Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

From KDE to the OOXML controversy to video drivers: a gaze into the crystal ball for free (as in free speech, not as in free beer) software.

The Firefox Web browser community has created thousands of wonderful extensions that make surfing and working with the Internet fun and productive. While many extensions are homes runs, here are a few that just don't make it out of the ballpark. The object of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is to write a 50,000-word novel in a mere 30 days. That's stressful enough without being constantly reminded of how far you're falling behind, yet that's just what the Nanowrimo Meter does. Most writers won't want a reminder of their cumulative lack of progress. Unless, of course, you're the type of writer that can churn out 11,554 cogent words in two days. If that's the case, we should talk

How often has it happened that you either buy a new camera or you replace the battery in your existing camera and, after taking a hundred or so shots, you realise that you forgot to set the date? So now all your photos were seemingly taken in January 2000 instead of December 2007. Manually editing the creation date of each photo one by one is a daunting task, especially if you’re a prolific photographer. But doing them all with one single command using ExifTool is a much simpler process.

LXer Feature: 30-Dec-2007

In this week's LXer Roundup we have several OLPC articles, Carla Schroder gives a tutorial on building your own Linux music studio, Steven Rosenberg pits Debian Etch with Xfce and Damn Small Linux with JWM/Fluxbox against each other, SCO gets delisted, Why there's more to Linux than Ubuntu, Linus talks about Linux and a great review of the Chumby by our very own Sander Marechal.

SCALE has announced its speaker line up for 2008. Speakers will include Don Marti, Josh Berkus (Postgres), Bdale Garbee (HP), Jono Bacon, andothers. In addition to the recently announced speaker line up,registration is now open and available online.SCALE will be held Feb 8 -10, 2008 at the Los Angeles Airport Westin in Los Angeles California.

Many people's current (and incorrect) perception of Linux is a geeky toy. If each distribution is considered an individual operating system with a Linux-based foundation, instead of talking about Linux as one operating system, those perceptions will go away.

Joel Barker wrote an interesting book entitled, "Paradigms:The Business of Discovering the Future". Originally written several years ago, I find it relevant today. In his book Barker has more of an interest in how we think about the future than making predictions.

In the almost five years since SCO launched its attack on Linux and IBM, open-source and legal experts have predicted that SCO would fail and the company would collapse with its lawsuits. That day is one day closer at hand. On Dec. 27, SCO was delisted from the Nasdaq.

The XO laptop I received last week as part of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Project's "Give One Get One" (G1G1) promotion is unlike any other laptop I've ever used, both in appearance and functionality. It's smaller, for one thing. The XO weighs only 3.13 pounds, is 9 inches wide, and approximately an inch thick when closed. But there's a lot more difference between the XO and a normal laptop computer than size. It has strangely marked keys, unusual buttons, external wi-fi antennas, a unique UI, and an original reason for being. Most people, myself included, will compare the XO to normal laptops, but that's not a good comparison. The XO is not designed to do the things that most notebooks are called upon to do, and no other notebook in the world can do the things the XO can do. There is some overlap, of course, but in the main it's apples to oranges.

The Debian development team yesterday announced the second update for Debian GNU/Linux 4.0, or Etch. Stability enhancements and an updated installer top the list of updates in this release.

LXer Feature: 29-Dec-2007

Thanks to a friend who knew a friend who knew someone else, I was lucky enough to get my hands on a Chumby for a few days even though it is only available as a limited preview and not outside the Unites States. It's probably one of the first Chumbies in Europe. I only had it a few days as it was only lent to me by the owner, but this gave me ample opportunity to play with the device, give a thorough review and hack it a little. And what fun I have had!

When the Everex gPC ($199 direct, without monitor) was announced, it received some fanfare as a bargain-subbasement "green" Linux-based PC, or the (quite unofficial) "Google PC," available at your local Wal-Mart. Everex, a firm known for producing cheap laptops for big-box stores, supposedly designed it for nontechnical yet Web-savvy users who like to go on the Web to see their friends' pages on social-networking sites or YouTube videos. Google and Google Apps are a central part of the gPC's raison d'être, but thus far the gPC is not a Google-licensed product. "G" also stands for green, since the gPC uses a low-powered VIA C7 processor. But as with the Google aspect, gPC's energy-efficient status is to some extent smoke and mirrors, as I'll explain later. The gPC does have a green-colored theme and start-up screen, so it has that much going for it. But the good news ends there.

OpenEMR HQ, an Oklahoma based firm focused on supporting, consulting, and expanding the popularOpenEMR software system, has scheduled the first OpenEMR Public Training for January 18th 2008. The training, to be held in Tulsa, Oklahoma, will focus on installing, customizing, and administering an OpenEMR system on Linux and will be held from 8:00am to 12:00pm CST. Due to effects of the recent mid-west ice storms, the company is only accepting registrations for the training by telephone and can be reached at 918.919.4624 and will cost $350 USD per person with group discounts available. More information can be obtained by emailing training@openemrhq.com or calling the OpenEMR HQ offices at the number above.

Perl is a dynamic scripting language widely used in everything from Linux system utilities to Web servers to full-blown graphical enterprise applications. Just in time for Christmas, there's a new version of perl, the first in over five years. The first update since 2002 to the "practical extraction and report language," perl 5.10 adds both new language features and an improved perl interpreter, according to community site Perl Buzz.

Thanks to the Samba project, documentation about Windows networking protocols is now available to free software developers who want it. With the help of the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) and the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), Samba has hammered out an agreement for obtaining the documentation and has set up the new Protocol Freedom Information Foundation (PFIF) to make it accessible to other free software projects. The announcement marks the end of nearly a decade of litigation that began when Sun Microsystems requested documentation for the Microsoft Active Directory to build software interoperable with Windows. When Microsoft refused, Sun lodged a complaint with the European Commission, which launched a five year investigation into the issue.

One of the things we plan to do different in the Geek Ranch (see What's New Down Here?) is build a lot of domes instead of conventional buildings. The reasoning behind this is that they are quicker to build, cost less and use mostly local materials and that which is not local (in particular, steel) is used in lower quantities than in conventional construction. Before you ask, while we will have storage buildings and other parts of the facility build as domes, if you are thinking about a trip to the Geek Ranch for your getaway, yes your casita will also be a dome. It seems like geeks are the least likely to have a problem with something non-conventional.

Historians may argue whether it was Louis XV or his mistress, Madame de Pompadour, who famously said, "Après moi, le Déluge" ("After me, the deluge"), but what cannot be argued is that, today, Deluge is the name of an efficient BitTorrent client that you would do well to try. Unlike other BitTorrent clients that consume high levels of RAM and CPU usage, Deluge is lightweight and unobtrusive. To help cut down the bloat, most of its functionality is available as plugins, so you can streamline its runtime requirements. Deluge is free software licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Windows, Macintosh, and Linux versions are available, and you can run Deluge in KDE, Xfce, GNOME, and a number of other desktop environments.

This is a great time to be your own recording and sound engineer. There are all kinds of great digital recording gear, from tiny portable recorders to multi-channel mixer-recorders with CD burners, and Linux has a wealth of good-quality audio recording and editing programs.

At Tectonic we love Firefox (and so do most of our readers). Over the course of 2007 we reviewed many of the best Firefox extensions available and now, as the year-end closes in, we offer the top-five of these we could simply not live without.

LJ Gadget Guy Shawn Powers managed to keep us busy one-upping each other in the office today -- he wanted to know who got the geekiest gift this holiday season. Of course he proved to be the geekiest of all when he went as far as producing a full video review of his gift.