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The first three months of the year were defined, in the technology sector, by some very scary numbers. Just feast your eyes on some of these. Apple, we learned, pulled in profits in just three months of over $3bn. That’s not in a year – that’s just in a quarter…

Threading is no small topic in programming circles. Some folks love them. Some hate them. Whether they are good or evil is a debate for the pious among us — I use them when they fit and you might want to do the same. In this article we’re going to have a look at a basic building block of Android applications — performing an operation in a secondary thread while keeping the primary GUI thread accessible and the user up to date at all times.

Talk about strange bedfellows. When Red Hat Summit kicks off June 22 in Boston, Microsoft is expected to be on hand as part of a major virtualization push. Here are the details, along with a look at additional surprises in store for Red Hat Summit.

After much planning and thought about implementing new categories on Buntfu.com it became apparent that the structure needed to be descriptive yet open enough to require little maintenance was more challenging than originally anticipated. Yet, the importance and significance of supporting more hardware and software that works with Free and Open Source systems was too great to ignore. Many categories were directly influenced by Ebay in an effort to produce a familiar environment.

This post is the first in a series on shell script debugging, error handling, and security. Although I’ll be presenting some methodologies and techniques that apply to all shell languages (and most programming languages), this series will focus very heavily on BASH. Users of other shells like CSH will need to do some homework to see what information transfers and what does not. One of the difficulties with debugging a shell script is that BASH typically doesn’t give you very much information to go on. You might get error output showing a line number, but that’s just the line where the shell became aware of the error, not necessarily the line where the error actually occurred. Add in a vague error message such as the one in Listing 1, and it gets difficult to tell what’s going on inside your script.

You're probably familiar with using makefiles to build executables from source code. But did you know that GNU make can automate many tasks? Juliet Kemp teaches us how.

Let me be blunt: If you're not using Linux on the desktop in call center and other fixed-purpose computing environments, you're doing your company a disservice. It never fails to amaze me when I see environments with hundreds of Windows XP systems running TN3270 sessions to an AS/400, with a headset-equipped person staring at the green screen and talking to a customer. Even if there were a need for Web browsing and email for those users, why would you pay for Windows on that system in this day and age?

Looking for a cheap DIY Linux robot? This is the Linux PC robot project. The objective of LinuxPCRobot is to build a fully functional robotic development platform for $500 or less using linux, commonly available components, a little skill, and some good old fashioned scrounging.

At first glance, it will be difficult for Canonical and Ubuntu to compete with Apple’s dominant iPad in the tablet market. But now that I’ve had some time to really think about the situation, I think the iPad will help to re-ignite Ubuntu’s Mobile Internet Device (MID) effort against Microsoft Windows. Here’s why.

When you install the Ubuntu Netbook Edition in October, don’t look for Firefox on the desktop — it won’t be there. Chromium, Chrome’s open source cousin, is going to be taking its place. After years of desktop dominance on Linux, is Firefox losing its foothold or is this an anomaly?

One year ago we reviewed the ZaReason Ion Breeze computer that was built around NVIDIA's ION platform with an Intel Atom CPU, but today we are looking at our first ZaReason notebook and it boasts some very high-end hardware. The Verix 1656 is one of ZaReason's highest-end notebooks and its powered by a quad-core Intel Core i7 CPU (with Hyper Threading to make for eight logical cores in this mobile computer), a NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250M GPU, and a 15.4-inch 1680x1050 display. The ZaReason Verix 1656 also has a very nice brushed-aluminum exterior.

There have been several stories proclaiming that a recent Linux infection proves Windows malware monopoly is over and that Think Linux is free from malware? Think again; it's been hacked. Much as it pains me to disagree with the good people, they're wrong. Here's what really happened. UnrealIRCd, a rather obscure open-source IRC (Internet Relay Chat) server, wasn't so much hacked as the program it was letting people download has been replaced by one with a built-in security hole. Or, as they explained on their site, "This is very embarrassing...

It just seems that through all this hype of Google’s much anticipated release of its Chrome OS, many look to it as Google’s replacement to all competing Operating System when the reality shows that this will not be the case. First of all, let us look at the audience this new OS is catering to: someone who pretty much uses the web for everything (i.e. entertainment, productivity, communications, etc.).

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) announced the inclusion of the GNOME desktop environment in its XO-1.5 line of computers. The inclusion of GNOME allows for students to quickly move from a learning environment to a productivity environment quickly and easily.

digiKam is an immensely powerful photo application, so learning all its features requires time and effort. But this capable photo management application also offers a few easy to use features which you can use to instantly improve your shots.

This video is a overview of Character creation in Icewind Dale using CodeWeavers CrossOver Games in Linux Mint 9, the game also plays extremely well in other Linux distributions and Mac OS X with CXGames 9.0

Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth is bullish on PCs exposing millions of consumers to Linux – despite the industry succumbing to Jobsian tablet fever. Shuttleworth reckons that Ubuntu is approaching a tipping point among the ordinary PC-buying public, with the distro shipping on a record (for Ubuntu) five million machines this year.

In which Carl and Marla find the Alexandria Project (or do they?), strange doings take place in N. Korea, and Frank has a very surprising visitor

The Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA) recently elected a new executive which will sit for two years until the Idlelo 5 conference in 2012. Tectonic spoke to the newly elected officials about the successes of the past, new challenges and hopes for the future.

Most users interact with OpenOffice.org on the desktop. But what if you need to do a selective restore on the files that store custom gradients or colors? Troubleshoot why an extension won't install? Share resources with other users? For these kinds of tasks, you need to know a bit about where OpenOffice.org stores its files, and what you can do with them.