Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been able to borrow a friend’s laptop: a Gateway w730-K8X (Athlon Mobile 4000+ processor, ATI X600 graphics, 1024 RAM). She has the 64-bit version of Ubuntu Feisty Fawn installed. I’ve installed and worked with 64-bit Linux on servers over the past couple of years, mainly running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, but this is my first chance to play with 64-bit Linux extensively on a laptop.

Three major healthcare groups: Harris (Houston) and Tarrant (Dallas) County Mental Health Mental Retardation Authority (MHMRA) and Gateway to Care are either near Request for Proposal (RFP) or already have proposals for Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems. A decision will be made in the next two months. Linking the MHRMRA's and Gateway to Care via the same EMR system would be a historic, rare, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. For the success of these initiatives and the future of our patients, it is of critical importance that the systems chosen 1) be non-proprietary, Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) licensed products and 2) use the same software base. Advocacy for such a system by Houston Psychiatric Society and its members is crucial.

One of the popular features of Fedora 7 is the ability to remix Fedora and build your own custom version. Now don’t get me wrong–building a new distribution is nice. But what about those who wish to create their own Fedora-based project? How do you grow a complete community in an enterprise environment or in the general public? Thanks to some of the lesser-known features, anyone can use the exact same tools that make Fedora, well… Fedora.

Oracle is using LinuxWorld to try and calm concerns its Enterprise Linux and Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN) willfork Red Hat and fragment the Linux market.

During the opening keynote at this week's LinuxWorld Expo, kernel developer Andrew Morton called for more assistance in testing the Linux kernel from users, and predicted that virtualization would be the big thing for the next few years of kernel development.

Absolute, a lightweight Linux operating system based on the respected Slackware Linux distribution, just released version 12.0. It features kernel version 2.6.21.5, IceWM and Fluxbox window managers, and many graphical and ncurses-based configuration tools. Its goal is to provide a lighter, easier-to-use Slackware appropriate for newcomers and experienced Linux users alike. It is built for speed and performance but doesn't neglect stability or security.

The Linux Foundation yesterday announced that Nokia Siemens Networks has become a member. Nokia Siemens Networks will work with the foundation and its members to continue improving Carrier Grade Linux.

Visualize Xen love and penguin per use too. LinuxWorld HP has burrowed deep into the data center for its package of LinuxWorld-related announcements. Software libraries, code testing and pay-per-use Linux? Sure, why not.

I attended my first OSCON two weeks ago. I learned a lot about leading open source projects — something that has long been important to me, but now is even more important for me, since I’ve just started working full time on Intel’s new Threading Building Blocks open source project. I split my time at OSCON between sessions related to multithreaded programming and open source project management strategies.

Server and software company continues efforts to publish source codes of its chip designs; launches Niagara 2 microprocessor.

In this week, we have announcements on Fedora 8 Test 1, Virtual FudCon and our new column called AskFedora. Speaking of AskFedora, we received several good questions including License Issue, Backups and Problem with Pup. In Developments, we have continuing discussions on CodecBuddy, Yum, Kmods, RPM Roadmap, KDE4 Status and more.

Your Linux distribution probably arrived with a "kitchen sink" kernel. It doesn't take much to build a better one that's tuned to your hardware's needs.

aKademy 2007 hosted two mini-summits, one for Schools and Education and one for Text Layout. The Text Layout Summit was a true cross platform event, and followed from the one last year at the Gnome Summit. Text layout is a complex area requiring advanced knowledge of dozens of different writing methods. With funding from The Linux Foundation they brought together people from Pango, Qt, IBM ICU (Intl. Components for Unicode), SIL Graphite, Unifont.org, m17n, W3C and DejaVu. Getting the various widget sets to have the same high quality support for all scripts is a problem the summit hoped to solve. Read on for details of what they discussed.

August 7th, 2007 – ALLENDALE, NJ - Guardian Digital is happy to announce the release of EnGarde Secure Community 3.0.16 (Version 3.0, Release 16). This release includes many updated packages and bug fixes, some feature enhancements to Guardian Digital WebTool and the SELinux policy, and a few new features. They include completely new support for virtual machines (KVM), a new, quick download process, improvements to the navigation interface and more. In distribution since 2001, the Community version of Guardian Digital’s commercial portfolio has been a staple for security enthusiasts, administrators and organizations for almost a decade. As one of the very first security-centered platforms based completely on Open Source, EnGarde has been engineered explicitly for protection and security, while providing the ability to build a complete Internet presence. Utilizing robust SELinux policies, intrusion detection, Web & email content filtering, DNS and more, EnGarde has become an integral component in some of the world's largest organizations.

Terminal and network computing giant Wyse has announced plans to support Novell's thin client Linux OS in "next generation" products. Wyse said the deal will offer greater flexibility and choice to its customers, especially those wishing to standardize on SUSE Linux throughout the enterprise. The announcement appears timed to counter competitor HP's recent investment in Linux-based thin client computing. HP last month revealed plans to acquire Neoware, an early leader in Linux-based network computing. If approved, the deal would bring HP close to Neoware's claimed 39 percent of the global thin client market, HP officials said.

Matthew Dillon created DragonFly BSD in June of 2003 as a fork of the FreeBSD 4.8 codebase. KernelTrap first spoke with Matthew back in January of 2002 while he was still a FreeBSD core developer and a year before his current project was started. He explains that the DragonFly project's primary goal is to design a "fully cross-machine coherent and transparent cluster OS capable of migrating processes (and thus the work load) on the fly."

Dell and Ubuntu broke the barrier for major vendors to preload consumer desktop Linux, and now Lenovo and Novell have shattered the wall for Linux-powered business desktops. On Aug. 6 at LinuxWorld in San Francisco, the companies announced an agreement to provide preloaded SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) 10 SP 1 on Lenovo ThinkPad laptops with Lenovo also providing Linux support.

Dana Blankenhorn has started a newZDNet healthcare blog with a strong emphasis on open source in healthcare software. So far he has four articles of note. First he commented on the new Misys open source move. He has commented on thePossiblityForge Java OpenEMR, an article on What open source can teach medical computing. Most recently he has asked the great question: What is stalling open source in healthcare?Trotter

Defcon 15 followed hard on the heels of the Black Hat Briefings last week. Black Hat closed at Caesar's Palace on Thursday evening, and Defcon started at the Riviera Friday morning. Both shows are the creation of Jeff Moss, but while Black Hat is aimed directly at the professional side of network security, Defcon is all about community, mad fun, hacking, and games.

Mind mapping, the practice of visually representing linked ideas in diagrams, is a controversial technique. Some people find mind mapping's branching trees and multiple colors to be a distraction from the main task of organizing ideas. Proponents counter that the resulting diagrams are concise, quick, and reveal patterns you might otherwise miss. Either way, GNU/Linux offers a number of such programs from which to choose. The most useful ones I've encountered are kdissect and VYM (View Your Mind). Both offer a powerful graphical interface, and both extend the concept of mind mapping by allowing you to attach text and graphics to a diagram and by supporting filters to export results into forms usable with other programs.