Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Linus Torvalds, Linux’s primary creator, hasn’t been happy with the direction his formerly favorite Linux desktop interface, GNOME, has gone. In fact, Torvalds downright hates GNOME 3.x. He’ll get no argument from me. I hate GNOME 3.x too. Recently though, Torvalds has start toying with Google’s new Chrome operating system’s Aura interface and, guess what, he kind of likes it.

The updates to PHP versions 5.3.12 and 5.4.2 released on Thursday do not fully resolve the vulnerability that was accidentally disclosed on Reddit, according to the discoverer of the flaw. The bug in the way CGI and PHP interact with each other leads to a situation where attackers can execute code on affected servers. The issue remained undiscovered for eight years.

Today KDE released updates for its Workspaces, Applications, and Development Platform. These updates are the third in a series of monthly stabilization updates to the 4.8 series. 4.8.3 updates bring many bugfixes and translation updates on top of the latest edition in the 4.8 series and are recommended updates for everyone running 4.8.2 or earlier versions. As the release only contains bugfixes and translation updates, it will be a safe and pleasant update for everyone. KDE’s software is already translated into more than 55 languages, with more to come.

A Web server needs to support concurrency. The server should service clients in a timely, fair manner to ensure that no client starves because some other client causes the server to hang. Multiprocessing and multithreading, and hybrids of these, are traditional ways to achieve concurrency. Node.js represents another way, one based on system libraries for asynchronous I/O, such as epoll (Linux) and kqueue (FreeBSD). To highlight the trade-offs among the approaches, I have three echo servers written in close-to-the-metal C: a forking_server, a threading_server and a polling_server.

Suppose you are a C++ developer and you need to do some prototyping quickly in Ruby. When you pick up a Ruby reference book like the Pickaxe or browse the Ruby site, you see familiar constructs like class declaration, support for threads, and exception handling. Just when you thought you knew how Ruby works, you realize that concurrency in your Ruby code is not behaving like Boost threads, catch and throw are not what they seem, and others have used something called self all over the place in their Ruby script. Welcome to Ruby!

Microsoft announced on Monday that it would invest $300 million in Barnes & Noble’s Nook division for a 17.6 percent stake. The deal values the e-reader business at $1.7 billion. The move by Microsoft will help bolster the standing of Barnes & Noble’s fastest-growing unit. The bookstore giant had said this year that it was exploring strategic options for the business, including a potential divestiture or strategic partnership.

The Akademy 2012 Program Committee is proud to present the Akademy 2012 Sessions. Given the broad nature of KDE, the proposals submitted contained a wealth of interesting and valuable topics. From those, 28 proposals were selected that we felt would address the most relevant topics and be deep enough in the areas of most interest to the KDE Community.

SugarCRM has just debuted a controlled release of version 6.5 of its flagship open source CRM offering. In many ways, the release is an iterative change -- it does not represent the same major shift in functionality and user interface as version 6 did, when it was launched in 2010. In one key way, however, the new version is significantly different: The user interface is much more oriented to search technology.

The Debian Project produces an entirely Free operating system that empowers its users to be in control of the software running their computers. These days, more and more computing is being moved away from user computers to the so-called cloud – a vague term often used to refer to Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings. We are concerned that, without the needed care, this trend might put in jeopardy most of the freedoms that users enjoy when running (on their computers) software that is Free according to the Debian Free Software Guidelines.

Text editors that get out of the way and minimize complicated features can be desirable, depending on what you're doing and how you like to work. But Advanced Easy Editor takes "bare bones" to a painful extreme. Both strains of the app are reminiscent of sitting at a terminal running Unix. Perhaps they're just what's needed for a certain kind of job, but without so much as a text wrap feature, their appeal is highly limited.

Virtual Network Computing (VNC) is a popular tool for providing remote access to computers. The usual VNC configuration is optimized for single-user workstations, and logging in to the VNC port directly accesses a single user's desktop. This configuration is awkward on multiuser computers, however. Fortunately, you have an alternative. By linking VNC to a Linux computer's normal X Display Manager Control Protocol (XDMCP) server, accessing the VNC port enables users to provide their user names and passwords, thereby enabling a single VNC server instance to handle multiple user logins.

Intel is finally announcing the first Ivy Bridge processors this morning. I have been extensively testing out the Intel Core i7 3770K, the current high-end Ivy Bridge processor, for the past few weeks under Ubuntu Linux. I have been extremely pleased with the Intel Core i7 Ivy Bridge processor under Linux with its phenomenal performance, power efficiency, and new features. This article is the first of many looking at the Linux performance of the new Intel Ivy Bridge processors.

It doesn't happen often here in the Linux blogosphere that FOSS fans agree unanimously on -- well, on pretty much anything. Truth be told, there's generally good reason for the dissension. Take Microsoft's latest maneuvers, for example -- are they good news? Bad news? It's not always easy to tell. Last week, however, one of those rare announcements was made that brought universal joy to Linux aficionados around the globe.

Ohio LinuxFest is very pleased to announce that Wendy Seltzer will be keynote speaker at the 2012 event, to be held September 28-30 at the Greater Columbus convention Center. Wendy Seltzer is Policy Counsel to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and a Fellow with Yale Law School's Information Society Project, researching openness in intellectual property, innovation, privacy, and free expression online.

LXer Feature: 22-Apr-2012

In the Roundup this week we have word of the first Raspberry Pi computers being delivered, Larry Ellison knocks Oracle's own Linux strategy, Linus Torvalds is up for a Millennium Technology Prize, Joey Bernard expounds on science the GNU Way, The Slackware website continues to be down, Guillermo Garron's iptables cheat sheet and contrary to popular belief Mandriva is alive. Enjoy!

Last October I wrote about the sad state of the Free Software Foundation's high priority projects... Most of the projects are basically not going anywhere. Many of them at the time were not really advancing in their goals, haven't had releases in a while, or coding hasn't even started. It's been more than a half-year and still there's no significant work towards clearing many of projects from the FSF list.

Keith Packard has been working on the X window system since the early days, but more recently has been doing lots of work to enable its replacement. X has long held the position as the way that graphics is done on Linux (and other Unix) systems, but that is changing. He came to the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, which was held April 3-5 in San Francisco, to talk about the Wayland protocol and the Weston server, and how they could interoperate with X. Wayland looks to be an interesting change for desktop graphics on Linux. Wayland is an alternative window system, and is part of long-term effort to integrate more modern technology into the Linux desktop. But there are lots of existing X applications out there that need a migration path so that they don't have to be rewritten. That's part of the plan too, Packard said.

Open-source poster child Linus Torvalds, who kickstarted development of the Linux operating system kernel, has been nominated for the €1m Millennium Technology Prize - but says he's "no visionary" and is surprised Linux has been so successful. Torvalds and stem cell engineer Dr Shinya Yamanaka are finalists for the gong - one of the world's top awards for science and handed out once every two years by the Technology Academy of Finland. The award, worth £817k ($1.3m), recognises technology innovations that improve the quality of human life.

The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that Linux Creator and Linux Foundation Fellow Linus Torvalds is a Millennium Technology Prize laureate. This prize, determined by the Technology Academy of Finland, is one of the world’s largest such prizes with candidates sought from across the world and from all fields of technology.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison showed his trademark brashness on the witness stand, as the trial over Google's use of Java code in Android began in earnest. However, his testimony was less than smooth, at times, and may have abetted the enemy. It wasn't just the gift he handed to opposing counsel with his admission of an interest in the smartphone market, said tech analyst Rob Enderle. "He also stumbled about certain aspects of Java."