Showing headlines posted by Sander_Marechal

Nokia is on the side of openness in the mobile industry -- in fact, history says it's inevitable, according to, Bob Iannucci, chief technology officer of Nokia Corp. Openness seems paramount, but how to get there? The telecom world isn't the model, Iannucci said. "If we imagine the telecoms' way of doing that, you imagine these smoke-filled rooms where people make a decision, and seven years later, some outdated technology comes out. We can't do that," he said. But neither can mobile vendors realistically replicate what the computer industry keeps doing. The mainframe, minicomputer, and PC worlds each saw the value get sucked out of hardware and shifted first to software, then to services. Computers had dominant players that dictated some hardware standards, though; mobile phone vendors aren't likely to let one player decide everything, no matter how popular the iPhone gets.

[Read between the lines. It's yet another industry who's business model is threatened by openness and who's afraid of actually having to provide services to make money instead of peddling cheap hardware at too high prices. - Sander]

I’m an Apple user. Long time, pure bred, never owned anything else. Oh sure, I’ve used Windows machines, but it’s never crossed my mind to use one daily. I mean, Windows? Like most Apple users, the very idea makes me vaguely anxious. When you’re an Apple user, you’re a snob. You feel – no, you know – that your OS is superior. The machines are fast and secure, and they’re gorgeous, too. The Macintosh is, without a doubt, one of my favorite things. I reveal my Apple snobbery because I want you to know where I was coming from when I sat down to try Ubuntu, the Linux distro.

The facts are The Open Source software movement has gone wild. Because no one owns it, because it works great, because it is secure...it has taken on a life of it's own through the millions of people who use it. It has been growing this way for the last ten years, slowly and without any significant marketing help or understanding. It's at a point now, where it can be trusted with your data. It is at a point now where it can be used by the average business person. All that's necessary is a little encouragement to give you the confidence you need. But don't take our word for it, read the facts about why you need to move to the open source software. Read about the wildfire growth.

Linus Torvalds has released the latest version of the "stable" Linux kernel, version 2.6.25, which includes changes to Wi-Fi support, virtualization, real-time scheduling and file systems. The kernel, which was released last Wednesday, approximately 10 weeks after its predecessor, includes broader Wi-Fi hardware support and the integration of more Wi-Fi drivers, according to Linux developers.

Abas Business Solutions (PRC) Ltd. announced today that its Abas ERP system has been honorably awarded the "Winner of Enterprise Resources Planning Software" granted by Linux Pilot's Editorial at the award presentation ceremony at "Linux & OSS Best Solution 2008" held on 17th April. It's the third time that the Abas ERP system has been granted such an award, a position of pride for both Abas' employees and customers.

Sometimes, there isn't much you can do to kick-start your career. Not everyone can be lucky enough to get involved in a high-profile project at work, or to develop a talent in a technology that's suddenly in-demand. But it surprises me when IT professionals who aim to move up the career ladders don't take advantage of one resource that's a win-win solution all around: get involved in an open source project.

In what is being perceived as a move to counter the threat of Linux — a free operating system — in the ultra-low-cost personal computer (ULCPC) segment, Microsoft has extended the sale of Windows XP Home by two years to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) beyond the current deadline of June 30. Linux is the operating system (OS) running the current poster child for low-cost laptops like Asustek Computer’s Eee PC, released in January and costs just Rs 18,000. To counter this, Microsoft maintains that it wants to see Windows on ULCPCs, and wants “to provide the best possible Windows experience for the devices”.

Asustek Computer Inc. on Friday confirmed that it will launch the Eee PC 900 in the U.S. on May 12, and will set $549 as the list price for the new ultralight notebook. The Eee PC 900, which the Taipei-based computer maker unveiled last Tuesday, can be configured with either Microsoft Corp.'s Windows XP Home or the open-source Linux. The price for both configurations, said an Asustek spokesman, is identical: $549. But there are differences. Users who purchase an Eee PC 900 with Linux, however, receive a laptop that boasts 20GB of flash memory-based storage space. Customers who opt for Windows XP, meanwhile, end up with a machine equipped with only 12GB of solid-state storage.

Well, it looks like Richard Stallman, the father of FOSS, is going to have to cut his hair and get a suit because the warmed-over hippie movement he’s been leading is no longer the radical anti-software establishment counter-culture his rag-tag army fancies it is. Nope, it IS the software establishment.

[Yes, I know. It's Maureen O'Gara on SYS-CON. I can't believe my eyes either... - Sander]

A couple of months ago I got a couple of wonderful birthday presents. My lovely geeky girlfriend got me two Western Digital 500 GB SATA 3.0 drives, which were promptly supplemented with a 3ware 9550XS 4-port hardware RAID card. Immediately I came up with the idea for this article. I had just read up on mdadm software RAID so I though it would be perfect to bench mark the hardware RAID against the software RAID using all kinds of file systems, block sizes, chunk sizes, LVM settings, etcetera. Or so I though… As it turns out, my (then) limited understanding of RAID and some trouble with my 3ware RAID cards meant that I had to scale back my benchmark quite a bit. And to top it off I discovered some nasty problems with 3ware 9550 RAID cards under Linux that quickly made me give up on hardware RAID. I still ended up testing various filesystems using different blocksizes and workloads on an mdadm RAID 1 setup, so the results should still prove interesting.

