Showing all newswire headlines

These people are not interested in improving Linux, they are only interested in stroking their own egos. They want power more than anything else. Power over other people. Power to destroy anyone or anything that does not do what they demand.

The bullying of the copyright industry in Sweden inspired the launch of the first political party whose platform is to reduce copyright restrictions: the Pirate Party. Its platform includes the prohibition of Digital Restrictions Management, legalization of noncommercial sharing of published works, and shortening of copyright for commercial use to a five-year period. Five years after publication, any published work would go into the public domain.

While Linux systems generally have a good reputation for uptime, there are sometimes unavoidable reasons that a reboot is required. Typically, that is because of a kernel update, especially one that fixes a security hole. Companies that have long-running processes, or those who require uninterrupted availability, are not particularly fond of this requirement. A new company, Ksplice, Inc. has come up with a way to avoid these reboots by hot-patching a running kernel.

It seems as if Linux gamers are indeed really excited for having new games on Linux, well, "really excited" may still be an understatement. About 24 hours ago we talked about Heroes of Newerth, a game being developed by S2 Games, was coming to Linux and we were able to hand out beta invitations to begin playing the game immediately as part of their closed testing process.

Microsoft made waves this week with their GPLv2 contribution of virtualization code. On the other side of the coin, Microsoft continues to take issue with open source vendors over the issue of patents. One vendor that has called on Microsoft to be more open is Red Hat. In a blog post, Red Hat's legal team praised Microsoft's code contribution while asking Microsoft to change its stance on patents.

You’ve heard of Smart Phones and Netbooks. Now, get ready for Smartbooks — mobile 3G wireless devices that appear to be slightly larger than the iPhone. Qualcomm is rallying OEMs to introduce Smartbooks sometime in Q3 or Q4 2009. And here’s the twist: Qualcomm is hiring Ubuntu talent to help drive the project forward. Here's the scoop.

Let’s bust some myths today because a majority of KDE 4 haters out there have the same reasons for hating it. I’m pretty sick of seeing posts and news articles about “why I don’t like KDE 4? and then seeing that the real reason the person is upset is because they don’t spend an extra few moments trying to figure things out…aka lazy and ignorant.

There has been a lot of talk about the Linux kernel and Open Source drivers this week. Most of it was about Microsoft that released drivers under the GPL V2 for inclusion in the Linux kernel. As pointed out by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols this was planned for a long time and will benefit Microsoft as much (if not more) than Linux. The only important thing this shows is that Microsoft is ready to embrace the GPL if it serves it's business interests. Much more interesting is the discussion on Phoronix about the case of the new VIA Chrome 9 DRM...

At OSCON 2009 in San Jose, California, Google announced the winners of this years Google O'Reilly Open Source Awards. The awards have been presented each year since 2005 to individuals for their "dedication, innovation, leadership and outstanding contribution to open source".

Microsoft's unexpected move Monday to donate thousands of lines of code for inclusion in the Linux operating system kernel is being interpreted by some as recognition by Microsoft that it's a hybrid IT world out there, and its software must co-exist with Linux and other open-source products. Make no mistake, Microsoft hasn't abandoned its ambitions to be the dominant player in the data center, just as it already is on the desktop. And if that means engaging in some "co-opetition" with Linux in the short-term, so be it. But anyone who sat through the keynote speech by Microsoft COO Kevin Turner at the Worldwide Partner Conference last week knows Microsoft has a long list of technologies -- including Linux -- it has in its competitive sights.

atop is a handy top-like program that shows system load information in a separate section on top of process information; Juliet Kemp gives us a tour of this useful utility.

A week after adding API access to its Amazon-esque cloud, Rackspace has now open-sourced these APIs. On Wednesday, the company said it had opened up the specs for both its Cloud Servers APIs and Cloud Files APIs under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Meant to encourage the development of open standards for all so-called infrastructure clouds, the move is in stark contrast to Amazon's much-discussed silence over its own API philosophies.

In less than two weeks we will be officially releasing Phoronix Test Suite 2.0 "Sandtorg" and this by far is the biggest upgrade ever to our flagship testing and benchmarking software. While the Phoronix Test Suite is most often associated with Linux, this open-source software is also compatible with Mac OS X, OpenSolaris, and BSD operating systems too, all of which offer new improvements with Phoronix Test Suite 2.0. In this article we have detailed some of the major highlights of Phoronix Test Suite 2.0 and how we seek to drive innovation into PC benchmarking and performance profiling.

Mozilla recommends its updated Firefox 3.0.12 version for its new 3.0 series in that it removes a few critical security issues.

This guide explains how you can run virtual machines with Sun VirtualBox 3.0 (released on June 30, 2009) on a headless Fedora 11 server. Normally you use the VirtualBox GUI to manage your virtual machines, but a server does not have a desktop environment. Fortunately, VirtualBox comes with a tool called VBoxHeadless that allows you to connect to the virtual machines over a remote desktop connection, so there's no need for the VirtualBox GUI.

Adobe has used the Open Source Conference (OSCON), currently taking place in California's San Jose, to announce a new strategy for its Flash Platform. Some people are questioning Adobe's motives.

Rumors are swirling that Dell’s U.S. Web site has stopped selling Ubuntu-based desktop Linux PCs. What are the potential implications for Canonical and the desktop Linux movement? Here's the scoop.

"A lot of people say calling Debian, Fedora, or Slackware, GNU/Linux opposed to calling it Linux, makes it harder to explain to people. An example, Bob could tell Sarah “You should use Fedora. It will work with your hardware, it’s fast, and it’s free” and Sarah might ask “What’s Fedora?” and Bob would tell her “It’s Linux.” and Sarah will understand. Wrong."

Microsoft was in violation of the GPL (General Public License) on the Hyper-V code it released to open source this week. After Redmond covered itself in glory by opening up the code, it now looks like it may have acted simply to head off any potentially embarrassing legal dispute over violation of the GPL. The rest was theater.

Many a vigorous debate has been fought over any possible legal threats that might be inherent in Mono. Now that Microsoft has extended its Community Promise to cover select parts of the C# programming language, which is what Mono is built on, it is being hailed as evidence that Mono is safe. Bruce Byfield tries to answer the question, is it really?