Showing all newswire headlines

Traditionally at Phoronix we have stayed away from publishing benchmarks of Gentoo and similar source-based distributions for the lack of them having a standard or "stock" configuration for which one can easily replicate our tested software stack due to all of the different variables that come into play so the value of these benchmarks are much less compared to those distributions providing pre-compiled binaries for a standardized set of packages. However, satisfying a number of requests, we are publishing such benchmarks today. Rather than using Gentoo itself for benchmarking, we are using Calculate Linux Desktop, which is Gentoo-based while providing a very nice "out of the box" experience, i686 and x86_64 binaries, and overall is a polished and user-friendly Gentoo experience.

In the months since it completed its takeover of Sun Microsystems, Oracle has remained painfully silent over its plans for much of Sun’s treasure trove of open source assets. In the meantime, there are an increasing number of companies stepping up to shepherd Oracle’s lost sheep…

LXer Feature: 02-Aug-2010

A roundup of the big stories hitting our newswire from the previous week.

Linus Torvalds released the Linux 2.6.35 kernel, adding improvements to multicore support, network scalability, memory management, power management, and Btrfs file-system I/O. Meanwhile, we take a peek at Linux 2.6.36, and note Linux Journal's history of the Linux kernel, Slackware, Debian, and some 450 other distros.

As you may know, the Linux and open source community provides a wealth of free operating systems (OSs), called distributions, and software applications. Some are desktop distributions for general-use in the office. However, there are many distributions designed for particular uses. Today, we'll review 4 different desktop distributions specifically designed for educational and academic use.

After finally getting the bold version last week, the Ubuntu font which will be default in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat is finally available for (almost) everyone. Why almost? Here is an email from the Kubuntu-users mailing list: Members of the ~kubuntu-users team on launchpad can now test out the Ubuntu Font which is currently in beta testing. Anyone can join this team.

A census of open source developers has provided a sharp reminder of the necessity of commercially viable open source companies, and also how important it is that commercially viable open source companies employ good people to write open source. This probably isn't news to Reg readers, for whom it might be bleeding obvious - perhaps even tautological. But out in the worlds of academia and policy wonkery, the myth that F/OSS development is some kind of happy, Kumbaya potlatch still persists.

Firebird history after 10 years and the Future .Words from Philippe Makowski, President of Firebird Foundation

If you have more than a handful of servers, maintaining them by hand becomes a tedious task. Of course, you can automate this with shell scripts, but this is an ad hoc solution. Puppet can help you to reach a more consistent way of managing your servers. Here's how…

Checkinstall is a utility that builds a .deb, .rpm or Slackware package from a third party source code tarball. This allows you to introduce such third party software using the standard package management features of your distribution. In contrast, the conventional instructions for installing such software packages puts your package manager out of sync with the actual collection of software installed on your Linux box.

We all know that Android does not allow the camera LED to be controlled directly from apps and hence, you cannot use the camera LED as a Torch or Flashlight unless you are rooted. There are many flashlight apps on the Android Market Place but none of them will work for you if you don’t have a rooted phone. BUT this changed recently

The Bordeaux Technology Group released Bordeaux 2.0.6 for FreeBSD and PC-BSD today. Bordeaux 2.0.6 is a maintenance release that fixes a number of small bugs and includes many new features.

One Laptop Per Child wants to join forces to help develop the Indian government's planned US$35 tablet. In a congratulatory note to the government, OLPC Chairman Nicholas Negroponte said the world needs the $35 tablet, and he offered the country full access to OLPC hardware and software technology.

I am typing this as I am finally connected in shell to my Android phone. The prompt reminds me that it’s based on the Linux kernel (it’s free), the Dalvik virtual machine (it’s free), and free libraries. Millions of Android devices are shipped every day, each one is a Linux system. Today, it’s phone. Soon, it will be tablets: Android 3.0 (coming out at the end of the year) will finally be very suitable for tablets. Apple alone will have to face fierce competition on pretty much every front. Microsoft… who? They are more irrelevant every day. I should be happy, right? Well, sort of. Looking back at how long it took me to get this shell prompt makes me worried. Very worried. We are heading towards a world where we no longer own the hardware we buy — and there is no point in having free software if you can’t own your hardware. Read the full article at Free Software Magazine.

One of the free software projects we have been talking to as of late about better enhancing their benchmarking capabilities for likely integration into the Phoronix Test Suite is Rigs of Rods. While the graphics within this driving simulator may not be the best (at least when compared to Unigine, or within the open-source world, Nexuiz) it's not the graphics that the developers pride themselves on but rather the physics capabilities. Rigs of Rods began as a truck driving simulator game, but since then has turned into a rather interesting physics sandbox of goodies. A new release of their code-base was just made.

Lighttpd is a secure, fast, standards-compliant web server designed for speed-critical environments. This tutorial shows how you can install Lighttpd on a Fedora 13 server with PHP5 support (through FastCGI) and MySQL support.

While attending the 2010 Linux Against Poverty event, I was approached by Dr. Neal Scogin. Dr. Scogin resides in College Station Texas and made the trip to Austin to talk to me about one of his most important projects. Neal knows what many of us know...through the slow but steady processes already in place, Linux as a desktop will become an important part of the educational experience. The operating system has become fully functional but much of the educational software as it applies to Linux itself is lacking. What Neal sees as a critical need, is a way to teach kids about their Linux system. What better way than through a game?

"Canada is currently negotiating two major international trade agreements whose success may ultimately depend on the level of protection provided to Parma ham."

[Food might ultimately doom ACTA..excellent. - beirwin]

What exactly does it mean when Richard Stallman says that the Creative Commons’ Attribution-ShareAlike license has a “Weak Copyleft”? Why exactly is it that “Freeware” and “Non-Free Software” mean the same thing, while “Free Software” is something else entirely? And what is this business with “Free Beer”, and where can I get some? If you’ve asked yourself these questions, this column is for you. Read the full article at Free Software Magazine.

Conky is a free, light-weight system monitor for X, that displays any information on your desktop.