Showing headlines posted by tadelste

Unix isn't a flashy market. But what distinction there is has been going to Sun Microsystems lately, by making its Unix-based Solaris operating system available as open-source software. Last week, IBM moved to put its AIX Unix operating system back on everybody's radar by revealing plans to create a development center on its Austin, Texas, campus to speed up AIX development.

There is a lot of confusing information about the GNU/Linux operating system, open source and free software, and related issues in the press today. Many of these technologies and concepts are difficult to understand because they deviate from the standard historical traditions of the software industry. There are also a number of sponsored reports and other corporate propaganda published around the Web that smear the image of Linux and free software. In the interest of making a few basic concepts clear, this article will bring light to the darkness perpetuated by uninformed journalists, campaigning CEOs, and misleading advertisements.

COCC is a technology cooperative based in Connecticut that develops and supports software and systems for community banks and credit unions. Each month, COCC services 7,000 workstations and 500 ATMs, and processes more than seven million check images. The software that provides reporting, databases, and financial information used to run on the AIX platform, but COCC made the switch to Linux and saved 40% on hardware costs alone.

NOTE: ZNet has begun to explore the possibility of converting to free software. If you would like to help in this effort, please go to the Free ZNet Project forums, register, and introduce yourself.

Richard Stallman is one of the founders of the Free Software Movement and lead developer of the GNU Operating System. His book is 'Free Software, Free Society'. I caught up with him by phone on December 1/05.

Following, you will find Gary's Email and Thread to the OpenDocument Adoption Technical Committee as forwarded.

Mozilla's Firefox browser is now ahead of the Internet Explorer in terms of usage on European computers. A study by technology company AdTech says that the popularity of the open-source browser has grown by 40 percent over the last six months.

Microsoft will cut off IE support for Mac users this month, with availability ending early next year

Wind River will host a pair of half-day seminars on migrating device software to Linux this January, in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. and Bethesda, MD. The seminars target engineers, project managers, and systems professionals, and will be led by embedded pundit Bill Weinberg.

At first it would seem strange to talk about Philips, fiercely protective of its patents and seemingly equally ferocious in its levying of patent licensing fees, in relation to the concept of free royalties.

But, although you are still more likely to see the company hitting the headlines for enforcing its patent fees rather than waiving them, when it comes to the Linux operating system (OS), that is exactly what the company has done.

Philips believes that dropping some patent royalties will stimulate the development and use of the Linux software.

Open-source software vendor Novell has started work with the U.K. National Health Service (NHS) on a £21.8 million (US$38.6 million), three-year contract to improve its IT systems, a spokeswoman for the health agency said Friday.

The agreement is with Connecting for Health, a program under the Department of Health started in April to modernize the health service's IT systems. Connecting for Health has 12 other system-upgrade contracts, according to the NHS.

Australian companies are not only lagging behind the United States and Asia when deploying Linux and open source software (OSS), they are also reluctant to contribute developer time back into the OSS community, according to a report by analyst group Forrester.

Seems like everyone got tired of clawing at reach other and instead decided to get down to work last week. Moreover, not only was the acrimony factor way down, but also the helpful factor was way up. What a change!

Taiwan's Quanta Computer has been selected to produce $100 Linux laptops developed at MIT, for eventual distribution to children in developing countries. Between five and 15 million units are expected to be provided to children in China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, Nigeria, Thailand, and other countries, the Lab said.

[Ed: Quanta also builds Thinkpads -tadelste]

I purchased the student edition of Microsoft Office 2003 back at the beginning of this year. I found that Wine and Crossover Office 4.2 would not run this version of MS Office. So I've been waiting for about ten months for the new version of Crossover Office.

For those who don't already know this, Wine and Crossover Office are products that enable you to run Microsoft platform applications on a Linux machine. Wine is available from winehq.org and Crossover Office is available at codeweavers.com. The two products are created in cooperation with each other in the same way that Sun Microsystems works on it's Star Office product and cooperates with OpenOffice.org. There's another enabler for MS software on Linux made by Transgaming Technology called Cedega. It is available from transgaming.com.

Today I downloaded the 30 day trial version of Crossover Office 5.0 from codeweavers.com. Once I installed it I tried to install Microsoft Office 2003. After one false start where in invoked the wine excutable to install Office, and one false error message during the installation, the software was finally installed.

(Newsbytes)Author Robin Miller was online Friday, Dec. 16th to discuss the OpenOffice.org suite of office productivity software and his new book "Point and Click: OpenOffice.org."

Miller introduces readers to OpenOffice.org 2.0, an alternative to Microsoft Office's perceived hassles, upgrades and cost. OpenOffice.org 2.0 runs through Windows or Linux and offers word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, drawing and databases. What's more, it's free. In his new book, Miller provides software and instruction for the basics of OpenOffice.org, as well as Firefox and Thunderbird.

Vendors stepped up their efforts this year to make users feel more comfortable and confident about deploying open-source software. Companies focused on making the technology easier to use and improved interoperability between products. Additionally, they launched services and floated ideas designed to put customers' minds at rest over any potential lingering legal issues around using open-source software.

Over three quarters of the world's top supercomputers now run with Linux. Consumers have a good chance of encountering the operating system in cell phones, as one quarter of all smartphones use Linux.

Judge Kimball rules that Wells didn't make a mistake (Cf. why I thought she didn't make a mistake). She heard SCO, Kimball in effect says, and she "properly denied" them. The word properly means SCO can give up asking for Linux non-public materials. They'll just have to climb their ladder theory without it. Or they might just try browsing on the web and find the materials for themselves. Linux is developed in public. Even if the Magistrate Judge hadn't specifically mentioned having read everything SCO and IBM submitted, Kimball writes, and even if she hadn't ruled on SCO's alternative request by giving them some of the Linux materials they were asking for (the materials IBM volunteered at the hearing), she at least implicitly had ruled on the request, and anyway "a denial of a motion is routinely construed to encompass all requests made in that motion."

Security Enhanced Linux has move into the mainstream of operating system architecture in recent years. For those who don't understand the technology, many articles exist.

SELinux provides mandatory access control to a wider audience. It helps eliminate O-day attacks.

The agenda for the 2006 SELinux Symposium has just been announced and some project leaders of Linux distributions may way want to attended.

Existing distributions such as Fedora are including SELinux in the default build, and ports are underway to bring SELinux functionality to BSD and Darwin. Management has already stressed the importance of SELinux in many organizations. So, security minded systems administrators will find SELinux an important area to gain proficiency.

It doesn't take a brain surgeon to see why. Borrowing heavily from Mr. Cringely's terminology, there are several industry realities and stories, each having its own vector/trajectory that might lead one to seeing the importance of Adobe to Apple's well being. Adobe owns key graphic sector applications. Meanwhile, Microsoft has a strangle-hold over Apple with Office for the Mac. Were Apple to buy Adobe, it would give Apple the leverage it needs to ensure Microsoft keeps making Office for the Mac.