Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Sometimes it's easy to forget that we all had to start somewhere with Linux. When you're not used to the way it works, or the kind of concepts involved, Linux can seem like a foreign language. If you're struggling with free software, or if you know someone who needs help making the switch to Linux, we hope this feature will help.

In Mac, the QuickLook feature allows you to preview your files without opening them. For Linux users, particularly for those with Gnome desktop, you can also get a similar QuickLook functionality in your desktop with Gloobus-Preview. Gloobus-Preview is an extension for the Gnome desktop designed to enable a full screen preview of any kind of file. You can use it to preview your presentation slides, pdf files or even to listen to a mp3 track, all without having to open their default applications.

A Newcastle-based company has launched a Linux-based laptop and support package designed to encourage technophobes online. Built by the Broadband Computer Company, the Alex laptop runs an operating system based on Ubuntu Linux and a set of applications that have been written in-house. The laptop's features have been vastly simplified, and updates are applied automatically without prompting the user, according to company co-founder Andy Hudson.

The long running case of Jacobsen v. Katzer has been settled on terms favourable to Jacobsen, a developer of the Java Model Railroad Interface project. The case came about when Katzer incorporated Jacobsen's code into it's proprietary model trail software, after deleting the copyright notices that existed in the code.

Oracle Corp. has rekindled its Solaris love. Sun's Solaris operating system will underlie new high-end data center appliances running the Oracle software stack. And Oracle EnterpriseLinux now becomes the preferred OS for lower-end commodity hardware. By making the Sparc/Solaris tandem the foundation of big-iron SMP appliances, the company is going back to its roots when Oracle and Sun were joined at the hip. Pre-Linux, Solaris was the de facto development platform for new Oracle software. New Oracle databases came out first on Solaris and later on everything else.

Along with announcing the X.Org Foundation board of director results, Bart Massey also issued the 2010 State of the X.Org Foundation report. This lengthy report on the state of the foundation for this year can be read on the mailing list. It really doesn't detail the financial situation well like many are after, but just an overview of the X.Org happenings now and going forward. Below are a few take-aways from the report.

In the dispute between the SCO Group and Novell about the copyright for Unix, the new jury trial scheduled to begin on the 8th of March is apparently set to go ahead: according to a statement by Chapter 11 trustee Edward Cahn, SCO's majority owner Ralph Yarro wants to inject a loan of $2 million dollars into the financially stricken company.

Although some people viewed it as a tempest in a teapot, the long-running legal case Jacobsen v. Katzer stirred up some seminal open source issues. We first reported on the dust-up all the way back in August of 2008, noting that the dispute centered around--of all things--model train software.

A while ago, Giovanni Venturi interviewed Marco Martin for the Italian KDE website (so if you read Italian, please see there for the authentic version). For our Italian-challenged readers, we are pleased to present an English translation below. Marco "Notmart" Martin is of course well known as one of the primary developers of the new Plasma Netbook workspace and for his habit of teasing us via his blog with news of new features for the X+1 release of our Software Compilation just before version X is released...

The FERC, the agency with oversight of the U.S. power grid, signed an order on Thursday that grants Google Energy market-based rate authorization. This paves the way for the search giant to not only better manage its own energy costs, but to possibly add electricity marketer to its repertoire of services.

[Google Calendar, Docs and now Energy? - Scott]

LXer Feature: 20-Feb-2010

My review of the first day of SCALE 8x and the WIOS talks I attended.

Continuing their impressive record of quick delivery of fresh KDE software, the KDE Windows team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of packages with the latest KDE release for the Windows platform. The installer provides not only most of the applications from Software Compilation 4.4, but also the latest versions of a number of independently released KDE applications. Highlights include the latest stable version of digiKam (and the KIPI plugins) and Konversation. Although Amarok is not yet included in the installer there is progress being made.

Microsoft is determined to be a leader of the open source movement. It will once again be a “platinum sponsor” at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco next month and its National Technology Officer for the U.S., Stuart McKee, will deliver a keynote. McKee, former CIO for Washington state, may be best known to open source advocates for admitting that “ODF won” the standards battle with Microsoft’s Open Office XML back in 2008.

[I can answer that question for you Dana..and the answer is; No - Scott]

Opera has freed its first open source project, moving code for its Dragonfly debug tool onto the popular BitBucket hosting service. Dragonfly - a website debug tool similar to Mozilla's Firebug - was always intended as an open source project. From its inception in 2008, it carried an open source BSD license. But until this month, the code repository sat on Opera servers. As of February 10, it's a fully open source project hosted on BitBucket.

Canonical is developing a 2D ARM interface based on Enlightenment Foundation Libraries for the upcoming Ubuntu 10.04 ("Lucid Lynx") version of Ubuntu Netbook Remix. In other Ubuntu news, Ubuntu Live CDs in Lucid Lynx will boot 33 percent faster, and The Linux Box will market Ubuntu.

It's no secret that Linux runs behind many consumer devices, and embedded Linux fits in the tiniest of places. One of the latest ways to get your Linux fix comes in what looks like power wall wart from TonidoPlug. Under the cover you'll find essentially a Marvell SheevaPlug with a 1.2 GHz CPU, 512MB of DDR2 memory and a 512MB flash disk. On the outside you'll see a single USB port and an Ethernet jack.

Last month we published benchmarks of EXT4 comparing this file-system's performance when it was first marked stable in the mainline kernel and then where it is at now in the Linux kernel while testing every major release in between. This article was followed up by a Btrfs versus EXT4 comparison using the Linux 2.6.33 kernel to see how the two most talked about Linux file-systems are battling it out with the latest kernel. After those Linux file-system benchmarks were published, we received a request from Canonical to look at the EXT3 performance too. With that said, we have done just that and have published EXT3, EXT4, and Btrfs benchmarks from Ubuntu 9.10 and a Ubuntu 10.04 development snapshot from an Intel Atom netbook.

For those still waiting for the year of the Linux "desktop," I regret to inform you that it has already come and gone. Through the efforts of the open-source community, in conjunction with independent hardware and software vendors, as well as Web developers, Linux is well beyond its toddler years and is almost past its rebellious teenage years. Did you notice?

What do you get when you cross business logic and 80s arcade video games? An open source Space Invaders clone that's being used to illustrate the power of a business logic integration platform for game design.

Is Ubuntu actually good or merely popular? "It is either so bleeding edge it is a miracle the CD doesn't have stigmata, or it is really old packages that are never updated," blogger hairyfeet asserted. "Ubuntu has done more for Linux acceptance than any other distribution," countered blogger Martin Espinoza. "I'm a bit disenchanted with distros in general," said Slashdot blogger David Masover.