At LugRadio Live this past weekend, Novell developer Miguel de Icaza gave a presentation on Moonlight, an open source implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight web framework. During the presentation, he described the current status of Moonlight and showed some of the ways that it can be used to create richer applications for the Linux desktop.

Red Hat has recently announced that they have "No plans for a traditional consumer desktop". Let me explain why I think Red Hat needs to change their business strategy. First, a short history lesson. Before the arrival of Windows NT Server, Novell Netware claimed 90% of the market for PC based servers. However, Netware made a near fatal mistake when they did not provide a GUI interface soon enough. So server administrators became familiar with Windows 95 on their desktop, and they naturally preferred Windows NT 4.0 which included the same interface.

It’s funny how some people react when I tell them I use Linux. Sometimes they express the sentiment that I must be very computer savvy. Other’s get caught up in all the brand loyalty hype and still some have never heard of Linux! I kid you not! The truth of the matter is that I switched partly because Windows no longer offered me any challenges and reliability became an issue. The most common question I get asked whenever I present a public speaking seminar is “Why did you switch to Linux?”Well… for all those who asked, here’s the long winded answer.

Google has released Picasa version 2.7 for Linux, which promises many of the same improvements of the PC version, including (drum roll, please) uploading and downloading from Picasa Web Albums.

In many ways the Debian GNU/Linux project is unique among all the distributions that dot the Linux landscape. Apart from putting out a high-grade distribution, it has served as the base for a number of others - Ubuntu and Knoppix, to name just two - which have had a big impact on the growth of the Linux ecosystem. A few days back, the project concluded its elections for the year and Steve McIntyre emerged as the victor in a three-cornered contest. McIntyre may well be the most watched elected official of a non-profit group - the direction the project takes is of vital concern to a great many businesses. He was quick off the blocks when approached for an interview; his prose was clear and concise, his reactions swift.

Switching to Linux can be very daunting, most seasoned Linux users experienced that first hand. After all, at some point they were also “noobs”. However, the Linux community has excelled in making the switch for beginners as easy as possible by providing guides, howtos, tweaks, and general advocacy articles. When I first made the switch 3 years ago, I found the community welcoming me with open hands on forums, IRC channels, and E-mail, I was surprised how helpful these penguins were! For this, I feel obliged to give back to the community that has always been there for me. To pass down the torch to newer Linux generations. Over here I compiled a list of 7 habits that I feel someone has told me when I started out. I believe that getting into these habits will make the Linux experience more secure, convenient, educational, and ultimately more enjoyable.

Novell’s Suse Linux at the desktop is unlikely to be popular with consumers in the next three to five years, according to Novell President and CEO Ronald Hovsepian. The consumer market is taking longer to develop, he said Wednesday. “The market for the desktop for the next three to five years is mainly enterprise-related,” he said. Novell is in the meantime focusing on technology enthusiasts and offering them free downloads of the openSuse distribution.

The geeks have been pushing it for years now. The nerds tout their penguins and tell you how much they hate Microsoft(tm). It's been all the rage in tech circles since its appearance on the scene back in 1995, after Linus Torvalds, a student in Finland, introduced a new, open source operating system to the world. It was aptly named 'Linux'. Torvalds had wanted an alternative to expensive and bloated Unix operating systems, but instead what he created was an inexpensive alternative to, well, everything. For years now, Linux has been known primarily only to people in technology fields. While average home users may have heard of it, it is still surrounded in a cloud of mystery for the majority of people. When people think alternatives to the Windows operating system, they usually think of Apple's Mac OSX, but is it time to take a look at Linux?

When it comes to desktop publishing, a lot of people might think of big organizations producing newsletters, or your local boy scouts producing a fund raising flier. But the average person out there might not see where any kind of desktop publishing is really needed. Honestly, if you really look deeply, you might be surprised. There are a lot of great uses for desktop publishing. A lot more than people realize. What do we do when we want a good quality, free, open source desktop publishing program? You need to look no farther than Scribus.

You've heard about Linux. It powers everything from servers to mobile phones, can be found in schools, governments, industry and homes, and a good chunk of the internet’s infrastructure is powered by it. CHOICE Computer’s Editor even runs it at home! Linux is a bit of a jack-of-all-trades, and traditionally the domain of hardcore computer geeks. But that’s changing. The last few years have seen rapid development in the desktop sphere for Linux, so much so that it’s now emerging as a replacement for Windows. In this report we tell you all about Linux — what it is, the various distributions, where you get it from, and what its capable of. We also provide a tutorial on how to install Ubuntu Linux alongside Windows, so you can enjoy the best of both worlds.