Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

The history, status, and future of audio for Linux systems was the topic of two talks—coming at the theme from two different directions—at the Linux Plumbers Conference (LPC). Ardour and JACK developer Paul Davis looked at audio from mostly the professional audio perspective, while PulseAudio developer Lennart Poettering, unsurprisingly, discussed desktop audio. Davis's talk ranged over the full history of Linux audio and gave a look at where he'd like to see things go, while Poettering focused on the changes since last year's conference and "action items" for the coming year.

Due for a November release, Fedora 12 is already shaping up as an exciting, jam-packed release that targets netbook users, virtualization, improved networking, and much more.

Today is the fifth anniversary of the Ubuntu Linux distribution. To celebrate the past five years of brown, we decided to have a look at five ways that Ubuntu has helped make the open source Linux operating system more human.

He’s the man who brought open source to Silicon Graphics and NEC and advisor to Warburg Pincus on how to make money investing in open source. "At one point I got the title of open source's undercover agent," recalls Dave McAllister. He was recruited by Adobe as Director of open source and standards with a specific mission: "I was hired to, a) start an open source process and, b) get PDF approved as an ISO standard." So: mission accomplished?

Japanese software firm Access and Israeli mobile design firm Emblaze Mobile today demonstrated a smartphone prototype and device stack based on the LiMo-compatible Access Linux Platform (ALP) 3.0. The Else phone incorporates a Texas Instruments OMAP3430, 16GB internal flash, 3G, WiFi, GPS, and jointly developed "Else Intuition" software.

Mozilla has confirmed that the release of Firefox 3.0.15 and 3.5.4 have both been delayed until Tuesday the 27th of October. The minor security and performance updates were originally scheduled to be released on the 21st of October, but are being delayed for further beta testing. Details of the planned changes in each update, however, have yet to be confirmed.

What if you didn't need the Internet or a telephone system to communicate electronically with your friends? Imagine you could independently share electronic information with friends through wireless devices without external hardware or software. Think of how excited people get about checking in with friends using Twitter and Facebook. Now, with the right software and your current hardware, people could do those same kinds of activities in their local community--without any need for the Internet or the restrictions of Internet service providers. People could use their wireless devices for personal communications where there is no Internet or when there is no Internet, such as in a disaster situation, or when public networks are banned, such as in places like Iran. We believe that having independent control of our communications networks can be a valuable resource that opens new possibilities for communities.

If you are a Facebook fan then you must have used the official Facebook desktop application.The app is good but it’s not detailed and offers only limited features. You can’t see live notifications of new stories, can’t post a comment and if you need to upload a photo you have to open Facebook in the browser all the way. If you are not quite satisfied with the official Facebook desktop application or other desktop clients have a look at Facebook –Photo uploader. It is a new desktop client for Facebook, released by Adobe with really useful features.

In the first two parts of this series we learned how to build a custom Linux kernel. But there are so many options it's easy to get lost. Today we'll clarify some of the more important places where it's easy to go wrong.

It was well over a year ago now that news of the Symbian operating system--found on approximately half of global smartphones--going open source broke. The news was interpreted as particularly important to Nokia's forward-looking Symbian strategy, but after all this time, an open source version of Symbian's platform is still only in beta testing.

Richard Stallman demanded the EU cut MySQL loose from Oracle yesterday in an open letter to Brussels' competition supremo Neelie Kroes. The self-described software freedom activist's intervention came just a day after MySQL founder Monty Widenius made a similar call, saying that Oracle could offset the EU's go-slow examination of its purchase of Sun by simply putting MySQL on the block. In yesterday's letter, also signed by James Love and Malini Aisola of Knowledge Ecology International and Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group Stallman says that Oracle's objective in borging MySQL is to prevent further market share erosion and "to protect the high prices now charged for its proprietary database software licenses and services".

In part 1 we learned some neat tricks using OpenSSH and SSHFS for fast remote logins and file sharing. Today in Part 2 we learn how easy it is to configure OpenSSH to use secure public key authentication instead of a password login.

As a homeschooling family, my wife and I are very involved in our children's education and since we're both a couple of nerds, much of our children's education is done on the computer. I use Linux for work almost exclusively so I was a bit curious to see if there were any good children's educational programs for Linux; it turns out that there are some very good ones and I'm going to discuss 3 of them today: Tux Paint, Tux Typing, and Tux of Math Command. Do you sense a theme developing here?

The Fedora Project released the beta version of Fedora 12 "Constantine," adding the Moblin desktop environment and speed optimizations for i686 and the Intel Atom. The latest version of the Red Hat-related Linux distribution also offers IPv6 support plus enhanced Bluetooth, virtualization, multimedia, and power management.

According to a self-administered survey, Enterprises are still at risk from common security 'gaps.' Novell today released the first summary of data from its Threat Assessment Tool and the view isn't pretty. The results show that "many enterprises are still highly vulnerable to preventable security threats. To date, the survey has revealed significant vulnerabilities, particularly in the areas of inadequate data protection, insufficient mobile access policies, and lack of application control and system integrity for endpoint devices."

As expected, bookseller Barnes & Noble has announced a dual-screen e-book reader dubbed the Nook. The company has also entered into a partnership with Adobe to work on e-book standards.

The Puppy Linux project has released a 4.3.1 bugfix upgrade for last month's major 4.3 release of the popular, lightweight GNU/Linux distro. Puppy Linux 4.3, which has been rebuilt with a new "Woof" build system and PPM package manager, has received a number of positive reviews.

Red Hat has announced the first and only beta of its next Linux development release, Fedora 12. Emperor Constantine the Great knew a good means to hold a crumbling empire together when he saw it - namely, Christianity - and by code-naming the 12th release of Fedora after Constantine, Red Hat is by no means suggesting that the Linux empire is crumbling or that the warring between the political, military, and religious powers that led to Constantine's ascension to rule is somehow also going on in the Linux arena. Rather, Red Hat is emphasizing Constantine's openness to new ideas.

Marvell has announced four processor families -- Armada 100, Armada 500, Armada 600, and Armada 1000 -- based on ARM cores. Touted as "a top to bottom solution for mobile computing and intelligent devices," the SoCs offer single or dual cores with clock speeds from 400MHz to 1.2GHz, the company says.

Following a number of Windows Mobile 6.5 based phones, smartphone market newcomer Acer has now announced its first Android model. It's based on a Snapdragon processor, likely clocked at 1 GHz, with 256 MB RAM. The Android 1.6 operating system (code named "Donut") is housed on its internal 512 MB Flash drive and there is a microSDHC slot for adding extra storage. The 3.5 inch capacitive touch screen has a resolution of 800 × 480 pixels.