Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

The OpenOffice team have made version 3.2 of the open source office suite for Windows, Mac OS, Linux and Solaris available to download. It offers numerous enhancements over its predecessor which offer both stability and speed benefits. Writer and Calc, for example, should now start twice as fast as in version 3.1.1.

Mozilla Messaging is looking forward to a big year in 2010 including Thunderbird 3.1 and figuring out how to make the project financially sustainable. Making Thunderbird better is the easier part. Figuring out how to make money as a project is another story entirely.

Even with all of the high quality software available, sometimes you just have to break down and write a custom application, and usually you don't have a lot of time to devote to it. This is the situation I found myself in when my wife started a new business and needed a simple means of tracking sales leads. To her credit, she realized that she couldn't simply use a spreadsheet and needed a database application. So I decided that I'd see just how involved it would be to write an application with Open Office's database program, known as Base.

Red Hat released the first beta of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.5, providing memory allocation enhancements to the KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) hypervisor. RHEL 5.5 also introduces new storage and WiFi drivers, and supports new AMD, IBM, and Intel processors, says the company.

The major derivatives of Ubuntu are well known, but what about the others? Just because they aren’t as popular doesn’t mean they don’t have something to offer! We introduce five of the least known, yet simply outstanding distributions.

Let's get one thing straight. We don't like the term cloud computing any more than you do. Of course, Richard Stallman doesn't like when we call it Linux rather than GNU/Linux. He's gotta live with Linux. And, well, we've gotta live with cloud computing. It's not going away.

GRUB2 has been a long time coming, and is finding its way into users' hands mainly via Ubuntu 9.10. Is it better than legacy GRUB? Should you upgrade? Akkana Peck guides through the mazy paths of GRUB2 in this series.

Ksplice has launched a subscription service that updates Linux servers without rebooting. Based on an MIT-bred utility that has been considered for merging into the Linux mainline kernel, Ksplice Uptrack is claimed to reduce costly downtime, while also speeding installation of security patches and other upgrades.

Working on a little script the other day I had the need to determine if the input to the script was coming from a pipe or from the terminal. Seems like a simple enough thing to determine but nothing jumped immediately to mind and a quick internet search didn't help much either. After a bit of pondering I came up with two solutions: the stat command and using information from the proc file system.

Recently, Google announced that its operations in China (and beyond) had been subject to sophisticated attacks, some of which were successful; a number of other companies have been attacked as well. The source of these attacks may never be proved, but it is widely assumed that they were carried out by government agencies. There are also allegations that the East Anglia email leak was a government-sponsored operation. While at LCA, your editor talked with a developer who has recently found himself at Google; according to this developer, incidents like these demonstrate that the security game has changed in significant ways, with implications that the community can ignore only at its peril.

LOS ANGELES -- Ubuntu announces that it will hold the first UbuCon hosted at the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE 8x) on Friday, Feb. 19, in an all-day session of talks and activities. Part unconference and part scheduled sessions, UbuCon will cover what is going on with, and how to improve, the Ubuntu community. The final hour of the event will include lightning talks.

When Jammie Thomas (now Thomas-Rasset) became the first alleged P2P file-swapper to take her case all the way to trial and verdict, no one suspected that she would actually have three trials and verdicts, but that's the case today, as the RIAA rejected a federal judge's decision to slash Thomas-Rasset's damage award. Instead, we're headed to a truncated third trial on the issue of damages. The recording industry also made it clear this week that both Thomas-Rasset and Joel Tenenbaum (the second P2P defendant to go to trial and verdict) are, in its view, quite terrible people: lying, deceiving, irresponsible, and unreasonable. And the industry can't understand why they're both fighting on.

Tail light chasing your competition means you will NEVER own a concept in your customers's minds. Matt Asay recently blogged about Novell's continuing practice of chasing Red Hat in the Linux market rather than defining itself on its own strengths, (in this case offering support for Red Hat servers cheaper than Red Hat).

KDE and GNOME pile on the eye candy and grow ever-larger and hungrier of system resources. Thankfully, Linux users who prefer a lightweight desktop environment have a number of great choices. Today Juliet Kemp takes us on a tour of the attractive, nimble, and functional Xfce desktop.

There is power in authority. Microsoft's strategy against open source uses authority. It ties up institutions that are authoritative, that have power over professions, creating a benefit for the institution that ties its members to proprietary Microsoft tools....To Microsoft open source is not an end in itself. It is a marketing tool. It is a way to gain lock-in with important customer sets.

The latest 4.4 release of the KDE Software Compilation (KDE SC) offers far more than just stability and bug fixes: The developers have added a special new desktop for netbooks, as well as more program options. They have also made major structural changes. While stability and fine tuning the Plasma desktop shell were the focus in KDE 4.3, the current version has afforded developers the opportunity to add new features. They have integrated a total of 1,433 user requests into KDE SC 4.4. However, this was not done at the expense of bug fixing: The KDE team lists 7,293 fixed bugs.

One of the spinoffs from the emails and documents that were leaked from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia is the light that was shone on the role of program code in climate research. There is a particularly revealing set of "README" documents that were produced by a programmer at UEA apparently known as "Harry". The documents indicate someone struggling with undocumented, baroque code and missing data – this, in something which forms part of one of the three major climate databases used by researchers throughout the world. Many climate scientists have refused to publish their computer programs. I suggest is that this is both unscientific behaviour and, equally importantly, ignores a major problem: that scientific software has got a poor reputation for error.

Google has taken the wraps off its latest social network known as Buzz. The service - integrated directly with its e-mail service Gmail - allows users to post status updates, share content and read and comment on friends' posts. The site pitches Google directly against rival networks such as Facebook, which has amassed nearly 400 million users since its launch in 2004. Buzz will try to capitalise on the number of regular Gmail users, which is currently around 170 million people.

The latest KDE4 desktop release sports thousands of new features and bugfixes, and includes the best integration yet of semantic technology.

The Linux Mint team announced the final release of Linux Mint 8 "Helena" KDE Community Edition. Based on Kubuntu 9.10, Linux 2.6.31, KDE 4.3.4 and Xorg 7.4, Linux Mint 8 KDE CE boasts improved OEM installation, as well as "ignore updates" and multiple software selection features. The first (RC1) release candidate of the Ubuntu 9.10-based Linux Mint 8 arrived in November. Like the RC1 release, the final KDE-desktop version is based on Kubuntu 9.10, a version of Ubuntu 9.10 ("Karmic Koala").