Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

The most exciting bit of kit I've played with in ages isn't a cutting edge graphics card, or a multimedia tablet. It's a netbook - a Samsung NC-10 with a bog standard Atom chip, a bit of RAM and an ancient operating system. It isn't just a great bit of kit, though. It's the canary in the coalmine, chirping that the tech industry has completely lost touch with reality - and that it's caught us in its Reality Distortion Field.

Have you ever come across a situation where you wanted to convert a video from one format to another in your Linux machine and you have absolutely no idea how to do it? What about playing DVD on Ubuntu or rip your favorite VCD to mpeg file? Below, I have come up with a great list of software that you can use to handle your video/audio files in Linux. All the software listed are compatible with any of the Linux distros out there. The installation instructions and screenshots are based on Ubuntu, so if you are on a different distro, you will have to change the command accordingly.

A new industry alliance, Genivi, has been launched and aims to bring open source to "In-Vehicle Infotainment". Genivi, a non-profit organisation, has been founded by car makers BMW, General Motors and Peugeot Citroën, component makers Delphi, Magneti Marelli and Visteon, CPU maker Intel and embedded systems developer Wind River. It plans to work on a Linux based, open source reference platform that can be incorporated into vehicles.

In Torture-Testing Phoenix HyperSpace, the Linux-Based Instant-On OS, we learned a bit about Phoenix HyperSpace, the Linux-based "instant on" operating system. We learned that Phoenix is positioning it as a fast, safe, secure, energy-efficient environment for mobile workers that should meet most of their computing needs, making a trip into Windows an occasional foray rather than a daily necessity. I've been spending some quality time with it on a Lenovo S10 IdeaPad, and today you get to hear all about my adventures with it.

Looking for a Web-based content management system that uses Perl instead of PHP? Want to server dynamic and static content with PostrgeSQL, not MySQL? What started out as a hobby project by Hendrik Van Belleghem, based in Bazel, Belgium, has grown into Spine – a Perl Web content system for Apache on Unix systems. With so many LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) content systems available, Spine offers a refreshing alternative with the tried and tested Perl language and is database independent. Open Source Identity interviews Van Belleghem about Spine, a lesser-known alternative to the popular Web CMSs.

As companies grow, merge and scale up, the systems they use for various enterprise tasks become tangled and mixed. They may also age very poorly. Replacing them with newer, more efficient, better-supported systems is no small task, especially when they're so tightly intertwined. Not doing so, however, can make for a difficult-to-manage, insecure system.

The DOHCS 2009 conference has come and gone, and it was a tremendous success exceeding even our own lofty expectations. With nearly 300 attendees we greatly appreciated the interest in the speakers and their outstanding presentations. We are already in planning for DOHCS 2010 and hope to see you there. Below are the presentations and audio from DOHCS 2009, please note that the audio has some problems including volume in sections (particularly Q&A) that we are aware of and unfortunately cannot resolve. MP3 files are approximately 30-55MB .

What's the best Linux distribution? It's one of the most commonly asked questions from people who are new to Linux. The answer? Well, there isn't really a simple answer.

Software Tree has filed a lawsuit against Red Hat claiming the Linux distribution and open source middleware manufacturer has infringed upon one of its patents. The patent at the heart of the case is 6,163,776, System and method for exchanging data and commands between an object oriented system and a relation system.

Well, the nightmare part has kicked in. Bear with me, folks, because I'm going into some detail so others may learn from my pain. The other night I was up until past 3 a.m. trying to get the Linux machine to access shared folders on the Win 98 machine. At least I found out that many, many other Linux users faced the same problem. Even better news, thanks to somebody named Rafal and his "LANMAN fix," I got it to work. More on that later.

[Linux newbie doesn't like bad grammar in the documentation and things that are different. - Scott]

It's increasingly common for prominent open-source developers to leave IBM or other open-source-friendly companies to try their luck at Microsoft. It's not common at all for them to blog about it before actually getting a formal offer. Yet that is what Sam Ruby, prominent Apache Software Foundation director and Atom developer, has done on his blog. Ruby was hired by IBM directly from Christopher Newport University in 1981 and has never left.

For an OS to wrestle market share from Microsoft's Windows, it will need two things: the OS-maker's support and low licensing fees. This rings true even on the netbook front--a relatively new PC segment, and even for Microsoft. Recently, the Android OS backed by Google was unofficially ported to an Asus Eee PC netbook, and according to online reports, the Taiwanese manufacturer has set up a team to develop a netbook running on the Linux-based OS.

Watching litigation is often like watching a messy divorce. People will often say things they don't actually believe are true just to get the response they want from the audience. If you want to determine who is right, you have to step back and look at the behavior from the parties outside court to determine who is at fault and what the real issues are. This latest case between Microsoft and TomTom, which has some Linux leaders speaking out, is to point and it may showcase how others are likely to try to manipulate us during these difficult times.

[I posted this purely for it's entertainment value. - Scott]

In a keynote at the Open Source Forum of CeBIT 2009, Graham Smethurst, general manager of infotainment and communication systems at BMW, will present a new Open Source development platform for the auto industry. Under the name GENIVI, founding partners BMW, Delphi, General Motors, Intel, Magneti Marelli, PSA Peugeot Citroën, Visteon and Wind River will jointly develop Linux-based infotainment software

Nokia has released the first major update to the Qt "cross-platform application framework" since it acquired Trolltech a year ago. Qt 4.5 is now available under the open source LGPL and GPL licenses along with two commercial licenses for older versions.

With any article whose premise is ensuring the safety of your programming career, it's tempting to try to hook your attention with fear, uncertainty, and doubt about the state of the economy. I could point at all those layoff statistics. Or I could frighten you by bringing up the spectre of your job going overseas.

GNOME and KDE reign supreme on the Linux desktop, but there are many lesser-known desktop environments that are increasingly popular among users who are looking for lightweight alternatives that deliver more streamlined interfaces and a functional user experience with less overhead. The Xfce project, which produces one of the most polished lightweight desktop environments, recently announced the release of version 4.6.

If you have ever tried to use the apt-get command to install software but received an error because you forgot sudo, the Command-line Fu site has a quick but useful tip for you.

Flock, a social-focused browser startup that has raised nearly $30 million in venture funding, has ceased building on top of the open source Firefox browser, say multiple sources. The next version of the Flock browser will be built on Google’s open source Chrome browser platform. The last version of Flock was released in October 2008. Flock first launched in October 2005 and has had 6 million or so downloads. But it still has less market share than even Netscape, which was discontinued over a year ago.

The most recent such pronouncement came from the British authorities last week with a statement that the use of open source software in the public service would be accelerated. The more significant statement about this policy was that open source software would be adopted "when it delivers best value for money". You can be sure that companies like Microsoft are already doing the sums to make the right offer which offers "best value for money."

[Belated Editor's Note: Warning, reading this article may make you want to punch your monitor.. - Scott]