Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Het besturingssysteem Debian GNU/Linux is sinds kort voorzien van de eerste release candidate van versie 4.0, ook bekend onder de codenaam etch. Met etch wordt onder andere ondersteuning voor het AMD64-platform toegevoegd, GCC 4.1 de standaard compiler en X.Org de verzorger voor het X Window System X11. Zoals gewoonlijk is deze update beschikbaar voor verschillende hardwareplatformen zoals alpha, arm, i386, ia64, mips, powerpc en sparc. De meegeleverde aankondiging ziet er als volgt uit:

The company, while trying to reach a patent agreement with Red Hat, has not ruled out going it alone and providing some sort of indemnification for its customers who use Red Hat Linux.

When the Geekcorps Mali team set out to design a computer that could withstand the harsh elements of the Malian desert, their only goal was to help create a better economy in the small community through the use of technology. They never expected it would lead to an award.

First, there was Freespire; then, free CNR. Now, here comes FreeLinuxEmail, a free email and file storage system from Linspire Inc. It's not much of a name, and not a completely accurate one, either. The system was developed by Messaging Engine of Melbourne, Australia. It offers anywhere-access for Linspire 5-0 and Freespire 1.0 users. FreeLinuxEmail boasts free email and file storage, and a swift web interface. It supports SMTP for sending email and WAP for mobile phone access.

The key to getting first-rate image output on any operating system is setting up a good workflow. One piece of the workflow puzzle that used to be out of reach for Linux users is device profiling -- accurately measuring hardware devices like scanners and monitors to account for their differing capabilities. But a relatively young open source application called Lprof does a professional job at that task.

You've probably seen the many articles infesting computing publications that blather on about comparing TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) and ROI (Return on Investment) for Linux and Windows, and trying to figure out which one costs less to run. I'm no analyst, nor am I a Fellow at some Institute, nor am I a pundit who is paid to pontificate. I'm just an old country system and network administrator who has been running mixed Linux and Windows networks for lo these many years, and since everything works OK and my customers keep sending me checks that don't bounce, I figure I'm entitled to a punditry or two of my own. The bottom line is Linux costs way less to run and works better. That's why I prefer it.

A study commissioned by Mozilla Foundation claims that the anti-phishing filter in Mozilla's Firebox 2.0 browser has outclassed similar tools available in Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7. The study found that Firefox 2.0, which is said to be a more secured version than the earlier browsers, had blocked 81.5 per cent of all phishing websites, while IE7 prevented 66.35 per cent of the phishing operations.

Reg Technology Panel Not yet convinced. Following the acquisition of PeopleSoft and Siebel Systems, only a short time after PeopleSoft had itself acquired JD Edwards, software giant Oracle became the proud owner of four ERP and three CRM product lines, all originally developed on different platforms and having different tooling to manage configuration and implementation.

Optimized for distributed network infrastructure applications spanning multiple processors and operating systems, version 2.0 of the Element high-availability middleware from Enea is now available for MontaVista Carrier Grade Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora Core, and CentOS (Community ENTerprise Operating System). Element 2.0 also works out of the box with Kontron's XL8000 AdvancedTCA system and provides standard interfaces for AdvancedTCA and the SA Forum's Hardware Platform Interface

First International Computing (FIC) is to ship a completely open, Linux based, ARM powered GPS-equipped quad-band GSM/GPRS mobile in the first quarter of 2007. The Neo1973 is the first phone based on the open-source OpenMoKo platform and is expected to ship direct, worldwide, for around $350. OpenMoko is an integrated open source mobile communications platform which its developers claim will create an explosive growth in mobile applications to rival the diversity and size of the ringtone market and foster new income models for carriers.

Lineo Solutions has confirmed that it will begin including CodeSourcery's Sourcery G++ development tools in Lineo ELITE development kits for the ARM architecture. Sourcery G++ includes the entire GNU Toolchain, including the GNU C and C++ Compilers, GNU Binary Utilities, and GNU Debugger.

Funambol, an open source Java-based SyncML application, reached a milestone in September with the release of v3.0. The software provides calendar and address book linkage for groupware and mobile devices. Funambol started out more than three years ago as Sync4j, with a project on SourceForge.net. From humble beginnings, Funambol has today become a company that sells commercial support contracts, but still makes its software available under the GPL.

Depending on who is commenting, the recently announced agreement between Microsoft and Novell is either the ultimate victory or the beginning of the end for Linux. If there is anything that is clear about this new arrangement, it's that nobody really understands what it means yet. Perhaps, in the end, it means less than most people hope or fear.

Toshiba America Electronic Components (TAEC) is sampling its second-generation processors for mid-range and low-end digital TVs having single-chip designs. The TC90407XBG and TC90407XFG chips feature 64-bit MIPS-based host processors and dual DSPs, along with on-chip function blocks aimed at supporting the North American ATSC standard, and come with Linux support.

One of the first POS (point-of-sale) equipment vendors to adopt Linux will now become one of the first to offer solid-state storage. Wincor Nixdorf's new X-Series, due in January, will be offered with an Msystems mModule uDOC embedded flash disk.

Mayix XLiveCD 2006.2, a Gentoo-derived Linux distribution, was released last weekend by its Guatamala-based project team. Mayix, which is produced only in Spanish, includes the so-called "stage 4" binary Gentoo packages and sports a 2.6.17 Linux kernel, X.Org 7.1, and a GNOME 2.14 default desktop.

According to Forrester Research, open source databases can lower an enterprise's database total cost of ownership (TCO) by fifty percent. This finding and others were presented in an online seminar delivered on Oct. 12, 2006 titled "Realizing the Value of Open Source Databases: How Sony Online Entertainment Replaced Oracle with EnterpriseDB."

The "Slug" has gained much-improved Linux support, thanks to a new Debian installer that targets the device. The first release candidate of the debian-installer for Debian's forthcoming "Etch" distribution was released yesterday, offering nearly complete support to the Linksys $99 NSLU2 NAS gadget.

Sun Microsystems move on Monday to make Java open source code under the General Public License will not deter an Apache Software Foundation project that promised an open source Java implementation on its own. The Harmony project, started May 18, 2005, moved out of its incubation phase and into full-fledged project status at the end of October. Moving out of incubation is a sign within the Apache Software Foundation that an open source project is organized and has a critical mass of contributors. It's expecting to produce its 1.0 implementation of Java Standard Edition in mid-2007.

Casual Ubuntu users may have registered surprise when they first booted the distribution's Edgy Eft release this past October. Back at the beginning of the Edgy development cycle, much was made of the formation of a new, dedicated Art Team to develop a fresh look for the backgrounds and splash screens of the startup process. But when Edgy hit the shelves, the artwork was scarcely different from that of its predecessor, Dapper Drake.