Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Canonical's Ubuntu One personal cloud service for Ubuntu 10.10 users has expanded its reach beyond Linux with new iOS, Android, and Windows clients. Ubuntu One's beta Windows client is off to a solid start, but work remains if Ubuntu One wants to overtake Dropbox, says this eWEEK Labs review.

Previously only available in the Beta channel, Google has released version 8 of the Chrome web browser into the stable channel. This major update is the first version capable of using the upcoming web store and includes a built-in PDF viewer that's sandboxed to help prevent attackers from exploiting security vulnerabilities in the plug-in. A sandboxed Adobe Flash Player plug-in has been integrated into the Development (Dev) channel version of the browser, so that too should appear in the stable release in due time.

A rather small crowd of researchers, kernel developers and industry experts found their way to the 12th Real-Time Linux WorkShop (RTLWS) hosted at Strathmore University in Nairobi, Kenya. The small showing was not a big surprise, but it also did not make the workshop any less interesting.

Oracle executives talked up on Thursday the planned Solaris 11 release due in 2011, with the Unix OS upgrade offering advancements in availability, security, and virtualization. The OS will feature next-generation networking capabilities for scalability and performance, said John Fowler, Oracle executive vice president of systems, at a company event in Santa Clara, Calif. "It's a complete reworking of [the] enterprise OS," he said. Oracle took over Solaris when the company acquired Sun Microsystems early this year.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, the latest version of Red Hat's flagship Linux-based operating system, began shipping last month, boasting a bevy of core improvements around scalability, resource management and virtualization. What's more, the system ships with a slate of updated open-source software components that stand to make life easier for developers and system administrators who wish to take advantage of recent features without leaving Red Hat's support and certification umbrella to do so.

Adam Williamson has shared that he's looking at packaging Canonical's Unity desktop for Fedora. "Why? Well, a few reasons. Mainly, Unity’s an interesting project. I want to look at it and compare it to GNOME Shell and I think quite a few others do too, so it seems nice to package it so you can run both on Fedora. I don’t really want to maintain an Ubuntu install just to test Unity (can’t do it in a KVM VM as it requires compositing support). Also, though, I think it’ll do a bit to help keep everyone honest: if other projects show interest in providing Unity as an option for people to use, it increases the motivation for Unity's developers to make sure it can be easily built without non-upstreamed changes. Hopefully it also increases the motivation for upstream projects to work with the Unity developers to get their changes merged.

One of the standards that has become normal in the US federal sector is the requirement that all mobile devices, such as laptops, have encrypted drives. This was a direct result of a number of laptop thefts earlier in the decade that resulted in the supposed leaking of personal information. As a former federal contractor, I watched a number of successful and not so successful methodologies implemented and deployed. Some resulted in real data protection and some resulted in wonderful bricks. In some cases on a regular (read daily) basis.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 offers a strong foundation for hosting virtual workloads, and boosts support to ten years, says this eWEEK Labs review. Yet, price increases and the lack of Xen or .NET support could make Novell's SUSE a better choice for some enterprise users. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, the latest version of Red Hat's flagship Linux-based operating system, began shipping last month, boasting a bevy of core improvements around scalability, resource management, and virtualization.

If netbook computers have done nothing else, they have increased the choices of desktops for Linux software users. Some existing desktops have found a new niche in netbooks, while the last couple of years have seen new ones designed specifically for the restraints of memory and screen size imposed by netbooks.

Believe it or not, there is still this illusion that Linux and open-source software is written by counter-culture, C++ programming cultists living in their parent basements or huddled together in Cambridge, Mass. group-houses. Please. That is so twenty-years ago. Today, as the Linux Foundation reveals in its latest analysis, Linux Kernel Development: How Fast it is Going, Who is Doing It, What They are Doing, and Who is Sponsoring It (PDF Link), it’s big business that’s making Linux in 2010.

Oracle claimed that it acquired the Hudson trademark with its purchase of Sun Microsystems. But a well-placed former Sun Microsystems employee has contacted The Reg to say that Sun took an "explicit decision" not to apply for a trademark on the name Hudson. A search of the US Patent and Trademark Office's website throws up 623 trademarks for Hudson for many things, but not for the project Oracle owns.

Motorola Inc. announced it will split into two companies on Jan. 4, separating the "Motorola Mobility" division that makes Android smartphones from the "Motorola Solutions" division responsible for enterprise handhelds running Windows Mobile. The separation will benefit stockholders, customers, and employees alike, the company claims.

Here at MakeTechEasier, we’ve covered Linux desktop issues of all kinds, and we’ve examined desktop environments both well known (Gnome and KDE) as well as somewhat obscure (Window Maker, LXDE). For some reasons, we’ve never taken a close look at the very popular XFCE desktop environment. It’s nearly as feature-rich as Gnome, but with a smaller footprint. As it’s been a big name in the Linux desktop world for quite a few years now, it seems we’re long overdue to check out this polished and useful collection of software.

Scapy is a flexible tool for both capturing and generating network traffic, and performing whatever type of analysis you want. In Part 2 Paul Ferrill goes deeper into designing custom tests with just a few lines of code.

This is an annual report published by The Linux Foundation that measures the the rate of Linux kernel development, who is doing it (developer names) and who is sponsoring it (company names). It has become an annual check on the state of the world's largest open source project and collaborative development effort.

It's long been a topic of what parts of X.Org should be killed with fire. There's plenty of dated and obscure X.Org and Mesa drivers around for hardware that hasn't even been manufactured in years and are rarely used. At XDS Toulose and on other occasions it's been decided not to do a massive purge of all these legacy graphics drivers for Linux. Old hardware support by the X Server has once again been brought up, but this time it's about monitors.

For the CentOS developers and users, Christmas Day may bring more than the usual presents under the tree. If past experience holds, it should take the CentOS development and QA teams about 45 days from the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 to get CentOS 6 ready for release... which puts the projected release date on December 25.

As Linux gains more popularity, the number of major commercial game vendors supporting Linux has not increased, but independent developers are certainly taking notice. Here are four more Linux games that are sure to distract you from real work. Be sure to play them only when your boss is not looking. Enjoy!

ZT Systems announced what it says is the first commercially available ARM-based development platform for the server market. The Ubuntu Linux-based R1801e 1U rackmount server employs SSD (solid state disk) storage and eight ARM Cortex-A9-based computer-on-modules (COMs), providing 16 600MHz cores while using less than 80 Watts, the company says.

In a post on the project's mailing list, Fedora Project Leader Jared K. Smith has announced the election results for the Fedora Ambassadors Steering Committee (FAmSCo), the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo), and the Fedora Board.