Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

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.

Running Phoronix.com and developing the Phoronix Test Suite software consumes much time and is an enormous undertaking. You can support our Linux efforts already by joining Phoronix Premium, supporting our advertisers, making a donation, or using our Amazon.com affiliate link when shopping...

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.

The open source industry needs profitable champions to demonstrate success, and attract funding and participation in open source, according to Red Hat CEO. In an interview with ZDNet Asia Wednesday, Jim Whitehurst said revenue models of open source proponents such as Red Hat itself and Google, have brought success to the respective companies and allowed them to contribute back to the open source community. Google relies on ad-based revenue, while Red Hat's revenue runs on a subscription model.

A good portion of the boot time on current Linux systems is spent on system initialisation and starting dozens of daemons sequentially. The Ubuntu 9.10 development team have started to parallelise and accelerate the boot process through the large scale use of Upstart.

Spring Design, developers of a dual-screen e-book reader called Alex, has filed suit against Barnes & Noble, alleging that B&N's new Nook reader uses Spring's trade secrets and violates the companies' non-disclosure agreement.

Turnkey Linux, Songbird, LogicalDOC, Brain Workshop, Evolutility, and many more-- the Open Source world is full of great applications for everything under the sun. Cynthia Harvey shares a sampling of 49 applications for all occasions.

MIPS Technologies announced two new MIPS32 cores, including one that's optimized for Linux. Both the M14K core and the M14Kc -- a superset that incorporates Android-ready, Linux/Java microcode -- support MIPS' microMIPS instruction set architecture, enabling 1.5 DMIPS/MHz performance and advanced code compression that can reduce code size by 35 percent, says the company.

French Mandriva user Olivier Faurax registered a support case at Skype complaining about a missing Mandriva package. Instead of the package he received a reply of some amazement.

This morning I woke up to find an e-mail in my inbox which contained a link to an xeconomy.com interview with Nicholas Negroponte. While reading it over breakfast I managed to spill my tea because I couldn't believe I was really seeing the words I was looking at. XO-2 development canceled? An XO-1.75 to replace it? Talk about an XO-3? Going from OLPC to olpc? But let's take it step by step, shall we...

The openSUSE-Medical project is seeking developers and additional packagers. The distribution is an openSUSE sub-project aimed at doctors and medical staff and will include various open source software applications for medical use. The developers plan to start reviewing a list of open source healthcare software for inclusion in the distribution and adding packages to openSUSE, once enough packagers are on board.

Like the ticking of a Swiss watch, every month the KDE team brings you a new release. November's edition of KDE is a bugfix and translation update to KDE 4.3. With the KDE 4 series picking up in popularity, we're happy to encourage even more people to give KDE 4 another spin -- or just upgrade your existing KDE to KDE 4.3.3. As the release only contains bugfixes and translation updates, it will be a safe and pleasant update for everyone. Users around the world will appreciate that KDE 4.3.3 is more completely translated. KDE 4.4 is already translated into more than 50 languages, with more to come.