Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Among the broad selection of software offered in the KDE Software Compilation is Parley, an application for vocabulary training. Recently people from Vox Humanitatis came in and provided a set of vocabulary data files for Parley for less known languages. This piqued our curiosity, so we did an interview with Sabine Emmy Eller, CCO of Vox Humanitatis.

Barnes & Noble's Android-based Nook e-reader device was rooted by a site called NookDevs. Meanwhile, Intrinsyc revealed that it led the systems integration of the delayed Nook, which has has suffered from some early negative reviews, and Spring Design's lawsuit against Barnes & Noble over the Nook is moving forward.

OpenLogic, Inc., a provider of enterprise open source software solutions encompassing hundreds of open source packages, today announced Open Source Fulfillment Center, an OpenLogic service that helps companies ensure compliance with open source licenses and avoid lawsuits such as happened with fourteen well known consumer electronics manufacturers this week who are alleged to have violated terms of the GPLv2.

Canonical announced that Mark Shuttleworth will be stepping down as CEO in March to be replaced by Canonical COO Jane Silber, reports eWEEK. Meanwhile, the Ubuntu project has released its first alpha of Ubuntu 10.04 ("Lucid Lynx"), which speeds boot-time while kissing the GIMP editor goodbye.

The Mono framework compatible with Microsoft's C# .NET is available in version 2.6. Developers also upgraded its associated MonoDevelop environment to version 2.2.

The Novell-backed Moonlight project released the final Moonlight 2, an open source Linux/Unix clone of Microsoft's Silverlight framework that offers improved media streaming. Novell and Microsoft also announced that they will continue their Moonlight collaboration and extend Microsoft's patent covenant to Moonlight distributors other than Novell.

You've made your beautiful custom holiday cards with GIMP, and now you're ready to print them. What's the best way? Your own inkjet printer at home, or farm the work out to someone else?

Thailand-based NorhTec announced a device touted as "the world's most energy-efficient desktop computer," offered for only $99 with the Linux version. Built into a standard-sized keyboard, the "Gecko Surfboard" runs on a 1GHz x86 SoC (system on chip), operates fanlessly, and uses just five Watts, the company says.

Canonical has revealed plans to bring social networking integration and GNOME panel improvements in the next major version of Ubuntu. Notification area icons will be replaced by a new application indicator system. The panel will also feature a new Me Menu for setting messaging status.

The new version of Moonlight is out, and with it, an expanded patent covenant enabling any Linux user to run Novell's open source Silverlight implementation.

The VideoLAN project, developers of the open source VLC multimedia player, is urgently seeking developers to work on the Mac OS X port. According to a posting on the VLX forums "there are now effectively zero active developers for MacOS" which has already led to the 64 bit releases of VLC for the Apple operating being put on hold. The original appeal in May 2009 for developers seems to have had no response.

Earlier this week, the latest round of BusyBox GPL lawsuits were announced by the SFLC. The current offenders are Best Buy, JVC, Samsung, Westinghouse and 10 others. It seems that every few months, there are a new round of violations or lawsuits announced, so it behooves every company that distributes software or products containing software to ensure they aren't ever on the list. We announced our Open Source Fulfillment Center service earlier this week that helps companies ensure they comply with the GPL. Jason Perlow of ZDnet gave a pretty good explanation of the challenges in complying with the GPL. Dana Blankenhorn, his colleague, talks about why those explanations are not an excuse. I want to focus on some concrete steps companies can take to avoid being the next defendants.

[Thought this was interesting considering recent events. - Scott]

Reading the recent discussions about GNOME's position in the GNU Project, I'm reminded of Utah Phillip's comment that "a long memory is the most radical notion in history." The way that the discussion has been reported in the media, you would hardly guess that the discussion is the latest round in an ongoing and disquieting dispute -- largely because the origins of the dispute were never widely reported. The current discussion began on the GNOME Foundation mailing list, when Richard Stallman, president and founder of the Free Software Foundation, suggested that Planet GNOME, (http://planet.gnome.org/) the conglomeration of GNOME developers' blogs, should exclude all references to proprietary software.

What partition setup should you use when dual-booting Windows and Linux? Should you have a separate partition for /home? Why do some people put /boot into its own partition? These are the questions that have plagued mankind since the dawn of time (or thereabouts). This guide aims to answer some of those questions and demonstrate some partition schemes that may save you some space, hassle, or data loss down the line.

Once again, Microsoft have lifted from outside sources for their own product without paying heed to license restrictions. However, this time they have taken from proprietary code.

Continuing in this series of slide show backgrounds, in this article I will explain the process of creating a set of desktop backgrounds that will transition like a slide-show in XFCE. Note that I am using XFCE version 4.6.0 in this tutorial. Other versions may be able to use this tip, but the screen shots may look different. See corresponding howtos for GNOME, and KDE3 also.

Google has been in talks with at least one hardware manufacturer about a Google-branded Chrome OS netbook, according to internet rumor. And it only stands to reason. We now have the Googlephone. Why not the Googlenetbook? Citing multiple unnamed sources, TechCrunch says that the Mountain View Chocolate Factory has sent an RFP, or "request for proposal," to the mystery manufacturer and that the two have actually discussed building a Google-branded Chrome OS device.

Apple has succeeded in gaining a permanent injunction against Mac clonemaker Psystar from selling computers with any version of OS X installed. The court also declined to exclude Rebel EFI, Psystar's software that enables an end user to install OS X on a non-Apple machine, from the injunction.

In the continuing soap opera of Oracle's battle against the European Commission for the right to acquire Sun, and with it, MySQL, we have had to rely on the bloggers and analysts to get it right, because the media surely have not. Before you read any further, stop right now and read Matthew Aslett's excellent summary of Oracle-MySQL through last week, Pamela Jones' excellent piece on the matter (and her later update), and Matt Asay's highlighting of Monty Widenius' conflict of interest in opposing the Sun acquisition.

Most Windows users know about the utility of the Ctrl + Alt + Del keys when dealing with an unresponsive application. A program is said to be unresponsive when it doesn’t respond to any user interaction and neither does it perform its intended actions. There are plenty of jokes surrounding the whole Ctrl + Alt + Del combination that brings up the task manager in Windows and allows you to end unresponsive applications. Things seldom go this far in the Linux world, however claiming that such Linux unresponsiveness doesn’t occur would be a plain lie.