Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

The latest release of the RabbitMQ messaging platform, RabbitMQ 3.0, includes plugins that support Web-STOMP, which allows the text-oriented STOMP protocol to run over WebSockets, and MQTT, the machine-to-machine/"Internet of Things" connection protocol.

It's a general matter of course in any given year that as Thanksgiving draws ever closer, more than a few Linux bloggers begin to wax sentimental about their favorite operating system, often recounting all the many reasons they're thankful it exists. It is the start of the season of thankfulness, after all. This year, the usual pattern doesn't seem to have happened.

Linux now supports network address translation (NAT) for IPv6. Other new features include server-side support for Google's TCP Fast Open (TFO) acceleration trick and a tethering driver for the iPhone 5.

A recently introduced systemd enhancement allows programs to add a unique identifier to log messages sent to systemd's Journal, which lets it retrieve extra information about the logged event from a message catalogue. Developers could, for example, add some further details and internet links concerning an error message to the information in the catalogue; the information could also explain the log data in a user's local language if a suitable translation exists.

A few months ago, I joined Red Hat as a marketing apprentice (intern) in Paris, France—where I am also continuing my studies at France Business School—and it became clear to me that my vision of what open source is and what it means to be part of the community has changed. This evolution has significantly altered the way I am participating in projects and communiticating with peers.

In part due to Steam now being available on Linux, Egosoft wants to hire a Linux game developer to continue bringing their X3 games to the penguin platform...

While FreeBSD 9.1 is running behind schedule, one of the exciting additions to this forthcoming BSD operating system is finally debuting Intel kernel mode-setting on FreeBSD support. The most exciting feature in this release is undoubtedly the availability of Kernel Modesetting and new drivers for intel chipsets. The drivers are not perfectly up-to-date (xf86-video-intel is at 2.17 and mesa is at 7.11) but it is a significant improvement over what was previously available (2.7 and 7.6, respectively).

Perusing the open source news today I came across this piece by “DarkDuck” titled "Top 5 Free Suites to Replace Microsoft Office”. It strikes me as odd that still, towards the end of 2012, the open source community is still interested in replacing the bloated corpse of Microsoft Office. In my mind, we now have so many other options available.

Fancy giving Linux a whirl? Here are all the factors that you should look for when choosing from the wide range of available Linux distributions.

FOSDEM is one of the largest gatherings of Free Software contributors in the world and happens each February in Brussels (This year on the 2nd & 3rd of February). It’s one of the few community-centered conferences in Europe, and the largest volunteer-run Free Software event in Europe as well. Proposals are now invited for talks on KDE, KDE software and general desktop topics. KDE will be in the Cross Desktop Developer Room (devroom), along with Enlightenment, Gnome, Razor, Unity and XFCE. This is a unique opportunity to share KDE with a wide audience of developers.

The Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo Wii are nearing their end. As powerful as they have been in the living room, gamers want more. They want better graphics, new user experiences, and more mobility, as much as those things can be at odds with one another. A new wave of game consoles is rising to meet some of those challenges, but perhaps not all: the Nintendo Wii U doesn’t seem to be that much more powerful than an Xbox 360, and the next Xbox and PlayStation are rumored to use what amounts to mid-range PC hardware in order to save costs.

The OpenStreetMap community has announced that it will host its second global "mapathon" during the weekend of 23–25 November; this time, the event is code-named "Operation Cowboy" and will focus on the US. Concentrating on "armchair mapping", aerial images will be surveyed at local meetings, as well as from home. Based on these surveys, the project will then complement its map material for the US. The campaign has its own official Twitter account and hash tag: #OPC2012.

More than any other program, Samba allows Linux desktops to exist in the world of Windows. In fact, Samba historically has allowed Linux to live secretly in the server room as well. It's possible to emulate a Primary Domain Controller from your Linux server, and Windows machines can't tell the difference. The problem is that Microsoft no longer uses PDCs and has turned to Active Directory.

A bike share program that was supposed to be launched last summer in New York City has come to a halt due to software related issues. I can't help but think that if the software was open source, these problems would have been easily resolved, elimating worrisome delays.

Steam is a great source for any gamer. It is a place that will allow you to try out and enjoy many of the more popular video games that are available on the market today. Steam Greenlight will allow you to vote on games that you would like to see become available. It is a great system for gamers; they do not have to drop $50 to purchase every game off the shelf. They can simply join Steam and enjoy the most popular ones at a reduced price.

Following last month's Btrfs file-system tuning benchmarks, in this article are a similar set of tests when stressing the EXT4 file-system with its various performance-related mount options. Here are a number of EXT4 benchmarks from Ubuntu 12.10 with different mount option configurations.

In a statement on her blog, Mitchell Baker, Chair of the Mozilla Foundation, said that the organisation has its sights firmly set on the mobile space for 2013. The goal is to duplicate the organisation's success with Firefox on the desktop on mobile phones and tablets. "We’re building these products now. We have the financial resources to support these efforts," Baker said. The product in question is Firefox OS, which Mozilla's developers have been working on for the better part of a year. Since Mozilla has had difficulty in bringing full versions of Firefox to iOS, Windows Phone and Windows 8 on tablets, it is now building its own ecosystem based on web technologies including HTML5 and JavaScript.

Android developers often complain about fragmentation of the platform, and Google apparently agrees – so much so that it's written an anti-fragmentation clause into the license terms of the latest Android SDK (software development kit). Under Section 3.4 of Google's new terms and conditions, "You agree that you will not take any actions that may cause or result in the fragmentation of Android, including but not limited to distributing, participating in the creation of, or promoting in any way a software development kit derived from the SDK."

Skype logo Microsoft's Skype division has released version 4.1 of its popular closed source VoIP, video and text chat software for Linux. The latest release of the software, labelled 4.1.0.20, is a major update to the 4.x branch and brings with it enhancements to the application's user interface and several new features, such as support for signing into Microsoft accounts.

Valve's initial roll-out of their Steam client for Linux is all centered around Ubuntu. With Ubuntu having the largest market-share on the Linux desktop, Valve is focusing upon proper Ubuntu support as their first priority. In the days that the Ubuntu/Debian package has been available of the Steam Linux Beta, it's already been reported to work on other Linux distributions. Some Linux distributions have also begun to package the Steam Linux binary for their own platforms, but now there's some concerns about doing this, at least from the Arch Linux camp.