Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

For many Linux desktop users, GNOME is their home. But it's a home that's in the process of a major renovation. In a session at the FUDcon Fedora Linux user and developer conference this week, contributors showed off some preliminary work for GNOME 3, the next major evolution of the GNOME platform. With GNOME 3, developers will be introducing a number of new concepts and technologies to the Linux desktop, including more advanced 3D as well as more tightly integrated messaging system.

Embedded specialist Wind River strives to win mobile network users with hardware compliance and its own Android branding.

With the growing popularity of netbooks, it is no surprise that many Linux distributions and software developers have created customized versions of their software to run on them. Some of the popular choices include Ubuntu’s Netbook Remix and Intel’s Moblin. Not to be counted out, KDE now has a version of their desktop environment designed for netbooks. While it is still under heavy development, I thought now would be a good time to get a little preview of what is to come. For the purposes of this preview, I installed Kubuntu Netbook Edition, but you can conceivably use any distribution that will support your netbook.

Samsung Electronics announced the availability of an SDK for its "Bada" mobile operating system. The kernel-configurable Bada platform can be based on a Linux kernel or another real-time OS (RTOS), and it incorporates an Eclipse-based IDE, a GNU tool-chain, and a service-centric UI framework based on Samsung's TouchWiz UI.

I will list the ways in which OLPC has influenced the target market which probably defines the interest of most readers of OLPC News, the angle from which most bloggers and industry commentators have been talking about the OLPC project for the past 4 years, which is how OLPC technology may affect the rich Western country's PC/Laptop industry. Said in another way, how OLPC has influenced the whole bunch of adults in rich countries reading Engadget and Gizmodo egoistically thinking: "When can I buy and use this for myself".

Tis the season to go shopping and to treat your favorite Tuxperson to something nice. Especially if it's you. Carla Schroder seeks out that perfect melding of fun and practical geektoys.

Commercial Linux distributor Red Hat today kicked out the 1.2 release of its Enterprise MRG Linux variant for real-time, messaging, and grid computing. Enterprise MRG was launched as an idea in December 2007 in the wake of Novell's roll-out of its SUSE Linux Enterprise Real-Time variant of its SLES server Linux distro a month earlier. The initial 1.0 release, which was missing the Project Condor grid components, debuted in June 2008. It did have the real-time Linux kernel, which is important for military systems, financial trading systems, and other industrial controllers where you have to strip down the general purpose Linux kernel and make it provide a more consistent response time (with low latency) on transactions.

With over 20 million installations, Fedora is among the most world's popular Linux distributions. While that kind of success has been due to a rapid base of supporters, the distro originally launched by Red Hat as a community Linux project is having to bridge the divide between targeting a mass audience and keeping hardcore enthusiasts in the fold.

Continuing my tour of Linux-based video editors this week I've profiled Cinelerra. Specifically I've reviewed the community-supported version produced by the CinelerraCV project.

Motorola venture capital arm Motorola Ventures has made an investment in multi-touch technology firm Sensitive Object. The French touchscreen technology company has developed patent-protected technology that uses acoustics to analyze sound waves caused by touching any surface of a device.

'tis the season, as they say, when we will appreciate our wireless networks more than ever. Thanks to Wi-Fi, we never need to leave the couch. And thanks to the continual feasting that lasts from approximately November to January, getting off the couch is pretty much impossible anyway. This December, the Guru's stocking is stuffed with a bounty of shiny new questions. Unfortunately it will be impossible to cover them all in one column, so if yours is missing please check back for January's episode. From the couch.

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.