Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Zimbra users and packagers can now test their email clients across all browsers in the cloud on the leading Selenium service -- without having to maintain their own testing infrastructure

A few weeks ago we reported that notebook hybrid graphics switching on Linux still sucks. For these newer laptops that boast dual GPUs -- an integrated low-power IGP and a more performance-oriented discrete GPU for demanding environments with switching between the two being done "seamlessly" in real-time based upon usage or via a hot-key -- the support under Linux is still virtually nonexistent. There is a crude form of Linux GPU switching, but for the most part it's not nearly up to par for what's available in Microsoft Windows 7 or Apple Mac OS X. The situation remains that way, but some small progress has been made.

After I wrote a review of the Scratch programing environment, one of our readers suggested that I look into the Alice programing environment. http://alice.org/ Well, I've gotten to know Alice and have found it to be quite an impressive programing environment. By the way, I'm always looking for interesting subjects to write about, so if you have suggestions, please email them to me.

How many times have you heard this statement: "It's the year of the Linux desktop." Not recently? Then how about "Linux is making gains on the Windows desktop"? Still leaving a bad taste in your mouth? Bet I know why. For years, both the statements above have been over-used to the point that either idea is now completely meaningless. Not due to anything negative with the Linux desktop, mind you, rather due to inherent differences in how Linux is marketed to the world, who its intended audience is and whether mainstream adoption even matters in the first place.

RockMelt is a new cross-platform web browser that's aimed at re-inventing the browser for how people use the web today. According to a post on the RockMelt blog, the browser has been in development for two years and is based on Google's open source Chromium browser platform, the open source project behind Google's popular Chrome web browser.

A few days ago I theorized that Mark Shuttleworth's move to Unity on Wayland was an effort to focus his operating system more on mobile devices and, ultimately, cloud-based services. Unity's hardware compatibility is limited in range, at least for now, and Wayland is even moreso, again at least for now. But there's one part of the equation I failed to consider. What about the X11-dependent Compiz?

Phoronix has published the results of benchmarks performed on 26 Linux kernels dating back five years, from Linux 2.6.12 to a pre-release version of the upcoming Linux 2.6.37. Despite the addition of numerous features over the years, the results show remarkable consistency.

Microsoft has released the sources of the F# programming language as open source code under the Apache 2.0 licence. The compiler and libraries are now available as "code drops" within the F# PowerPack collection on the CodePlex web site, Microsoft's hosting platform for open source projects. Both components were previously already available to download free of charge under Microsoft's Research Shared Source License Agreement, which permits developers to use the code in non-commercial projects. The Apache licence takes things a step further and allows the unrestricted use of the F# libraries and compiler.

Linux server admins need good scripting skills and command-line chops, but who says they can't be fun? Learn Bash Karaoke with 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall, quickly find disk hogs, and display used/free disk space.

Scott McNealy has kept a low profile since Oracle bought his company earlier this year, but on Wednesday the former chairman and CEO of Sun Microsystems shared some thoughts on the acquisition. "Do I have a problem with Larry Ellison buying Sun? No, that's part of capitalism, as soon as we go public we're for sale, that's part of the deal," McNealy said, referring to Oracle's chairman and CEO. "And do I have a problem with him exercising his intellectual property rights? No, I don't have a problem with that. Would it be how we necessarily ran and operated? Obviously not."

The Google Instant predictive search technology has launched in an Android version. In other Android app news, Twitter and Facebook have each released updated apps, Verizon is prepping its V Cast Android Store for the Droid Incredible next week, and the U.S. Defense Department unveiled a T2 Mood Tracker app allowing veterans to monitor their emotional health, says eWEEK

If you work with open source software of any kind — whether at work or as a volunteer — then you understand the importance of license compliance and keeping track of copyright ownership. But as a project grows, those tasks can get tricky, even when everyone is on the same page. That is exactly the problem that led Hewlett Packard (HP) to create FOSSology, an open source tool you can use to analyze a source code tree for this type of metadata and more. This weekend, why not set it up and dig into your source code — you might be surprised at what you find.

Canonical’s announcement that it would not adopt GNOME Shell for Ubuntu 11.04 has not been universally loved. But is Unity divisive or just a typical development decision being given too much weight?

One Laptop per Child (OLPC) Project Founder and Chairman Dr. Nicholas Negroponte has confirmed that the launch of the next-generation OLPC XO tablet computer, the XO-3, has been delayed. In an interview at the MIT Media Lab, Negroponte said that, while the OLPC Project wanted to show the XO-3 at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, at the beginning of January they will miss CES by 45 days. Negroponte says that the delay has to do with "finding an unbreakable material" for the device's display, noting that it may end up as glass rather than plastic.

Pardus Linux, a popular independent distribution funded and developed by the Scientific & Technological Research Council of Turkey, will be releasing version 2011 in the coming weeks and with it lots of nice updates and improvements.

Last week Mark Shuttleworth dropped the bomb that the next release of Ubuntu, 11.04, would ship with Unity as the default window manager. This caused a lot of concern throughout the community, but most were getting used to the idea, appeased by the knowledge that GNOME Shell would be but a few clicks away. But yesterday he went even further - he announced that Ubuntu would be moving to the Wayland graphical server as well. Has Shuttleworth lost his mind? Or does he know something we don't?

The team at Adafruit Industries is offering a bounty for the first open source drivers for Microsoft's Kinect hardware for its Xbox 360 gaming console. According to a post on the Adafruit blog, the first person or group to upload their code, examples and documentation to the GitHub project hosting service will win the team's first ever "X prize" project bounty.

Just one year ago, I posted a piece on O'Reilly Radar about an unlikely group working happily together to vastly increase the amount of U.S. Patent information available at no charge on the Internet. I've done no heavy lifting whatsoever on this project, so it has been a pleasure to watch the U.S. Patent Office, the White House, and Jon Orwant at Google plow through this rather daunting task. The system is now in full production including all the current feeds that were previously only available for big bucks by subscription. Also available for the first time is the Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) data, which is the full "wrapper" for a patent application. PAIR data was only available previously on a rate-limited query-only service.

Intel and Nokia last week rolled out MeeGo 1.1, which is now officially available for Intel Atom netbooks, the N900 handset, and in-vehicle "infotainment" systems. The netbook spin of MeeGo 1.1 is out there to compete with the likes of Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition, which was released just shy of a month ago. While nothing radically has changed with MeeGo 1.1 compared to the initial MeeGo 1.0 release from earlier this year, the software stack is updated so for the past few days we have begun conducting a performance comparison between MeeGo 1.1 and Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook. Here are some of our initial findings.

The next major transition for Unity will be to deliver it on Wayland, the OpenGL-based display management system. We’d like to embrace Wayland early, as much of the work we’re doing on uTouch and other input systems will be relevant for Wayland and it’s an area we can make a useful contribution to the project.