Showing headlines posted by dcparris

Right in between a car crash and Easter, I knew I had to write a Sunday Eve Column. So here I am, digesting vast quantities of chocolate eggs (and I don't even like chocolate), craving for coffee (for me about as special as breathing), with the goal of explaining to you my, well, obsession with microkernels. Why do I like them? Why do I think the microkernel paradigm is superior to the monolithic one? Read on.

Freescale is shipping a home NAS (network-attached storage) / media server reference design that runs Linux and targets power-efficient, always-on consumer products. The MPC8349E mITX Reference Platform includes a PowerQUICC-based mini-ITX board, along with a standards-based Linux software stack and SDK from Mediabolic.

IBM's upcoming release of Lotus Notes for Linux is, according to Novell survey responders, among the most eagerly anticipated events in Linuxdom. And rightly so.

PHP creator Zend Technologies and IBM are continuing their partnership to forge new enterprise opportunities for PHP devs. This time, PHP is being ported to IBM’s i5/OS family of midrange systems. The program was prompted by strong end-user reception to the Zend Core for IBM program, which supported PHP dev access to DB2.

Centrify's DirectControl Suite 3 allows administrators to add Linux to their server mix and still use Active Directory to manage users.

ARM is shipping a new version of its graphical development toolset. RealView Development Suite (RVDS) 3.0 offers a unified, end-to-end toolchain for coincident hardware and software development, and is optimized for system performance and Linux application compilation, according to ARM.

opentaps Open Source ERP+CRM Suite to be Unveiled at MySQL Users Conference 2006 The opentaps open source ERP+CRM suite will be officially unveiled during MySQL Users Conference 2006 in Santa Clara, CA during April 24-27, 2006. This fully integrated suite can be deployed with open source databases like MySQL and offers a complete and scalable solution for managing customers, products, inventory, orders, manufacturing, warehouses, and accounting.

  LXer Feature: 12-Apr-06

Linux News says don't negotiate with the economic terrorists of Microsoft via Port 25.

p2p news / p2pnet: We've all had it up to here with reports on the fact MacIntels can be booted with both Apple and Microsoft operating systems.

eCosCentric has added CAN (controller area network) bus capabilities to its commercially supported open source RTOS (real-time operating system) for deeply embedded systems. eCosPro-CAN initially supports ARM and PowerPC chips from Philips and Freescale, and targets automotive and industrial control systems.

[Check out the eCos license. Interesting... - dcparris]

Try KDE is a new resource listing ways that you can try out KDE without commiting to a full GNU/Linux or BSD install. It includes links to live cds, VMware player images and Klik bundles as well as links to KDE desktops available over NX, with explanations of these technologies. It is linked to from the KDE frontpage and will be updated regularly as more resources are discovered. You the community can help us out, by sending your comments and suggestions to the email address listed at the foot of the Try KDE page.

Multiple vulnerabilities have been identified in Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Suite, SeaMonkey, and Thunderbird, which may be exploited by remote attackers to take complete control of an affected system, bypass security restrictions, or disclose sensitive information.

Following the release of four alpha and nine beta versions, the OpenSUSE Linux project on April 13 unveiled the first release candidate of version its 10.1 distribution. OpenSUSE v10.1 RC1 is made up of five CD iso images for i386 and x86-64 architectures.

The Pacific Telehealth and Technology Hui released today an upgraded, open-source version of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ VistA health care information system software. Its new features include a streamlined installation process and updated patient registration, scheduling, pharmacy and laboratory modules.

Paradox: as software increasingly becomes available for free, developers keep trying to foist more of it on us--along with lots of extras (call it, oh, say, spam) we don't need. In the days when we paid real dollars for software, all we got in the box was what we paid for. Now that the stuff is increasingly backed by advertising and by co-marketing deals (but not by technical support), we hapless users have to spend our time fending off vendors' constant offers to become our new best friends.

This guy should try FOSS. We don't do that to our users. - dpcarris

Bruce Lowry responds to a CNet article about the slow progress Novell seems to be making in its Windows to Linux migration.

Peter Brown, the executive director of the Free Software Foundation, hopes to 'get the message of free software outside the hacker world'

Zfone is PGP creator Phil Zimmermann's latest brainchild, a small desktop application that encrypts VoIP softphone conversations using strong encryption and peer-to-peer communication. Zimmermann released the first public beta last month. While I'm intrigued by the concept, getting the application to work is another story.

Unfortunately, this is not a FOSS package, even though it uses one or two itself. - dcparris

Australian Anthony Towns won the poll from a field of several candidates after 421 votes -- from 43 percent of the eligible community of Debian developers -- were cast. Towns -- who is also the secretary of industry body Linux Australia -- will take up the post for one year from Monday 17 April, taking over from incumbent Branden Robinson.

Mutt is a fine command-line email client, but it lags Evolution and Thunderbird in its ability to do email filtering. The procmail mail processing utility can help. It is highly configurable, allows for far better email filtering than Thunderbird, and as is customary with command-line applications, it is fast. While procmail is most commonly employed on the server side, its ability to handle POP and IMAP protocols makes it useful for desktop users as well.