Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

When hearing the word interface, most people probably think of a Graphical User Interface or a physical hardware interface (serial, USB). If you dabble in scripting or are a serious developer, you, no doubt, are familiar with the concept of software interfaces as well. Occasionally, the need arises to integrate disparate systems where an interface doesn't already exist, but with a little ingenuity, an interface can be created to bridge the disparity and help you meet your specific needs.

Well, it pains Linux Girl to have to write these words, but it looks like the "Death of Desktop Linux" story is back for another round. Yes, after countless debates and discussions of the topic ad nauseum over the years -- the most recent being just a few short months ago, in fact -- it recently reared its ugly head again, like a zombie that just won't quit.

The Document Foundation (TDF) has announced that it has joined OASIS (Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), the international standards development consortium which focusses on ebusiness and web service standards, as a Contributor. According to Document Foundation director Italo Vignoli, TDF will primarily focus its efforts on the Technical Committees for the Open Document Format (ODF), representing the open source productivity suite LibreOffice which it sponsors and governs.

Smaller buffers are designed to help avoid bufferbloat. "TCP Fast Open" promises to speed up HTTP connections. The netfilter infrastructure can now use userspace programs to help with connection tracking.

Linux kernel big daddy Linus Torvalds and fellow developer Alan Cox have lashed out at claims that the culture surrounding the operating system's core prevented it from conquering the consumer PC market. The pair also slapped down folks working on the GNOME user interface - a popular package among desktop Linux users - and accused the team of blaming others for GNOME's failings.

Microsoft this week updated its services agreement with subtle, yet potentially significant changes to its policy on privacy and dispute settlement. The company notified users of the changes in an e-mail sent Friday, informing them that the new Terms of Service would go into effect on October 19th. Apparently taking its cue from Google, Microsoft's revised policy allows the company to access and display user content across all of its cloud properties..

For years now, there has been a lot of talk about the "fractured" Linux Desktop environment. It's an easy argument to make, given the number of distros, desktop choices the user has and the number of apps that may perform the same function. The argument has been made so many times over the years that it's not necessary for citation. If you feel it is, Google is your friend....knock yourself out.

As the remaining founders of Diaspora hand the project over to the community, Glyn Moody asks what lessons we can learn from the success and failure of a free software project and considers the importance of thinking about what happens next.

Whenever one looks at the mobile patent wars, it is natural to conclude that everybody is suing everybody else. Thus far, though, that has not actually been true. Google has been on the receiving end of a number of lawsuits, either directly or indirectly via attacks on manufacturers shipping Android devices, but Google has not, itself, launched patent attacks against others. That situation has just changed, though, with the report that Google has filed a case against Apple with the US International Trade Commission.

LXer Feature: 03-Sept-2012

For your long weekend reading pleasure I bring you more on the Apple v. Samsung court proceedings, Firefox 15 goes on a memory diet, Linus shows his love for the Gnome desktop again, Apparently Apple killed the Linux desktop and no one told me and Baldur's Gate might get ported to Linux. Enjoy

Lost your shell connection? Need multiple shell sessions? You are logged into your remote server via SSH and happily plucking along at your keyboard and then it happens. Suddenly, the characters stop moving and then you get the dreaded “Connection Closed” message. You have just lost your session. You were halfway through some task and now you have to start over. Ugh. Well you can prevent this from happening by using screen. The Linux screen tool can not only save you from disconnection disasters, but it also can increase your productivity by using multiple windows within one SSH session. I use this tool all of the time in our server management work.

Months after Hewlett-Packard originally announced the open source version of webOS, the beta version of the platform is on its way out the door. Friday's release includes two environments for developers. The first is the desktop build, which is boasted to provide "the ideal development environment" for designing the webOS user experience with more features and integrating other open source technologies on the Ubuntu desktop.

Not to be outdone by Local Motors and their open source Rally Fighter vehicle, the team at MakerPlane is hard at work on version 1.0 of their open source aircraft. While they are still at least 2 years away from a working prototype, things are moving along briskly and the team is ready to show off some of their results.

"Release early, release often" is a popular mantra in the open source world. Unfortunately, some developers don't pay enough attention to it – and contribute to the reputation that Linux offers bad support for current hardware.

With the rise of NoSQL, it's easy to assume that old-school relational databases are simply living out their dinosaur dreams for legacy applications. But a funny thing happened on the way to the SQL cemetery: PostgreSQL became cool again. Yes, PostegreSQL.

In a tweet just hours ago from @TrentOster of BioWare, the first indication of a new Baldur’s Gate for Linux was revealed. The tweet reveals plans to bring Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition to Linux.

If you're a regular reader of this column, you may remember that I recently took a look at Cloud TV's HD Widgets, an app for creating your own elegant, translucent widgets to replace ugly stock widgets that appear to permeate today's Android phones -- Motorola, I'm referring to you mainly.

SUSE has announced the introduction of SUSE Cloud, the company's own distribution of OpenStack. The Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offering enables organisations to set up their own local cloud instance that behaves similarly to public cloud services such as Amazon EC2.

According to a blog posting by Sean Michael Kerner, Linus Torvalds has declared his intention to jump the version number of the Linux kernel up to 4.0 when the second version number of the current branch gets close to reaching "the 30s". At the current kernel development speed, Linux 3.29 would be released in the autumn of 2016.

Better management of memory and updates highlight the latest release of the Mozilla Foundation's Web browser, Firefox 15. Firefox's development team has steadily improved the browser's memory management over recent months, but with this release of the program, it's targeting a major contributor to the software's piggish memory ways: add-on applications.