Showing headlines posted by Sander_Marechal

With the pressure of the recession bearing down on companies, several industry experts expect adoption of open source software to grow, as a result. Michael Barnes, VP of software and Asia-Pacific research, Springboard Research, told ZDNet Asia in an interview, there has been increased interest over the past three to four months in open source.

Someone on the Ubuntu forums started an interesting thread today asking, “Can you manage to use only free software on your pc?“ It got me thinking about my dependency on proprietary software, and whether I’d ever really be able to get it out of my life entirely. I use three computers (in the narrow sense of the word, which excludes my cell phone) on a semi-daily basis: a desktop at home, an old Dell laptop that I use for taking notes in the library and a workstation in my employer’s office. All of these machines run Ubuntu, but there are bits and pieces of closed-source code tacked on. Here’s a breakdown of the proprietary components.

In response to a painful article I read, I’d like to touch the topic of a handy and easy way to install programs under Linux. First and the highest accusation to the current status quo is the impossibility to install the binary package on any Linux distribution, enabling, for example, the possibility to send a file to a friend, for a similar deployment, and the possibility to do a clean uninstallation of all dependencies. The other accusation states that “Linux has become a developers’ system, and not a system for the people.

When I first came across Gumstix, my jaw dropped. Gumstix are fully functional computer motherboards, the size of a gumstick or smaller, that run Linux. The latest in the Gumstix line, the Overo Earth, pushes the boundaries of ultra small computers -- and kicks some serious butt doing it.

A February survey of IT managers by IDC indicated that hard times are accelerating the adoption of Linux. The open source operating system will emerge from the recession in a stronger data center position than before, concluded an IDC white paper. Sixty-five percent of the 330 respondents said they plan to increase Linux server workloads by 10% or more this year. Sixty-three percent said they will increase their use of Linux on the desktop by more than 10% this year, although such an increase would still probably represent a miniscule share of all desktops. Forty-nine percent said they expect Linux will be their primary server platform within five years.

Finally, after almost two years in the making, the latest version of PCLinuxOS has been unleashed. Although released without much fanfare, I was excited enough to download PCLinuxOS 2009 immediately after it is available. I was able to test drive PCLOS 2009, took some screenshots for you all to see, and wrote my first impressions about this latest version which you will about to read later on. But before anything else, allow me to introduce PCLinuxOS to some of our new-to-Linux readers.

The repository system is a great strength of open-source operating systems, but some people want the latest-and-greatest of a particular application while keeping the core system unchanged. There is also the situation where non-free applications aren't available from within the standard repositories. In these two cases, adding outside repos can help you get the functionality you want.

There are growing concerns in the open source community that has many Linux developers worried. And some system integrators feel the same way. Overall, technical support and licensing policies managing many open source projects are an afterthought, and this is exactly what has the Linux and open source community worried. Some say it's time for some major changes in the way support and FOSS (free and open source software) licensing are managed in the enterprise segment.

Building software from source - that's a bit old-school, isn't it? Who wants to wrestle with the command line, hunting down dependencies and coaxing the GCC compiler into running properly? Well, it does sound like a strange thing to do in this world of binary packages and online repositories. We have thousands of packages available via the internet, all neatly compiled for our distros, thereby usually nullifying the need to get down and dirty with a Makefile. As great as they are, binary packages have a lot of limitations that can only be overcome by compiling a program from its source code. To prove that it's not quite as difficult as it sounds, let's see how this works. We're going to take a stock, unmodified Ubuntu 8.04 installation and install the Audacity sound editor, enabling some extra features along the way.

The Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM) API exposes a set of functions that application programmers use for security-related functions like user authentication, data encryption, LDAP, and more. In this article, get a basic guide to the PAM model on Linux, see how to configure PAM, and learn how to design a sample PAM login application in 10 easy steps.

These days everyone is looking for a bargain, and laptop manufacturers are eager to deliver. Sure, you can still spend $1,000 (or much more) for state-or-the-art hardware that runs the latest versions of commercial software with ease. But now you can also get a netbook that does everything you really need for under $400. In many cases, manufacturers of these lower cost notebooks are relying on open-source technology as a means to lower the price. Compared to its commercial counterparts, open-source software generally requires fewer resources and provides greater security. By going with open source on your laptop, you probably won't feel the effects of a slower processor and less memory, and you'll be less likely to be victimized by hackers.

