Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

The FSF released the fourth and final draft of GPL version 3, incorporating feedback from the general public and official discussion committees.

Three months ago I introduced my readers to a new system for hosting VST plugins compiled natively for Linux. That system has continued its development and has become a mainstay in the Studio Dave Linux audio arsenal. Here's an update on the system's recent incarnations, complete with the usual multimedia extravaganza of text, screenshots, and sounds.

The VectorLinux team this week released the live CD version of VectorLinux v5.8 Standard and the first alpha of the live CD/DVD edition of v5.8 "SOHO." The Standard edition features a 2.6.18.5 kernel, and SOHO a newer 2.6.20.3 kernel, which both use the KDE 3.5.6 desktop with Kmyfirewall, the team said.

A startup in Alameda, Calif. plans to release a kind of holy software grail the third or fourth week of June. Lina said its dual-licensed Lina virtual Linux machine will run more or less normal Linux applications under Windows, Mac, or Linux, with a look and feel native to each.

Linux, like the other *nix platforms, has a reputation of being a good environment for developers. In fact, Linux and hacking – in the original sense of the word – seem to go hand in hand, so much so that some commentators still find it hard to conceive of it as anything but a server and/or development platform.

Robert Kaiser writes: "Yesterday, the SeaMonkey project released a new version of its all-in-one Internet suite. SeaMonkey 1.1.2 closes several security vulnerabilities and fixes several smaller problems found in previous versions. With that, SeaMonkey stays at the same level of security as its siblings Firefox and Thunderbird, which are issuing updates for the same problems this week as well.

Google is in the online ad-service business. Why does it lavish attention on software developers and open-source projects? Kicking offline Web apps into gear

Just a quick note to mention how impressed I have been with my current backup solution, Bacula (using an Overland Neo2000 tape library, which also does the job nicely). A basic setup is pretty straightforward, and after that it runs smoothly and with very little need for intervention (other than tape switching. I have yet to find software that will pull the tapes out of the fireproof box for me & put them into the tape library…).

Our series on Professor Eben Moglen's comments from an interview at the Red Hat Summit continues today with his explanation of why it was time for him to depart from the board of the Free Software Foundation.

Mobile device specialists Palm have stepped away from the handheld device market with the launch of the larger, Linux-based Foleo which is a lot more like a notebook than a handheld device. But will it catch on?

A new campaign to highlight Telkom's local capping non-compliance has been launched with a plan to test Telkom's capability to deliver uncapped local content.

The Music Player Daemon (MPD) is a very different, and very cool, way to play back music online. Unlike typical music-playing applications, MPD does not have a graphical (or even command-line) interface. Instead, a variety of clients interact with MPD over the network.

In part 2 of this two-part series on LVM, A. Lizard will cover the dar backup script, emergency script, icon setups, setup of a backup GUI, insertion into a Knoppix .iso, backup, and restore.

Not since SCO has there been a company so reviled by the open source community as Novell following its deal with Microsoft. Already there are some clear signs of the negative effects of that anger: senior coders have left the company; Novell has posted a loss for the most recent quarter; and there are calls for a boycott of Novell products to say nothing of imminent changes to the GNU GPL that might well nullify the entire Novell-Microsoft deal. Some people are rubbing their hands in glee at the thought of Novell crashing and burning completely, but such a development could actually turn out to be one of the worst things to happen to free software.

It's important for everyone to understand that the issue of mutual respect for intellectual property rights was an important one for not just Microsoft, but for every participant in the industry, Microsoft stated.

If you use a traditional desktop like GNOME or KDE, a keyboard-controlled desktop with a minimum of utilities may seem like stepping back 10 or 15 years in the history of interface design. Why bother, when traditional desktops are easy to use and RAM and disk space are so cheap nowadays?

Singapore Airlines is offering access to Sun's StarOffice 8 office productivity suite free of charge to passengers on its new Boeing 777-300ER aircraft. StarOffice, Sun's proprietary version of OpenOffice.org, runs on the aircraft's Linux server and is accessed via a seat-back terminal at each passenger's seat, according to Sun.

Recently I wrote about locking down the GNOME desktop environment with Pessulus. In this article, I'll show you how to do the same for KDE, using Kiosktool, a front end for changing the KDE configuration files in users' home folders and the /etc/kde* folders.

The 2007 Open Source Business Conference featured a panel discussion on the question of whether the Microsoft/Novell agreement is good for open source or not. Your editor was asked to sit on this panel and try to represent the community's point of view - as if the community has a single point of view. The event is a bit of a blur - only partially caused by the beer your editor sought out to help with the recovery afterward - so this will not be a complete report. Hopefully it will still be useful.

A version of Wikipedia aimed at school children has been launched. Equating a 15 volume encyclopedia, the content has been limited to articles suitable for children. Accessible online and as a download, the encyclopedia will soon be found in all tuXlab schools in South Africa.