Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Scribes is a text editor for GNOME that focuses on usability. After 30 minutes of usage, you will either love it or hate it.

Four vendors are helping change Linux-based phones from voice-focused appliances into multimedia computers, according to Sascha Segan of PC Magazine. OpenMoko, TrollTech, Nokia, and Motorola are each using open source to cut costs, add flexibility, and/or to attract community and commercial developers, writes Segan.

Adrian Bunk posted a list of known regressions in the latest 2.6.20-rc4 Linux kernel compared to the previous 2.6.19 stable release [story]. In two emails, he listed six regressions that don't have fixes yet, and six regressions with fixes that haven't been merged yet.In another email thread, Linux creator Linus Torvalds noted that his goal for 2.6.20 is to focus primarily on stability. He also noted that he intends to release the stable kernel at some point after linux.conf.au which is happening this year in Sydney, Australia between January 15th and 20th.

The Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu Ltd. (ELCOT), a government-owned organization that delivers IT services to the southern India state of Tamil Nadu, has decided that its projects will be deployed on open-source software, including Linux.

Conventional wisdom says that BitTorrent achieves superior download performance over competing peer-to-peer (P2P) systems because the protocol discourages those who download without uploading in turn, creating an environment where all participants act fairly. A University of Washington (UW) research paper says otherwise, and its authors have a BitTorrent client to prove it.

Dell's love affair with Linux is a clandestine affair these days, conducted in secret, away from disapproving eyes. But now the pair have been spotted in China.

Storix Inc. today introduced software that lets customers back up, migrate and provision new Linux and AIX systems. The Storix System Backup Administrator version 6 For Linux and AIX (SBAdmin) also provides bare metal restore capability for failed or new systems.

AOL is showcasing a Linux-based hard drive-equipped portable media player (PMP) manufactured by Haier, at CES this week. The Smartscreens Media Device packs a 30GB drive, plays MPEG4 and WMV videos over wired or Bluetooth wireless headphones, and can also receive Internet radio stations via WiFi.

Three years ago, out of more than 2300 CES exhibitors, the word"Linux" appeared in text associated with just 11 of them, in the show's online guide. This year atCES 2007 has more than 2700 exhibitors; yet"Linux" appears in text associated with just 3 companies:Interact-TV,Neuros Technology andPixel Magic Systems. Yet it is clearer than ever that Linux has become the bedrock on which more and more companies build their solutions.

OpenMoko, a Taiwanese startup that develops mobile hardware and software, next month plans to start selling what it claims to be the first Linux smartphone based completely on open standards.

An open letter to PETA, inspired by Ryan Lortie’s very silly My stance on Ubuntu and the Bad Vista campaign.

Foreword: This article describes how Linux and a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) single-board computer (SBC) helped Vetland Medical develop and market its EX3000 product, an inexpensive anesthesia monitoring device aimed at bringing technical innovations in human anesthesia equipment to veterinarians.

A French company called Aldebaran Robotics has released several video clips of a new robot they're developing, called Nao. They claim their humanoid robot will include voice recognition, vision, speech synthesis, "emotional expressions", a WiFi connections, and will be based on Linux. Nao stands 22 inches high and has 23 degrees of freedom.

Virtualization, the ability to run multiple "virtual" systems on a single host, is nearly as old as solid state computing. But it's been all the rage again in recent years, with more than a dozen large-scale Linux virtualization projects -- and while they require special custom kernels, patches, and software, the first steps toward OS-level virtualization have been implemented in the Linux kernel.

The viewer application of the online game Second Life has been released as open source.

President commits Rwanda government to providing each primary school pupil with a Linux-based laptop within five years.

The Dreamlinux project, a Brazilian distribution based on Debian, Knoppix, and Morphix, last week released its v2.2 Multimedia Edition live CD for free download. Dreamlinux boots directly into an XFce desktop, which provides access to a "substantial" collection of desktop applications and a central control panel for system configuration, according to the project.

Sonos has added support for Windows Media formats to its Linux-based whole-house audio distribution system, via a "one-button" firmware upgrade. The new "Sonos System Software 2.1" for the Sonos Digital Music System brings better interoperability with Windows Media Player 11 for Vista and XP users.

I'm a developer. I spend my time sitting at a computer, working on our IT infrastructure. Contrary to stereotype, I have just a cheapo computer and no fancy gizmos. I take pride in the Apache hat I wear to write this column. But sometimes we need to take a step back, and look at the why of it. As we enter a new year, let's share a glimpse into that question.

Beset by customer defections to Microsoft Corp. and open-source vendors such as MySQL AB, Oracle Corp. is making a bid to win back users by enhancing its free tools for migrating data and applications from non-Oracle to Oracle systems. The software maker today announced the release of SQL Developer 1.1. This latest version of the free database development tool allows users to browse and manage three non-Oracle databases: Microsoft Access, MySQL and SQL Server.