Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Over on the GCC mailing list is a rather lively discussion (especially for being a Friday evening) that only started earlier today. No, it's not about the recent GCC 4.5 release or even our GCC vs. Clang/LLVM benchmarks, but it's about development participation. A developer is asking why you don't participate in contributing to GCC?

After calling Flash a "CPU hog," Steve Jobs has given Adobe the chance to live down this now famous insult. And Adobe is taking it. Steve Jobs also called Flash "buggy" and littered with security holes. And he summarily banned it from both the iPhone and the iPad - even when it's translated into Jobsian machine code. But with the latest update to the Mac OS X version known as Snow Leopard, the Jobsian cult has added an API that allows third parties to hardware-accelerate H.264 video on the Mac, and Adobe tells The Reg it's already working to tap that API.

Daniel Gerzo with the FreeBSD project has issued a status report concerning work going on within FreeBSD and related projects for the first quarter of this year. Catching our interest in particular were the updates surrounding LLVM/Clang as the compiler for FreeBSD's base, the Chromium web browser porting efforts to FreeBSD, and ZFS file-system enhancements.

System Administrator Dilemma #942: Send a Data Center Service Tech out to pop open the case to tell you what's in your system or use two simple commands. Do you rely on proc files or dmesg to tell you everything you need to know about a system? If you do, you’re only seeing part of the picture. But what about when you want more detailed information about the system on which you’re working? Do you have to have the manufacturer’s spec sheet handy to know which components your system contains? It’s inconvenient to have someone open a system case in a remote data center to tell you how many memory DIMMs are in, or are not in, your target system. Linux systems include two native commands that tell you almost everything you need to know: dmidecode and biosdecode.

Ben Cato Clough and Luke Upchurch's "When Copyright Goes Bad" (from Consumers International) is a great, 15-minute mini-documentary on what copyright can do, what it is doing, and what it needs to stop doing. Appearances by Fred Von Lohmann - Electronic Frontier Foundation; Michael Geist - University of Ottawa Law School; Jim Killock - Open Rights Group; and Hank Shocklee - Co-founder of Public Enemy.

Linux's NetworkManager has evolved into a solid tool that manages wired and wireless Ethernet, mobile broadband, Bluetooth, roaming, IPv6, and offers both a GUI and command-line interface. Joe Brockmeier gives us a tour of the new features in NetworkManager.

Dell is planning to release a bevy of ARM-based mobile devices, according to what Engadget says are leaked company documents. The devices include four Android-based phones, two Android tablets, and the company's first Windows Phone 7 device, the website says.

After a recent O/S version upgrade (to openSUSE 11.2) I noticed that bash started being a bit more intelligent when I did something stupid: it started giving me a useful error message when I typed the name of a command that wasn't in my PATH but that was in an "sbin" directory. My reaction at the time was "huh, that's nice", but today I decided I needed a bit more information.

In the last couple of years I have tested many Linux distros. I was never a diehard fan of any of them, kept an open mind and was willing to simply use the one that best fit my needs. Fedora, Mandriva, OpenSuSE, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Debian and others have been put to the test at some point or another. PCLinuxOS was one of the few popular ones I had not tested. Being based off Mandriva, I was assuming it would be similar to the Linux Mint - Ubuntu case, so no surprises expected. After all, I had tested several Mandriva releases, so what could be that interesting about PCLinuxOS? Now, let me tell you... boy, was I wrong!

Version 2.6.34 of the Linux kernel will be the first to support the Ceph and LogFS file systems. A number of changes to the Btrfs and XFS code promise improved performance. The kernel should now be better at working with drives with 4 KB logical sectors.

It's Google's Internet, we just use it. Well, maybe not, but some days it seems that way. Google's gone from searching the Internet to being a big chunk of it. The latest moves from Mountain View include adding OAuth and contextual gadgets to email. Good on the surface for Google users, but what do they mean for everybody else?

Today with the first public release of ACTA, the effects the international agreement will have on Free Software appear to be dangerous for its development and its distribution. First, by extending infringements proceedings and criminal offences to a broad scope of "intellectual property" including software patents. Second, by destabilizing the most important means of distribution for Free Software, which relies on an open and neutral platform on which online services are not meant to control whether "intellectual property rights" (including patents) are infringed. Third, by strengthening the protection of Digital Restrictions Managements (DRMs) against Free Software and fair competition.

Intel has revealed that it is developing a variant of the Linux-based MeeGo operating system that will run on conventional desktop and laptop computers. This move could substantially broaden MeeGo's scope, transforming it from a mobile platform into a general purpose Linux distro.

The first beta release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0 was made available yesterday morning. RHEL 6.0 is set to offer many virtualization enhancements, power management improvements, new security features, many package updates, and even some reported performance enhancements. With Red Hat mentioning this major upgrade to their enterprise operating system carrying "performance enhancements", these claims have now been tested using the Phoronix Test Suite within our labs. There are some improvements for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0 to note, but also some losses.

If you own an ICOM D-STAR radio, you know how hard it is to program through the faceplate. And if you are a Linux user, you know that your options are either use the faceplate or borrow a Windows machine (or fire up a VM) and plunk down $60 for the software and cable to program them with. Until now that is. Enter CHIRP. CHIRP is a cross-platform, cross-radio programming tool specifically focusing on ICOM D-STAR radios, although there seems to be nothing preventing you from using it with non-D-STAR rigs. This is new software (currently at version 0.1.9), so let’s look at the highlights.

You would think that writing a blog entry on “Hot New OSS Projects” would not be that difficult. All you should have to do is go to SourceForge or Freshmeat and see what projects are being downloaded, or at least accessed, and write about them. Or, hangout on Slashdot or LinuxDevices.com and see what cool things are being shown and talked about. These days you can even read the mainstream media about Linux products and projects. And of course there is the Linux.com site with its news feeds, discussion groups and projects. All of these would have been “too easy” for maddog, so of course he had to do the unthinkable and ask his eclectic group of Linux User Group (LUG) members what they thought were “Hot, New OSS Projects.” The first message that came back from the “call for thoughts” was: “What do you mean by OSS project?” followed by “What do you mean by new?” and (of course) “

We've got here our very first entry for "The $100.00 (USD) Coolest Linux Workspace Contest". It's from Mauricio, a Music Theory student. If he wins the contest, he says that he will be using the money to buy a USB mic for some serious music recording.

When we hear the word "appliances", we tend to think of things in the kitchen — blenders, mixers, juicers, espresso machines. When IBM thinks of appliances, however, they think of something else: Quick and easy software stacks, ready to run right out of the box. That's exactly what IBM, in partnership with Novell, announced today: A new line of software appliances aimed at simplifying the tech needs of small and medium business — with Linux under the hood.

Yesterday we showed proof of Steam's Linux client existence via its Mac OS X launcher that is currently in closed beta, then this morning we showed further signs of Linux support. Since 2008 we have known that Steam and the Source Engine would come to Linux. As an update, we even pointed out the download link for the Steam Linux binary from their store.

Developers attending today's Facebook conference, f8, are being issued with RFID badges integrated with their Facebook profiles for clocking into site locations. The details come from the All Facebook, which reports that Facebook is being atypically opaque about the data gathered from the radio frequency identification tags. But given the experimental nature of the service that's unsurprising - the point of the conference is to inspire people to create applications, not define their limits.