Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

The trap statement in bash causes your script to execute one or more commands when a signal is received. One of the useful things you can use this for is to clean up temporary files when your script exits.

I am pleased to announce that the Phoronix Test Suite has just incorporated its 100th test profile. With now having 100 different tests and over 50 test suites, there are plenty of tests to suit your needs whether you are interested in graphics / video, server, CPU, memory, disk, or system benchmarking. This also raises the count for the number of compatible tests in our GPLv3-licensed automated testing software that is compatible with Mac OS X, OpenSolaris, and *BSD operating systems.

Six months ago I noted that the European Patent Office had embarked upon a fairly abstruse process:

a referral of a “point of law” concerning software patents by the President of the European Patent Office (EPO) to the EPO “Enlarged Board of Appeal”, something that seems to happen quite rarely. Now, you do not have to be a genius to see the problem with this; essentially, the EPO is asking itself whether it wants to widen its own jurisdiction, increase its power and boost its income by allowing software patents. Unless the Enlarged Board of Appeal consists entirely of self-denying, altruistic masochists, I think we can all guess what the answer will be.

A vulnerability in udev, the user-space tool that manages the Linux /dev tree, has left unpatched systems vulnerable to a local root privilege escalation. Exploits are already circulating on the full-disclosure mailing list, so it is rather important for users and administrators to update their systems. The problem was caused by the way udev processes the messages it receives—certain kinds of messages, which could be generated by user processes, were not considered. That oversight led to the vulnerability.

The Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa and the Germany-based InWent project have launched a programme to develop trainers in East and Southern Africa capable of teaching others to build free software-based businesses.

Even as the global economy tanks, open-source companies continue to soar. A range of open-source companies reported sales and community growth this past week, including..

Version 3.0 of the open source x2go terminal server for Linux has been available to download since the end of April. The software, code named Uthörn, was developed for Debian 5.0. The new version aims to improve print server functionality. According to the release notes, it compresses print jobs before sending them, reducing data transmissions by up to 90 per cent.

According to NetApplications, GNU/Linux now accounts for 1.02% of computer desktops. Depending on your outlook, this figure is cause for cautious celebration, or equally cautious dismissal of the operating system's prospects. Alternatively, you might prefer -- as I do -- to question the statistic's accuracy, and look at other ways to estimate GNU/Linux's presence. The problem, of course, can never be settled with any certainty. GNU/Linux comes from dozens of vendors and community projects, rather than a single corporation, and, since it requires neither registration nor activation, a single DVD could be the source of half a dozen installations. Under these circumstances, any estimates quickly trail off into speculation whose credibility depends on your own biases on the subject.

Businesses that opt for open source solution equivalents of proprietary software applications can reduce the total budget required for its implementation and operation by 50% to 60% over three years. That’s according to Yossi Hasson, CEO of open source service provider Synaq. Hasson says that with the slowdown in the economy, businesses need to investigate viable alternatives in order to meet their IT needs in the most cost-effective way possible.

At the beginning of the year, many analysts predicted that, given the economic climate, this would be the year for mergers and acquisitions. Indeed, they were right: acquisitions are up in everything from banking to technology, with the latter category perhaps best represented by Oracle's surprise snatch of Sun Microsystems just a few weeks ago. The buying, at least from where we're sitting, looks primed to continue, and Open Source companies are no exception, as was aptly demonstrated this morning as it was revealed that Open Source vendor Hyperic has been acquired by the likewise Open Source SpringSource.

The venerable Linux init system is not up to the job of managing modern dynamic hardware and processes; if a device is not present at boot, then init cannot control it. Upstart is hotplug-aware, and first appeared as an init replacement in Ubuntu, and now Fedora has adopted it. It runs alongside init for a comfortable transition; Juliet Kemp gives us a guided tour in this two-part series.

While anti-virus and anti-malware is not much of a problem on Linux at this time, AVG has added this anti-malware protection to their Linux security software. AVG has supported Linux for sometime when it comes to virus and spam protection, but with version 8.5 they have expanded their anti-malware support.

SpringSource, the company behind the Spring framework for Java applications, has announced it has acquired Hyperic, developers of open source monitoring and management software. SpringSource's CEO Rod Johnson explained that the acquisition would allow the company to offer a complete solution to the entire life cycle of an application, from development to deployment in the data centre or cloud.

The international SchoolTool development team and the Shuttleworth Foundation set up by Ubuntu sponsor Mark Shuttleworth have announced the release of SchoolTool version 1.0. Developed on the basis of Zope, the software organizes all pupil data - timetables, marks, parent contact details - along with resource booking, calendaring and report card generation. The web browser based SchoolTool can also be used for the central management of several schools.

LXer Feature: 04-May-2009

The Linux and Unix Menagerie has a hilarious look back at what we thought was cool, Mike Weber has a cool tutorial on how to compile a Kernel in Ubuntu 9.04, HP unveiled a ProBook laptop line that you can get Linux Pre-installed on, and can XP save Windows 7? Something tells me the answer is no..

X.org 7.5 is scheduled to appear in summer, and could include a new Intel graphics driver. The developers have slashed its code to boost reliability and performance. The kernel developers have now presented versions 2.6.30-rc4 and 2.6.29.2 of Linux, 2.6.27.22 and 2.6.28.10 are released and guest mascot Tuz bows out.

Facebook recently launched a new set of APIs that allow third-party application developers to integrate support for the Facebook stream in their software. In this hands-on introduction to the new APIs, you will learn how to use them in a desktop client application and you will get an inside look at how they were used to bring the stream to Gwibber, an open source microblogging client for Linux.

I created a test document in each of those editors and then loaded each test document in each of the other editors. I showed what worked, what didn't, and made some suggestions on how interoperability could be improved. I found only two notable failures, when the Microsoft/CleverAge Add-in for Excel loaded KSpread and Symphony documents.

[Microsoft claims it cannot do better because lack of documentation. But the Open Office version is based upon the undocumented Excel version. Just proves closed source closes minds - Scott]

Last week we took a look at how two distributions based on the same environment and one a derivative of the other, can actually be very different. Xubuntu and Debian both use the same package management system and both have the same suites of software available. So what makes them so different when installed out of the box? Can Xubuntu be just as lightweight as its Debian counterpart? This week we take another look at how Xubuntu 9.04 fairs when installed in a more minimalist manner. In the news this past week, Mandriva developers make massive updates to "Cooker" following the stable 2009.1 release, four main BSD projects all announce new updates of their flagship products, the openSUSE community releases updated media for 11.1 with KDE 4.2.2, users of the Arch Linux distribution put together a free community magazine, the creator of Puppy Linux looks set for a return to the helm of the project, and Oracle's Solaris (no, the name doesn't roll off the tongue easily here either) is rumoured to be working on version 11 set for release in the middle of 2010. Finally, we are pleased to announce that the recipient of the April 2009 DistroWatch.com donation is Python, the popular programming language.

Despite a steady stream of rumors, IBM did not, in the end, buy Sun Microsystems. But, on April 20, Oracle did. This acquisition could have some interesting implications for the Linux community. Your editor, while not really knowing more than anybody else, suspects that the outcome could be mostly positive. What follows, here, is some wild speculation on where this could all go.