Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

When Linux was in its infancy, hardware support was one of the biggest issues for the open source operating system. Good drivers for everything from video, audio, network cards, human interface devices, and the like had to be reverse engineered and written from scratch by hackers. Broader support these days by major PC hardware and peripheral manufactures has made the Linux hardware compatibility more widespread, but no one's claming "mission accomplished" on this yet.

Instalinux.com is a handy Web site from which users can create customized installation images for a handful of different Linux distributions.

The hard-disk recorder (HDR) is the central component of the modern digital audio studio. The most basic feature of a high-quality HDR is the capability to record and play multitrack/multichannel digital audio at various sampling rates. However, with the addition of software amenities such as non-linear and non-contiguous editing operations, support for a variety of soundfile formats, and audio digital signal processing via plugins or built-in modules the HDR is no longer simply a more or less sophisticated record/playback device.

The next version of the Palm operating system will be based on Linux, as Access attempts to keep the pioneering software alive.

Recently I wanted to make sure I had enough space to back up my home digital videos and pictures, so I purchased a new hard drive to add to my home Linux server. I moved all the files I wanted to save onto a single hard drive and repartitioned the old hard drive so I could upgrade to a newer version of Linux. After going through the process of reinstalling the operating system, I mounted the backup hard drive and discovered that it was empty. I had some how mixed up the hard drive I used to back up all the data with a hard drive that I wanted to wipe.

Real-time Linux and middleware from Concurrent Computer Corp. and Real-Time Innovations Inc. (RTI) are supporting the U.S. Navy's Aegis Open Architecture program, the companies announced Aug. 28. Aegis Open Architecture is the foundation for the modernization of the Navy's Aegis-equipped cruisers and destroyers, the companies said.

Philipp H. Poll started the Linux Libertine Open Fonts project in September 2003 because of his dissatisfaction with the fonts shipped with GNU/Linux distributions. "In SUSE 9.x," he recalls, "you had to use a script to download the Microsoft core fonts if you wanted to have good TrueType fonts." To improve the situation, Poll chose to start with the basics with Linux Libertine, an alternative to Time Roman and Times New Roman, the most commonly used typefaces in computing, and to develop it using free software methodologies and tools under the GNU General Public License.

The New Zealand Open Source Society(NZOSS) has claimed a moral victory in the patent office after Microsoft amended its patent on XML schema. NZOSS president Peter Harrison says the changes made to the patent were such that the organisation was no longer concerned about the threat posed by the patent.

Okay, I don't really know how many chances I've given GNOME, but I've tried to switch to GNOME as my default desktop many times. I always ended up switching back to KDE (to be fair, I use other window managers, too, such as Fluxbox, which is one of my favorites). Thanks to the rumors that Xgl/Compiz/cgwd worked best on GNOME, I gave GNOME another shot.

[I know how he feels. - Scott]

The Association for Progressive Communications has established a new award to reward organisations or people who make it easier for others to start using free and open source software.

The Unified Modelling Language (UML) has firmly established itself as the lingua franca of the object oriented development world. It offers the right levels of abstraction, independence from programming language implementation to make it pretty much ubiquitous.

Open source software is a given in most enterprise data centers, so it's not surprising to see the ranks of open source companies and projects swell. It's not just Linux anymore - community-developed software is offering alternatives for everything from databases to application servers to network management to disaster preparedness. How do you know which open source approach is right for you? We've pulled out a few start-ups that you might not be familiar with, but we think should be on your radar.

Sun Microsystems has unveiled a portal that will detail its efforts to make its Java programming language available as open source code. After the announcement, Bob Brewin, Sun’s chief technology officer for software, talked to Computerworld about the state of the company’s effort to make Java SE (Standard Edition) code available to the open source community.

Only the very brave can pick winners amongst the current crop of Web 2.0 start-ups, social networks and other sundry services. And whatever the outcome might be, it is safe to say that the popularity of open source database MySQL and programming language PHP will only increase.

If you ask any Novell watcher to rate the software vendor's abilities, the chances are that observer will give the company a low grade for marketing. Novell has struggled with how to position its products for years and now hopes it's finally on the right track with a new focus for its SuSE Linux distribution.

Reliance on open source code runs deep among Google's developers, and the company uses open source in its production systems, too. The software has been Google-ized--something new added to make it fit Google's way of doing things.

[I wrote a piece similar to this when Google presented at my local LUG some months ago. - Scott]

Trusted Computer Solutions Inc. (TCS), a supplier of multi-level security and cross-domain information sharing applications for government and industry, announced in partnership with IBM the launch of the TCS SecureOffice suite of cross-domain guards based on Linux.

Luis Villa is absolutely right in his castigation of our X update on Wednesday this week. As a team we made a series of errors, and the result was a desktop that was broken for thousands of users, for several hours. It has been a severe lesson in QA, something Luis knows plenty about.

TheAssociation for Progressive Communications (APC) Chris Nicol FOSS Prize [more infohere] recognises initiatives that are making it easy for people to start using free and open source software (FOSS). The prize will be awarded to a person or group doing extraordinary work to make FOSS accessible to ordinary computer users.

Open-source advocate Eric Raymond on winning over the iPod generation, the need for open source to conquer hearts and minds beyond geekdom, and why Linux advocates don’t have much time to beat Microsoft.