Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

LXer Feature: 01-May-2011

Among the big stories to hit the newswire this past week we have GUI isolation security issues, why patents and software need a divorce, Glyn Moody brings up the not new idea of a blanket Linux PR strategy, our own Carla Schroder learns a lesson in humility, Ken Starks talks about some simple yet big things we could fix and a review of the OpenPandora handheld gaming device. Enjoy!

Oracle has released Java SE 6 Update 25 (6u25); this update contains no security updates to the Java runtime, but does include wider platform support with Windows 7 and SP1, Windows 2008 R2 with SP1, Oracle Linux 6 and Oracle Solaris 11 Express 2010.11 added to the supported list. Also supported by the update are Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 4, Google Chrome 10 and VirtualBox 4.

The KDE Edu Team is proud to present its new website at http://edu.kde.org as the central place to start to discover KDE Edu. With this new website, we are also officially presenting the new KDE Edu logo as the stamp for KDE in Education. The logo emphasizes the opportunity for people to grow their knowledge freely in various fields with KDE Edu programs. The concept was started in May 2010 by Alexandre Freitas and finalized by Asunción Sánchez Iglesias.

If you’re new to Linux and free/Open Source software, or even if you’re a more seasoned user, then you’re often looking for more information. Not just documentation, but also useful tips and tricks. The team here at Make Tech Easier works hard to provide as much quality information as we can. But we can’t write about everything (though we’re trying!). So, what are some other sources of the information that you’re looking for? Lets take a look at a few of the better ones out there.

Names matter in free software. Just think of the number of electrons that have been spilt arguing over whether it's “Linux” or “GNU/Linux”. But is “Linux” catchy? The fact that few people have heard of it outside the rather specialised world of free software suggests not. Indeed, far more people have probably come across “Ubuntu”, which has taken on the role of the public face of GNU/Linux to a certain extent. That's good, in the sense that it has done valuable work promoting free software to the general public; but it's also unfortunate in that it has pushed the “Linux” name even further into the background.

When you're ready to move up from simple audio recording applications like GNOME's Sound Recorder, take a look at the excellent Ardour digital audio workstation. Ardour is one of the shining jewels of FOSS, a robust professional-level multi-channel recorder, editor, and mixer. Follow along as we learn the basics by making a simple recording. You will need a computer with a sound card, even a cheapo on-board chip, and a microphone or instrument to plug in to your sound card.

UK-based OpenGamma has been developing a unified platform for financial analytics which will allow financial services firms to combine their data management, calculation engines and analysis into a single framework. The platform, which is still in development, has now been released as a open source developer preview, dual-licensed under an Apache 2.0 licence or a commercial licence. The preview is described as a "beta-quality release" that has been through OpenGamma's testing and QA processes.

This issue of Linux Journal is all about how to get Linux in your pocket. In this article, I go one better and tell you how to get Linux on your fingernail. Now, before you get too excited, I won't be discussing some new nano-computer being used by James Bond, unfortunately. Instead, I discuss how to put Linux on a micro-SD card (or any other USB drive, for that matter). Using this, you can run Linux on any machine that can boot off a USB device.

Yahoo! may spin off its Hadoop engineering division, creating a startup offering support and services around the open-source distributed number-crunching platform, according to a report citing people familiar with the matter. The Wall Street Journal reports that Yahoo! is "weighing" a Hadoop spin-off and that Silicon Valley venture capital firm Benchmark Capital has discussed the possibility with the company. Such a startup – in which Yahoo! would retain a stake – would compete with the likes of Cloudera, the Northern California startup founded by an all-star lineup of former Yahoo!, Google, Oracle, and Facebook employees.

Canonical has released Ubuntu 11.04, née Natty Narwhal. But this release is not your ordinary update with a handful of new features in the same basic Ubuntu you know and love. No, this marine mammal is an entirely new beast, with the Unity shell replacing everything familiar about the Ubuntu desktop. After a bumpy ride with the initial beta – which I dubbed the single worst beta release of Ubuntu I've ever tested – I did not have high hopes for the final release. Those low expectations were fortunate, because although things have certainly improved, they're a long way from the level of polish that we've come to expect from Ubuntu.

LXer Feature: 29-Apr-2010

The buyer (me) acts as the investor for this project since their pre-order money will be used to fund the project. It was originally pre-ordered for $330, but after over a year of waiting for the production to take place I canceled it. Now in addition to pre-ordering, the Pandora can be bought and shipped in a week for a premium price of $500 which I took the opportunity, but is it worth the cost? Let's find out..

The first update to Firefox 4.0, version 4.0.1, addresses a total of three vulnerabilities, two of which are rated as critical. The browser's WebGLES feature contains bugs that could lead to crashes, potentially resulting in the execution of malicious code. The Windows version of Firefox was also found to have been compiled without ASLR which could allow an attacker to bypass ASLR's protection against malicious code if a memory corruption flaw was found. Several critical memory safety bugs have in the browser engine used by Firefox have also been corrected. These bugs reportedly contained evidence of memory corruption under certain circumstances. The developers presume that, with enough effort, some of them could be exploited to run arbitrary code.

Amrel announced the availability of Linux on a ruggedized, military-focused handheld PC that includes a five-inch, 800 x 480 pixel touchscreen. The Rocky DB6 has a 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530 processor, 32GB of RAM, 64GB or 128GB of SSD (solid state disk) storage, and a Mini PCI Express expansion slot, the company says.

SandForce has developed a very interesting and unique SSD controller that uses real-time data compression. This affects data throughput and SSD longevity. In this article, we perform an initial examination of the IOPS performance of a SandForce 1222-based SSD. The results can be pretty amazing.

Google has released the stable version of Chrome 11. After the update, users will have version 11.0.696.57 of Google's web browser. As previously reported, Chrome 11 features the addition of a new logo that drops the previous 3D bubble look for a flatter and more simple look.

I’ll admit up front – it’s embarrassingly late for me to have discovered screen. Friends and coworkers have been suggesting it to me for years, but it wasn’t until recently that I had a concrete need for it. Now I wish I’d had it all along. In short, screen gives you the equivalent of the “workspaces” you find in Gnome, KDE, and other desktop environments, but for the command line. It may not sound like much, but like the graphical equivalent, you begin to see the power after a few uses. Today we’re going to cover some screen basics useful for your home desktop but especially useful if you use remote access tools like SSH.

Shawn rants a bit about Ubuntu's new Unity interface, and gives us a couple tips on how to adjust.

The worldwide market for operating system software grew nearly eight percent to $30.4 billion in 2010, led by Microsoft Windows with 78.6 percent market share, says Gartner. Yet Linux was the fastest growing server OS, and Apple's Mac OS had the fastest growth on the desktop, says the research firm.

Nielsen reports that 31 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers said they would prefer Android for their next phone, compared to 30 percent for the iPhone. Overall, Nielsen estimates that 37 percent of smartphone subscribers and 50 percent of recent subscribers use Android phones, up sharply from January.

If you don't include master pages (which are really styles under another name), then Scribus supports three types of hierarchial styles: lines, character, and paragraph. As in any other self-respecting word processor or layout application, these styles allow you to apply detailed sets of formatting options quickly, without having to change each instance of a formatting option individually.