Showing all newswire headlines

Focusing on the embedded market (and seemingly well-liked by users of both Linux and the various BSDs) are the boards from the Zurich, Switzerland-based PC Engines. The company has some extremely compelling and relatively inexpensive offerings ... if you're willing or able to run your application(s) in 256 MB of RAM.

Netbooks run either Windows or Linux, and both are readily available in shops all over the world. The Linux variants chosen by several netbook manufacturers are usually derived from desktop distributions, and obviously, Windows is a desktop operating system as well. However, netbooks have small displays, and both Windows and GNOME/KDE and some of their applications aren't always suited well for such an environment. Enter Android, Google's Linux-based phone operating system. It is suggested that Android-based netbooks will appear on the market in 2010, maybe even sooner.

One more new filing from Wednesday, this one from SCO v. Novell. Here's the docket entry:..

I am admittedly not a normal computer user. I don't always fully grasp what's going on deep inside the operating system, nor am I always confident I'm clear on how an application is working with all of the services it requires to function. But I find it interesting, even if just on the most simple, conceptual level. The majority of computer users want their machines to "just work." And though I like seeing how my hardware and software interact, it is preferable to have things "just work," so I can get what I need done, and then spend the time I saved doing so leisurely poking at my application's innards. There's an inherent danger in the "just works" philosophy, however.

Yes, you're not the only one who's ever completely destroyed an important server at work ;)

Google's Android OS has been pretty well received thus far, and the presence of the Market, where users can download applications, has fared pretty well except it has missed one thing: paid-for apps. While it might sound like a bad thing that users will have to start paying for applications, the incentive for developers (ie cash) means that the whole experience should now get a little better.

Like many of you, I picked up a new TV over the holidays. Imagine my surprise when I was flipping through the instruction manual and found the GPL V2.0 and GPL V2.1 licenses in the appendix. Samsung seems to be using one or more pieces of GPL'd code inside of its Series 5 LCD TVs. I would have liked to know that the TV I was buying was using Free/open source software. All things equal, I would have purchased the TV using "FOSS Inside" vs. a similar TV not using "FOSS Inside". But I'm not representative of the consumer population. Would my wife, friends or parents make the same choice based on an "FOSS Inside" logo on a consumer electronic device? Likely not; well, not initially at least.

Bless Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols for his optimism. Writing for Computerworld, Vaughan-Nichols suggests that we don't need to wait for the Year of the Linux Desktop, because we've already had it. Somehow, I missed that. Vaughan-Nichols points to HP shipping Linux, Dell shipping Linux, etc., but come on: a trickle of retail activity does not a "Year of the Linux Desktop" make.

The Debian developers have decided to release the upcoming Debian 5 (Lenny) with proprietary firmware files to expedite the completion of the Linux distributions next release. The vote itself had several options for dealing with proprietary firmware, from a complete elimination of it, even if it meant more delays for Lenny, to an explicit waiver of the source code requirement for firmware files. The winning option was "assume blobs comply with the GPL unless proven otherwise", a principle which declares proprietary firmware as undesirable, but allows for the earlier release of Debian 5 to take priority over the removal of questionable firmware.

Google is planning to use Android for any device — not just the mobile phones. Don't be surprised if netbooks will come pre-installed with Google's Linux OS.

Nothing can beat having a great Linux distro installed on a super-fast hard drive, with all your favourite apps configured just how you like them and all your files at your fingertips. But this has one major drawback: perfect as your setup is, it's also just one machine, and sooner or later you'll be forced to leave that computer behind and use something else. Something that might run Windows. Something that might not even have Firefox. Because no one likes being parted from their data for too long, we present a smarter option: store it all on a USB flash drive.

The Compiz project, which makes a free compositing window manager, suffers from a lack of participants, direction and leadership, at least according to developer Kristian Lyngstol.

The past year brought some exciting advancements for the Linux operating system and open source software. Open technology continues to become more pervasive and the Linux kernel is now widely used in a multitude of mainstream products ranging from set-top boxes to mobile phones. With 2008 coming to a close, we wanted to take a minute to look at some events of significance to the open source software community.

It seems like a bit of a mystery how open source software ever sees the light of day. The idea of a large number of people working for glory and the greater good rather than recompense seems too idealistic to be true. In the early days this is exactly what happened, but now commercial companies have arisen, or switched over to open source, to act as the marketing arm of these communities. There are now a large number of paid workers at Red Hat, Novell, Ingres and other open source businesses and these corporations are beginning to act in ways that mirror their closed source counterparts.

There are 10 sorts of distributions in the world. Those that have specific releases, where it is better to reformat and reload with each new release and rolling distributions. Even still the specific release distributions can, in some cases, be upgraded to the newest release when it becomes available but this does not always work. The biggest advantage (or disadvantage depending on your viewpoint) is that stable (sic) versions of programs are chosen for that particular distribution release and are maintained throughout the life of that released distribution.

I just ordered my first computer yesterday: 4GB RAM, a 250 GB SATA 3gb/s hard drive, a 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo processor, a Nvidia 9800 graphics card, and a comfortable 20? monitor. But while these were all expensive (especially the video card), none of them compared to one item on the list: Windows. That’s the hope that Linux companies must look forward to.

Writers at VentureBeat decided to test the idea that Android would make an ideal operating system for netbooks by porting the, Google developed, open source operating system to their Asus EEE PC1000H. Using information from the Android Porting Google group, and encouraged by the news that a Google developer had ported Android to an EEE PC701, the writers set about the porting work and managed to get it up and running after a number of hours work.

This laptop belongs to a good friend and she loved it when I told her that we can give a new life to her laptop using GNU/Linux. This is an Toshiba Satellite Sro 435CDS built around 12 years ago. Specs? Pentium 120, 32 MB ram, 4 GB Hard. Yes this laptop has been upgrade a few years ago to highest supported specs.

The Boston Globe has an article on the difficulties President Obama will face with spending $50 Billion in Health IT: "As Barack Obama prepares to spend billions on health information technology as part of his plan to revive the US economy, some specialists are warning against investing too heavily in existing electronic record keeping systems...If America's physician practices suddenly rushed to install the systems of their choice, it would only dramatically intensify the [tower of] Babel that already exists," wrote David Kibbe, a senior adviser to the academy and a longtime proponent of health information technology, and Bruce Klepper, a healthcare market analyst..."

Last quarter AMD introduced their "Shanghai" Opteron processors that join the ranks of Intel's Harpertown Xeon CPUs that are 45nm quad-core server/workstation parts. Initial reviews of these new AMD Opteron processors have been very positive, but how do these chips perform with Linux? In this article we have our hands on a few of the fastest Shanghais, the AMD Opteron 2384 clocked at 2.7GHz, as we see how well they compare to the older "Barcelona" Opteron processors.