Showing headlines posted by dave

IBM is about to announce a new lower-end Power server designed to run Linux. IBM has put the two-processor OpenPower 710 up for sale in the UK. (IBM kindly pulled the linked web site down about an hour after this story first appeared. Thankfully, there is still a cached version here.) The sample configuration for the rackmount system shows it running on 1.65GHz Power5 chips. The new box will fit in below the four-processor OpenPower 720 released last September.

many enterprises are relunctant to switch to Mozilla Firefox. Reasons cited include deployment difficulties, conservative IT policies and the fact that Web browsers are not considered core corporate tools.

Sun has gotten the blessing of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) for its new Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL say "Cuddle"), the royalty-free license it is reportedly supposed to use in open sourcing Solaris 10.

KDE 3.4 Beta 1, christened Krokodile, was released not too long ago. For those of you who have not yet taken the plunge, Eudpytula Minor has announced some Krokodile screenshots for your viewing pleasure.

The International Open Source Network, an initiative of the United Nations Development Programme, has produced a 48-page primer on Free and Open Source Software and Education, which is now available for free public download. According to the IOSN the primer is intended to help policy-makers and decision-makers understand the potential use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in education. The primer is released under a Creative Commons licence.

Safeguards against phishing have been checked in to Mozilla Thunderbird. In builds with this feature, Thunderbird will display a confirmation dialogue when the user follows a link in an email to a site that looks like it might be part of a phishing scam. The dialogue is currently triggered when visiting a URL with a numeric IP address instead of a domain name or a URL that does not match the address displayed in the message's link text.

Sun Microsystems told NewsForge/ITMJ Thursday that it intends to open source a small but important new feature in Solaris 10 -- Dynamic Tracing (DTrace), a new framework for troubleshooting the network and tuning system performance in real time. Sun had asked NewsForge to honor a non-disclosure agreement until Tuesday about this announcement, but CMP's Computer Reseller News (CRN) leaked the story Friday night, citing "sources close" to Sun. CRN had not been briefed on the announcement, a Sun spokeswoman told NewsForge.

The Linux Trace Kit (LTT) and relayfs were merged into Andrew Morton's -mm patchset with the release of 2.6.11-rc1-mm1. At the time, Andrew encouraged a discussion into the merits of both to determine if they should ultimately be merged into the mainline kernel. The feedback to relayfs suggested that while it worked as advertised, it tended to be overly complicated providing more than was necessary.

This article by a PhD student at Shanghai JiaoTong University (SJTU) Research Institute of Robotics describes an RTLinux-powered robot that placed fifth in the most recent RoboCup competition. The robot has two color cameras for visual sensing along with a laser range finder (LRF) for goalkeeper location, and a wireless LAN allows communication among the robots on SJTU's team. The robot's embedded operating system is Red Hat Linux enhanced with the RTLinuxPro real-time extension.

Mozilla, an open-source software foundation formed by Netscape, launched FireFox 1.0 in November. The new browser is gaining power and the company has reported downloads in tune of 10 million. Experts now believe that with introduction with few new features, Mozilla could soon grow at faster pace.

"To push research forward, scientists need to draw from the best data and innovations in their field. Much of the work, however, is patented, leaving many academic and nonprofit researchers hamstrung. But an Australian organization advocating an open-source approach to biology hopes to free up biological data without violating intellectual property rights."

The third issue of Red Hat Magazine has an interview with Chris Blizzard, Red Hat employee and member of the Mozilla Foundation Board of Directors. Chris talks about his involvement with Mozilla and Red Hat's future plans for integrating Mozilla Firefox into their Linux desktop.

A Massachusetts state senator [Democrat Marc Pacheco] who had complained about the state government's effort to promote open-source software at the expense of proprietary software has hailed the state's effort to reach a compromise over future software purchases by the state. Under a new iteration of the state's IT policy, products from proprietary software suppliers like Microsoft have a clearer path to compete.

Sun Microsystems is taking steps to turn its new Solaris 10 operating system into open source software much like the widely used Linux operating system, a company official said. By promoting Solaris 10 as a “better” alternative to Linux...Sun hopes to revive its flagging Unix business in Philippines.

US BioDefense is developing an Open Source Stem Cell Research Platform to leverage the distributed power of open source development.

I needed to connect my new desktop PC wirelessly from my second floor office to my first floor network. As I started researching the options for wireless USB adapters, I realized I might have some work ahead of me. Wireless USB in Linux is still in the early stages of development. But a little searching and some trial and error led to a successful connection.

Linus Torvalds once led a ragtag band of software geeks. Not anymore. Here's an inside look at how the unusual Linux business model increasingly threatens Microsoft

You could get in on the start of something big with Yet Another Linux Blog. Right now it's just a blog with a grand total of 25 entries, and an empty forum. But YALB, as I like to call it, provides some oft-updated wisdom and entertaining, if controversial, information about Linux and open source software that will draw a larger audience as word gets out.

As Linux boxes have taken on more tasks in business computer rooms over the years, the kinds of hardware users are deploying on Linux has evolved from simple PC servers to more advanced dual- and four-way processor systems, a recent report says.

If SCO truly felt it had a winning case against IBM, it wouldn't make sense to delay as its once-successful business crumbles.