Showing all newswire headlines

Toward the end of his linux.conf.au talk, Andrew Tannenbaum put up a few slides on the runtime cost of the microkernel approach. He had quite a few benchmarks, but the bottom line was that the microkernel architecture used in Minix imposed a roughly 5-10% performance penalty, depending on what one is trying to do. While operating systems hackers would normally cringe at the prospect of paying a 5% penalty, to many people this could seem like a good deal: give up 5-10% of a processor which is mostly idle anyway in exchange for a more reliable system.

Research Also Shows Open Source Usage Skyrocketing in the Enterprise, Sharp Increase in Demand for Support and Policies

Key highlights of the latest version of Ensim Pro X for Linux include support for Fedora Core 6. Ensim customers may deploy Ensim Pro X on FC 6.0 with the latest OS features available. This applies to new users with the latest version, as well as upgrades for existing customers. FC 6 is the latest version of the widely used Fedora Core Operating System and has already over a million installations.

Trolltech and VirtualLogix have integrated Trolltech’s Qtopia platform for Linux handsets and VirtualLogix’s VLX software on a single-core processor. Trolltech, the company that makes software faster to build and easier to use, and VirtualLogix have formed a partnership, and will be demonstrating the single-core processor form-factor at 3GSM, the company said.

Levanta recently released a new server management appliance aimed at administrators who manage large Linux-based networks.

Just a few minutes ago, Sun announced that it would make a "preview" version of its Office to ODF plugin in "mid February," with the full version to follow "later this spring." Plugins will be available for use with both Sun's StarOffice as well as the open source OpenOffice.org office suite. The announcement comes three days after Microsoft announced the immediate availability of its Office to ODF plugin at SourceForge.

A new open source advocacy group is about to launch with a focus on applications rather than open source standards.

Sun Microsystems Inc has earmarked its Thumper disk array as a future NAS and VTL platform, and said that it plans to make its Honeycomb CAS software open source.

This article shows you how to convert an XML document using Perl into a tree of objects in memory. Most Perl programmers find this approach more natural, and it is indeed more convenient. It then introduces you to SAX and event-based parsing, an entirely different style of programming, one that turns out to be very rich, using the SAX pipeline.

Tucson Amateur Packet Radio (TAPR) is sponsoring a plan to encourage and popularize the idea of open source -- for hardware components. The organization released a draft of an open source license for computer hardware this month, and issued a public call for comments on the draft. The new license is already drawing criticism from prominent members of the open source community.

IT managers looking to build an open source-based networking infrastructure will shortly be able to get their hands on free software that handles a range of routing and security features.

Local chief information officers at a Sydney conference this week were more interested in talking about open source and standards-based software than Microsoft's new operating system.

As we witness the release of Windows Vista to the world at large, I thought it was interesting to see the evolution of BeOS coming back into the spotlight. Today, the spirit of BeOS remains alive and well in OpenBeOS' latest incarnation, known as Haiku.

Do your ever wonder if some self-proclaimed open source projects really 'get it' what it means to truly be about being 'free and open source' versus just using FOSS for other means? Sometimes I really have to wonder, because I keep running into examples where projects touting open source software engage in behavior where they glaringly contradict the holistic and philosophical embrace of its ideals. There's a lot of faking the FOSS going on out there.

Earlier today, I stumbled upon an article that was filled with reader comments stating that the sellers of open source software are to be dismissed as scam artists. Those in this crowd that actually understand the legal bindings of the individual license(s) and definition of open source generally pointed out that they feel such sales are unethical - just not illegal.

The ROX Desktop is a lightweight alternative to GNOME or KDE built around the ROX-Filer file manager. The project's name is an abbreviation of "RISC OS on X." The ROX Desktop's performance is reminiscent of IceWM, and it's noticeably faster opening programs than GNOME or KDE. However, its speed comes at the expense of a needlessly redundant default configuration, and some users may balk at some of the assumptions its design makes about how they prefer to work.

United Electronics Industries (UEI) is shipping a rugged Linux-based programmable automation controller based on a PowerPC processor. The UEIPAC Cube is available with extensive I/O options, and targets unmanned vehicles, environmental control, and test stand applications such as hardware-in-the-loop simulation.

Ah, survived the holidays! But if your bank balance is anything like mine right now, you’re looking for ways to save money. Here’s one means of economizing -- stop buying computer software. No, I’m not advocating becoming a pirate. Johnny Depp can pull it off, but I wouldn’t recommend it for educators. (Too few of us look that good in mascara.) Instead, take a serious look at some high quality software that is now available -- at no cost.

Featured in the expanded arrangement are specific blueprints that demonstrate how to redeploy applications. For example, the companies have been building a blueprint, or "proof point," on moving from an IBM CICS environment onto Linux running Oracle Fusion Middleware and the Oracle 10g database on Unisys ES7000/one Enterprise Servers.

This is the first in what will hopefully be monthly summaries of news from the Free Software Foundation and GNU project. This summary has been distilled down from press releases, blogs, email lists, and website news pages. The idea is to provide a concise summary of the latest FSF/GNU news for those who don't have the time or interest to find and read all the original news sources within that community.