Intel's netbook dominance has yet to be challenged in a serious way, but at least one business analyst thinks that's going to change in the next 2-3 years. The netbook market is extremely new; Atom itself isn't even a year old—if the IT industry were to break with the existing Intel+Microsoft model, the emergence of a new product type combined with a deep economic recession could be the perfect opportunity to do it. Analyst Robert Castellano from The Information Network believes future netbooks based on the upcoming ARM Cortex-A9 architecture and running Linux could create a market for netbooks at price points Intel and Microsoft simply won't be able to match. Not only would the multicore A9 be cheaper than a 2012 Atom, the assumed ubiquitousness of cloud computing would supposedly eliminate (or almost eliminate) the need for local storage.

Maybe the smallest desktop-based Linux distribution, which requires only 10 MB free space on an USB drive, CD or an internal hard disk drive, Tiny Core Linux could give you a new experience and maximum Internet speed with a customizable X desktop and by running entirely in RAM. The Tiny Core Linux distribution is powered by Linux 2.6 kernel, Busybox, Tiny X, Fltk and Jwm. It shows fast booting speed and the latest version (Tiny Core Linux 1.2) comes with many improvements and bug fixes.

For years, my friend Stephen J. Vaughan-Nichols has been trying to turn Linux into something it is not: A successful and popular desktop operating system. Everyone needs a reason to get up in the morning and I am glad he has found such a long lasting (and profitable) one. He is a smart guy, but I am still waiting for the Linux that will change my life. His latest foray into "Linux is the next big thing" is a discussion of Google's Android operating system running on future netbooks. Stephen then over-generalizes to call Android "Google's...own contender for desktop operating system king." And in a paragraph that starts by talking about Windows 7, no less. This is simply wrong.

[Note the disclaimer at the bottom: "David Coursey's closest brush with a desktop "ix" operating system is his Macintosh." - Sander]

Paper - don't you just hate it? We live in the 'information age', and yet the much promised era of the paperless office still seems decades away. Our desks are cluttered with notes, reminders and scraps of random information that desperately need to be sorted, but it's hard to find the time. You've probably tried the brute-force method of computerising your notes: keeping a plain text file (or word processor document) on your desktop, ready at hand to tap in phone numbers, reminders and other tidbits that you need to store in a hurry. This system works fairly well at first, but it soon becomes unwieldy. Sure, it's a slightly better system than playing 'hunt the Post-It Note', and it certainly saves on trees, but there has to be a more elegant solution...

One Laptop Per Child is set to dump x86 processors, instead opting to put low-power Arm-based processors in its next-generation XO-2 laptop with the aim of improving battery life. The nonprofit is "almost" committed to putting the Arm-based chip in the next-generation XO-2 laptop, which is due for release in 18 months, said Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of OLPC. The XO-1 laptop currently ships with Advanced Micro Devices' aging Geode chip, which is based on an x86 design.

[Well, so much for trying to run Windows on your OLPC :-) - Sander]

The Mandriva development team today announced a release candidate for its 2009 Spring release, codenamed Pomerol. Release candidate 1 includes KDE 4.2.1, GNOME 2.25.92, Xfce 4.6, X.org server 1.6, OpenOffice.Org 3.0.1 and the brand-new qt 4.5.0. In addition to features such as Speedboot, included in the beta release last month, 2009 Spring RC1 includes the experimental hybrid ISO technology. Hybrid ISO allows users to dump an ISO image to USB storage devices which can be used to boot additional devices such as netbooks.

Patent and copyright law are stifling innovation and threatening the global economy according to two economists at Washington University in St. Louis in a new book, Against Intellectual Monopoly. Professors Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine call for abolishing the current patent and copyright system in order to unleash innovations necessary to reverse the current recession and rescue the economy. The professors discuss their stand against intellectual property protections in a video and news release linked here.

CUPS, the printer server project, was purchased by Apple but continues to be the main printer software in Linux and Unix systems. 5 of the 6 main Samba developers were employed by HP at one time, but only after HP agreed to leave the Samba copyrights in the developers’ names rather than HP's. Google, HP, IBM, and Red Hat no doubt have a strong participation in many Open Source projects, and more companies join that list every day. Because the motivations of the Linux distribution companies often differ from those of the folks producing the software, they walk a tightrope between maximizing their own profit by being more closed and alienating the communities that produce the software they sell. The falls from that rope have been colorful.

Acer recently announced it was getting into the smartphone business. It seems it is all Windows Mobile devices and that decision has drawn criticism from those that support Linux desktops. According to TechRadar, "Aymar de Lencquesaing, senior corporate VP of Acer, was asked why the new phones all used Windows, to which he replied that they gave the easiest option for synchronisation with its notebook and netbook install base." Other than a Linux option on a particular model of the Acer Aspire One netbook, Acer really focuses on Windows-based PCs for the desktop, so it makes sense that it would want to deliver phones to its customers that would easily connect to their PC.