Showing headlines posted by Sander_Marechal

Okay it is no secret that Linux has not been able to crack the desktop, either at the home or at the workplace. Not to ignored either is that Windows lost some desktops last year (a little over 3%),but let’s not panic just yet, Windows still owns over 88% of all the desktops according to leading research. Many people might be surprised to learn that I come from a background of Windows, Linux, UNIX and even MAC. In fact, my first IT experience was in a Novell/SCO UNIX environment. Now there are some fundamental issues to why Windows 7 will trump Linux distros like Ubuntu, Fedora and Debian. Therefor, to get those out of the way let’s just spell them out.

[Here's my submission for FUD-of-the-week. It's just too funny. I dare you to top that! -- Sander]

This isn't about a shell script, it's about a really cool technique to apply in shell scripts. Have you ever been worried about multiple instances of a shell script running because they might overwrite or corrupt the data or devices they are working on? Here's a way to prevent that. There's a Unix system call named flock(2). It's used to apply advisory locks to open files. Without exhausting the subject, it can be used to synchronize access to resources across multiple running processes.

Yes, this is a 2009 headline. Who'd have thought? The SCO Group is back in the news with plans to auction off its core products so the proceeds can continue its lawsuits over alleged copyright violations in Linux. Is CEO Darl McBride mad? Personally, I thought SCO was long gone but they’re still alive and kicking.

The Amarok team is pleased to announce the release of Magellan, Amarok 2.0.1.1. It includes some of the features users have been waiting for, bugfixes as well as a security fix. Filtering and searching in the playlist is possible again and track queuing as well as "stop after current track" are back. A lot of improvements have been made to MTP device handling and the scripted service API. Mac users can now enjoy Growl support. Read more in the release announcement and try it today.

So, the season of giving has just come and gone, and you’ve received a Linux-based netbook—the popular new class of ultra-cheap, ultra-portable computer. By definition, netbooks are very limited in what they can do; they’re primary meant for accessing the web as well as some moderate office and multimedia use. Their low-speed processor and minimal memory means that they’re just not suited for more intensive applications like gaming or video editing. However, there are things you can do to get the most out of your little machine. For instance, you can swap out the limited OS that comes packaged with most Linux-based netbooks for a much more versatile distro like Ubuntu, which can be customized specifically for netbooks. It’s a somewhat complicated process, but in this guide we’ll walk you through it, step by step, and then we’ll show you how to get around in Ubuntu.

Nowadays a very large number of sites use a dedicated content management system that serves to totally abstract users from the intricacies of learning HTML, DHTML, XHTML and all the other different languages that can be harnessed to produce rich and dynamic websites in favour of having strict controls on look and feel. That's not to say that there isn't a place for good old fashioned web editors; rather that they now provide a complementary set of tools that can enhance a website, turning it into a thing of relative beauty. So, what's the state of editors for Linux and does it get any better than Vi or Emacs? Let's take a look at what options are on offer today.

Yesterday, while looking through the Comdex news feeds, I stumbled across a Mini Mi 1000 HP product announcement from HP. The Mini Mi retails from just $329.99 and ships with Mobile Internet, a "user-friendly, all-inclusive interface built on Linux". What caught my eye on the product page wasn't the description of the GUI, it was what followed on the next line. Preceded by "Please note" in bold, the HP page states "the Linux command line interface is disabled on this edition."

2008 was a big year for indie gaming. With the likes of Braid, Castle Crashers, World of Goo, and a host of other titles raking up big sales numbers, the indie gaming industry is growing right alongside its bigger brother. And, like the indie film industry before it, the smaller, more humble sector of the industry garners a lot of adoration and respect from its faithful followers. But now that the indie sector is growing, how does one stand out from the pack? According to one indie developer, the answer is simple: make games for Mac OS X and Linux.

While you were likely to be opening up Christmas presents, Linus Torvalds was giving Linux users around the world a special present: the release of the next major Linux kernel: Linux 2.6.28. I had some time to tinker with this latest and greatest Linux, and it's my kind of Christmas present: solid improvements to my favorite operating system. Here are the five features that I think most of us will appreciate the most as we move into the New Year.

