Showing headlines posted by dcparris

Microsoft was hit with a one-two punch that could make it easier than ever for Office suite users to make the jump to open source.

Version 1.0.0 of kGroups, an online collaborative solution based on the KINKY application framework, has been released by the University of the Western Cape and the Avoir project. It does just about everything, from CMS to wikis to blogs, for any activity where people are seperated by time, space or both.

An interesting thing is about to happen to home computing—the “Desktop” that GNU/Linux never seems able to liberate from proprietary Windows may be just about to become irrelevant. Three independent, ultra-low-end computing platforms are being released—platforms that, like the first “desktop PCs” will be mostly owned by people who’ve never owned computers before. Every one of them will run GNU/Linux!

Samsung has shipped a new Linux-based smartphone in China. The SCH-i819 targets Chinese business travelers, and is the first Linux phone to support dual-band cellular operation with both CDMA 1x (800MHz) and dual-band GSM (900/1800MHz) networks, according to Mizi Research, which supplied the phone's Linux stack.

After getting my hands dirty with nearly a dozen operating systems over the years, I find PCLinuxOS (PCLOS) comes closest to being a complete desktop solution right out of the box. Initially built on the Mandrakelinux 9.2 base, it has come a long way as an independent GNU/Linux distribution. One of the primary features Because PCLOS is a live CD, you can test your system for hardware compatibility before you install it on your hard drive.

The development of the next generation of KDE kicked off with the release of the Qt 4 toolkit and aKademy conference last August and is now in full swing. KDE sub-projects from Kate to KWin are deep in the midst of planning and coding for the next major overhaul to GNU/Linux's most popular desktop. Each of KDE's applications must be rewritten to take advantage of Qt 4 and improve the look, power, and usability of KDE. The latest development announcement is for Phonon, KDE 4's multimedia framework, and the replacement for KDE 2 and 3's aRts.

OpenLogic, an open-source software and services provider, has launched a program to offer commercial support for more than 150 open-source products, including the Apache Web server, the PostgreSQL database and the Python programming language.

  LXer Feature: 9-May-06

Kevin Carmony has taken the heat from some in the FOSS community for offering non-free software in Linspire, and in particular, for attempting to lure the FOSS community into contributing to Linspire via Freespire. Don Parris spoke with Linspire's Kevin Carmony to learn more about his position. Are the community's accusations fair? What other options are there?

AVerMedia technologies has today announced that it has developed drivers for its Hybrid TV Tuner product range to support the following distributions of Linux; Fedora core3, Fedora core4, Mandriva and SUSE.

In the first part of this series from Dee-Ann LeBlanc, the issue of Mono was introduced along with one of the Mono applications for GNOME adopted for Fedora Core 5. Another of these is F-Spot, a photo management and editing program that offers a nice change for those who are overwhelmed by The GIMP.

I have never been a big fan of open-source software. As a born cynic, I never quite bought into the altruistic model of development. I do, however, buy into open-source pricing models and have little doubt that in five years' time it will be the standard means of purchasing software. In short, you get the software for free but then pay an ongoing maintenance fee that includes upgrades to new versions.

Red Hat’s purchase of JBoss could spawn an all-encompassing open source development platform.

Running a Windows-only laptop is hardly ideal for people who do considerable work in the Linux environment. When Cygwin and ssh aren't enough, consider at least dual-booting into the free software world. Kevin Farnham recently converted his new laptop into a half-Windows, half-Ubuntu GNU/Linux machine. Here's how.

TimeSys has announced an additional set of new technical webinars focused on cross-development.

Applications are due today for Google's "Summer of Code" 2006, a program in which selected student developers will earn stipends and receive mentoring in exchange for contributing to open source software projects. Mentors are available from 102 projects, including several related to embedded Linux.

In this interesting guest column, Doug Roberts, a desktop Linux user for about two years, shares his perspective on switching from Windows to Linux, and what to think about when you decide to take the plunge. After an initial, unsuccessful attempt to install Xandros, Roberts tried a Knoppix live CD and soon installed Knoppix on his PC's hard drive, which has since morphed into "an almost pure Debian system." His Linux distro experience didn't stop there, however -- he's also dabbled with Mepis, Ubuntu, Kanotix, Puppy Linux, and others, and has seen (and is impressed by) SUSE.

uCertify announces the release of its upgraded Exam Simulation PrepKit for CompTIA's Linux+ certification exam (XK0-002)

Allows to centrally manage database servers with latest versions of Plesk control panel for Linux, UNIX or Windows.

News reports out of LinuxTag late last week have Andrew Morton, the second highest ranking Linux kernel developer, calling for a bug-fixing cycle to cut down on the growing number of bugs found in the latest kernel release. NewsForge contacted the number one man on the Linux project, Linus Torvalds, who acknowledged it might be the right time for a "bug cycle.

Ranch Networks, a maker of network management appliances, says its latest box can balance loads and provide failover for the open-source Asterisk IP PBX platform.