Showing headlines posted by Sander_Marechal

When it comes to Linux, most U.S. headlines involve Canonical, Novell or Red Hat. But another Linux distribution — from Mandriva S.A. of Paris, France — is making a name for itself in the global IT channel. Consider this: More than 2,000 IT partners have lined up to back Mandriva, up from about 1,200 in 2007, The VAR Guy has learned. Here’s the scoop.

[So their partner channel grows a lot, but they still have to cut back massively? Are their partners not bringing in any money then? - Sander]

Sun Microsystems, it is generally felt, lost the desktop to Microsoft a long time ago. Aware of this, Sun in recent years evangelized mobile as Java's habitat - mobile is, after all, where Microsoft's at its weakest. It's with great ceremony, then, that Sun's marking the fact it comprehensively missed that JavaFX Mobile deadline by returning to the desktop with the scheduled launch today of JavaFX Desktop 1.0 - now just JavaFX 1.0. Linux, meanwhile, is the new Java for mobile it seems. Linux looks set to grow in the mobile space, with ABI Research last year predicting there'd be more than 127 million devices using Linux by 2012, up from 8.1 million in 2007.

Bouncing along the bottom of a recession is not where most people think of doing long term planning. But open source doesn’t think first about money, so the Open World Forum has taken a long, hard look into the deep future of the year 2020. (I will be 64 when that year opens, hence the headline.)

There is no doubt that people are leaving Windows, many going to the Mac and some are turning to Linux. This is partly due in part to dissatisfaction with Vista. The reason isn’t important. What is happening to the Linux community is. We see that Windows users are having an impact on the Linux community that we may not have anticipated. Windows users aren’t used to choice. For them the array of choices that Linux presents is confusing.

If you use GUI then you can right-click on the pictures and see properties. But can you see the image properties (or metadata) from command line interface? Yes! you can do that using identify command. Here is how.

While Novell may be the second largest commercial Linux distributor, it still gets the bulk of its sales off of NetWare and related products. The Open Enterprise Server hybrid, which puts NetWare services on top of SUSE Enterprise Linux, bridges the gap for Novell, and today, OES got a service pack to make it more appealing. The company also announced that it has merged its ZENworks systems management tools with its recently acquired PlateSpin virtualization management tools and put them under a single PlateSpin brand.

Michael Geist describes his film: "The open source software movement figures prominently - Red Hat co-founder Bob Young describes the role of copyright policy in the development of Linux, while Russell McOrmond, who leads a Canadian open source group, explains the effects of DMCA-style laws. Why Copyright? Canadian Voices on Copyright Law, which I produced together with Daniel Albahary, features a wide range of Canadian voices."

If you've recently switched from Windows to the Linux distribution Ubuntu, you've probably experienced a decrease in spyware -- and malware in general -- on your system. But although Ubuntu is billed as the ultra-secure solution, you should know that even though Ubuntu's default install has its flaws, like every other operating system. To combat these weaknesses, IT Security has prepared a guide to help you close your system's backdoors and protect you from some of the common Ubuntu exploits.

There are many reasons why you would want to generate bogus data for your database. Perhaps you’d like to know how well your databases will perform when filled with data, or maybe you just need some data so that you can start creating a front end for the database. I recently ran into the problem of not wanting to generate lots of data manually. I initially thought that I would write a shell script to do this, but figured I might as well look around first. I stumbled across a program called Spawner which is great for generating data for database testing.

The Alfresco Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) whitepaper, based on publicly available pricing from a range of vendors, shows how it is possible to save, in the first year of implementation (based on a 1000 user configuration) up to 89 percent of the cost of SharePoint purchases and up to 96 percent of the cost of other ECM solutions by using Alfresco's open source ECM. The whitepaper aims to demystify some of the complexity around current proprietary ECM pricing and demonstrate how choosing and implementing an open source ECM solution can be a transparent and cost-effective process.

Teri Takai, California CIO: "We’re going to be moving away from some of our older mainframe technologies, running on COBOL. We’re moving definitely towards greater use of open source, to either a dot-net of Java environment for development. We’re moving towards many more services as self-service.."

With the JShot screen capture and uploader utility, you can quickly put all or part of your screen on the Web and send a URL to it to a friend. JShot is free for noncommercial use, and is great when you want to show people a screen capture and don't want to have to deal with file names and upload permissions.

If you’ve shied away from Linux because of the hassle of working with removable media, you may want to take another look. Thanks to automation — and with the help of these tips — you may find that removable media is downright user friendly.

Domino’s Pizza will now come with a remote control – your brand-new TiVo box. Early in 2009, you will be able to order a Domino’s Pizza delivered right to your door. All you need do now is give the delivery guy your front-door key and you’ll never leave the sofa again.

David Boies, founding partner of Boies, Schiller & Flexner and the DOJ's special trial counsel in the Microsoft case. - Berkman Center Channel.

Looks like the Times Online’s report about Microsoft offering $20 billion to buy Yahoo was bogus, with key figures in both the Microsoft and Yahoo camps saying there’s no truth to the story. The thing is, the denials could be yet more misinformation...

It's time for me to wear my special hat again. The Fedora developer community has announced the official release of Fedora 10, a new version of the popular open source Linux distribution. This release is a promising step forward for Fedora and it introduces some important new features and technologies that bring more robustness and usability to the desktop user experience. Fedora 10 is built on Linux kernel version 2.6.27, which was officially released in October. This version comes with improved compatibility for popular webcam devices and also includes the new Atheros ath9k wireless driver.

Silicon Graphics have always made great workstations. I’m not just talking about brutal 3D monsters that could apply video feeds as textures in real time (over a decade ago). The machines are responsive and balanced, and this makes them perfect for general desktop use. Annoyingly, too, as it means when I’m on the road and using my Macbook, I’m constantly frustrated by a gutless machine with a glitzy UI that gets in the way and slows things down. With IRIX officially dead, the Open Source community is the only place any sort of IRIX-related development is happening. The crew over at Nekochan have developed Nekoware, an entire distribution of Open Source apps ported to IRIX, tuned and optimised for MIPS.

Not everyone who uses Linux today has done so because of carefully reasoning that it is a better operating system than the others on offer. People enter the Linux fold due to different reasons and those who stay there go through several stages of growth. This article has nothing to do with the person who takes careful stock of things and the migrates over after weighing carefully the pros and cons. It deals with the others.

With all of the talk these days about the desktop Linux taking on Windows in the enterprise sector, have you ever considered that with some simple compromises, using Linux desktops running different thin clients can work very well within the confines of what most businesses need? The real trick is ensuring that application functionality and familiarity remain intact. I believe there is such a tool that will allow this to happen – indeed, it has worked well for many computing environments already. Enter Thinstation

[Matt on Datamation? What has the world come to? And with picture too! - Sander]