Thomas Hellström of Tungsten Graphics is preparing to release a new DRM module and Mesa 3D driver that supports some of VIA's older hardware -- and eventually their newest graphics processors. This work done by Thomas includes a memory manager similar to the Graphics Execution Manager and a stable AGP command submission mechanism. This new code will also allow for kernel mode-setting on VIA hardware in the future. The hardware supported by this new VIA 3D code is the CX700 and older Unichrome IGPs...

Red Hat Engineer Michael DeHaan talks about why he developed Cobbler, and how it simplifies network installations for datacenters and other large-scale linux environments.

The Climate Savers Computing Initiative is on the front lines of the battle against global climate change. Their mission? To convince you that saving power is good for both Mother Earth and the bottom line. The Green Penguin chats with Pat Tiernan, Climate Savers' new executive director, to see what the future holds for this green-IT organization. read more

'Spy' photos of the forthcoming Android-based Kogan Agora caused a kerfuffle, but there's a noticeable difference between what was shown and what will ship. The basic model will be priced at $A299, or you could shell out an extra hundred bucks for the Pro version with a 2 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi connectivity and GPS. Don't forget that these are outright prices for unlocked phones.

When checking out a recent daily LiveCD of Ubuntu 9.04 (the Jaunty Jackalope), the migration wizard found in the Ubiquity installer now supports migrating files from an Ubuntu installation. With Ubuntu 7.04 the Ubuntu Migration Assistant was introduced into the LiveCD installer to automatically transfer documents, pictures, bookmarks, and even the wallpaper from a Microsoft Windows installation on the hard drive over to Ubuntu. Two years later it's now beginning to work nicely if you want to transfer your documents and settings from an earlier Ubuntu Linux installation into a fresh Ubuntu installation. Right now though the only option we were presented with is for transferring our Mozilla Firefox settings and bookmarks from an Ubuntu 8.10 setup into this latest Jaunty build...

Vietnam's minister of information and communications, Le Doan Hop, has reportedly asked national and local government IT workers to switch all servers to source software prior to June 30, 2009. Hop also reportedly mandated that all government workers use open source in their jobs prior to 2010. The paper suggests Hop explicitly endorsed OpenOffice, Mozilla ThunderBird, Mozilla FireFox, and Unikey, a Vietnamese typing program.

Cisco Systems is claiming that international interest in its recently launched contest for router-centric application development has been so strong that it must extend the first-phase deadline from Jan. 12 to Feb. 27.

Having met so many of you at Akademy last year, I am now glad to notify you guys that we have approval from Bayero University Kano Nigeria to host the Free and Open Source Nigeria 2009 conference on 6th to 9th March. We want to invite KDE contributors and users including organisations and companies who want to come and give talks or workshops during the event. We are expecting more than 2000 participants from within and outwith the university. We will be glad to receive guests from all over the world, especially people with vast experiences in open source.

AMD's Alex Deucher has announced the release of the xf86-video-ati 6.10.0 driver. This open-source ATI graphics driver update brings forth bi-cubic scaling on R300/400/500/690 chipsets, new ASICs are supported by this DDX driver, reduced X-Video tearing, and quite a few bug-fixes.

The whole list of changes found in xf86-video-ati 6.10.0 can be read on the X.Org mailing list...

Back in September we talked about the possibility of America's Army returning to Linux with the 3.0 release. One of the America's Army developers mentioned that it's a possibility and there may be a way to get the client restored and updated on Linux...

Late last month the open-source community was presented with Chrome 9 series DRM support as the first step in providing 3D acceleration for these VIA IGPs atop a free software stack. Today we have been greeted with more patches from VIA's Bruce Chang.

The patches submitted to the DRI-devel mailing list fix a system hang with multi X support, fix a system hang issue caused by 3D scaling+ACPI, and address a segmentation fault when playing video with AGP after resuming from the system suspend mode.

These VIA driver fixes will likely find their way into the Linux 2.6.29 kernel...