Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Dell today announced it has chosen AT&T as its exclusive U.S. carrier for its upcoming lineup of Android-based smartphones, known as the Mini 3. Dell has already chosen China Mobile, Vodafone and Claro Brazil as partners outside the U.S. But Dell still has not given out much information on the Mini 3, other than saying that it is an Android phone designed around power efficiency and platform customization. A spokesperson for the company said that with carriers falling into place, it would eventually start to disclose more information on the hardware.

In order for real communication to happen, especially among people from different regions and dialects (let alone people from different countries and languages altogether), terms have to be clearly defined so that everyone is starting from the same point. The problem with such definitions is that the devil really is in the details. A leaked version of the EIF version 2 has raised serious alarm among open source and open standard advocates. ComputerWorld UK writer Glyn Moody describes one aspect of the changes: "But it gets worse: not content with totally eliminating the concrete definitions of open standards in Version 1, Version 2 then goes on to re-define 'closed' as just another shade of openness, but without any of the openness." There is strong concern across the EU that software industry lobbyists have managed to water down the language so that the initial dedication to open standards and open source is completely neutralized.

First branded as a communist plot, then derided as a form of cancer, before being upgraded to merely a 'grey spectre', free and open source software (FOSS) has had a pretty rough ride from Microsoft over the years. For many in the open source community, the company represents all that is troubling about closed source software development. Recently, though, there have been developments that at least one leading open source developer has labelled a 'sea change' following last year's announcement that Microsoft was to become sponsors of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF).

I just found a new toy. It’s a Linux distro running a complete desktop, Firefox browser, multimedia utilities, FTP/SSH/IM/torrent/email clients, and a custom package manager… in a 30MB ISO. That’s right, it’s even smaller than Damn Small Linux. It can be run from CD or USB, and once booted it runs entirely from RAM, so it’s VERY quick and you can remove the CD or USB device while the system is running. You can pop it out and free up that spot to read/play/burn something else. Combined with tools to generate your own customized live CD/USB remix, this makes for a very versatile little package. This is SliTaz, and so far it’s a lot of fun.

If you follow open source news at all, it's been pretty hard to ignore MySQL the last few months. With a desperate campaign to stop Oracle gobbling up MySQL, the FLOSS poster database has been front and center. As usual, the PostgreSQL community has been quietly coding away and working on the 8.5 release scheduled for the first quarter of 2010.

As a person who uses Linux regularly, often I am asked about my opinions about other operating systems, especially those coming from large companies located in Redmond, Washington. Here's the deal. Operating systems are tools. We use them to do jobs. It is always a good idea to think critically about what tools you are using, and verify if other tools can do the same job in a more efficient or flexible manner.

Intel used an early-morning conference at today's Consumer Electronics Show to roll out 27 new processors, including 12 specifically aimed at embedded devices. Additions to the chipmaker's Core i3, i5, i7, and Xeon families, the CPUs have two or four cores, include on-chip graphics, and incorporate "Turbo Boost" technology, according to the company.

Google wasn't the only company announcing new Android-based devices this week. At this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, several handset and mobile device manufacturers also announced new models and partnerships with mobile carriers for their Android devices, ranging from various mobile phones and tablets, to eBook readers.

AT&T announced plans to launch five Android devices from Dell, HTC, and Motorola in the first half of the year, as well as two Palm WebOS phones, say reports. In separate announcements, AT&T and T-Mobile said they had completed upgrades to provide HSPA 7.2 service across their 3G networks, says eWEEK.

Contributors to the WebKitGTK+ project recently gathered for a hackfest to improve the open source HTML renderer's integration with the GTK+ toolkit. They added some cache control APIs, improved support for HTML5 video, form persistence, and other features.

The LISP (LISt Processing) programming language is relevant to OLPC's XO laptop because, like an iPhone or smart phone, it has very limited resources and is not a full sized computer. The LISP community came up with software for biology called BioBike. It is 3 things..

HP announced three netbooks using Intel's N450 "Pineview" processor that support SUSE Linux: the Mini 210, Mini 2102, both with 10.1-inch screens, and the Mini 5102, which offers 10-hour claimed battery life. Meanwhile, at CES the company unveiled a prototype Qualcomm Snapdragon-based Android "smartbook," says Engadget.

A little over two years ago, the world — or at least a whole lot of geeks — waited with baited breath for the revelation that Google would be entering the mobile phone market. The eventual announcement proved a curveball, however, as what the search giant unveiled were plans for an operating system, not a handset. Now, that curve has finally straightened.

We're getting close to the last stops on our tour of NLEs for Linux. This week I've focused my attention on two editors, both of which surprised me in many ways.

From its humble beginnings back in 1991, Linux has grown at a rapid rate. International Data Corp. (IDC) pegged Linux operating system revenue growth at 23.4 percent in 2008. IDC projects that by 2012, Linux operating system revenue will cross $1 billion for the first time, reaching as much as $1.2 billion. Not bad for a free operating system.

This something I never had with windows. Confidence in my operating system. What do I mean by this? Well let me explain. Just recently I was doing a remote upgrade of Ubuntu Jaunty to Ubuntu Karmic. Everything was going along as easily as a hot knife through butter. Configuration files were changed, packages were downloaded and were in the process of being installed. Then it happened. Halfway through the upgrade. At the most sensitive part where the packages were being installed. The computer was rebooted. This could easily happen to anyone if there is a power glitch and you are not using an UPS. In this case, if you remember I was connected remotely, the end user decided to reboot the computer. After I had specifically told them not to touch it. I don't blame them. These sort of things happen.

A year ago Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon platform with ARM processor at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2010. Now the first real devices are coming to market. The operating system is Linux.

SCO, "by and through the Chapter 11 Trustee in Bankruptcy, Edward N. Cahn", has filed its opposition to Novell's Motion to Set Aside Judgment. This is the motion that will be argued on February 4. SCO argues that if Novell wanted to argue this, they should have appealed it, and that's a strong argument

On Tuesday, at the company's headquarters in Mountain View, California, Google introduced its first own-brand smartphone, the Nexus One. Since information about the Nexus had repeatedly appeared in the IT media in December, probably not entirely without Google's assistance, this didn't come as a major surprise. The same also applies to many of the Nexus One's features. The smartphone weighs 130 grams and is, like Google's first G1 phone, manufactured by the Taiwanese vendor HTC.

When I first started Desktop Linux Reviews, I wanted to include some Linux applications along with the distribution reviews. I’ve finally gotten around to that now and the first application review is Hulu Desktop for Linux. Hulu is one of the most popular video sites on the web. You can watch all kinds of different television shows and movies right in your browser. But there’s also another way to watch Hulu and that’s to download the Hulu Desktop application for Linux.