Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

During the run up to Firefox 2, we released beta builds and release candidates for wide testing and feedback as part of a community beta program. Anyone who downloaded and installed these pre-release versions of Firefox became part of this beta program and was automatically updated to the Firefox 2 final release. To ensure continued improvement in the quality of Firefox 2, we are now applying the same program to our security and stability release process for Firefox 2. Starting within the next 24 hours, everyone who participated in the beta process will be offered a pre-release version of the next security and stability update.

Like many people, I have too many passwords to remember. To keep them straight, I wrote a simple password locker script using dialog and GnuPG (GNU Privacy Guard). The script prompts the user for a master password using a dialog box, unencrypts a file that holds a list of passwords, and opens the file in a text editor. When the editor is closed, the script re-encrypts the password file.

Trolltech has released version 4.2.3 of Qt. This is mainly a bug-fix release, with updates to numerous classes across all platforms. Changes include a new unofficial Portuguese translation, three fixes to lupdate including one which brings a 400x speed increase, and a fix to a bug in QTextEdit which caused the bottom lines to become unreachable after adding the scroll bar. Meanwhile Qt 3.3.8 has been released, quite possibly the penultimate in the Qt 3 line with support for Qt 3 ending in July. Get them from the Qt download page; both qt-copy trunk and branch have been updated in KDE's repository.

For the next interview in the fortnightly People Behind KDE series we travel back to Europe, visiting Italy to meet someone who wants to enable you to read your documents and help you to do the math, who's "fiery" passion for KDE may be linked to his location - tonight's star of People Behind KDE is Pino Toscano.

Techalign has released version 2.0 of its Kubuntu-based Pioneer Linux desktop. The new version features a 2.6.17 kernel and the KDE 3.5.4 desktop, extensive support for multimedia, and Automatix, which automates the installation and uninstallation of many popular applications.

TheOpenMRS organization isannouncing they they are participating in the 2007 Google Summer of Code:"Computer science students, need a summer job? Have you ever imagined that writing code could save lives? Why not apply to OpenMRS for the Google Summer of Code 2007?..." Read On for the complete announcement and how to apply.

Once or twice a year I look at FOSS video editing tools to see if they're ready for everyday use by advanced amateur and low-end professional video makers, which is where I classify myself in the video production hierarchy. There have been several notable improvements recently that have moved FOSS video editing tools a little closer to practicality, but FOSS desktop video editing still has a long way to go before it can be taken seriously by people who need to turn out high-quality video productions on tight deadlines.

I have a 1TB RAID array that has to be moved from my one remaining Solaris machine (which will no longer boot) to a Linux machine. I was expecting that - as with the other disk which has undergone the same process - this would appear as a SunOS usr disk and partition, which I could then mount read-only and dump elsewhere before reformatting the disk as ext3 & dumping it back again.

Amazon.com is the most popular online retailer. While you can, of course, access the site with any browser, developer Fabio Serra has created Mozilla Amazon Browser (MAB), a browser-based application that relies on Mozilla's XML User Interface Language (XUL) technology to implement its graphical user interface.

An open source pharmacy software system, iDART, designed for use at antiretroviral (ARV) pharmacies for HIV+ patients is now being deployed on PCs running Ubuntu.

Architecture for Humanity and AMD have announced a prize of $250 000 for the best design for a computer lab that can be adapted and implemented in third-world countries.

KDE is happy to be participating in the Google Summer of Code program for the third consecutive year! As usual, we are looking for mentors and students to take us singing through the summer. Whether you have been part of the program in previous years or not, we need your help and fantastic ideas!

Microsoft released its Virtual PC (VPC) 2007 virtualization software as freeware recently, and you definitely get what you pay for. VPC 2007 isn't Open Source, nor does it run on Linux. Linux isn't even mentioned as supported guest operating system, but since people have successfully run several Linux distributions through earlier versions of VPC, I decided to give it a go. After several hours of struggle, I found out why VPC 2007 doesn't claim to support Linux distros.

In my last article I cited the Vector Linux developers as an excellent example of the way Open Source developers respond to the user community. All of us who benefit from Linux and/or the myriad of Open Source applications out there are part of that community.

When entrepreneur Adam Green introduced Michael Kowalchik to the idea of reading lists (OPML subscriptions to customizable collections of news feeds), it got the software developer fired up. "I built a prototype of a reading list browser kind of thing, and the more we talked the more we realized we had a lot of vision in common," Kowalchik says. "I said, 'Hey, do you want to partner with me on this?'" Green, who started out in an advisory role only, decided he liked Kowalchik's interactive browser widgets so much that he would invest his money and his time, and Grazr Corp. was born.

The Web 2.0 mantra suggests that you forget desktop applications and embrace AJAXified browser-based apps that you can run from any OS, anywhere, as long as you have a speedy connection to the Internet. But what about times when you can't get online? Firefox, Opera, and others are looking to make it possible run applications offline, anytime, anywhere.

With large enterprises in its sights, Red Hat talks platforms and partnerships. Red Hat today announced version 5 of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), its server operating system - but at the European launch in CeBIT the talk was not of all the technology inside, such as Xen virtualisation and JBoss middleware. Instead it was all about partnerships, packaging and support. In particular, Red Hat will now work with application developers, both to offer co-operative support and to recommend other open source software.

We get it. You're slammed. You can't find the time to blink. Let alone make plans to attend the 2007 Red Hat Summit in San Diego, May 9-11. Stop for a second, OK? Find the time. You'll be rewarded.

Gone are the days when free software could blithely ignore what was happening in the world of proprietary code. The two approaches are now inextricably intertwined as more and more users and companies choose to run both. One paradoxical consequence of this is that as free software becomes more widely deployed, Microsoft's impact on it becomes greater. Against this background, a recent shift in Microsoft's public statements about open source assumes a particular importance.

The Wall Street Journal Tuesday published an informative article on how Linux is finally starting to get some real traction as the operating system of choice in business and personal desktops and laptops -- not just in servers in data centers.