Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

The GNOME Project has dropped another update to the GNOME 3 platform, just a year after the first release of GNOME 3. The second update of GNOME 3 offers a few new features, applications, and improvements that might make it worth a second look for GNOME traditionalists. To test GNOME 3.4 as it approached its final release, I installed the Fedora 17 alpha. As usual, if you really want to ride the leading edge of software development, Fedora is a good place to start. (Which is not to say other distros aren't good for leading edge software, by the way.) I also checked out the GNOME 3.4 live CD provided by the GNOME folks.

If first person shooters aren't your thing, you are not interested in Trine 2, or just too impatient waiting for Source games on Linux, there's a new Linux game that was released today: Linux Tycoon.

The open database of the corporate world, OpenCorporates, has announced that it has passed the milestone of having 40 million companies in its database. It also noted that the fifty-second jurisdiction, Mauritius, has been added, and that it is moving from alpha to beta, though it admits it should have done that "some time ago".

The Linux Foundation has released its annual report on the state of the software, and reports that Microsoft has made it into the Top 20 of companies that sponsor development of the Linux kernel – quite a change for the operating system Steve Ballmer used to dismiss as a cancer. For contributions made to the kernel since version 2.6.36, Microsoft ranks 17th, with Redmond's contribution estimated at 1 per cent of the whole. The top contributing companies were Red Hat, Intel, and Novell. Samsung and Texas Instruments were also named as fast-growing contributors, reflecting an increase in interest in Linux for mobile and embedded systems.

PubSubHubbub is an open protocol of web hooks for notifications of updates to news feeds in a publish/subscribe framework. It is defined as a set of HTTP server-to-server interactions integrated into Atom and RSS extensions. Despite the odd name, PubSubHubbub is fairly straightforward to use for designing applications with a lot of information updates. Learn about the standard and open-source implementations and support software for PubSubHubbub.

Google's Go programming language has reached version 1.0. Go represents Google's attempt to combine the best attributes of dynamically typed language with those of statically typed, compiled langauges. "Google's computer scientists believe there's a better mousetrap and they're right, but ... they have to be aware that [widespread adoption is] going to be a long process," said IDC's Al Hilwa.

The Star Trek tricorder has become a reality, thanks to the hobby project of a cognitive science researcher. Dr. Peter Jansen has developed a handheld mobile computing device that has a number of sophisticated embedded sensors. The device is modeled after the distinctive design of the 24th-century tricorder.

Developer Dmitry Grinberg has apparently managed to boot Ubuntu Linux up to the shell on an Atmel 8-bit microcontroller; this has led some to ask if he's a genius or a madman. Since normal Linux distributions expect to find a 32-bit processor and a memory management unit (MMU), Grinberg had to overcome several obstacles. For example, he didn't hesitate to write an ARM emulator (ARMv5TE) for the ATmega1284p, which is slightly overclocked at 24 MHz. The developer said that he chose ARM because he was already familiar with this technology and because Linux runs on ARM processors.

Red Hat is widely expected to crack a billion dollars in revenue in today’s earning call. This achievement will finally put to bed the argument that "nobody can make money with open source." I want to congratulate Red Hat for this incredible achievement. However, I would also like to use this occasion to show that there is significantly more at play here. It isn't just the billion dollars Red Hat is making with open source; there are many more reasons why Linux and open source are fundamental building blocks of the future:

KDE Cascadia will be held in partnership with LinuxFest Northwest (LFNW) in Bellingham, Washington on April 28 and 29, 2012. This is a pilot of regional KDE gatherings in conjunction with established grassroots FOSS conferences to reduce the effort and expense associated with a single annual stand-alone meeting, and to increase user and developer involvement in KDE. The LFNW Organizers warmly welcome the KDE Community.

Windows might be on the rise in the world of embedded systems, but if IDC's prognostications are right, then Windows is about to get its kernel handed to it with the rise of Android on what the market researcher dubs "smart connected devices." By IDC's reckoning, makers of PCs, tablets, and smartphones shipped some 916 million units of machinery in 2012, raking in an astounding $489bn in moolah.

With the official release of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" being less than one month away, the feature freeze having long passed, and the kernel freeze being imminent, it's time for the usual biannual Ubuntu Linux benchmarking festivities at Phoronix. In the coming days and weeks there will be numerous articles looking at the performance of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS when it comes to its desktop/workstation performance, boot performance, power consumption, and all sorts of other figures to judge the performance of Ubuntu's Precise Pangolin release. One area from the testing thus far that has stood out has been the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS performance on older PC hardware, but unfortunately it's not standing out for a good reason.

"If we see light at the end of the tunnel, it is the light of the oncoming train" ~ Robert Lowell. Oh yes, another good quote. This post is on SSH tunneling, or as I like to call it 'Poor Man's VPN'. Contrary to the sysadmin's popular belief, SSH tunneling actually can be very valuable use for both techies and home users. I say contrary to popular belief because 'reverse tunneling' and tunneling http traffic through SSH can bypass firewalls and content filters. But this article isn't about how to violate your corporate internet use policy, it's about how to create SSH tunnels to make your life just a little bit easier.

When Maggie Vail first heard about open-source software, she said, “it felt like punk rock.” Ms. Vail, a longtime member of the independent rock music scene, is one of the executive directors of CASH Music, a nonprofit group that wants to bring some of punk’s do-it-yourself spirit to an area that many musicians find frustratingly complex and expensive: managing their music and fan interactions online.

Developers are sucking buggy open-source programming frameworks off the web unaware that newer fixed versions exist, according to a new report. Packages of the Google Web Toolkit, the Spring Model View Controller, and Apache's Struts and Xerces have been downloaded millions of times despite the fact they contain known vulnerabilities - as evidenced by a trawl through the Sonatype.org central repository.

GNOME 3.4, the latest major update to the GNOME3 desktop, is set to be officially released on Wednesday. Here's a look at some of the most interesting features of this biannual GNOME update.

Iceland has kicked off a migration project to put its public institutions on a strict diet of free and open source software. The move will affect a wide variety of institutions, and it could result in savings for the country's cash-strapped government. However, just because software is free as in beer and free as in freedom doesn't mean maintenance will come at no cost.

A new version, simply labelled "2012_3_24", of the Parted Magic open source, multi-platform partitioning tool has been released. According to lead developer Patrick Verner, the update fixes a number of issues related to interaction between the BusyBox tool collection and Clonezilla, and upgrades a number of the included applications.

More than 50 percent of the world’s largest corporations have open source applications with security vulnerabilities. That’s because more than 80 percent of software applications built in-house by enterprise developers incorporate open source components and frameworks that may be vulnerable.

LXer Feature: 26-Mar-2012

The latest installment of the LXer Weekly Roundup for your reading pleasure.