Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

If you're fortunate enough to live near New York City, you can catch Eben Moglen at the NY Chapter of the Internet Society (ISOC-NY) on Friday, talking about "Freedom in the Cloud." Specifically, Moglen will be talking about the implications of "cloud computing" on software freedom, privacy, and security. Cloud computing does pose quite a few challenges for software freedom. In addition to software licensing, users have to worry about privacy, data portability, and more. Just having the source is no longer enough, when users do have the source.

After years of HTML standardization disarray, browser makers Apple, Opera, Mozilla, and most recently Google now are hammering out new directions for Web standards. Perhaps the most visible HTML5 aspect is built-in support for audio and video, but there are other HTML abilities under way: storing data on a computer for use by an application, Web Sockets for periodically pushing updates to a browser, Web Workers for letting Web programs perform multiple tasks at once, and Canvas for better two-dimensional graphics.... It's far from game-over for Flash, though.

The venerable GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) is undergoing a significant transformation. The next major release, version 2.8, will introduce an improved user interface with an optional single-window mode. Although this update is still under heavy development, users can get an early look by compiling the latest source code of the development version from the GIMP's version control repository.

The Linux Foundation announced a call for papers and open registration for its second annual LinuxCon conference, scheduled for August 10-12 in Boston. The conference will feature several mini-summits prior to the show on topics including security and KVM, says the nonprofit Linux advocacy organization. LinuxCon, which debuted last September in Portland, Oregon, brings together technical and business leadership across the Linux spectrum, including desktop, enterprise, kernel, and embedded development.

The European Union's Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR.eu) as of today is offering public administrations access to more than two thousand free and open source applications. The OSOR is a platform where public administrations can exchange information and experiences and collaborate in developing free and open source software. The platform has managed to bring together more than 2000 such open source software applications in just sixteen months after its launch. The most recent projects added to the OSOR repository include Zorb, an extension to the open source network monitoring tool Nagios, Comerzzia, meant to aid public administrations in providing services to SMEs and Genericoder, an open source converter for XML files.

Disclaimer: This post reflects my personal opinion and is in no way related to the company I work for. LWN tells us what is happening with the android kernel patches in upstream. The short version: They are gone

So, the XO-2 has moved from promise to hope to scrap, and has made way for a tablet-style, iPhoneiPad-like XO-3 (Read about the 3.0 model at Forbes and Engadget, with the now-in-production 1.5 and the in-planning 1.75 XOs, both using the current design but with faster processors. OLPC, and Nick Negroponte in particular, love to use conceptual designs to create excitement. This works great in normal, commercial development a few times. Once you miss a few targets, people react very negatively too it, even if you do finally release a product. Why do you think Apple pairs announcements with already-planned release schedules?

The mobile version of Firefox web browser has been finally released. But don't get too excited because as of the moment, it is only available for Nokia's Maemo5 platform. This means that the owners of Nokia N900 smartphone are the lucky few who can download, install, and experience Firefox for Mobile in action.

China-based HiVision is readying an Android-based "PWS700CA" netbook with a 600MHz Rockchip ARM9 processor and a 7-inch, WVGA touchscreen, and according to one preview, it's likely to sell for under $100. HiVision also recently introduced a Linux-based "PWS700B" netbook, as well as an "EB-0600S" e-reader, says the company.

Fedora or Ubuntu? That is a question that Linux users are asking with increasing frequency. The question is not random -- the two distributions have consistently topped the downloads on Distrowatch for the last two years. Read Fedora and Ubuntu mail forums, and users who despair of one are constantly announcing their intention to try the other. Although other distributions, including Linux Mint, openSUSE, and Mandriva, offer comparable features, for better or worse Fedora and Ubuntu are widely viewed as the desktop distributions of choice. Unsurprisingly, you can find dozens of comparisons of the two on the Internet. However, except for one posted on PolishLinux.org, few answers are detailed enough to be of much use. And since the one on PolishLinux.org was made in 2006, it’s at least six versions behind the current releases (Fedora 12 and Ubuntu 9.10). So a new extended answer seems overdue.

