Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

P.I.M. announced that a new version of its cross-platform desktop filing system for Linux and Windows users is now available for free download. SqlDesktop v3.00 arranges desktops like an ordinary office: documents, spreadsheets, images, and other items are stored intuitively in folders residing in an SQL database, according to the French company.

Web browser company Opera has released another beta version of its popular mobile browser, Opera Mini.

Novell is releasing Basilisk Lizard, its codename for Release Candidate 1 (RC1) of openSUSE 10.2. RC1 is intended to help Novell fix "shipment blockers" and is, says, the last development build before v10.2 of the Linux distro hits the streets in its final version.

For nearly three years, I've resisted the temptation to turn my monthly visit to this soapbox into a mélange of punditry and prognostication. I've tried to stick mostly to hands-on experiences with Free Software, and to telling you how to get the most out of those offerings. But this month, two recent news stories have me itching to comment. So, welcome to the first-ever Free Agent grab bag column.

The Ubuntu Open Week starts today. From 5pm South African time a series of online workshops will take place. During the week participants can chat to Ubuntu developers and join an open Q&A with Mark Shuttleworth.

Global IT Consultancy, ThoughtWorks today announces the release of dbdeploy . An open source tool for developers and database administrators (DBAs), dbdeploy is a simple solution to the problem of managing and deploying database refactorings to development, quality assurance (QA), user acceptance testing (UAT) and production environments.

Open-source software is becoming ubiquitous, but companies need to be aware that its use must be carefully managed. Even Microsoft has admitted the attractiveness of this business model through its engagement with open-source companies such as SugarCRM Inc.and Zend Inc. Problems can arise because many open-source licenses require that users who incorporate open-source code in their software must make their code available for free (at reproduction cost), permit modifications of the software and permit redistribution without charging a fee.

The head of IT at the University of the Western Cape tells Novell he will do his utmost to develop an exit-strategy for all Novell products at the university. "Novell has let us down badly."

As a standalone office suite, OpenOffice.org lacks a back-end solution similar to Microsoft Office SharePoint, the software that integrates the office suite into a document collaboration and document management environment. Sure, there are applications that can handle both version control and user management, but until now, none of them offered seamless integration with OpenOffice.org that was easy enough for an average office worker to use.

OpenMoko jas announced the availability of a completely integrated open source mobile communications platform in partnership with FIC, a company who specialises in in motherboards, graphics cards, mobile solutions, and electronic devices. The announcement of the OpenMoko mobile communications platform coincides with the unveiling of FIC’s Neo1973 smartphone, which utilizes the full OpenMoko platform, and promised to be available in January 2007.

The HPC4U European research project active in GRID computing technologies just released the first freeware version of its fault tolerant grid middleware providing fault tolerance for parallel applications. This system, based on a Linux kernel running as MS Windows service (coLinux), offers the user the possibility to launch parallel application on virtual nodes in order to test fault tolerance mechanisms in action.

As the Web 2.0 bandwagon continues its rapidly accelerating path downhill towards the inevitable crash we find ourselves at another turning point in the development of the networked world. Ten years ago we were faced with a choice between the controlled homogeneity of the ‘information superhighway’ or the many and various delights of the unsupervised Internet, and we chose wisely.

Blessen Cherian, CTO and Executive Team Member of bobcares.com writes, "Shell scripting is nothing but a group of commands put together and executed one after another in a sequential way. Let's start by mentioning the steps to write and execute a shell script."

Linux company GEN Automation Technologies does their share in promoting Free Software by providing small and mediumsized enterprises (SMEs) the options to avail of rental and lease-to-own servers running an Open Source.

The power of free software is being put to best use in Africa with localised Linux operating systems such as Wazobia in Nigeria gaining in popularity.

The UK's Open Source Consortium has joined criticism of UK government education policy towards open source software, maintaining that the British Education Communications and Technology Agency 'pays lip service' to open source while effectively excluding it from purchasing frameworks.

I have an impressive talent for buying laptop computers hostile to Linux. Right now I'm using a Sony Vaio VGN-FS840/W, with more proprietary drivers than you can shake a stick at. It's so bad that even a retail edition of Windows XP won't run on it; you need the OEM Windows (and sure enough, Sony is too cheap to include the CD), or you need to go to the Sony support site, download all of the drivers, and make your own supplement CD.

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Dolphin, an alternative file manager, is imported into KDE SVN. Work on session management in Kontact becomes visible with the implementation of state remembering for tabs in aKregator. Mailody gets a better SMTP implementation, with authentication support. Many functionality improvements in Okular. An experimental generic API for integration of more online music store services (following the example of the Magnatune implementation) is proposed and developed in Amarok. Continued speed and memory optimisations in KOffice and KDE 4 (via. kdelibs).

The latest server numbers are in and Gartner and IDC agree on giving IBM pride of place. Gartner says worldwide server shipments grew 9% year-over-year to just over two million units with revenues up 4% in Q3 to $13 billion. IDC puts the revenue number at $12.9 billion, up 3.5%, calling it the fastest growth rate in four quarters and the largest Q3 outlay for servers since 2000.

According to a new Forrester study, open source databases are increasingly beating their proprietary cousins when it comes to low end applications. For databases less that 200GB, talking to technewsworld.com senior Forrester analyst Noel Yuhanna says that: "Eighty percent of the applications typically use only 30 percent of the features found in commercial databases." Open source databases already deliver these features.