Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

The Linux Foundation has finally chosen the winning entry for their "We're Linux" video contest. And the result is some coloured squiggles with a European accent telling us how awesome freedom is.

In late December AMD had published open-source R600/700 3D code that also allowed for 2D and X-Video acceleration, but was not of use to end-users interested in full OpenGL acceleration. AMD had then released the R600/700 3D documentation a month later and then the R700 ISA documentation just a few weeks back. Today, however, AMD is finally pushing some workable code into a public code repository.

OLPC is excited to announce that a refresh of the XO-1 laptop is in progress. In our continued effort to maintain a low price point, OLPC is refreshing the hardware to take advantage of the latest component technologies. This refresh (Generation 1.5) is separate from the Generation 2.0 project, and will continue using the same industrial design and batteries as Gen 1. The design goal is to provide an overall update of the system within the same ID and external appearance.

Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director of the Eclipse Foundation, has announced in his blog, that the Common Public Licence (CPL) has been superseded by the Eclipse Public Licence (EPL). The move comes as the result of cooperation between the Foundation and IBM to help reduce licence proliferation.

Last year at LinuxWorld Expo, I had the opportunity to speak with Cliff Schmidt, the Executive Director at Literacy Bridge. At that point, Cliff was showing off an audio recording device with the eventual plan of being able to distribute sub-$10 gadgets that would allow for education and collaboration in struggling third-world countries. The little device that was literally in pieces back at LinuxWorld now is being used in Ghana as part of a pilot program.

It truly is a beautiful thing when something just works. Network-attached storage devices deliver ease of use, small footprints, and high capacities at commodity prices. Paul Ferrill examines the VIA ARTiGO A2000 Storage Server, a shoebox-sized FreeNAS-based NAS with capacity to burn.

Our friends at Unigine Corp have published a 2009 development road-map for the Unigine Engine, their cross-platform gaming engine that is able to deliver stunning graphics on Linux. In 2009 the Unigine Engine is set to receive support for game consoles, improved physics capabilities, multi-monitor support, world layers support, an integrated terrain editor, high-level vehicles support, a new game logic framework, and much more.

Anthony Lineberry, a Linux expert, announced during his presentation, "Alice in User-Land: Hijacking the Linux Kernel via /dev/mem", at the Black Hat security conference now taking place in Amsterdam that he will shortly be publishing the libmemrk library. He says Libmemrk works in both 32-bit and 64-bit environments.

The Ubuntu project has published a "release candidate" or final testing version for the upcoming 9.04 version of its popular Linux distribution. "We consider this release candidate to be complete, stable and suitable for testing by any user," said Ubuntu developer Steve Langasek in an e-mail.

Version 7.50 of the Citadel open source groupware for Linux has been released. The new version improves the template system of Citadel's WebCit web interface and uses JavaScript to enhance the mailbox summary view. According to the release notes, its message display and email composition dialogues have been updated.

One of the nice things about Linux — but by no means the most important — is the enhanced security that comes along with running it. That doesn't mean Linux never runs into security issues, though, and this week, the vulnerability in question centers around a nifty little service called udev.

Microsoft's brawl with TomTom over FAT patents has been seized on by software-freedom advocates as a wake-up call for people to adopt GPLv3. Open-source developers can protect themselves, their customers and the cause of software freedom in general by switching code currently under GPLv2 to the updated GPLv3, the Software Freedom Law Center has said.

One download can upgrade your entire Debian network; Juliet Kemp shows us how to save time and bandwidth by using approx to cache and serve updates locally.

As a parent of three young boys, I often think about what it's going to take to be competitive in the job market of the future. Obviously, they'll need solid reading, writing, math and science skills, with history, literature and art thrown in to make them well-rounded. Being a computer nerd myself, I recognize the value of even basic computer skills.

Zaragoza, Spain-based eBox Technologies announced the availability of version 1.0 of its Ubuntu Linux-based eBox server distribution.The open source eBox 1.0 features LDAP, DHCP, NTP, DNS, and email servers, among other features, and provides a new development framework for building add-on modules, says the company.

The first beta of version 8.4 of PostgreSQL, the free object-relational database system, developed under the umbrella of the PostgreSQL Global Development Group, has been released. After fourteen months in development, the new release contains hundreds of patches and dozens of new features.

The influence of RMS on the world of free software and beyond is, of course, immense. But sometimes his presence is more symbolic than real, as he seems to disappear off the map for weeks at a time, with little in the way of public statements or comments. Maybe this can be put down to the frequent travelling that he undertakes, as he continues tirelessly to spread the word about freedom. Whatever the reason for those intermittent silences, it's interesting to note something of a flurry of comments from him recently, and in quite surprising contexts.

The Government has been far from forthcoming when it comes to revealing any details behind the New South Wales (NSW) laptop tender choices. There are unanswered questions from Linux buffs, taxpayers, students and parents, and transparent Government advocates alike.

According to a number of Linux distributors, a bug in the udev service under Linux can be exploited to obtain root privileges. The kernel uses udev to dynamically create device-specific files and folders (/dev/) for input and output, so that only devices which are actually connected appear in /dev. udev is not a direct component of the Linux kernel, but is included and activated by default in almost all Linux distributions which use 2.6 series kernels.

The Pupeee Linux developers have released version 4.2 of their Asus Eee PC optimised open source netbook distribution. Version 4.2 of Pupeee is based on Puppy Linux, which was recently updated. The focus of Pupeee is speed, ease of use and Eee PC compatability.