Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

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.

After a rocky beginning, I've been able to do many neat things with my Black iPod Classic with 120 GB, but it hasn't been without its trials and tribulations. In this post, I'll write about the tools I use to sync music, add photos, and transcode videos to the correct format. Being a Kubuntu user, note that my bias is towards KDE tools. If you use others, please list them in the comments. As with many things on Linux, there's more than one way to do it.

I remember, back in the day, when dealing with fonts in Linux was a real problem. At best you were given the xfontsel application, which was an X11 way of displaying the fonts on your system – only in the old-school X11 method (think bitmappy). Fortunately modern Linux distributions have much better fonts and font tools available. From font creation/editing to font management, there are plenty of outstanding applications to help you in your quest for font nirvana. In this article I am going to introduce you to Fonty Python. Fonty Python isn’t just a cool name, it’s a tool that allows you to manage your fonts in a rather different manner. Fonty Python allows you to organize your collection of fonts in sub-collections called Pogs (for TyPOGraphy). In this article you will learn how to install and manage your fonts with FontyP ython. Bring out your fonts!

MySQL use declining, PostgreSQL and MariaDB use rising and no majority support for any of the possible outcomes of the current European Commission investigation into Oracle's proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems; these are some of the results of a survey, carried out by the 451 Group, of open source users show which shows they are split over the future of MySQL.

If browsing the featured workspaces teaches you anything, it's that a good scrubbing and a fresh coat of paint goes a long way towards making an office over. Check out the before and after pictures of today's total makeover. Lifehacker reader Vanderfleet-Martin had an office in serious need of some cleaning and some "spiffing up", so he designed a new layout in Google Sketchup. Over Thanksgiving weekend he hauled everything out, repainted the whole thing, brought in a new desk with support shelves, and remade the whole office into a colorful and well organized version of its former self.

There are more options than ever for mobile Internet, from ubiquitous w-i-fi to purchasing your own personal MiFi to carrying all of Wikipedia with you. Paul Ferrill looks at some cool mobile gadgets for traveling Linux users.

When the graphical interface setup under openSUSE didn't work just right, one could always run SaX2 to correct it. Now Novell wants to retire the tool.

Respected Free Software lawyer, Eben Moglen and the SFLC (Software Freedom Law Centre ) have sent a letter to the European Commission saying that it believes that the Commission has "underestimated the robustness the GPL has consistently demonstrated". The letter is a response to the concerns expressed in the Commission's Statement of Objections that the GNU Public Licence was insufficient protection against competition issues raised by the acquisition.

Another voice heard on the European Commission's objection to Oracle's purchase of Sun Microsystems. This time, Eben Moglen has weighed in with an analysis of the objections related to the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2). Moglen disagrees with the commission, and says that the GPLv2 is sufficient to protect the MySQL community apart from Oracle. According to the commission, the GPLv2 provides "inadequate protection" for third parties to work with MySQL if the deal goes through. This has been supported by Richard M. Stallman, who opposes the deal along with Knowledge Ecology International.

Linux is often overlooked when it comes to music production. For a long time, there were good reasons for that. The complicated sound system, lack of professional-quality software, and limited hardware compatibility have all contributed toward a bad reputation for Linux when it comes to quality audio tools. We here at MakeTechEasier thought it was time to take a look at where things stand when it comes to music production on Linux, particularly for guitarists. In this article, we’ll cover some things like tab/notation software, audio editing, and multitrack recording.

It's a Bizarro-World indeed when Microsoft is held up by a judge in Europe as a paragon of openness, but that's apparently what happened in a law suit brought by Nintendo. The games console and software maker has lost its case against Divineo Group in a Paris suit to block the sale of Nintendo DS Flash cartridges in France. The judge dismissing Nintendo's case is reported to have said that by blocking non-Nintendo carts, the company is purposely locking out developers from their consoles.

AMD and SiSoftware have teamed up to develop a benchmark testing suites for OpenCL. Released by SiSoftware, the OpenCL GPGPU benchmark suite is part of SiSoftware's Sandra 2010. OpenCL is an open standard for parallel programming of heterogeneous systems. SiSoftware's Sandra 2010 software provides remote analysis, benchmarking and diagnostic features for PCs, servers, mobile devices and networks.

Linus Torvalds announced the release of a stable Linux 2.6.32 kernel. Major additions include kernel-based mode setting (KMS) and 3D graphics support on select Radeon cards, plus new kernel shared memory (KSM) technology for KVM virtualization, power-saving and performance improvements, and a faster "Devtmpfs" boot technology.

The popular Ubuntu Linux's six-month release schedule keeps it in the public eye; every release is greeted with a barrage of news, reviews, praise, and complaints. It seems the last few releases have generated an increasing number of cries for longer release schedules, that six months is too short and results in too many bugs. Mark Shuttleworth discussed at length the importance and benefits of a short release cycle in his Linuxcon keynote: it generates excitement and keeps contributors motivated. And it follows the long-standing principles of "many eyes make all bugs shallow" and "release early, release often."

In this post I will collect all commands which SHOULD NEVER be executed in Linux. Any of them will cause data loss or corruption, can freeze or hang up running system. NEVER RUN THESE COMMANDS IN LINUX BOX CLI! Even if somebody advises you in forum/im to do it.

3D support for newer Radeon graphics chips, better use of power saving features offered by the latest hardware and numerous enhancements to KVM and Btrfs are some of the outstanding items among the many thousands of changes undertaken for the latest kernel version. Various other improvements should also make Linux 2.6.32 more reactive and as a result, feel faster.

Viosoft Corp. is shipping an Android development kit for MIPS-based digital multimedia designs, with a special focus on IP set-top boxes (STBs). The Android Adoption Kit combines Sigma Designs' SMP8654-based Vantage 8654 Development Platform with a version of Viosoft's Arriba IDE/Debugger optimized for Android on MIPS, says the company.

As I've noted many a time, the UK government has been one of the most backward when it comes to adopting open source solutions. The fact that over the last few years it has started to make vague noises about doing so shows more that it's realised it looks pretty dumb compared to other governments as a consequence, not that it's serious about things. Indeed, it's still the case that closed-source software dominates government procurement.

Nokia is ramping up development of its Qt open source user interface and application framework with a new release this week. Among the big new additions to Qt 4.6 is support for the widespread Symbian mobile phone operating system. Nokia is one of the biggest supporters of Symbian, with the vast majority of its devices using the OS. In 2008, it purchased Symbian and has since set on its own open source path. As a result, bumping Qt to version 4.6 -- its second update this year -- signals an acceleration of Nokia's developer efforts.

I just received our first word on the hearing in Utah on SCO v. Novell from one of our reporters. "looking for a march 8th trial date, to run 3 weeks" is the report. I'm sure there will be more info on the way as soon as they can type it up. We had several eyewitnesses in attendance. So stay tuned for updates.