts.

Microsoft is touting BMW and Siemens as the latest enterprises to sign up for the three-year priority support certificates for Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server it offers, which are designed to help them run Windows and SUSE Linux Enterprise systems seamlessly together. But the timing of Microsoft's release of these two separate deals is interesting, as they seem to come despite the disagreement between the Free Software Foundation and the software maker over whether it is legally bound by the terms and conditions of GNU General Public License Version 3.0.

"The cfs core has been enhanced since quite sometime now to understand task-groups and [to] provide fairness to such task-groups," began Srivatsa Vaddagiri,"what was needed was an interface for the administrator to define task-groups and specify group'importance' in terms of its cpu share. The patch below adds such an interface."Srivatsa requested that his patch be merged into Andrew Morton's -mm tree to receive more testing.

VMware, Inc., the virtualization leader, today at VMworld 2007 announced that it has released a majority of VMware Tools as open source software as part of the project Open Virtual Machine Tools. VMware Tools is a set of guest operating system virtualization components that enhance performance and improve management of VMware virtual machines.

Occasionally throughout the summer I’ve been chatting and emailing with Saugatuck Technology analyst Charlie Burns about mainframes, IBM and Linux. Many people have argued over the past year that the mainframe is dying out (again), but Burns and some very telling market trends go against that grain with a 180 degree turn: the mainframe is surging, and it’s all thanks to Linux.

Kim Brebach, a Windows user and consultant with an Austrialia-based technology marketing group, recently took a long trip into the land of the Linux desktop and reports back on what he found. Now I, on the other hand, am an operating system expert. You name it -- OS/2, VAX/VMS, AIX, Windows, Linux -- I've run it. That's all grand, if you want an informed opinion on what's what in desktop operating systems. But, if you want to know what an ordinary, somewhat tech-savvy Windows user makes of the Linux desktop, I'm not your man. Fortunately, Kim Brebach is your guy to tell you what a beginner makes of desktop Linux.