In our original article two years ago, we did a complete overview of the entire KDE 3.5 Control Center, a task that was not small by any stretch of the imagination. But since so many of you felt that it was unbelievably helpful to you, as well as instrumental in instructing new users on the usage of KDE in Linux, I've decided to go ahead with a new series, this time detailing the new System Settings control panel for KDE4. The reason I'm doing this now, and I hadn't done it before this, is because I wanted to wait until KDE4 grew and matured enough to make this worth doing. I believe it's reached that point with KDE 4.3. It may still have some growing to do, but the new System Settings panel (the replacement for Control Center) is more or less finalized, allowing for articles such as this to be written without concern for too many changes or obsolescing of features in the meantime as it continues to mature.

FreeBSD, and the other BSDs, are exceptionally stable and powerful operating systems, but they can be quite different from Linux. Although they share common principles and ideals, and a huge amount of software, when it comes down to it, FreeBSD and Linux are two different beasts. This doesn’t make FreeBSD better or worse, but it is something to be aware of. Perhaps the most challenging thing about FreeBSD is the initial installation. While PC-BSD, another BSD variant, has made a lot of headway in making BSD easy to use, FreeBSD is still king as far as the BSD’s go. With the recent 8.0 release, it may be time to give FreeBSD a look. FreeBSD is favoured by many for service management and hosting, running Web servers and mail servers, etc. But it works as a fully functional desktop as well. This tip will take a quick walk through the installation. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on whether or not you are familiar with installing FreeBSD, the installer has not changed significantly over the years. Yes, it is still text-based.

Greg Kroah-Hartman, the Novell developer who maintains the staging, USB and driver core for Linux, has announced that the driver code for Google's Android operating system has been removed from the 2.6.33 Linux code base. Kroah-Hartman says that "I love the Android phone platform" but that the code for supporting Android has not been cared for, and as is his policy, uncared-for code is removed from the source code control system. The change was committed to the Linux source tree on December 11th, last year.

MySQL founder Monty Widenius, who left Sun Microsystems early last year, remained very vocal throughout the long machinations leading up to Oracle's acquisition of Sun, even mounting a letter writing campaign. With the Sun acquisition going forward, we reached out to Monty for an interview and he was kind enough to share his thoughts with us. In this two-part interview he speaks candidly about MySQL and Sun, and we will run the second half of the long interview tomorrow.

Two days ago we reported on hybrid graphics coming to Linux in a crude form that allowed switching between graphics processors on notebook computers that utilize dual graphics processors, one that's meant to deliver the best energy efficient performance while the other GPU is for maximizing the graphics performance in demanding environments. Just 24 hours after this kernel patch hit the Internet it already went through four revisions by Red Hat's David Airlie, which delivered better switching and greater notebook compatibility. Since yesterday this patch has already undergone a few more revisions.

"What’s holding it back is people’s love of the Microsoft operating system and that fact that it’s familiar and so on. But actually the trajectory of progress in the Linux world is very, very impressive. I think it’s only a matter of time for ARM to gain market share with or without Microsoft."

The Britain Loves Wikipedia scheme will see UK museums and galleries opening up to the free online encyclopaedia. Throughout February, volunteer authors can take part in special tours to document artworks and natural treasures at a total of 20 institutions.

Days after a hacker broke open the inner multi-touch capabilities of Google's Nexus One, Google announced it is now offering pinch-to-zoom capability on the Android phone via a software update. In other Google news, the company has posted pictures of the Linux-based Chrome OS running on a tablet prototype.

Kate Stewart is the manager of the PowerPC team at Freescale. As such, she has a basic customer service problem to solve: people who buy a board from Freescale would like to have some sort of operating system to run on it. That system, of course, will be Linux; satisfying this requirement means that Freescale must operate as a sort of Linux distributor. At her linux.conf.au talk, Kate talked about a new initiative aimed at helping distributors to ensure that they are compliant with the licenses of the software they are shipping.

It happened like this. Recently our online banking authentication procedures changed. For the better I might add. While these security measures are far more secure they also prevented me from accessing our joint bank account whenever I wished. The end result was that I didn't check the account status often enough and an automatic payment didn't go through. Enough was enough I shouted out the window at two o'clock in the morning. After dodging a few smelly shoes and empty beer bottles I decided to set up my wifes phone to enable it to use the new security measures..