Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Debian 6.0, alias Squeeze, has been nearly two years in development. The new version is the first completely free Stable Release – and also the first Debian distribution that not only has the Linux kernel, but also the FreeBSD kernel.

The strangely named Linux Console seems to be designed to work equally well as a Live distribution and as a permanent installation. It offers an LXDE based desktop alongside a collection of standard applications. It could be used as a typical desktop Linux distro, but I have a feeling that it could see some use as a front-end in appliance type set-ups that need to be a bit more of a typical desktop layout than some of the kiosk or media player distributions. However, I'm not absolutely sure what the aim of this distro actually is.

By default, Ubuntu comes with a set of keyboard shortcut that you can use straightaway. However, some of these keyboard shortcuts might not be desirable, troublesome, or obstructive and disrupting your productivity. For example, if you have a keyboard with a media button, that button is automatically mapped to Rhythmbox. If your favorite media player is Banshee, or Exaile, you might want to change the keyboard shortcut to your favorite application.

ALSA 1.0.23 was released in April 2010 as a major update to the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, but it's finally been outdone by ALSA 1.0.24. The ALSA 1.0.24 update is also very significant and delivers on quite a number of sound card / audio processor driver improvements.

Computer Lab International (CLI) released a new Ubuntu-based Linux operating system for its MT2300 and ST6800 thin clients, which use Via Eden C7 processors clocked to 500MHz and 1.6GHz, respectively. The OS features Firefox, the CLI Device Manager, plus support for RDP, Citrix ICA 11, host terminal emulations, VNC client/server, and VMWare View4, the company says.

IBM and Oracle have divvied up the leadership of OpenJDK – the leading open-source Java project – finally giving IBM the sort of Java control it spent ten years fighting Sun Microsystems for. The new bylaws for the OpenJDK community outline a governing board that consists of a chairman, vice chairman, OpenJDK lead, and two members at large. Oracle has given IBM the power to appoint the vice chairman, while Oracle will appoint the chairman and the OpenJDK lead.

Soon after the release of LibreOffice 3.3, the Steering Committee posted their position on OOXML support in LibreOffice. Some of those that have tested the LibreOffice office suite knows that they can open and save in Microsoft Office formats. So, The Document Foundation supports OOXML then? Well, no, not really.

In an email, SCO today (Friday) informed its partners that UnXis Inc. was chosen as the successful bidder for SCO's Unix software business on 26 January. The slightly convoluted phrasing is probably due to SCO's current reorganisation under Chapter 11. On 16 February, the transaction is to be submitted for approval to the bankruptcy court where SCO's case is pending. The email also quotes Hans Bayer, SCO's Vice President Worldwide Sales, as saying that “We are delighted that after years of shifting targets, that under the UnXis ownership, we now will be prepared to create a truly customer driven, fully supported, open systems platform for high reliability enterprise computing”.

While 2.6.37 might be considered a quiet release, there are some very nice scalability improvements for file systems and one cool new feature that warrant a review. This year’s holiday kernel was 2.6.37, which was actually released on 4 January 2011 (perhaps it’s a New Year’s kernel) and is a good example of a kernel release during the holidays. At first glance, one would think that it was a quiet kernel with no flaming articles on the web or some seriously flawed benchmarks being posted, but you didn’t see too much of that. However, there are some great things that happened in 2.6.37 around file systems and one really cool feature that I’ll talk about at the end of the article.

If you use the open-source ATI Linux graphics driver, there's a major stable update available. At long last, xf86-video-ati 6.14.0 has been released. This open-source X.Org driver brings official support for the Radeon HD 5000 series, Radeon HD 6000 series, and AMD Fusion Ontario hardware. This release also has a plethora of bug-fixes and flips on the KMS page-flipping support.

The Pogoplug Pro is one of three plug-computer devices offered from CloudEngines. It is the only one of the three to include built-in WiFi. In all other aspects it's virtually identical to the original Pogoplug with the exception of color (black for the Pro, pink for the original). Simplicity is the theme for all Pogoplugs coupled with easy access. CloudEngines includes their My.Pogoplug.com service to provide access to your Pogoplug device from any desktop computer (Linux, Mac OS X and Windows) and a wide range of mobile devices (Android, Blackberry, iPad and iPhone ).

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the GNU Project have announced that they are now accepting nominations for this year's Free Software Awards. The annual awards recognise an individual and one project for their contributions to the progress and development of free software.

The Cr-48 is, according to Google, the "first of its kind - a notebook built and optimized for the web." It is the next step in the promotion of Chrome OS, Google's other Linux-based distribution. As a way of showing off what it has accomplished and building interest in the system, Google has distributed Cr-48 machines widely. Your editor was a lucky, if late, recipient of one of these devices; what follows are his [Cr-48] impressions after some time playing with it. The Cr-48 and Chrome OS are an interesting vision of where computing should go, even if that vision is not for everybody.

These days, Linux distros are a dime a dozen, especially in the field of the Ubuntu remix. Just about anyone thinks they can create a usable spinoff (they’re probably right) and that it’ll be wildly successful (they’re probably wrong). For this reason, we don’t often give a full writeup to an Ubuntu remix on MTE unless it offers something really unique or interesting. Pinguy isn’t exactly revolutionary, but it is among a rare breed: an Ubuntu spinoff that might actually have some real improvements over the original.

Novell reveals in an SEC filing today supplementing its proxy statement that the US Department of Justice has sent it and Microsoft a "second request" for more information regarding the proposed sale of patents to the Microsoft-organized consortium CPTN: Also on February 2, 2011, each of CPTN and Novell received a Second Request from the DOJ regarding the sale of certain identified patents and patent applications to CPTN contemplated by the Patent Purchase Agreement. The Second Requests have the effect of extending the waiting period under the HSR Act until 30 days after both parties have substantially complied with the Second Requests, unless the waiting period is earlier terminated. Novell is in the process of gathering information to respond to this Second Request and is continuing to cooperate fully with the DOJ in connection with its review.

Originally, Google's presentation yesterday at its headquarters in Mountain View, California, was expected to revolve mainly around Honeycomb, the tablet version of Android. However, the real news was about Android app's: firstly, Android Market is now also available on the web; secondly, Android users will be able to buy content from within their apps – via "in-app" purchases.

We covered FlashVideoReplacer, a video add-on for Firefox, last year, but the new 2.x series offers several improvements. We look at what the new version offers and ask the developer a few questions.

The Prism project was launched in 2007 with a primary goal of Integrating Web applications into the User’s desktop experience. The project realized this goal for some prominent applications, and many user contributed bundles have been produced which make it possible to launch popular websites directly from your desktop as separate applications in a distraction free browser window. The Prism project itself, and the ways that it has been applied, have given us deep insights into this void between traditional desktop applications and the Web.

Mozilla has announced the availability of a new Firefox Mobile 4 beta release for Android and Maemo. The new version brings significant performance improvements, further reduces the browser's installation footprint, and introduces experimental support for reflowing text after zooming.

Datasound Laboratories (DSL) announced a compact "embedded controller" based on a 300MHz DM&P Vortex86SX CPU. The Icop VSX-6117 is just 3.14 x 1.96 inches, uses only 320mA at 5V, includes 128MB of soldered-on DDR2 memory and 2GB of flash storage, has a 10/100 Ethernet port, and includes EIDE and x-ISA expansion, according to the company.