Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

In the dispute between the SCO Group and Novell about the copyright for Unix, the new jury trial scheduled to begin on the 8th of March is apparently set to go ahead: according to a statement by Chapter 11 trustee Edward Cahn, SCO's majority owner Ralph Yarro wants to inject a loan of $2 million dollars into the financially stricken company.

Although some people viewed it as a tempest in a teapot, the long-running legal case Jacobsen v. Katzer stirred up some seminal open source issues. We first reported on the dust-up all the way back in August of 2008, noting that the dispute centered around--of all things--model train software.

A while ago, Giovanni Venturi interviewed Marco Martin for the Italian KDE website (so if you read Italian, please see there for the authentic version). For our Italian-challenged readers, we are pleased to present an English translation below. Marco "Notmart" Martin is of course well known as one of the primary developers of the new Plasma Netbook workspace and for his habit of teasing us via his blog with news of new features for the X+1 release of our Software Compilation just before version X is released...

The FERC, the agency with oversight of the U.S. power grid, signed an order on Thursday that grants Google Energy market-based rate authorization. This paves the way for the search giant to not only better manage its own energy costs, but to possibly add electricity marketer to its repertoire of services.

[Google Calendar, Docs and now Energy? - Scott]

LXer Feature: 20-Feb-2010

My review of the first day of SCALE 8x and the WIOS talks I attended.

Continuing their impressive record of quick delivery of fresh KDE software, the KDE Windows team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of packages with the latest KDE release for the Windows platform. The installer provides not only most of the applications from Software Compilation 4.4, but also the latest versions of a number of independently released KDE applications. Highlights include the latest stable version of digiKam (and the KIPI plugins) and Konversation. Although Amarok is not yet included in the installer there is progress being made.

Microsoft is determined to be a leader of the open source movement. It will once again be a “platinum sponsor” at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco next month and its National Technology Officer for the U.S., Stuart McKee, will deliver a keynote. McKee, former CIO for Washington state, may be best known to open source advocates for admitting that “ODF won” the standards battle with Microsoft’s Open Office XML back in 2008.

[I can answer that question for you Dana..and the answer is; No - Scott]

Opera has freed its first open source project, moving code for its Dragonfly debug tool onto the popular BitBucket hosting service. Dragonfly - a website debug tool similar to Mozilla's Firebug - was always intended as an open source project. From its inception in 2008, it carried an open source BSD license. But until this month, the code repository sat on Opera servers. As of February 10, it's a fully open source project hosted on BitBucket.

Canonical is developing a 2D ARM interface based on Enlightenment Foundation Libraries for the upcoming Ubuntu 10.04 ("Lucid Lynx") version of Ubuntu Netbook Remix. In other Ubuntu news, Ubuntu Live CDs in Lucid Lynx will boot 33 percent faster, and The Linux Box will market Ubuntu.

It's no secret that Linux runs behind many consumer devices, and embedded Linux fits in the tiniest of places. One of the latest ways to get your Linux fix comes in what looks like power wall wart from TonidoPlug. Under the cover you'll find essentially a Marvell SheevaPlug with a 1.2 GHz CPU, 512MB of DDR2 memory and a 512MB flash disk. On the outside you'll see a single USB port and an Ethernet jack.

Last month we published benchmarks of EXT4 comparing this file-system's performance when it was first marked stable in the mainline kernel and then where it is at now in the Linux kernel while testing every major release in between. This article was followed up by a Btrfs versus EXT4 comparison using the Linux 2.6.33 kernel to see how the two most talked about Linux file-systems are battling it out with the latest kernel. After those Linux file-system benchmarks were published, we received a request from Canonical to look at the EXT3 performance too. With that said, we have done just that and have published EXT3, EXT4, and Btrfs benchmarks from Ubuntu 9.10 and a Ubuntu 10.04 development snapshot from an Intel Atom netbook.

For those still waiting for the year of the Linux "desktop," I regret to inform you that it has already come and gone. Through the efforts of the open-source community, in conjunction with independent hardware and software vendors, as well as Web developers, Linux is well beyond its toddler years and is almost past its rebellious teenage years. Did you notice?

What do you get when you cross business logic and 80s arcade video games? An open source Space Invaders clone that's being used to illustrate the power of a business logic integration platform for game design.

Is Ubuntu actually good or merely popular? "It is either so bleeding edge it is a miracle the CD doesn't have stigmata, or it is really old packages that are never updated," blogger hairyfeet asserted. "Ubuntu has done more for Linux acceptance than any other distribution," countered blogger Martin Espinoza. "I'm a bit disenchanted with distros in general," said Slashdot blogger David Masover.

The open source software turned 18 last year, and its maturity is evident to hackers and corporate types alike.

[A slideshow with some debatable facts inside. - Scott]

One of the most common complaints I hear about Linux is that it’s just no good for gaming. Some complain about hardware support, others the lack of titles, others that it’s just too complicated. It’s true that Linux probably isn’t the first platform that comes to mind when I think about PC gaming, but some parts of that reputation are inaccurate or outdated. Sabayon Gaming DVD takes on that myth to see just what a Linux gaming system can do. It’s got a fast Gentoo base, built-in codecs and 3D driver support, Compiz, and many of the best games available for Linux. On top of the usual Gnome games, you get such titles as Neverball, Battle for Wesnoth, OpenArena, Tremulous, Warsow, Nexuiz, and Warzone 2100, all playable from the live DVD.

To get a sense of how the health of the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) community is in general and to monitor the interest in FOSS and Linux in the region in particular and at the 36-hour mark before the expo starts, pre-registrations for SCALE 8X are running over 30 percent higher than at this time last year. Friday marks the start of SCALE, highlighted by the Women In Open Source (WIOS) and Open Source Software in Educaction (OSSIE) segments.

There has been a sea change in public opinion. Google is now seen as the evil empire. Microsoft, they’re the feisty little guys up in Washington state. The change has also been marked by a new attitude toward open source. Google’s delivery of open source code for Living Stories is treated as ho-hum. The donation of $2 million to Wikimedia is quickly followed by snark. Is that all they’re giving? Well, their search engine likes Wikipedia best.

The SIM cards in cellular telephones might be smaller than a postage stamp and less than a millimeter thick but that hasn't stopped South Korea's SK Telecom from cramming all the major components needed to run Google's Android OS inside one of them. The carrier's Android SIM, a prototype of which is on show at this week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, includes an ARM-based processor, companion memory and 1GB of flash memory to store the OS and other data.

Aava Mobile announced an "open" Aava smartphone reference design that employs Intel's "Moorestown" CPU, with current or planned support for Moblin Linux 2.1, Android, and MeeGo. Meanwhile, LG will port its Moorestown- and Moblin-based GW990 phone to MeeGo, says an industry report.