Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

D-Link is readying a Linux-based IP set-top box (STB) based on the open source Boxee home entertainment stack. The singularly styled "Boxee Box DM-380" incorporates WiFi, Ethernet, USB, and HDMI out, as well as analog and digital audio outputs, says the company.

Mozilla Messaging has announced the official release of Thunderbird 3. Ars takes a hands-on look at the improvements in the new version—including tabbed messaging and enhanced search—and finds a lot to be excited about.

Here is LWN's twelfth annual timeline of significant events in the Linux and free software world for the year. 2009 offered few surprises to those that have been following Linux and free software for as long as we have. As expected, there were new releases of many of the tools and underlying infrastructure that we use on a daily basis. There were also lawsuits over software patents, arguments over licensing, and various security flaws found and fixed. Distributions were packaged up and released, more phones and other devices with Linux and free software were sold, and so forth. All part of the march to "world domination". We look forward to 2010—and beyond.

I've been thinking the last few weeks about the evolution of the GPL violation. After ten years of being involved with GPL enforcement, it seems like a good time to think about how things have changed. Roughly, the typical GPL violation tracks almost directly the adoption and spread of Free Software. When I started finding GPL violations, it was in a day when Big Iron Unix was still king (although it was only a few years away from collapse), and the GNU tools were just becoming state of the art. Indeed, as a sysadmin, I typically took a proprietary Unix system, and built a /usr/local/ filled with the GNU tools, because I hated POSIX tools that didn't have all the GNU extensions.

Using open source software offers schools a unique opportunity to advance the information society that is fair and free, says Cenatic, Spain's resource centre on open source and open standards.

Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computer technology for the design of objects whether 2D or 3D, real or virtual. It is heavily utilized in many applications, including animation, automotive, shipbuilding, aerospace industries, industrial and architectural design, prosthetics, and many others. Because of its enormous economic importance, CAD has been a major driving force for research in computational geometry, computer graphics (both hardware and software), and discrete differential geometry.

In the last decade, I've done plenty of formal research into corporate adoption of open source. For example, I designed a survey and wrote up the results of one research study about business open source use. So I can say authoritatively: At least as of that 2008 research, the major business executive barriers to FOSS adoption are product support, the awareness of available solutions (that is, vendors come calling with a sales pitch, but the CIO might not know an open source option is available), and lack of support by management (i.e. "the boss won't let us"). I've also written the Evans Data open source report for several years, so I know that developers' FOSS perceptions of what's important are very different than the murmurings on the deep-plush-carpeted executive floor.

A project that could bring an unofficial version of Google's Chrome OS to 64 bit computers has launched. Using the Chromium OS code that has been open sourced by Google, the ChromiumOS64 project allows people who like a little more RAM to consider the new operating system/browser hybrid concept from Google.

For many Linux desktop users, GNOME is their home. But it's a home that's in the process of a major renovation. In a session at the FUDcon Fedora Linux user and developer conference this week, contributors showed off some preliminary work for GNOME 3, the next major evolution of the GNOME platform. With GNOME 3, developers will be introducing a number of new concepts and technologies to the Linux desktop, including more advanced 3D as well as more tightly integrated messaging system.

Embedded specialist Wind River strives to win mobile network users with hardware compliance and its own Android branding.

With the growing popularity of netbooks, it is no surprise that many Linux distributions and software developers have created customized versions of their software to run on them. Some of the popular choices include Ubuntu’s Netbook Remix and Intel’s Moblin. Not to be counted out, KDE now has a version of their desktop environment designed for netbooks. While it is still under heavy development, I thought now would be a good time to get a little preview of what is to come. For the purposes of this preview, I installed Kubuntu Netbook Edition, but you can conceivably use any distribution that will support your netbook.

Samsung Electronics announced the availability of an SDK for its "Bada" mobile operating system. The kernel-configurable Bada platform can be based on a Linux kernel or another real-time OS (RTOS), and it incorporates an Eclipse-based IDE, a GNU tool-chain, and a service-centric UI framework based on Samsung's TouchWiz UI.

I will list the ways in which OLPC has influenced the target market which probably defines the interest of most readers of OLPC News, the angle from which most bloggers and industry commentators have been talking about the OLPC project for the past 4 years, which is how OLPC technology may affect the rich Western country's PC/Laptop industry. Said in another way, how OLPC has influenced the whole bunch of adults in rich countries reading Engadget and Gizmodo egoistically thinking: "When can I buy and use this for myself".

Tis the season to go shopping and to treat your favorite Tuxperson to something nice. Especially if it's you. Carla Schroder seeks out that perfect melding of fun and practical geektoys.

Commercial Linux distributor Red Hat today kicked out the 1.2 release of its Enterprise MRG Linux variant for real-time, messaging, and grid computing. Enterprise MRG was launched as an idea in December 2007 in the wake of Novell's roll-out of its SUSE Linux Enterprise Real-Time variant of its SLES server Linux distro a month earlier. The initial 1.0 release, which was missing the Project Condor grid components, debuted in June 2008. It did have the real-time Linux kernel, which is important for military systems, financial trading systems, and other industrial controllers where you have to strip down the general purpose Linux kernel and make it provide a more consistent response time (with low latency) on transactions.

With over 20 million installations, Fedora is among the most world's popular Linux distributions. While that kind of success has been due to a rapid base of supporters, the distro originally launched by Red Hat as a community Linux project is having to bridge the divide between targeting a mass audience and keeping hardcore enthusiasts in the fold.

Continuing my tour of Linux-based video editors this week I've profiled Cinelerra. Specifically I've reviewed the community-supported version produced by the CinelerraCV project.

Motorola venture capital arm Motorola Ventures has made an investment in multi-touch technology firm Sensitive Object. The French touchscreen technology company has developed patent-protected technology that uses acoustics to analyze sound waves caused by touching any surface of a device.

'tis the season, as they say, when we will appreciate our wireless networks more than ever. Thanks to Wi-Fi, we never need to leave the couch. And thanks to the continual feasting that lasts from approximately November to January, getting off the couch is pretty much impossible anyway. This December, the Guru's stocking is stuffed with a bounty of shiny new questions. Unfortunately it will be impossible to cover them all in one column, so if yours is missing please check back for January's episode. From the couch.

Fedora 12 was released on November 17 with the usual pile of new packages and features. By the sounds, it is a solid, well-received release. But one feature—unpublicized, undocumented, and turned on by default—has a number of Fedora users up in arms, leading to a huge thread on fedora-devel, in the bugzilla entry, and here at LWN. In short, the problem was that in the Fedora 12 default installation, regular users sitting at the console could install signed packages from any repository that the administrator has enabled.