Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Novell is using open source technology from the Spacewalk project that rival Linux vendor Red Hat started, in order to help Red Hat users migrate to SUSE Linux. The new SUSE Manager is a Linux systems management solution that will enable administrators to manage and update SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) as well as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) installations. SUSE Manager replaces the Zenworks Linux Management solution that Novell has had in the market since 2004, which evolved from the Ximian Red Carpet Linux management product suite.

Less than twenty-four hours ago Unigine opened up pre-ordering for their first game, OilRush, which is an impressive real-time strategy game that offers very impressive graphics from their advanced, multi-platform engine. While pre-orders have just got started -- and with beta access for those who pay the $20 USD / 15 EUR cost for the game -- here's some very early statistics.

Wind River is expanding its On-Board Program, which provides board vendors with the Linux and VxWorks software tools, documentation, and training they need to develop, test, and validate Embedded Development Kits. The more-diversified program now lets vendors bring Wind River Test Management-based BSP validation in-house, among other benefits, says the Intel subsidiary.

As the move to multi-core accelerates so does the need for parallel programming, but first let's look at what is causing this trend. There is a general rule in computing that says performance and capacity move down the market pyramid as time progresses. We all know that our phones (even the dumb ones) are much more powerful than the first computers. Indeed, many new smart phones will have two compute cores. Technically speaking, the NVidia Tegra 2 has 8 processing units, two of which are general purpose ARM Cortex A9 cores, the others are for audio, video, etc.

Plan B is designed to make up for the failures of Android users who have misplaced their phone and are trying to locate it – but haven't installed any phone tracking software on their device. Now, the free tool from the Lookout Labs developers can reportedly handle such situations retroactively via the Android Market's new remote installation option.

Every few years I run a poll on my personal website to gauge Linux users' favorite desktop. When analyzing the results over the years, some trends do emerge. Is KDE or GNOME king? What has come in third or fourth consistently over the years? How about you, what is your favorite desktop?

Following Nokia's recent announcement about its future smart phone development strategy, KDE has received a lot of questions. Many of these questions have been related to the future of KDE and KDE's commitment to the Qt framework. In this statement we set out what we see as a bright future for Qt and KDE software.

The quickest way to build a commercial Linux business is to clone whatever Red Hat does. That's what Oracle and CentOS do with their Enterprise Linux redistributions and accompanying paid-for support offerings, and it is now what Novell is doing with a "new" product called SUSE Manager.

Hardware keeps getting faster and faster, and most of us are running machines that would have been unthinkably speedy a decade ago, yet somehow it never seems to feel that way. As the hardware gets faster, the software seems to get bigger and slower and we always seem to end up with something that dances around the line of usability. Linux has been no exception to this, with each new advance in hardware bringing a matching increase in the complexity of the software. If your system takes too long to boot, the best way to fix it is to know what’s bringing you down. For that, there’s Bootchart. This little utility will show you exactly what’s launching when and how long it each step takes.

Linux Magazine's Senior Software Editor Brockmeier, talks with Ted Gould of Canonical about the upcoming release of Ubuntu Unity. In this interview Ted touches on Unity's UI design decisions, hardware drivers and bundled software.

Saab Automobile unveiled an Android-based in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) concept supported by an open API and app store. The & Saab IQon& system is equipped with an eight-inch touchscreen, provides streaming multimedia, navigation, and on-board storage, and offers API access to more than 500 sensor signals that can be remotely relayed back to Saab dealerships.

Nearly two months ago AMD released Radeon HD 6000 series open-source support -- complete with kernel mode-setting and Mesa/Gallium3D OpenGL driver acceleration support -- but this support had only covered the "Northern Islands" ASICs and not the newest Radeon HD 6900 "Cayman" graphics processors. Cayman's design is much different from the Northern Islands and previous-generation Evergreen GPUs, but the open-source support for these highest-end AMD graphics processors is beginning to emerge.

In conjunction with the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco this week, Unity Technologies has released a version of its Unity development platform for games and other 3D apps on Android devices. Meanwhile, Android gamers can turn to a free new Nvidia & Tegra Zone& app for Android that points to games optimized for the Nvidia Tegra 2 processor.

Last week, in "Ubuntu: Where Did the Love Go?" I presented one view of Ubuntu and its relationship with other parts of the free and open source software (FOSS) community. One of the first and most articulate responses to the article came from Ubuntu's community manager Jono Bacon.

The Linux Foundation announced that its Intel-backed Yocto Project, which develops open source tools for Linux-based embedded systems, will align and merge technology with the OpenEmbedded community known for its Linux build system. The Linux advocacy organization also announced new partners in the Yocto Project, including major embedded Linux semiconductor manufacturers and software development firms.

After our review of KDE 4.6, we received a great deal of positive comments, but not all of them were sparkling assessments of KDE’s functionality. For that reason, I have decided to get back to the basics this week with a little how-to guide for KDE 3 users who may be reluctant to switch to KDE 4, Gnome or other desktop users who avoid KDE because of certain usability problems, and anyone who might be new to the software and its unique desktop interface.

Expected in March, the forthcoming kernel will contain the new LIO target framework for implementing Storage Area Networks (SANs). Also new are a kernel-side media presence polling feature for disk drives and various Device Mapper optimisations that are relevant for desktop systems.

Recently, the Foreign Office of Germany made the announcement (translated news report) that it is migrating away from Linux back to Windows as its desktop solution. We've covered the concept of national adoption of Linux at a government level a couple of times before, but this is one of the first cases of a government moving back the other way. The most important action that community can take at this point is ask, “why?”

Red Hat has changed the way it ships the source code for the Linux kernel. Previously, it was released as a standard kernel with a collection of patches which could be applied to create the source code of the kernel Red Hat used. Now though, the company ships a tarball of the source code with the patches already applied.

With the latest GNOME 3 development snapshots came a lot of disappointment. Several blogged and dozens commented about the missing minimize and maximize buttons. Folks had grown used to using those buttons and wondered how to cope without. Mostly they just wondered why were they removed? Where did the buttons go?