Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

When it comes to troublesome Linux peripherals, WiFi takes the cake. Sparked by the Portland Project's efforts to bring standardization to the Linux desktop, the Linux wireless developer community tackled this problem at its second Linux Wireless Summit last month in London.

In an effort to bolster use of its open source middleware and license-free database software, IBM on Wednesday said it will provide free sales and marketing support to developers who create products for those offerings. Under the program, developers who create applications designed to run atop IBM's WebSphere Application Server Community Edition or its DB2 Express-C database can sign up to receive free telemarketing time and discounted advertising rates underwritten by IBM.

Several weeks ago, desktop Linux distributor Linspire Inc. announced that it was going to open up CNR (Click N Run), its Web-based software downloader/manager, to other distributions. Now, the company is revealing more about what this new Linux software distribution system will look like.

You know what I'd like to see? I'd like the various Free software groups (whether they use "open source" or "free software" doesn't matter) get together to produce the greatest educational tool the world has ever seen: A website dedicated to Free / Open Source code. Not programs. Code.

Following more than two years of development, the Xfce project team recently released version 4.4.0 of its popular open-source desktop environment. Xfce 4.4 includes new tools, such as the Thunar file manager, as well as several significant improvements to its core components, according to the release announcement.

Citing increased demand from Web developers and their clients, a Toronto-based Web hosting company today said it would begin letting customers build and host Web sites running both Microsoft Windows and Linux applications at the same time.

With the Sonnet library for KDE 4, developer Jacob Rideout hopes to reinvigorate the field of desktop linguistics by adding automatic language detection and other innovative features. Sonnet is to be for KDE 4 what KSpell 2 is for the current version of the K Desktop Environment, providing spellchecking facilities to applications as diverse as the Konqueror Web browser, Kopete instant messenger, and KWord office software. Unlike KSpell, however, it will also provide grammar checking, multilingual tools, and perhaps even translation, dictionary, and thesaurus functionality across all of KDE.

In this role, McWhirter will be responsible for evolving the technical infrastructure and content of the JBoss.org site for a growing community of contributors and users as well as an increasing number of open source projects. Today, JBoss.org generates over 30 million page views and half a million user sessions per month.

Toward the end of his linux.conf.au talk, Andrew Tannenbaum put up a few slides on the runtime cost of the microkernel approach. He had quite a few benchmarks, but the bottom line was that the microkernel architecture used in Minix imposed a roughly 5-10% performance penalty, depending on what one is trying to do. While operating systems hackers would normally cringe at the prospect of paying a 5% penalty, to many people this could seem like a good deal: give up 5-10% of a processor which is mostly idle anyway in exchange for a more reliable system.

Research Also Shows Open Source Usage Skyrocketing in the Enterprise, Sharp Increase in Demand for Support and Policies

Key highlights of the latest version of Ensim Pro X for Linux include support for Fedora Core 6. Ensim customers may deploy Ensim Pro X on FC 6.0 with the latest OS features available. This applies to new users with the latest version, as well as upgrades for existing customers. FC 6 is the latest version of the widely used Fedora Core Operating System and has already over a million installations.

Trolltech and VirtualLogix have integrated Trolltech’s Qtopia platform for Linux handsets and VirtualLogix’s VLX software on a single-core processor. Trolltech, the company that makes software faster to build and easier to use, and VirtualLogix have formed a partnership, and will be demonstrating the single-core processor form-factor at 3GSM, the company said.

Levanta recently released a new server management appliance aimed at administrators who manage large Linux-based networks.

Sun Microsystems Inc has earmarked its Thumper disk array as a future NAS and VTL platform, and said that it plans to make its Honeycomb CAS software open source.

Tucson Amateur Packet Radio (TAPR) is sponsoring a plan to encourage and popularize the idea of open source -- for hardware components. The organization released a draft of an open source license for computer hardware this month, and issued a public call for comments on the draft. The new license is already drawing criticism from prominent members of the open source community.

IT managers looking to build an open source-based networking infrastructure will shortly be able to get their hands on free software that handles a range of routing and security features.

Local chief information officers at a Sydney conference this week were more interested in talking about open source and standards-based software than Microsoft's new operating system.

Do your ever wonder if some self-proclaimed open source projects really 'get it' what it means to truly be about being 'free and open source' versus just using FOSS for other means? Sometimes I really have to wonder, because I keep running into examples where projects touting open source software engage in behavior where they glaringly contradict the holistic and philosophical embrace of its ideals. There's a lot of faking the FOSS going on out there.

The ROX Desktop is a lightweight alternative to GNOME or KDE built around the ROX-Filer file manager. The project's name is an abbreviation of "RISC OS on X." The ROX Desktop's performance is reminiscent of IceWM, and it's noticeably faster opening programs than GNOME or KDE. However, its speed comes at the expense of a needlessly redundant default configuration, and some users may balk at some of the assumptions its design makes about how they prefer to work.

United Electronics Industries (UEI) is shipping a rugged Linux-based programmable automation controller based on a PowerPC processor. The UEIPAC Cube is available with extensive I/O options, and targets unmanned vehicles, environmental control, and test stand applications such as hardware-in-the-loop simulation.