Showing headlines posted by dave

Most top-tier hardware vendors are selling AMD64 workstation and server systems these days, including Hewlett Packard, Sun Microsystems, and, more recently, IBM. Oddly enough, most of them are shipping with 32-bit operating systems installed by default. While the AMD64 architecture can comfortably handle both 64-bit and 32-bit software -- even concurrently -- it seems a waste of its potential to disregard the best features of the architecture. While the theoretical speed advantage and expanded resources of 64-bit computing are enticing to those in need of maximum performance, the road to a perfect AMD64 desktop, workstation or server machine is long and treacherous. What operating system will you use? Is there enough 64-bit software available? In this article we'll explore some of the advantages and pitfalls of going totally 64-bit in a 32-bit world.

Vendors used to bond with enterprise buyers by avoiding the words 'Linux support'. In 2005, buyers request Linux support. Database vendors are returning that interest with the double wallop of the Linux kernel matched with POWER processor-based servers.

rebron wrote in to tell us that Forbes.com has selected Mozilla Firefox as favorite in its Best of the Web series. Four of the Five Browsers selected as 'Best of the Web pick' are Gecko based. [LXer editor's note: one of our own sites is also listed in this directory, and we are aware that it is a big honour.]

Let there be no doubt that Red Hat the company has become a monster success story. We'll get to Red Hat the investment in a bit, but all the folks who doubted that an essentially free product could be repackaged with services and sold at a premium must feel a bit silly now. I never publicly said so, but you can count me among one of the former doubters. I always thought Linux the product would do well, but I had my doubts about Red Hat making much on it.

The Mozilla Foundation is testing a patch to its Firefox browser that puts the kibosh on popup ads which have been slipping through the open-source browser's blocker.

Opinion:Finally, finally, someone is withdrawing an open-source license. Now, if only about a few dozen other companies and groups get the idea, we'll all be better off.

The impression I gathered from last week's BrainShare is that Novell's current thrust is going to be all about the packaging and the marketing.

Open source solutions have clearly moved beyond the initial “free, as in beer”, appeal. According to IDC predictions for 2005, Linux shipments will account for more than 20 per cent of server volume shipments, growing at twice the rate of Windows. Most interestingly, IDC notes that within the manufacturing, financial services, telecom, and government verticals, organisations are clearly moving towards enterprise-grade, commercially supported Linux distributions — that means “paid”. I, too, am now willing to pay for the functionality I have enjoyed at little cost for years now.

Continued growth in its enterprise subscription revenue helps the company's total revenue for fiscal year 2005 jumps to $196.5 million, an increase of 58 percent from 2004.

Less than half of those selected to the project's governance board are expected to be Sun staff members; the majority are thought to be from the company's customer base, the industry and the open-source community.

IN our Clear Choice test of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0, (we tested RHEL 4.0 Advanced Server, Red Hat’s most robust Linux distribution), we found huge performance gains over previous editions, beefed up security options and vastly improved hardware detection mechanisms.

Every year thelkml sees a handful of April 1'st gags, and this year was no exception.

CSC, formerly Computer Sciences Corporation, is a fortune 500 company supplying high level IT services to companies and government agencies in 76 locations on 6 continents . The organisation employs nearly 80 000 people and reported revenues of US$13.9 billion last year. In November CSC Leading Edge Forum completed 18 months of research into OSS. The report Open Source: Open for Business (7.8 MB) explores the usage and potential of open source both within the company and amongst its heavyweight client base.

Since the election of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil has gradually become a beachhead for Open Source, and consequently a thorn in Microsoft's side. Soon after his election, President da Silva appointed Sergio Amadeu, an academic and Open Source enthusiast, to head Brazil's National Information Technology Institute.

Asa Dotzler wrote in to tell us that the Mozilla Foundation is testing a patch for Mozilla Firefox that improves popup blocking. In a recent weeks, a number of advertising networks (once again, we won't mention Fastclick by name) have started exploiting the fact that Firefox's popup blocker doesn't stop popups launched by plugins (for example, Flash movies) by default. The patch, which is available as a signed extension for testing purposes, adds no new functionality but does change a couple of hidden preferences.

The advent of open-source software has been hailed as the most significant event in computing since Apple played David to IBM's Goliath. Yet, while open-source code can be found practically everywhere these days, the companies dedicated to bringing it into the mainstream have had a rough time staying afloat. To economists, open-source's growing pains offer fascinating insights into the impact of technological change on the way markets are organized. But to firms now investing billions of dollars in IT infrastructure, there's nothing academic about the issue.

Linux.com is featuring an article about using KOffice to create good-looking reports. The article covers importing from a database into KSpread, preparing the data for KChart and formatting it in KWord.

Due to severe problems with the scheduled migration of KDE's massive source code repository from the CVS revision control system to Subversion, the KDE project has decided to opt for the BitKeeper source control system as the more pragmatic choice. The full press release follows; further details on what this will mean to KDE developers and contributors requiring repository access will be posted shortly to the KDE Wiki.

Finland-based First Technologies is offering a Linux-based network media player for signage and advertising applications in the transportation, hospitality, and corporate markets. The FXA-50 features a depth of less than 2 inches, LCD display options from 3.9 to 10.4 inches, and central management software supporting a variety of network transports.

Tips and directions for replacing your computer's motherboard--from deciding whether it's worth the hassle to tweaking the BIOS.