Showing all newswire headlines

Generally, all Linux distributions needs a scheduled reboot once to stay up to date with important kernel security updates. RHN (or other distro vendors) provides Linux kernel security updates. You can apply kernel updates using yum command or apt-get command line options. After each upgrade you need to reboot the server. Ksplice service allows you to skip reboot step and apply hotfixes to kernel without rebooting the server.

Vimscript is a mechanism for reshaping and extending the Vim editor. Scripting allows you to create new tools, simplify common tasks, and even redesign and replace existing editor features. This article (the first in a series) introduces the fundamental components of the Vimscript programming language: values, variables, expressions, statements, functions, and commands. These features are demonstrated and explained through a series of simple examples.

Yesterday we delivered benchmarks showing how the open-source ATI Radeon graphics driver stack in Ubuntu 10.04 is comparing to older releases of the proprietary ATI Catalyst Linux driver. Sadly, the latest open-source ATI driver still is no match even for a two or four-year-old proprietary driver from ATI/AMD, but that is with the classic Mesa DRI driver. To yesterday's results we have now added in our results from ATI's Gallium3D (R300g) driver using a Mesa 7.9-devel Git snapshot from yesterday to see how this runs against the older Catalyst drivers.

In early March Stuart Jarvis wrote an article published here on the Dot which announced the winners of the poll results for suitable KDE software labels. Since then work has begun on coming up with suitable logos for these labels. This work is still underway and in need of volunteers if you have time and artistic skills.

TinyMe is a lightweight linux OS, it is aimed at making the computing experience as bloat- and lag-free as possible. It is well-suited to older computers, enthusiasts devoted to small/fast systems

Simple Invoices is a simple, lightweight web-based invoicing application. It’s an open source application that you have to install on a computer running a LAMP stack. Its hardware requirements are quite minimal, depending upon your level of usage. Simple Invoices opens in your web browser and has a simple, yet aesthetically pleasing user interface.

If you just want enough information to fix your problem quickly, you can read the How-To section of this post and skip the rest. I would highly recommend reading everything though, as a good understanding of the concepts and commands outlined here will serve you well in the future. We also have Video and Audio included with this post that may be a good quick reference for you. Don’t forget that the man and info pages of your Linux/Unix system can be an invaluable resource as well when you’re trying to solve problems.

ZaReason is a popular independent Linux computer company, founded by Cathy and Earl Malmrose. Cathy Malmrose tells the tale of how ZaReason came into existence thanks to chaos and Compiz Fusion.

Want to speed up your network and provide greater security in 15 minutes? You can do that with Squid Proxy Server on Ubuntu 10.04. The process is very easy and is an excellent way to save on network resources. Squid 2.7 has a focus on web performance.

The CodePlex Foundation is a non-profit designed to encourage and educate commercial software developers to start or improve their own open source projects. And, even though Microsoft is the first sponsor of the Foundation, all of the projects are "platform and technology agnostic," Hunter emphasized in a recent interview. That's likely a response to many critics of the CodePlex Foundation (CF), who think this is all an attempt by Microsoft to deal with open source solely on its own terms. The evidence is certainly strong. Besides being the founding sponsor, Microsoft currently holds two positions on the current five-person board.

Here's a paradox. Free software seems perfect for developing countries: it's free both to obtain and to share, runs well on low-spec machines and – an important aspect that is often overlooked – can be easily localised. And yet the uptake of free software in many such countries is poor, with Windows still dominating computing at all levels. How is this possible?

The Ubuntu Linux distribution isn't the only open source project with a long-term-support release on the horizon. The Asterisk open source VoIP PBX (define) project is moving ahead with its own long-term support (LTS) plans with its 1.8 release.

We are in the process of conducting a set of tests looking at how the performance of Ubuntu Linux has evolved through their Long-Term Support (LTS) releases beginning with their first 6.06 "Dapper Drake" version followed by Ubuntu 8.04 "Hardy Heron", and then the Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" release that will be released by month's end. These benchmarks will look at how the performance of Ubuntu Linux has changed over the past four years, but first we deviated from our original plans to get a look at how the current open-source ATI R500 graphics driver in Ubuntu 10.04 provided by the Mesa stack performs against older proprietary ATI Catalyst drivers.

"There are lots of evil things that proprietary software companies might do. Companies put their own profit above the rights and freedoms of their users, and to that end, much can be done that subjugates users. Even as someone who avoids proprietary software, I still read many proprietary license agreements (mainly to see how bad they are)."

The ARM Cortex-A8 achieves surprisingly competitive performance across many integer-based benchmarks while consuming power at levels far below the most energy miserly x86 CPU, the Intel Atom. In fact, the ARM Cortex-A8 matched or even beat the Intel Atom N450 across a significant number of our integer-based tests, especially when compensating for the Atom’s 25 percent clock speed advantage. However, the ARM Cortex-A8 sample that we tested in the form of the Freescale i.MX515 lived in an ecosystem that was not competitive with the x86 rivals in this comparison. The video subsystem is very limited. Memory support is a very slow 32-bit, DDR2-200MHz.

This comes up in discussions almost every new project I work on, because it's a very important thing to consider when designing a database. When deciding when and how to create an index in your MySQL database, it's important to consider how the data is being used.

This is the Dreambox, a Linux powered price winning digital television receiver. While it may not look like much at first, wait till you hear what special features it supports (some unofficially) ... Many Dreambox owners use these softcams together with special software for card sharing. Card sharing is when you buy one card for pay-tv and share de decryption codes generated by the card over the network.

A beta of the Firefox “Lorentz” project is now available for download and public testing. Firefox “Lorentz” takes the out of process plugins work from Mozilla Developer Previews and builds it on top of Firefox 3.6.3. This beta offers uninterrupted browsing for Windows and Linux users when a problem causes a crash in any Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime or Microsoft Silverlight plugin instance. If a plugin crashes or freezes when using Firefox “Lorentz”, it will not affect the rest of Firefox. Users can submit a plugin crash report, and then reload the page to restart the plugin and try again.

Earlier this week it was made public that IBM had levied patent infringement allegations against French company TurboHercules and its mainframe emulator. A letter signed by IBM VP and technology officer Mark S. Anzani and addressed to TurboHercules co-founder Roger Bowler detailed the more than 170 patents the company allegedly infringed upon. The problem: two of the patents in question were part of a 500-patent access pledge made by IBM in 2005.

It seems Groklaw will have to open a new category, answering Florian Mueller FUD. As you know he recently claimed that IBM had violated its public pledge not to sue Linux for patent infringement. I think he's mistaken. IBM, when it announced the patent pledge, specifically reserved the right to defend itself from attack: "IBM has no intention of asserting its patent portfolio against the Linux kernel, unless of course we are forced to defend ourselves," said Nick Donofrio, senior vice president for technology and manufacturing, drawing applause in a speech at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo. And in the TurboHercules story, who is suing whom? It's not IBM, folks. The complaint against IBM was filed with the EU Commission by TurboHercules. At that exact moment, did they not take themselves out from under the patent pledge's safety umbrella?