Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Fedora 11 Alpha came out a month ago, 2 days later than the initial schedule, and it has recently entered its “Feature Freeze” state. Codenamed Leonidas, Fedora 11 is due to be released on May 25th and it includes a large number of new features (most of them have already been approved). I’ve been using Fedora for more than 5 years and I often run Rawhide (Fedora’s development branch) to preview some of the future improvements. I couldn’t have missed this Alpha release, so I installed it for testing (first, as a guest OS in VirtualBox and then on my laptop).

!whatever:p, sudo !!, ^foo^bar ... if they whet your appetite and set your pulse racing do I have a web site for you! It’s the Digg or Reddit of the Linux command-line world.

When Eric Raymond posted the first of the Halloween Documents in 1998, it marked the end of the beginning for open source. That is to say those documents demonstrated that the logical superiority of the open source development model had penetrated the most headstrong corporate skull in the proprietary software universe: Microsoft. The fact that Microsoft could judge major open source projects to be equal or possibly superior to their own efforts more than 10 years ago, and the fact that they recognized

It's not very surprising as we've all speculated a full-fledged Google OS for years, then Google's mobile OS hit the phone market, and now we've seen it (Android, of course) already installed and working dutifully on netbooks. It's not rock-solid, but Google's CEO has hinted that there'll be subsidized, Android-powered netbooks backed by Google or its partners arriving to the netbook scene soon.

Thinking of buying a BMW, a Peugeot or a Citroen in the near future? If you are then the chances are pretty good that you'll be buying an automobile with a small Linux computer behind the middle console

Most migrants from other operating systems will seek out a Linux alternative to the ubiquitous iTunes, and chances are they'll come across Amarok 2.0 and Songbird 1.0. They're both contenders for the Linux music player crown, but take different approaches. Which one is right for you? Amarok is a native KDE application (but is also available for other operating systems besides Linux via KDE ports), while Songbird has been built using Mozilla technology, so it's cross-platform from the first step. Migrating to either from other, lesser, applications is a breath of fresh air. They do the same kind of things, but in a more effective and better-looking way.

The developers behind Novell's openSUSE Linux distribution have unveiled the roadmap for version 11.2 and the schedule for the next several releases. The distro is moving towards a time-based eight-month cycle.

A few weeks ago, after some soul-searching, I decided to pack up the OLPC and ship it off to a new user elsewhere in the world. I've relayed it to a second party in America, who is better equipped to present it to its new owner.

Free screenshot manager Shutter provides a really handy upgrade from the built-in GNOME screen grabber, sending your images to editors, auto-thumbnailing, sending to FTP or hosting sites, and doing much more. Shutter is actually the 0.7 version of what was once known as GScrot—and, boy, did that name need changing. The free app is a serious boon to bloggers, technical writers, or anyone else who needs to show off part or all of their Linux desktop.

Stephan Kulow, the OpenSUSE project manager, has proposed a roadmap for the future versions of OpenSUSE. While Ubuntu and Fedora distributions currently aspire to provide a new release every six months, which is loosely pinned to the GNOME development schedule, previously OpenSUSE did not have a have a fixed release schedule. OpenSUSE will now try to ship a new version every eight months as part of their new release cycle.

Back in November we saw the launch of the S3 Graphics Chrome 530 GT and with that they talked up a new magical Linux driver that would provide HD video acceleration support along with OpenGL 3.0 capabilities. But no driver was released, however, a day later it was confirmed by S3 Graphics that they were working on a new Linux driver. Their PR representative said the driver was to be released in December, but that didn't happen. In February they continued to talk up their Linux support but months later there still was no driver. However, that changed in late February when S3 Graphics did in fact roll out a new Linux display driver.

It seems to be a big sticking point for windows users that they can't run their windows programs on Linux. They say they would use Linux if only they could run such and such windows program. Sounds to me like they wish to have their cake and eat it too. My point of view in this matter is quite simple. If you wish to run windows programs then use windows. If you wish to run Linux and windows programs then either use an emulator, wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) or a virtual machine. If none of those solutions are suitable then stop thinking about using Linux. Stop complaining that you will use Linux if only it could run this program. Either use the operating system the program was designed for or use an alternative program designed for the operating system you wish to use.

As the central element of Linux, the kernel is equally central to open source software in general. Because the community has such a stake in its design and success, the kernel has proven to be the hub around which much discussion revolves. The kernel's creator, Linus Torvalds, also has a stake in its success, and he takes part in the discussion.

At CeBIT Open Source 2009 Martin Michlmayr, past Debian project lead, presented his current projects FOSSology and FOSSBazaar, and spoke about the role his employer Hewlett-Packard is giving him in the governance project and how the FOSSBazaar work group is organized within the Linux Foundation. Britta Wülfing of Linux Magazine Online interviewed Michlmayr after his talk to find out more about his work at the Open Source Initiative (OSI) and the European Union Public License (EUPL). Here are the results of that conversation.

fluid Operations, a provider of management software for complex fully virtualised environments, has developed an open source implementation of the VMFS cluster filing system that uses VMware ESX to store virtual machines and disks. This is a userspace driver written in Java that has been tested under Windows and Linux, but according to the project's site it "should work on any platform that supports Java". It only supports VMFS3, not versions 1 or 2, and was developed by analysing the on-disk format of VMFS.

It probably won't be "Facebook for Linux" but a Web site launching Tuesday is intended to create an online community specifically for Linux programmers who focus on embedded applications such as mobile devices, set-top boxes, industrial controls and everything apart from servers and PCs. The Web site, dubbed Meld, is organized and supported by MontaVista Software, which markets a Linux software stack, services, support and tools for the embedded market.

Linux Mint, an Ubuntu-based distribution that prides itself on its good looks and ease-of-use, has just upped the ante with its Linux Mint 6 Felicia release candidate. The thing about Felicia is that it is the first KDE 4-based version released by Clement Lefebvre and his team over at Linux Mint.

Ahead of the first-ever Open Source Software (OSS) BarCamp event, which will take place on 28 March in Dublin, chief-organiser Laura Czajkowski has said that small-to-medium businesses have much to gain from open source, even if it is just to realise that there are alternatives out there.

I stumbled across Amber's blog by accident today – she's writing a series of posts that document her experience installing and using Linux distros and a variety of open source applications. I hope open source developers are following along as stay-at-home-mom Amber shares her adventures in Linux and open source. She eloquently points out usability issues that make it hard for your average mom to race out and embrace open source. Developers: Take note. For that matter, publishers should take note – I hope Amber gets a book deal out of her blog series.

Intel and a group of leading automotive-industry manufacturers have formed a non-profit group to develop and promote an open-source reference platform for In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) systems. When Intel announced earlier this week that it was developing a set of Atom processors specifically for the automotive market, it did not name specific car or parts manufacturers who had committed to using those chips. Today's announcement partially answers the questions this omission raised.