Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

JavaScript programmers, rejoice! It's been a good week for open source from big companies. Earlier this week Yahoo! released its Traffic Server it acquired from Inktomi, and now Google has unleashed Closure Tools. These are part of the toolset that Google uses to create JavaScript-heavy applications like Google Docs, Gmail, and Google Maps.

With its open source release Thursday of its Closure JavaScript tools, Google (GOOG) is starting to suggest that it may eventually become a good open source citizen. The newly released tools include a JavaScript compiler, a very broad JavaScript class library, and Java/JavaScript-friendly templates. All are released under the Apache 2.0 license, a very permissive license that essentially lets outsiders do whatever they want (rather than a viral or semi-viral license like EPL or LGPL).

A Boston-based startup named Litl is taking a big risk: they're betting people will go for a netbook that sports a Linux-based OS and focuses on Web-/network-based productivity (Facebook, Twitter, etc.). The risk is in the pricetag: $700 -- almost twice the price of computers that can do twice as much. Is there a market for this?

Android 2.0 (formerly codenamed 'Éclair') is the latest evolution of the mobile OS developed by Google and the Open Handset Alliance. This version is a chunky upgrade, superceding the current Android 1.6 software (dubbed 'Donut'), which was actually considered "a minor platform release". The first phone to feature Android 2.0 will be Motorola's comeback phone, the DROID (aka the dull-sounding Milestone in Europe).

One Laptop per Child chairman Nicholas Negroponte told Xconomy that OLPC is prepping an ARM-based version 1.75 of its XO netbook while planning to release a "paper-thin" version 3.0 in 2012. Meanwhile, the Internet Archive is providing OLPC users with 1.6 million e-books, says the nonprofit organization.

Prominent open source personalities presented a host of information about current and future developments in Linux at the Linux-Kongress 2009 conference. This time, filesystems were discussed in several presentations. Among the topics were the advantages of Ext4 and Btrfs, fast Ext4 filesystem checks, and kernel and userspace tricks for minimising the time-consuming movements of read/write heads, all of which can speed up some tasks by several orders of magnitude!

Wondering how Adobe was able to get Flash onto the iPhone, despite Apple's prohibition against anyone's runtime modules from appearing? Look no further than University Illinois computer science professor Vikram Adve's lab, where he and his students working to support their open source Low Level Virtual Machine (LLVM).

The effort putting Linux on Intel's mobile Atom processor has seen its latest release, with an across-the-board polish for Moblin. The steering committee of the Moblin Project, the Intel-initiated effort that was spun off to the Linux Foundation earlier this year, proudly announced a raft of capabilities new to version 2.1.

As I've mentioned before I'm an openSUSE user, and as long as they don't make the "U" lower case again, I'll probably stick with it. When it comes to package management, OpenSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprice (and SuSE before them) are usually associated with YaST (and yes, I'm still waiting for them to upper case the "a"). YaST works well but it's a bit verbose for installing a single package, and of course that's just more fodder for the apt-getters with all their apt-get install this and their apt-get install thats. And you can't argue with them, but there are other options with openSUSE: yum and apt4rpm come to mind, but the preferred solution is zypper.

Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) edition has been around since Ubuntu 8.04, and has taken on some pretty stiff competition of late from Moblin. Inquiring minds want to know which version is better for my netbook? Paul Ferrill pummels UNR in hopes of finding an answer.

BitTorrent is one of the most contentious technologies available. At least, that is, to the Old Order, those lovely suit-clad corporate types bent on holding technology forever in the days of the — manual — typewriter. The technology, and the suits' dreams of a world free of it, are on trial in Australia, where Linux made an appearance today — at the defense table. The matter at hand is a lawsuit by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft — yes, that's AFACT — against iiNet, an Australian internet service provider over the ISP's role in allowing its service to be used for illegal BitTorrent downloading.

Apache Software Foundation (ASF) pioneers have toasted 10 years of independence and successful code development at their annual conference in California. Speakers who spun-up the project in its early days celebrated building a community that has stayed (mostly) friendly and dedicated to the ideal of building open-source code. Also it’s a group that’s remained beyond the control of tech vendors. To mark the anniversary, ASF announced the Subversion open-source version-control project has joined ASF, to become a top-level project. Not that things have been this harmonious - or pain free.

The 2009 Linux Kernel Summit was held in Tokyo, Japan on October 19 and 20. Jet-lagged developers from all over the world discussed a wide range of topics. LWN's Jonathan Corbet was there, and has written the following summaries.

Google has defended its decision to allow unfettered Android tweaking, saying that although this may fragment the Googlephone market, it's what's best for developers. "Everybody talks about fragmentation as a bad thing, but I think you need to look at it from the perspective of the developer," Eric Chu, Google's group manager for Android mobile platforms, told the wireless-happy OpenMobileSummit in downtown San Francisco this afternoon. "How much work does the developer have to do to address the fragmentation? If there are a million devices and they're in three fragments, they don't care."

Zend Technologies has announced that it is working with Oracle to deliver an integrated and optimized enterprise-class Linux and PHP solution for deploying and managing business-critical Web applications. Zend's Web application server is now available through the Oracle Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN). Zend Server also includes out-of-the-box enterprise-grade connectivity to Oracle Database.

It isn't very difficult to crimp your own CAT5 cabling. You can repair and re-use old cable, cut cable to exact lengths, and save money. Aaron Weiss shows how, with lots of good pictures.

Reports that the Linux netbook is dead or dying are incorrect, at least globally, according to an analyst firm. Nearly one-third of the 35 million netbooks on track to ship this year will come with some variant of the free, open-source operating system, ABI Research said. The exact split is 32% Linux versus 68% Windows, said Jeff Orr, an analyst at ABI, which works out to about 11 million Linux netbooks this year. That number contradicts third-party market figures, trumpeted by Microsoft, that showed Linux shipping on as few as 4% of U.S. netbooks.

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Skype announced that it is working on an open source UI layer for its Linux VoIP client. Although apparently not fully open source, the upcoming version of the Skype client for Linux could enable more open development of client front ends, including mobile devices.

This year's Kernel Summit saw Linux developers, led by Linus Torvalds, discussing the development process and gaining an insight into how Google uses the Linux kernel in-house. Ulrich Drepper and Alan Cox think universal binaries in Linux are a step in the wrong direction. Various graphics drivers have recently been updated to add new functionality.