Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Toradex announced a Linux-based single board computer (SBC) with a 1.6GHz Intel Atom E6xx, and also debuted a PC based on it that's claimed to be & the world's smallest.& The & Topaz& SBC underlies the fanless, aluminum-housed & Xiilun,& which measures 3.50 x 2.36 x 0.63 inches, features up to 2GB of DDR2 RAM, and offers a bootable microSD slot, DVI-D, and four USB 2.0 ports.

Frequently, Datamation puts together lists of top open source software. This time we've done something a little different and made a list of top open source Web sites. Of course, literally thousands of sites and forums provide news and information about open source software. To narrow things done, we focused on sites that provide a lot of links of open source applications – the top places to download open source software.

Kernel version 38 will offer a new meshing implementation, loads of new and improved LAN and Wi-Fi drivers, plus various minor changes that promise to improve the network subsystem's performance.

Verizon Wireless launched the Motorola Xoom Feb. 24 for $600 with a two-year contract, and the dual-core Android 3.0 tablet has earned solid reviews -- although with concerns over the high price and lack of apps. Android tablets certainly have a long way to go, however, since Apple's iPad represented 93 percent of the 4.5 million tablet PCs sold in 3Q 2010, says ABI Research.

There are many ways in which Linux users can collaborate. You can use white boards, chats, full-on cloud-based office suites, CMS tools, and more. But what if you are wanting to collaborate quickly and efficiently on text-based documents? What do you use? If you're a fan of free and open source software, you turn to either Gobby or Kobby.

Google has revised the developer tools for its Chrome web browser. In a blog post it has explained that information about the communication between Chrome and a web server is now available in a new Network panel. You can sort and clear data that is stored there, and export network data into the HAR (HTTP Archive) format. The timing information for resource loads no longer comes from the WebKit browser engine, but from the network stack, so that it more properly represents raw network timing. Holding the mouse pointer over each entry reveals detailed timing for the different phases of loading for each resource. This solution is similar to that provided by the Firebug plug-in for Firefox.

The Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) is happening this weekend Feb. 25-27 and is, simply, awesome! I heard about it during its infancy but never even looked into it thinking it would be just as expensive as OSCON. Boy was I wrong! The first year I attended, it cost $60. This year the cost is $70. That's $70 for THREE days, which is a steal! Factor in the discounts provided to local open source user groups & it is downright highway robbery. You really cannot beat it.

As many Linux users know, there's a number of motherboard vendors out there who put out very poor/buggy/broken BIOS implementations for their products. For Linux users this can be particularly painful if the changes are catered to workaround issues in Windows but in turn cause a greater mess for non-Microsoft operating systems. As a step to improve the situation, assuming BIOS developers actually will use it, Intel has released a BIOS Implementation Test Suite.

Little Linux plug computers come ready-to-use. But they're still Linux, which means hackable. Today we learn how to build a custom kernel for a plug computer.

The flights have been confirmed for some time and they're now being boarded. Speakers are packing and heading to Los Angeles, ready to rehearse their presentations before they go on sometime between Friday and Sunday. Exhibitors prepare to set up their booths. Registrations for the expo continue to roll in. Are you ready for some Linux The 9th annual Southern California Linux Expo is set to start tomorrow, Friday, Feb. 25, at the Hllton Los Angeles Airport hotel.

[I just arrived in L.A. and will be covering it for our readers it all weekend. - Scott]

Angela Byron is the co-maintainer of the Drupal open source content management system and framework. She talked to us a bit about her role with the Drupal project, and Drupal 7, the recently released, latest version of Drupal. See the full interview in the April 2011 issue of Linux Journal, on newsstands and in subscriber mailboxes very soon!

There are some commands that turn out to be more useful than first meets the eye. In my opinion, xargs is one of those commands. It takes the standard input and uses it to build a command line. It's nothing fancy, but it's very handy in some situations. As soon as you have a list of files, you can easily do something to them. A favorite, common enough to have a shell script of its own on my machine, is clean-titles.sh. It simply locates all backup files using the pattern *~, and then passes them on to rm. The result is a nice and clean current working directory and sub-tree.

Don't pay top dollar for Microsoft lard when you can get the best mail servers for free. The Linux world is full of great servers, both free and with commercial support options.

Ubuntu's 11.04 release ("Natty Narwhal") is going to be an important inflection point for the project, and for Canonical. The company is banking on its users, and potential users, embracing a user interface (Unity) that differs significantly from the previous Ubuntu release as well as other familiar desktop UIs. Further, the target release date is less than three months away and significant chunks of the Unity interface are still unfinished. The second alpha release on February 3 shows promise, but there is significant work left to be done.

The Linux server admin on the go needs a good remote administration toolkit. Here are 10 useful remote administration apps for Android devices. Here are 10 server and admin apps for the Linux-based Android mobile phone platform. You'll discover clients and servers for the basic protocols: SSH, FTP, and remote desktop (RDP & VNC). There are apps for network discovery and port scanning, remote PC/server monitoring, and an Exchange/groupware client.

Shawn reviews the Boxee Box from D-Link. Oddly enough, it's not really box shaped. Thankfully it still works well, for the most part.

Vic has begun selling an Ubuntu Linux-based, double-DIN car computer with GPS and 3G HSDPA for approximately $410. Based on an Intel Celeron M processor with 2GB of DDR2 memory, the NaviSurfer II Ubu-3G offers a 250GB hard disk drive, a seven-inch, 800 x 480 touchscreen, and extensive connectivity including multiple camera inputs, says the company.

After investigating the work being done on KBibTeX a few months ago, we turn our attention to Kile, KDE's LaTeX and TeX editor. LaTeX is a document markup language and document preparation system built on top of the typesetting system TeX. It is frequently used for scientific publications as an alternative to word processors. There is no stable Platform 4 version of Kile yet, but beta releases are already available and a stable release is not far away. Alexander van Loon took the opportunity to ask Michel Ludwig how the next version of Kile is shaping up. At this moment, Michel is the sole developer working on Kile.

Openistas beware! Politicos at the German Foreign Office are reportedly ditching Linux in favour of returning their desktop PCs to Windows XP-based systems. According to a report on netzpolitik.org, which was diligently spotted by The H, the German Foreign Office recently decided to dump their Linux-based machines.

Acer has announced the first Google Chrome OS device, according to a somewhat sketchy report out of Germany citing Acer itself. Oddly enough, the device is not a notebook. It's an all-in-one PC. Heise Online reports that Acer has unveiled a Chrome OS–based all-in-one PC dubbed the Acer DX241H. According to Heise, which cites Acer itself, the 24-inch LCD display includes an ARM Cortex-A8 system-on-chip. Much like Apple's iMac, PC brains are built into the monitor. Allegedly.