Showing headlines posted by tadelste

Yumiko Sugita announced the 2.3.1 release ofLKST, the Linux Kernel State Tracer. The project page notes, the "Linux Kernel State Tracer(LKST) records information as trace data about events in the Linux Kernel. It records various events like process context switch, send signal, exception, memory allocation, send packet, and so on." LKST is primarily a debugging tool that allows debugging on a live system, and it can also be used for performance analysis. It was originally announced inearly 2002, withregular releases over the past few years.

At the same time, Yumiko also announced version 1.2.1.ofdav, the Disk Allocation Viewer. The project page describes dav as "a program which collects and visualizes the fragmentation status information of [the ext2 and ext3] Linux filesystems. dav can collect the fragmentation status information regardless of whether [or not the] filesystem is mounted, and can output its text data orvisualize it."

In the same way that Visual Basic created a Rapid Application Development (RAD) environment for Windows, RIA technology can do the same for Linux. The Rich Internet Application (RIA) space is new and evolving, but offers the potential for creating Linux applications that are robust, feature-rich, browser-based, cross platform and require no client-side installation. As organizations rebuild applications to implement service-oriented architectures (SOAs), now is the time for the Linux community to leverage emerging RIA technology to make Linux a viable alternative to Windows on the desktop.

Editorial note: In a move that makes one question his loyalty, MySQL AB's CEO has defended his company's joint development agreement with SCO. One has to ask: Is this addition by subtraction? Soon, we will see.

MySQL is a very popular piece of the LAMP development stack and has demonstrated its maturity as a company. MySQL worked closely with the PHP to accomplish much in the open source world. But Marten Mickos has made a rather dumb mistake working with SCO - a company people hate. One day, he may wake up to find his support in the OSS community gone.

Red Hat's CEO has rejected the idea that a reduction in the number of Linux distributions would be good for the industry, and described Novell's acquisition of SUSE Linux as "theatre"

Microsoft has finally confirmed that there will be a third service pack for Windows XP, nearly a week after the news broke and two days after a version of it appeared on the Web. The company declined to release further details, but said that Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) will be available after the shipment of Windows Vista, the next version of the client OS. Vista is scheduled to be available at the end of 2006.

Microsoft Corp. launched a trust-building initiative on Thursday designed to show its commitment and progress to date in making its frequently attacked Windows computer operating system more secure from hackers. Microsoft, which is moving increasingly into the territory of specialist security software companies such as McAfee Inc. (NYSE:MFE - news) and Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq:SYMC - news), said it planned a string of product launches designed to combat cybercrime. The world’s biggest software company said it planned to release a preliminary, or beta, version by the end of this year of new software to protect corporate computers running Windows against viruses, worms and other attacks. “It’s a unified product. You don’t have to pick whose anti-virus solution you think is the best,” Chief Executive Steve Ballmer told a news conference in Munich. “The threats we see do need more than secure software.”

Here's a computer problem you can blame George W. Bush for personally. Starting in 2007 daylight savings time will start a month earlier and end a few days later. Instead of starting on April 2, as it will next year, it will start on March 11. The idea is to save energy. It was part of a bill passed earlier this year and signed into law by the President. (Thus, the blame game…it was really a way to get you into the story, so apologies to both you and the President.)

It should be noted to avoid Microsoft altogether users would have to switch operating systems, unlikely given the dominance of Windows. A Linux-based operating system would do the trick, but even if users stayed with Windows as their operating system, Microsoft would lose supplemental income and influence if users spent their time on Google’s portal, using Google software.

Here is my second day take on the Google-Sun "news." As with Oakland, there's no there there. Parse the news release carefully and there's no Open Office, no direct competition to Microsoft at all. There's just Dr. Schmidt and his old boss, Scott McNealy, smiling with their hands in one anothers' corporate pockets.

"While Lenovo's "Think" brand is usually spotted waving the Microsoft Windows banner, the company does ship PCs with Red Hat Linux, but without any productivity software."

The University of Malta has launched the Mediterranean Virtual University (MVU), a European Union Euro-Mediterranean Information Society (EUMEDIS)-funded initiative which brings together 11 universities and institutions from across Europe and the Mediterranean region to provide high-quality online courses employing cutting-edge pedagogy and e-learning techniques all within the framework of a collaborative effort and administrative centralisation.

Flock, the Web 2.0 browser sensation that hasn't even shipped its flagship browser to the public yet, got still more golden PR from another big media outlet, this time from Business Week. The buzz surrounding Flock seems to be reaching a fever pitch, and we common folk can only wonder whether all the hype is justified. I'm starting to think Flock will either be the biggest thing ever to happen to web browsing or the biggest flop.

Although some of manalaa.net’s coverage is dedicated to technology issues—Abdel Fattah is an IT specialist and a leading advocate of open-source software, notably as co-founder of the Egyptian Linux Users Group (EGLUG)—it is also highly political. Abdel Fattah and Bahei Eddin were part of the small group of “bloggers for change” that emerged last summer and organized several protests (alongside other movements) in Cairo’s popular neighborhoods. They can still often be seen on the sidelines of Kifaya protests, although they fiercely defend their independence from the movement.

Supported by the three main open source associations in Australia — Linux Australia, OSIA and AUUG — CeBIT Australia will provide visitors with an opportunity to gain hands-on experience with open source software.

If you're near Boston, Mass. and want to find out the development plans and design issues for the GNOME desktop, or just are curious to see an energetic collection of software developers from around the world interacting, head on down from now through Monday to the GNOME summit at MIT's famous Stata Center. Over one hundred people showed up for today's morning presentation, and nearly every one was a developer for GNOME or a related technology: X, Linux, or a desktop application.

Edditor's Note: Andy Oram is an editor at O'Reilly Media, a highly respected book publisher and technology information provider. An employee of the company since 1992, Andy currently specializes in free software and open source technologies. His work for O'Reilly includes the first books ever published commercially in the United States on Linux, and the 2001 title Peer-to-Peer. His modest programming and system administration skills are mostly self-taught.

Bryce Harrington, Inkscape and Worldforge hacker (as well as super-friendly OSDL guy), recently opined that gaining lots and lots of users isn't the only -- or even the best -- gauge of success for an open source project.

chromatic is the technical editor of the O'Reilly Network, specializing in programming, Linux®, and open source development. He's also been known to evangelize to his co-workers toward better development practices, being the author of Extreme Programming Pocket Guide and the co-author of Perl Testing: A Developer's Notebook. -Ed

The rocky road for the once-mighty NOS could be running out

In the past year, development of the open source Xen virtualization platform (http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/netos/xen/) has forged ahead at a rapid pace, adding support for hardware virtualization and large- scale enterprise server hardware such as symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) guests and physical address extensions (PAE). Simultaneously, the Xen project has amassed a substantial community of developers and refined the software to be stable and robust. Now with a third major release, Xen is ready for “The Big Show,” production use. Up until the recent release of Xen 3.0, a major obstacle to the adoption of Xen in some environments was the software’s lack of support for unmodified operating systems. Xen’s original approach of paravirtualization, modifying an operating system to facilitate virtualization, yielded great performance, but failed to host operating systems for which source code is unavailable.

In an interview with Computerworld, VMware President Diane Greene talked about emerging competitors and her company's strategy of partnering with friend and foe alike.

Known in KDE.nl circles as the documentation coordinator for the Dutch localisation project, this man is also a demon player at ultimate frisbee and a reader of Hercule Poirot.