Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

The Ubuntu project today released the first betas of Ubuntu 7.04 (GNOME-based) and Kubuntu 7.04 (KDE-based) -- aka "Feisty Fawn." Among other enhancements, the eagerly awaited distro-duo boasts a "ground-breaking" Windows migration assistant, new wireless networking content- and services-sharing capabilities, and a 2.6.20 Linux kernel.

While there are a couple good Solaris volunteer packaging efforts out there, it'll take a software management system overhaul to bring Solaris' software tools up to the level to which Linux users, administrators and developers have become accustomed.

At the Decibel Hackathon sponsored by NL.net and basysKom GmbH in Darmstadt, Germany last weekend, hackers from the KDE community met to discuss the handling of contact data in KDE 4. Read on for a summary of the event.

Meshcom Technologies of Finland is readying a mesh networking driver aimed at Linux- and Windows-based device vendors. MeshDriver 1.0 will be commercially available to vendors wishing to build products that form self-healing mesh networks optimized for throughput and performance in fixed and mobile network environments, the company said.

[I will be installing one of these at Sky Harbour in the next month. - Scott]

The biggest video problem open source developers need to solve isn't with video editing software, but with Internet video delivery, which is currently dominated by Adobe Flash. There are several good reasons why Flash is the most popular method of putting video on the Internet, but Macromedia (since purchased by Adobe) made a horrible decision when it released Flash 8. Its choice of a proprietary video compression codec makes a free replacement for Flash not only desirable, but necessary -- and I mean for business reasons, not just because of software ideology.

Turns out Oracle CEO Larry Ellison does have a few friends and one of them is HP. Earlier this week Ellison claimed that Oracle had displaced Red Hat at search engine giant Yahoo. But neither Yahoo nor Red Hat completely agree with Ellison's claim. Ellison also said Oracle had signed HP, CDW and Dell as resellers for Oracle's Enterprise Linux. Oracle entered the Linux support business last fall when Ellison announced he would be undercutting Red Hat by offering direct Oracle support.

The Mirth project is announcing the release of Mirth 1.4, with HL7 v3, X12, EDI and XML message support. Mirth 1.4 includes over 60 bug fixes, improvements and features, as well as a new, powerful development and mapping environment. Other new features include HTTP, SMTP and RTF support, application routing functionality and medical imaging support (binary image data encoding). Also stay tuned for the upcoming Mirth webinar which will be officially announced in the coming weeks.

Opera Software reports that Linux and the Opera browser are being used by a non-government organization combatting HIV AIDs in Malawi. The Baobab Health Partnership runs Opera in fullscreen"kiosk" mode on low-powered, Linux-based network terminals used to register new patients and track patient treatments Read more onLinux Devices

It's a universal frustration. You just know that the piece of information you're looking for is somewhere on a site. You click one link, then another, and another. You go back to the home page and try a different branch of the site. After dozens of clicks, you still can't find the information you need. Then it's back to Google and on to another site. At last you find one with an internal search engine. You enter your search term, and voilá!--the information you need pops up in less than a second.

The Ubuntu team is proud to announce the beta release of Ubuntu 7.04.

The virtual world phenomenon of Second Life will transform the Internet within the next 10 years, and the browser will have to change just as fast to keep up, said Mozilla's Window Snyder. According to Window Snyder, security chief at Mozilla, business travel, telecommuting, and even the basic things people expect in day-to-day business will be affected. Instead of flying from office to office, meetings will held virtually.

SimplyMEPIS 6.5 Release Candidate 3 (RC3) today was uploaded to the MEPIS subscribers' pool and propagated to the public mirrors -- only nine days after RC2 was released. It features a 2.6.15 kernel, a KDE default desktop, and Beryl 0.2.0 Final.

You can't always take everything you hear in the technology industry at face value. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said on his company's Q3 2007 conference call today that Oracle has displaced Red Hat at Yahoo. Officials at both Red Hat and Yahoo, however, see it differently.

Bug stamp-out list for March 23, 2007

Although CeBIT has been shrinking steadily for the past few years, there were still plenty of interesting things and exciting products on display at the big trade show earlier this month, especially if you are interested in open source.

As we reported last week, KDE will be taking part in Google's Summer of Code again. The deadline for student applications is approaching now, so be quick sending in your ideas before March 26th. If you are a student and would like to spend the summer on a cool Free Software project, do apply for one of the scholarships.

Load balancing software uses multiple hardware devices to spread work around and thereby speed performance. While Linux Virtual Server may be the best-known option for Linux networks, another alternative, BalanceNG, a simple, lightweight utility, may be a better choice for some organizations.

There's been a lot of talk about GPL version 3: whether it goes too far to be acceptable to business, whether the Linux kernel developers will ever switch to it, whether our community will fork or undergo unrest over it. Much of that talk is based on a poor understanding of the GPL3 terms, and with release of the new license imminent, it's time to clear that up.

Linux server and workstation integrator Pogo Linux has launched a line of Linux-based appliances that combine iSCSI SAN (storage-attached network) with typical NAS (network-attached storage) functionality. The StorageDirector 3000-series appliances run Pogo's Linux-based StorageDirector OS, and target the SMB (small- to medium-sized business) market.

Community. Free Software. Openness. All of the values of the Free Software movement are totally violated by O’Reilly publishing’s conferences. These same values are what has made internet culture exciting and vibrant and an important social force, and they are also the words that O’Reilly uses to market its $1500 per seat ETech conference.