Showing headlines posted by bob

A set of six patches were published for Mesa on Friday that allow for profiling support with Gallium3D's "Clover" state tracker for OpenCL support...

Here’s a quick rundown of the day 1 talks that have transcripts and / or video recordings:

Scarcely a week after the Intel-backed Minnowboard.org project began shipping its $199 open-hardware single board computer, the AMD-backed GizmoSphere.org project released an unrestricted version of its $189 Gizmo SBC’s schematic and electronics distributor Digi-Key added Wandboard.org’s open, Freescale-based $83-144 boardset to its online catalog. The moves reflect the current infatuation of embedded developers, makers, and [...]

I occasionally get asked why I spend so much of my free time writing software and giving it away for free. There are a number of reasons for this—I like to build things and I use it as an excuse to practice and improve my skills—but one of the most driving motivators for me is that I see open source contributions as a civic duty, a moral obligation to the rest of the world.

In February of this year, I reported that the Raleigh Public Record—a local, online news publication in Raleigh, NC—was in the process of creating an open source solution to extract data from PDFs. The problem many news journalists have is easily and quickly (which is very important given the nature of their job) converting data and images into a usable format from documents they use for their reports (see an example here). The project, DocHive, is now phasing into the next cycle of development under the leadership of Edward Duncan. He tells us what he has planned for his team over the next six months. But first, I asked:

Collaboration is one of the key principles of the open source way and a major topic here on opensource.com. One of our goals to highlight great collaboration stories, and when we discuss collaboration, the need for the perfect collaboration tool frequently comes up. One article, Avoid the tool trap when building communities, provides some great insights (hint: people create community, not tools). Email is still undoubedly one of the most preferred tools out there for collaboration. In fact, collaboration on the the Linux kernel started with the famous email Linus Torvalds sent to a mailing list back in 1991.

Are you a Linux desktop user who loves Ubuntu but is wary of Unity? You're in luck. There are lots of Ubuntu spins, both from Canonical and independent developers, which preserve the basic infrastructure and essence of Ubuntu but replace the default Unity desktop. Here are five of my favorites:

There are already many articles out there comparing Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and BeagleBone Black; this is not one of those articles. What I was looking for and couldn’t find was a comprehensive article that would summarize all of the pros and cons of the Raspberry Pi and the BeagleBone Black, and what each platform is best suited for. When I couldn’t find that article, I decided to write it myself.

One of the feature limitations of using the Mir Display Server up to this point has been when using multiple monitors (or say a laptop connected to a projector) the only display configuration possibility is using a cloned mode whereby the screens are the same. Canonical's Mir developers have begun working on improved multi-monitor handling...

AMD announced the most power-efficient model yet in its new line of Linux-ready AMD Embedded G-Series system-on-chips. The dual-core, 1GHz GX-210JA SoC offers a low 6W TDP and 3W “expected average power,” making it well suited for a wide range of fanless embedded devices. AMD announced its Embedded G-Series system-on-chips in April. Unlike earlier G-Series [...]

XKeyscore, the documents boast, is the NSA's "widest reaching" system developing intelligence from computer networks – what the agency calls Digital Network Intelligence (DNI). One presentation claims the program covers "nearly everything a typical user does on the internet", including the content of emails, websites visited and searches, as well as their metadata.

Don't be a CM fashion victim Configuration Management (CM) isn't just about IT, but in the space I have, I want to look at some issues around implementing an IT CM solution.…

Around a year ago, a school in the southeast of England, Westcliff High School for Girls Academy (WHSG), began switching its student-facing computers to Linux, with KDE providing the desktop software. The school's Network Manager, Malcolm Moore, contacted us at the time. Now, a year on, he got in touch again to let us know how he and the students find life in a world without Windows.

This is a short list of my favorite graphical text editors for Linux that can be classified as IDE (integrated development environment). Here, I give the pros and cons of working with the following:  

IEE announced a Linux-based thin-client touchpanel computer for harsh military environments. The highly rugged touchpanel computer is equipped with a 1GHz ARM processor and a 10.4-inch, 1024 x 768-pixel resistive touchscreen with backlighting and high contrast, and is usable over an extended temperature range of -46 to 70?C. IEE Inc. has yet to post full [...]

Booking a cab is getting easier for passengers thanks to the advent of apps that let you book your cab straight from your smartphone. But implementing those apps and booking systems isn't always the easiest—or most affordable—option for taxi companies.

Last week's OSCON conference served to remind us that open source software is setting the pace. We've come a very long way from the old saw that "open source doesn't innovate." Instead, you might ask: Is innovation in enterprise software happening anywhere else other than in open source land?

Distro hoppers are few and far between in the Linux blogosphere today if bloggers' tales are anything to go by, but in the past most have been around the proverbial block a few times. "I used to be," admitted consultant and Slashdot blogger Gerhard Mack. "I started with Slackware in the 90s but then moved to Red Hat and even tried SuSE before settling on Debian and staying there."

Sabai Technology is not your typical tech company. A networking solutions company created in 2010, Sabai is located on Main Street in Simpsonville, SC in an old cabinet shop. Founder and CEO William Haynes first started modifying routers as a missionary in Thailand, helping his fellow expats discover the power of open source routing solutions.

Humans have always wanted to know what the weather has in store for them, and have come up with a whole load of ways to predict what’s coming; some better than others. Weather forecasting as we know it began in earnest in the nineteenth century, when the invention of the electric telegraph revolutionised long-distance communications and made it possible for information about incoming weather to travel faster than the weather itself. Since then weather forecasting has become ever-more accurate, with improvements in the technology of reporting and communicating, as well as in the predictive models, making it possible for us to know the future weather in greater detail than ever before.