Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

In the days of yore we had a System V (SysV) type init daemon to manage Linux system startup, and it was good. It was configured with simple text files easily understood by mortals, and it was a friendly constant amid the roiling seas of change. Then came systemd, and once again we Linux users were cast adrift in uncharted waters. Why all this change? Can't Linux hold still for just a minute?

Novell and SUSE Linux may technically be separate companies, but they are owned by the same Attachmate conglomerate and they still have to work together on specific products, such as Open Enterprise Server, which bolts NetWare print and file services to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

LXer Feature: 12-Dec-2011

In this week's Roundup we have another dagger in the heart of the desktop proclaimed, the Mozilla - Google deal still lives, a cool developerWorks article on shells in Linux, HP to contribute webOS to FOSS, Glyn moody and the Open Source TCO as well as the late addition of a LXer Feature entitled "Gnome 3, Try 3". Enjoy!

LXer Feature: 11-Dec-2011

I just finished my third try with gnome 3. This time was the longest. I spent the month of November using it daily.

It's starting to look like the end of an era for Ubuntu users as Canonical mull the creation of an ISO that won't fit onto a CDR. The question is, does it matter? Canonical owes at least part of its success with Ubuntu Linux to the unique way that it has been distributed. From the start it has been available as a downloadable ISO image and a free CD, posted at no cost to the user. This was great news for people who wanted to install Linux but did not have the luxury of a decent Internet connection. In a sense, installing via a CDR image has always been like a kind of cache, in that you're moving part of the content that you need onto permanent storage rather than pulling it through the network connection.

Most, but not all, open-source apps are being welcomed by Microsoft into the Windows 8 Windows Store. The Store’s App Developer Agreement (here) allows developers to build their apps for download and installation on Windows 8 machines using any open-source licence as long as it has been approved by the Open-Source Initiative (OSI). The OSI is the body that monitors all open-source licences.

On the Linux Planet, success begets more success. Linux revenue continues to rise, which continues to fuel more demand for Linux and more development. This past week, the first alpha release of Ubuntu 12.04 debuted, and GNOME developers came to the conclusion that every detail matters.

LXer Feature: 05-Dec-2011

In the LXWR this week we have the news of a secret application on millions of smart phones that logs everything you do, Cloud predictions for 2012, Continued debate over Distrowatch rankings, R.C. Harner responds to Lisa Hann's "Disadvantages of Using Linux." article and Linus says he is actually starting to like Gnome 3. Enjoy!

Over the last four years or so, I have attended numerous conferences in many different locations. It has been, really without any exceptions, an incredible experience. Conferences are one of the main ways that our communities come together and meet face-to-face—something that's important to counterbalance the standard email and IRC development environment. In that time, I have also seen many different ways to organize, schedule, and produce those conferences, and, as is the case with free software projects, there are bits and pieces that conferences can learn from each other. What follows is my—fairly opinionated obviously—distillation of what works well and less well, which will hopefully be useful as new conferences spring up, or as existing ones plan for next year.

The Apache Software Foundation has come under withering attacks lately, with accusations of its politics and bureaucracy getting in the way of its ability to foster open-source software. The common rallying cry of the Apache attackers is GitHub, a source-control system that has almost blossomed overnight into the industry's top open-source code repository. But while GitHub clearly does offer a superior code-hosting alternative to Apache and other foundations in many respects, it is deficient in one of the most important ways: branding.

This is perhaps the easiest authentication helper to configure in Squid, but also the most insecure. The biggest problem with Basic is it transmits username and password in clear text, hence very susceptible to network sniffing or man in the middle type attacks. The only reason I'm writing about it is it's a valid authentication mechanism in some limited circumstances. Secondly I want to show you how authentication has evolved over the years.

The votes are in, the tallies are counted, the hanging chads have been evaluated, and we have our winners. This year holds a few surprises, a couple dominant players and as much open source as you can handle. We don't encourage gambling here at Linux Journal, but if you had an office pool going for pizza money, it's officially too late to make your wager.

Over the last couple of years the KDE Mobile project has been evolving as it targeted many embedded platforms. Currently, the focus is on the shiny Nokia gadgets (N9 and N950) running the platform called Harmattan. Eleven talented developers met in person at a recent KDE Sprint, giving a boost to porting KDE Applications onto this platform, creating new working relationships, and discussing various issues around the KDE Mobile project for handsets.

The Duqu malware that targeted industrial manufacturers around the world may have been spawned by a well-funded team of competent coders, but their command of Linux led to some highly amateur mistakes.

Backup company Acronis has changed its CEO: Jason Donahue has been replaced by Alex Pinchev, who has been an Acronis board member since November 2010. Before that he had been at Red Hat for nine years, most recently as president for global sales, services and field marketing.

The Southern California Linux Expo is proud to announce a conference for the next generation of free and open source (FOSS) community enthusiasts. SCALE: The Next Generation will be held Saturday, January 21, 2012, at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport hotel. We invite the youth of the FOSS community to share their enthusiasm and excitement about FOSS projects with the other young people. Talk submissions are reviewed by a committee of youths, parents, and volunteers planning the conference and evaluated solely on their merits. We request that submission dates be strictly honored in order to provide the committee enough time to choose the best set of proposals.

A new version of Parted Magic, simply labelled "2011_11_24", has been released. According to the release announcement post on the project's News page, the update to the open source, multi-platform partitioning tool includes the 3.1.2 Linux kernel and brings "some major changes that might cause some issues with the Multi-Boot-CD crowd".

LXer Feature: 27-Nov-2011

In the Roundup this week we have why Linux isn't just for geeks, Steven Rosenberg wants to keep it our Internet, LibreOffice might get a visual touch up, syslog may not be around for long and an apology to the Debian community. Enjoy!

The massive blockbuster Avatar reintroduced 3D to the 21st century. The big difference from the previous 3D invasions was digital technology. Optically and physiologically the principle was the same: pairs of frames, representing a left eye view and a right eye view, are presented (near-) simultaneously to the viewer. The 3D picture then gets assembled by the human brain.

Kindle Fire users may have to damp their enthusiasm for rooting their devices: unless they’re prepared to chase up some other fixes and put up with some inconvenience, rooting the device kills video access.