Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Computerworld’s Preston Gralla blogged the other day that Microsoft, in a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing, admitted that Microsoft is afraid of Linux, specifically Ubuntu maker, Canonical, and one of the grand daddies of Linux distributions, Red Hat. And with Windows 7 now released to the large volume customers, the debate of the desktop is again back in the cross hairs.

This week at Phoronix began by learning that Compiz is now running on ATI R600/700 GPUs when using the latest open-source Mesa / DRM stack. Owners of ATI Radeon HD 2000/3000/4000 series graphics cards are now just a step away from finding "out of the box" open-source 3D acceleration support. On that same day there was also the release of the OpenGL 3.2 specification, but that didn't come as a surprise.

On July 7, internet search giant Google not only announced its operating system Google Chrome OS with much fanfare, it also quietly released Neatx, an open source NX server. According to the announcement, Google has been looking at remote desktop technologies for quite a while. While the X Window System has issues with network latency and bandwidth, the NX protocol compresses X requests and reduces round-trips, resulting in much better performance — to the point that it can be used over network connections with low bandwidth.

The SCO litigation against — well, let's be honest, against anyone they can think of — has gone on and on and on. As 2007 drew to a close, it seemed the end was in sight, after the company was forced to seek bankruptcy protection to avoid being thrashed in court — which eventually happened anyway. Now it seems the end may really be in sight.

The Linux Mint project has been releasing versions of its Ubuntu 9.04-based Linux Mint 7 "Gloria" distro over the last few months and has now released a final KDE version. Gloria KDE Community Edition offers various ease of use enhancements, and greatly improved installation features.

Mark Shuttleworth has offered to put more Canonical employees on to Debian at the expense of Ubuntu, in a potential compromise with angry Debian developers. The offer is designed to help Debian hit a proposed code freeze date for the next version of the Linux distro in December. Shuttleworth said the diversion would mean "we'll get less done" on Ubuntu, which is based on Debian.

A new site, UKGovOSS.org, has been launched by Public Sector Forums to encourage discussion about open source and open standards in government. The UKGovOSS.org was created to continue the discussion which started at PSF's Local Government Open Source Conference in April 2009.

After almost two weeks in the Spanish province of Extremadura, the free project Debian appears satisfied with the outcome and promises the next release “Squeeze” will benefit from the meeting.

We are pleased to announce Camp KDE 2010! Camp KDE 2010 will take place at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) in La Jolla, California, USA from January 15th until January 22nd, 2010. The event is free to all participants.

The Official Ubuntu Server Book from Prentice Hall comes in several versions, including a Barnes & Noble Special Edition with extra content and a bonus DVD. Paul Ferrill reviews this new book that covers the important basic tasks every admin needs to master.

The core of US Patent 7,571,169 which Microsoft was granted on August 4th refers to – "A word-processing document stored in a single XML file that may be manipulated by applications that understand XML".

Following the bankruptcy court's decision to entrust the continuation of SCO Group's business to a trustee, there's been a lot of head-scratching over the future of the company. Judge Kevin Gross has yet to appoint a trustee to take the reins at SCO and the Office of the United States Trustee Program has yet to propose someone who will be acceptable to all sides to fill the post.

Chipmaker AMD has integrated the open standard OpenCL specification for parallel programming into its ATI Stream development environment.

Secure collaboration specialist TeamDrive has released its collaboration plug-in for OpenOffice 3.1 users. The freeware TeamDrive OpenOffice Plug-in allows users to create and share TeamDrive "SharedSpaces" (shared folders) and includes version control. Users can exchange files securely and view version comments or open previous versions of a document.

This year's Gran Canaria Desktop Summit represented the first time the GNOME and KDE communities have co-located their annual conferences in the same location. 852 free software advocates from 46 countries gathered together last month to discuss and enhance the free desktop experience at the first ever Gran Canaria Desktop Summit.

802.11n is the hot new wi-fi standard, all faster, better, and less interfering with common wireless devices than 802.11a/b/g. But don't get rid of your old devices---give them new jobs. Eric Geier offers 8 great ways to recycle old wi-fi gear.

Developers who 'knowingly' ship buggy software may be held liable for damages. That might be good for users -- but a sloppy set of guidelines could hurt open source.

After acquiring On2's video compression codecs in a deal valued at approximately $106.5 million in stock, will Google simply turn around and open source them? It certainly looks that way. In both the press release and the blog post announcing the acquisition of On2, Google makes a point of saying that it believes "high-quality video compression technology should be a part of the web platform" - and that On2 is a means of achieving that goal.

Nationwide unemployment may be heading toward double-digits in the U.S., but among the skills that are in highest demand are those of a Linux sysadmin. That's partly due to the effects of the recession -- more companies are willing to experiment with lower-cost open source alternatives to proprietary software. Still, the good news is qualified: Many of those jobs can be done anywhere on the planet.

The Mac is fairly widespread among musicians because tons of professional programs run on it. Apparently Ubuntu can completely replace the Mac, however, as in the following story.