Showing all newswire headlines

The One Laptop Per Child program reported today that after 303 builds, it finally has a satisfactory version of its Red Hat Linux-based Sugar operating system that is considered stable, according to OLPC president for software and content Walter Bender. "After a final few bugs that had hidden in corners were driven into the light, we issued Stable Build 303 along with Q2B76 firmware this week," Bender said in his weekly email report.

Johns Hopkins emergency medicine specialists have developed a tool to help hospitals prepare for disasters with the potential to overwhelm services. The Electronic Mass Casualty Assessment & Planning Scenarios computer program calculates the impact of such crises as a flu epidemic, bioterrorist attack, flood or plane crash, accounting for such elements as numbers of victims, wind direction, available medical resources, bacterial incubation periods and bomb size.

With all the bugfixes how history, the GNOME project team last week released v2.18 of its popular desktop environment. For the first time, GNOME ships with a bundle of online games, chess with a 3D look, and Sudoku crossword puzzles.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser may have the lion's share of the general market, but when it comes to security types, Mozilla's Firefox open source browser is an even contender, according to a security survey released Monday.

Aimed at new users, the Fedora Project's Fedora Desktop User Guide (FDUG) attempts to address some worthwhile questions: What does its audience want to do? What does the audience need to know to accomplish those tasks? What explanations and layout will help them absorb the information they need as easily and as quickly as possible? FDUG does a reasonable job of anticipating audience need, covering topics from logging in and basic desktop features to descriptions of setting up mail and managing photos and sharing directories. However, its presentation of information fails to answer the other questions implicit in technical writing, and suffers in both text and design from a lack of consistency.

My first surprise was how small an envelope this book came in. Sure, it was a huge envelope in terms of height and width but not thickness. I didn't even think it was a book before I opened the envelope. The very last page is 207 (although officially it's 216) which holds the "Z" in the index section so it is quite brief. That isn't necessarily a problem, though. Some books talk too much, after all.

Almost two years ago, the FSF (Free Software Foundation) started work on the first update of the GNU GPL (General Public License) in over a decade. A last-minute hitch, though, is keeping the license from appearing. The FSF announced at the May 2005 LinuxWorld Expo that the GPLv3 would be out soon . The project has taken a little longer than expected. At last report, the GPLv3 (GNU General Public License 3) was to be out by early 2007 .

Robert Knight, lead maintainer of Konsole has launched a Konsole Usage Survey. 28 questions are waiting for your answers. Use this chance to give useful feedback about a vital and often-used base application of KDE to enable Robert to make Konsole the best console application for KDE 4.

Ian Murdock announced on his blog today that he's leaving the Linux Foundation, and will be joining Sun to work on their operating systems strategy. Murdock notes that Sun has made great strides recently, and feels "the corner has been turned" Dave

Many times a simple screencast showing how to do something by using a series of screenshots in sequence in a video can explain what paragraph after paragraph of words cannot. Linux and a few open source applications make the job of creating such screencasts easy.

The United States generates more malicious computer activity than any other country, and sophisticated hackers worldwide are banding together in highly efficient crime rings, according to a new report.

Microsoft's Vista operating system should give the company a revenue stream that will run for years, but experts at Wharton say the January 30 launch of the consumer versions of Microsoft's flagship software may be among the last of its kind—a product sold for a flat fee in a shrink-wrapped box. Indeed, many wonder if the software business model that has made Microsoft so dominant may begin to fade as new software business models—from open source to advertising supported—gain increasing traction.

This article looks at input and output options, and you will learn how to use the Yahoo Web Services REST protocol interface to provide a more sophisticated showcase for the functionality of the DOM and SimpleXML.

The founder of Debian GNU/Linux, chair of the Linux Standards Base and outgoing CTO of the Linux Foundation, Ian Murdock has joined Sun Microsystems as Chief Operating Platforms Officer. Sun's Chief Open Source Officer announced the news on his blog today.

[Changed link to actual announcement - dcparris]

Beryl, a new open-source window manager for Linux, features compelling visual enhancements like support for transparent windows and elaborate window animations. Based on David Reveman's Compiz window manager, Beryl leverages hardware-accelerated rendering to provide support for unique and innovative graphical functionality.

To protect your AIX system, you need to have a solid backup strategy, multiple backups, offsite storage of data, and a fully tested and proven plan of restoring data to your systems.

Red Hat is planning a packaged Linux desktop solution that it hopes will push its Linux desktop offering to a far broader audience than exists for its current client solution. The move is designed in part to compete with Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 platform, which includes SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, which were released in July 2006.

If you need to convert word processor documents to and from Microsoft's OpenXML format, you have at least two choices. A new utility from Novell work as an OpenOffice.org extension, while a separate project makes an add-in for Microsoft Word. One is clearly better than the other.

The Debian Installer team is proud to announce the second release candidate (RC2) of the installer for Debian GNU/Linux Etch. Unless release critical issues are discovered, this will be the version of the installer that will be included in the release of Etch.

Ever wanted to take the window open on your desktop and set it on fire? If you happen to be running Linux, you're in luck. Jaw-dropping 3D desktop effects first came to the Linux desktop by way of the Novell sponsored Compiz effort which got started over a year ago. An open source community fork of that effort called Beryl is now moving beyond its base, taking Linux desktop effects to the next level.