Showing headlines posted by dcparris

With an almost total dominance of the desktop and server operating system market, you'd think that Microsoft Windows was the only choice. In actual fact, there's never been a better time to buy an alternative OS.

Lionel Menchaca, Dell's digital media manager, said that 30,000 people had weighed in to push Dell to offer Linux, and noted that the three Linux-based computers released on Thursday would not be the last. Dell's decision to offer Ubuntu is a breakthrough for enthusiasts of Linux, the most popular variant of open-source software.

Compatibility issues always exist with any new release of an operating system, said Steve Gillmer, Microsoft's business manager of collaborative technologies. He added that Microsoft works with software developers to reduce incompatibilities and with customers to manage the movement to new operating systems.

A recent posting by George Ou about Windows Home Server brought out a lot of responses from the Linux community. I think that Microsoft deserves to get some competition.

[Hmmm... Anyone interested in this? - dcparris]

FoxyBetty writes: "Firefox 2 is a finalist on the Webware 100 list! Now it's up to voters to pick the winners. Webware is a site where computer users can learn about new and useful Web applications. The Webware 100 will serve as a guide of new and innovative Web applications.

In a humorous announcement for the latest release candidate of the upcoming 2.6.22 Linux kernel, Linus Torvalds noted that there were updates to the ARM, SH and Blackfin architectures. He also noted fixes to USB suspend, infiband, and the network stack, as well as updates to ATA, DVB and MMC, and network drivers. Noting that a three-day weekend was starting in the US he said,"so what's a pasty white nerd to do? You can't go out on the beach, because the goodlooking people will laugh at you, and kick sand in your face. I'm not bitter." Linus continued:"But now you _can_ do something: you can download the latest -rc kernel, and smile smugly to yourself, knowing that you are running the latest and greatest on your machine. And suddenly it doesn't even matter that summer is coming, because you can just sit in the basement, and close the blinds, and bask in the warm light from your LCD, rather than the harsh glare of the daystar.."Further information about what's new and changed in the upcoming 2.6.22 kernel can be found in theKernelNewbies wiki. The latest -rc can be downloaded from theLinux Kernel Archives [story], and the source changes can be browsed online using thegitweb interface.read more

WALTHAM, Mass., May 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) today announced that it has filed its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarters ended July 31, 2006 and Jan. 31, 2007 and its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended Oct. 31, 2006 with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The filings were made in connection with Novell's completion of its self-initiated, voluntary review of the company's historical stock-based compensation practices, the results of which were disclosed in the filings and in a press release issued by Novell on May 23, 2007.

Ever since comparing seven Linux distributions on my "old thinkpad" testbed, I've remained impressed with the flexibility and ease-of-maintenance of Debian-based Linuxes. In my followup article on using Etch as a desktop OS, I pondered converting my primary desktop from SUSE to Debian. I've done it.

Novell has filed its delayed annual report with the SEC, which includes the technical co-operation and patent agreements it entered into with Microsoft in November 2006.

What started as the review of a bug report grew into an interesting debate as Linus Torvalds slammed the current suspend and resume [story] design in the Linux Kernel,"why the HELL cannot you realize that kernel threads are different? The right thing to do is AND HAS ALWAYS BEEN, to stop and start user threads only around the whole thing. Don't touch those kernel threads. Stop freezing them." Later in the discussion, Linus noted that he had no interest in Suspend to Disk (STD), and was only interested in a working Suspend to Ram (STR) implementation. He noted that complexity introduced by STD was infecting the STR logic, and that the two should be completely separated,"what irritates me is that STR really shouldn't have _had_ that bug at all. The only reason STR had the same bug as STD was exactly the fact that the two features are too closely inter-twined in the kernel. That irritates me hugely. We had a bug we should never had had! We had a bug because people are sharing code that shouldn't be shared! We had a bug because of code that makes no sense in the first place!" Linus noted that he doesn't use laptops much, but still likes STR on his desktop,"STR means they are quiet and don't waste energy when I don't use them, but they're instantly available when I care." He then went on to point to design flaws in the freezer:"I actually don't think that processes should be frozen really at all. I agree that filesystems have to be frozen (and I think that checkpointing of the filesystem or block device is'too clever'), but I just don't think that has anything to do with freezing processes. So I'd actually much prefer to freeze at the VFS (and socket layers, etc), and make sure that anybody who tries to write or do something else that we cannot do until resuming, will just be blocked (or perhaps just buffered)!"read more

STAR-CD, built with PGI compilers, delivers optimum performance across multiple x64 platforms

For the next interview in the fortnightly People Behind KDE series we remain in North America, down to the deserts of Arizona to meet an astronomer who uses his work expertise to bring the galaxy to our desktops - tonight's star of People Behind KDE is Jason Harris.

The ground rules Interview: TIBCO's Stefan Farestam talks with Reg Developer about the ground rules of SOA governance.

[Any interest in SOA governance around here? - dcparris]

Part 2: Runtime efficiency issues in Mac Cocoa programming: Last time round, we looked at the way an unnamed developer had used Cocoa routines to chop up a simple C-string in order to determine whether or not it contained a particular, named OpenGL extension name.

[Not necessarily GNU/Linux-related, but Cocoa and OpenGL may be of some interest to our audience. If not, go ahead and holler. We'll unpost it. - dcparris]

The always provocativeBrad Templeton, whohung out with a large cadre of geeks at the Internet Identity Workshop (IIW, orIIW2007) last week, has some cautions about new identity systems, even if they are all"user-centric". These cautions lie in a paradox:"The easier it is to give somebody ID information, the more often it will be done. Andthe easier it is to give ID information, the more palatable it is to ask for, or demand it." The italics are his.Here he hits on the problem of market power asymmetries (vendors strong, customers weak) that have been with us for the whole Industrial Age, and are with us still. I think we have a way to overcome those, and that Brad's Paradox may provide exactly the conceptual hurdle we need to see before we can make progress.So let's start with Brad's explanation:

Change Reflects the Company's Inherent Strengths and Sole Focus on Online Network of Properties

Dell promotional video discussing Ubuntu Linux

The third release of Xubuntu, the variant of Ubuntu with the lightweight Xfce desktop, appeared last month. Feisty Fawn (version 7.04) uses the final gold code of Xfce 4.4.0 rather than the release candidates in Edgy Eft (version 6.10) and Dapper Drake (version 6.06). I had very positive experiences with both Edgy and Dapper so I had very high expectations for Xubuntu Feisty Fawn. In some ways the new release does take a step forward but in some truly important areas it took a couple of steps backwards and has been something of a disappointment.

In a recentlkml thread the concept of dumping an image of the kernel's memory to swap when the kernel hits a bug was discussed.

The lead developer of the Hugin panorama-stitching application, Pablo d'Angelo, has proposed a new open database for collecting camera lens information that could be used to correct systematic distortion in photographs. The database would be populated by user-submitted calibration data and some data donated from a competitor, but the exact format and licensing of the database are still under consideration. One developer's suggestion would make proprietary software that uses the database pay for the privilege.