Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Dangerous is probably not a description you would apply to the average programmer, let alone yourself. However, the Microsoft, Symantec and even the US Department of Homeland Security are worried that you could unwittingly be just that and intend to prove it.

Imeem's android application offers an easy and clear-sounding way to listen to music on your G1. While it doesn't quite duplicate all the functions of the Web version of Imeem, it does serve up plenty of music without costing a penny.

A little bit in late to release this article, but important to let know KDE community about our involvement to spread KDE to Italian people. Last October, three members of KDE Italia gave talks in three different Italian cities. Daniele Costarella in Salerno, Salvatore Brigaglia in Sassari and Diego Rondini in Castelfranco Veneto (TV).

Paul Ferrill reports that Linux-powered "instant-on" environments are the new hot technology. ASUS and DeviceVM led the way with Splashtop, and now the venerable BIOS vendor Phoenix has released Hyperspace, which has some significant differences.

As part of a proposed reorganization following its bankruptcy filing, SCO plans a public auction of its mobile business and its Unix OpenServer business, the company said on Monday. Through the auction, SCO plans to secure additional operating funds in the two lines of business, believing that the auction will maximize the value of an asset sale and ensure ongoing development of the businesses. Several investment groups have expressed interest in acquiring the assets via public auction, SCO said.

What would happen if a Linux user switched to Windows. How about if a Windows enthusiast tried Linux? The results were surprising to both, and they illustrate just what needs to happen in order for Linux to finally break into the mainstream PC market.

“Free software” or “open source”? It's a perennial question that has provoked a thousand flame wars. Normally, the factions supporting each label and its associated theoretical baggage manage to work alongside each other for the collective good with only a minimal amount of friction. But occasionally, the sparks begin to fly, and tempers rise. I think we're in for another bout of this particular fever.

Holidays are an exercise in tradition. One of the more charming holiday traditions around LWN is to look at the predictions made at the beginning of the year and measure them against reality. There is, after all, great value in things which make us laugh. This year's predictions were featured in the January 3, 2008 edition. As might be expected, some of them were better than others.

Featured in this issue is an interview with Paul Sherman, lead developer of the lightweight derivative of Slackware - Absolute Linux. In the news, Debian announces updated "Lenny" live images and the openSUSE community releases unofficial KDE 3.5 Live CDs. Fedora chooses a name for the upcoming release 11, while in BSD land Sun Microsystems' OpenSolaris and FreeBSD benefit from sharing technology. In other news, Gentoo's Portage package management system gains support for Git repositories and we also include links to two external interviews: the first with PC/OS lead developer Roberto J. Dohnert and the second being a podcast with Gentoo founder and now Funtoo developer, Daniel Robbins. Finally, we would like to thank Russ Wenner for all his hard work throughout 2008 in creating the DistroWatch Weekly podcast and remind our readers of this great way to get your DWW fix.

Every now and then, some blogger working for a big website will write a story about how company Abc should make radical move Xyz in order to better, eh, well, that's usually left in the dark. These are generally more akin to said bloggers hoping for radical move Xyz rather than there being a well-argumented reasoning. Radical moves in the technology business don't happen very often, but when they do, there's generally a good reason for them.

Seeking to stave off final defeat, SCO has brought a (fourth) new reorganization plan to bankruptcy court. The company has proposed an asset sale to raise funds for paying off the rest of its debts and implementing a new business plan.

By many of the accounts we've seen, the star of last week's Consumer Electronics Show was Palm's new Pre smartphone, a Linux-based offering with all the features we've come to expect from post-iPhone devices and a few innovations of it's own. Indeed, iPhone appears in reviews of the Pre perhaps more often than Palm, with terms including iPhone killer" and "iPhone-like" popping out of paragraphs like coins from a slot machine. Among the iPhone-like attributes are the ubiquitous touch-screen display, along with 3G service, GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, on-board camera (reviews differ on whether it is a 2.0 or 3.2 megapixel offering), and third-party applications, while tossing additional specs, including a G1-like slide-out QWERTY keyboard, to the mix.

The world and their dog seems to be talking about Windows 7 at the moment. Ironically, in part that's because it's proving almost impossible to download the beta that has just been released: you can't help feeling that Microsoft has let this happen on purpose just to create a little demand. But while everyone is looking forward, I want to look back, at Windows Vista – more specifically, to the FSF's BadVista campaign.

The Debian project has voted to allow the use of binary blobs in the upcoming release of Debian 5, codenamed Lenny, says a news story. The decision is said to have followed a contentious debate over the issue, with open-source purists arguing against the move.

On January 5, Doc Searls asked What would you use Exchange for? A good question and based on the number of comments, it is generating a lot of discussion. As someone currently embedded in a primarily Windows environment, I want to know where the enterprise management tools for the Linux desktop are?

We are preparing to release Phoronix Test Suite 1.6 "Tydal" later this month, which is our largest and most significant update to date. Phoronix Test Suite 1.6 has quite a few changes internally as well as a number of new features and added tests. While there are over 200 changes making up this release codenamed Tydal, in this article we are sharing some of the most significant work in this forthcoming release.

It seems that much drama roils behind the OpenOffice scenes, with some saying it's a dying mess thanks to Sun's mismanagement. Then there is Go-OO, which could be a sneaky attempt to implant nasty Microsoft technologies into an important FOSS software suite. Bruce Byfield heroically attempts to sort out the whole mess and figure out what's really going on.

The Linux Foundation (LF) is now accepting 60-second video entries for its "I'm Linux" contest, which spoofs recent Apple and Microsoft commercials. The winner will receive a free trip to Tokyo to participate in the LF's Japan Linux Symposium in October 2009, says the nonprofit group.

The New York Times has published an interview story on Mark Shuttleworth, apparently made during Canonical's Ubuntu Developer Summit last month at Google's Mountain View headquarters. Ashlee Vance, story author, appears to view Ubuntu -- despite many successes -- as the flashy but flawed plaything of a quixotic billionaire.

Bluefish, long-favored among DesktopLinux editors, has come out tops in a "shoot-out" between seven different text editing software packages for Linux. Evaluated in the context of HTML authoring, Bluefish is praised for its broad multi-language support, built-in reference material, and ease of use.