Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Getting started in an unfamiliar open source project seems intimidating because it is intimidating; plunging into the unknown usually is. Navigating new territory is a lot easier with a guide—which is why I recently taught a seminar at Hacker School on "getting started contributing to open source" that mostly amounted to "first, find a mentor."

As a practicing physician in Phuket, he (Dr. Kongkiat Kespechara) became aware of some of the struggles facing hospitals. At one point the Thai government wanted to modernize all the hospitals and demanded that Information Technology be adopted right away. Then he saw the budget. No significant increase was given to help hospitals meet this expensive demand. After some ruminating he realized most of the costs would be tied up in creating the information infrastructure to capture patient records. He thought it would be a huge help to all of the hospitals if an open source solution was developed so they could all share, and called it Hospital OS.

In 2007, the Korean government first held the OSS World Challenge in an effort to promote open source software and bring awareness to developers within the country. Today, the challenge is open to entries from all over the world: OSS projects that were developed within the last year are eligible.

Blue Chip Technology announced a Ubuntu-ready “digital signage player” based on a 1GHz AMD G-Series processor with AMD Radeon HD graphics. The Vario-A2 is packaged in a polished stainless steel enclosure, runs from 0 to 40° C, accommodates internal SATA HDDs and SSDs, and has a mini-PCI Express card socket for functions such as WiFi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, GPS, and 2G/3G modems.

Cheap, low-end PCs -- such as the Raspberry Pi and Parallella -- have become quite popular with do-it-yourself fans. Now, CompuLab, an Israeli computer OEM, is throwing its hat into the ring with its $99 Utilite mini-PC, which might also serve businesses well.

The first release candidate of version 3.11 of the Linux kernel has arrived, and to commemorate the occasion, Linux creator Linus Torvalds has given the kernel a new codename and a new, Microsoft-inspired boot logo to match. As of Sunday, Linux kernel 3.11 is officially named "Linux for Workgroups," borrowing the moniker Microsoft gave to Windows 3.11, way back in 1993.

Ever since the announcement of the Raspberry Pi, sites all across the Internet have offered lots of interesting and challenging uses for this exciting device. Although all of those ideas are great, the most obvious and perhaps least glamorous use for the Raspberry Pi (RPi) is creating your perfect home server.

OpenGL 3.1 support has been done in Mesa for some time, but OpenGL 3.2 is still a work in progress ahead of the Mesa 9.2 release. Holding back proper OpenGL 3.2 support in core Mesa is full GL Shading Language 1.50 support (GLSL 1.50) and finishing up OpenGL Geometry Shaders support. Not all Mesa drivers are supporting OpenGL 3.1~3.2 though with the modern AMD "RadeonSI" Gallium3D driver for instance still being limited to OpenGL 2.1 compliance.

The project aims to run OS X binaries on Linux in a seamless manner by leveraging GNUstep for the Apple Cocoa frameworks and implementing other OS X components needed for offering binary compatibility. The project is similar in nature to Wine but rather than running Windows applications it is about OS X support.

Our latest look at the current development state of Ubuntu 13.10 is comparing the "Saucy Salamander" performance against that of Ubuntu 13.04, 12.10, 12.04.2 LTS, and 11.10. Testing was done with an Intel Sandy Bridge system to see how the Ubuntu Linux performance has evolved over the past two years in the road to the October release of Ubuntu 13.10.

The release of the Open Data Charter by the G8 is testimony to the growing importance of open data worldwide. The Charter recognizes the central role open data can play in improving government and governance and in stimulating growth through innovation in data-driven products and services. It endorses the principle of open by default— also supported in President Obama’s recent Executive Order on open data—and makes clear that open data must be open to all and usable by both machines and humans (as per the Open Definition).

Check-It Solutions is shipping a Linux-based control and monitoring appliance for home and commercial building automation and energy management. The CG-300 Controller runs on a 1.2GHz Marvell Armada 300, offers Ethernet, ZigBee, Z-Wave, and optional LTE, and is available in a turnkey Energy Management Starter Kit with smartphone accessible web-portal services, Energy Star benchmarking, and a Dent metering device.

Since the emergence of strong cloud service providers like Amazon Web Services, Google and Rackspace, software development and deployment is increasingly taking place in the cloud. According to Gartner, cloud computing is expected to grow at a rate of 19% this year. Big industry players including Netflix and eBay already have turned to the cloud for significant proportions of their operations and offerings. And in the next few years, we are likely to see more and more innovative startups like Coupa completely suspended in the cloud, relegating on-premise computing to a vestige of a bygone era.

Viking OS is an open-source head-mounted display (HMD) operating system for wearable computing, including smart glasses. The operating system is derived from FreeBSD to integrate more closely with Apple.

At a press conference in Warsaw, Poland, today, Deutsche Telekom announced that sales of the ALCATEL ONE TOUCH Fire powered by Firefox OS will start soon in Europe. T-Mobile Poland will offer the Firefox OS-powered smartphone via its online sales channels already from tomorrow on and from July 15 nationwide in 850 shops.

How the economics of open source make sense for large scale, national healthcare infrastructure projects. A recent study published by the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, examined "the use of open source electronic health records within the federal safety net."

Freescale is shipping a series of hardware/software development kits for its ARM CPU-based Vybrid F series SoCs, based on an ARM Cortex-A5 core, optionally along with a second ARM core of the Cortex-M4 variety. The kits include Freescale’s compact Tower System hardware accompanied by a customized version of the Eclipse-based ARM DS-5 toolchain.

Open Source Bridge is a conference for developers working with open source technologies and for people interested in learning the open source way. I have a new favourite conference. I spent two days at Open Source Bridge in Portland OR. It’s a fascinating event. I joked at first that it was "very Portland," but what does that really mean?

Google has patched a “master key” vulnerability in Android that was recently identified by Bluebox Security, according to an industry report. The vulnerability, which allowed hackers to modify APK code without breaking an app’s cryptographic signature, could convert 99 percent of all Android apps into malicious Trojans, claimed Bluebox.

As always the Linux kernel community has been busy moving the Linux mainline to another finish line and the stable and extended releases to the next bump in their revisions to fix security and bug fixes. It is a steady and methodical evolution process which is intriguing to follow. Here is my take on the happenings in the Linux kernel world during June 2013.