Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Webmin is a web-based system for Unix, Linux, OpenSolaris, and recently added Windows based Operating Systems that allow you to take full control of your server through a popular control panel and web-interface. What Webmin does is it allows you to simplify the managing course of action with a Unix and/or Linux system. You can manually edit and configure files as well as run commands to create/delete accounts, set up web servers, or manage email forwarding. You’re able to complete all of these tasks through a trouble-free web interface specifically designed for the user.

Eric Geier show how, with Google's Picasa, you can create online photo albums, touch-up and fix photos, make movies, and create gift CDs or DVDs without having to be an ace graphical artist guru.

The success of open source software is now being driven by its rapid commercialization by the likes of IBM and Microsoft, and not simply its appeal to evangelistic developers, a new report has suggested.

Let me first say that I am a believer in the possibilities that exist for laptops in learning, and I've followed OLPC as much as my free time will allow. OLPC presents itself as a learning company rather than a laptop company. Calls to constructionism, collaboration, and children as "learning by doing" are pervasive in the website. There's this vision of how the laptop can change learning and schooling and give the our children the right tools to thrive:

As a regular browser of the Firefox Add-ons site, I'm troubled by the apparent proliferation of proprietary extensions in the last year. Maybe I've simply exhausted the free-licensed extensions that interest me, but recently every interesting-looking extension seems to be a proprietary one -- especially in the recommended list. Nothing, of course, in the Mozilla privacy or legal notice prohibits proprietary extensions simply because they are proprietary, but I find them not only contrary to the spirit of free and open source software (FOSS), but, often, annoying attempts to entangle me in some impossible startup.

What is it about the holiday season? It throws a spotlight on the best -- and worst -- aspects of human nature. It holds true in the open source world. NextStep, a hardware recycling and refurbishing organization in Eugene, Oregon, was burglarized earlier this week. Hardest hit was the organization's Ubuntu Laptop Program. NextStep provides computers, technology and job skills training to Lane County Oregon's under-served residents, and its Ubuntu Laptop Program is a major source of funding for these endeavors.

With Sun Microsystems having abandoned its Project Woodstock Web application development effort, Icesoft Technologies is picking up the slack. The Woodstock project, discontinued last month, featured a group of user interface components for developing with JavaServer Faces and AJAX. But citing resource constraints during tough economic times, Sun eliminated the project. Instead, Icesoft will provide its Icefaces software for users to move forward.

When I heard U.S. president-elect Barack Obama make his "lipstick on a pig" remark while running as a candidate back in September, it got me thinking about language, and how it can be used to deceive as easily as to explain. While listening to an elaborate theory full of jargon, have you ever felt it seemed completely out of touch with the real world?

The Internet is infrastructure. This should be plain, but it's not. The reason is that neither the Net nor infrastructure are well-understood, even though both could hardly be more widely used.

Someone on the Seattle Linux List asked about Groupware and the usual suspects were suggested. One, however, I didn't know anything about. It is called Chandler. I figured it was worth looking at. The main thing that makes it different is its approach. One clue is the subtitle on the web page is A notebook you can organize, back up and share!. The traditional way that groupware suites work is that they are one place where you put a whole bunch of different things but each type of thing (appointment, to-do, ...) has a separate cubbyhole. That means you first think about what you have and then put it in the appropriate place.

The Novell-sponsored openSUSE Project announced the availability of version 11.1 of its open-source openSUSE Linux distribution. Version 11.1 offers a new license that eases redistribution, and it's the first version developed with the openSUSE Build Service, which improves collaboration and transparency among contributors, says openSUSE.

Much of the time when I write about the evolution of Linux or the evolution of the client, I get lots of comments revolving around the lack of popular games for Linux or whether the GIMP can replace Photoshop. And, of course, the partisans for whom it's important whether Linux "wins" or "loses" to Windows or Mac OS X jump in with their various ideological objectives.

Like me, you've probably read articles on how free software, or open source, is going to thrive in 2009, and how businesses everywhere are going to survive the recession by migrating to it.

The Linux Foundation has selected a new CTO, Ted Ts'o, who has been known as the first North American developer of the Linux kernel, the foundation said on Thursday. Ts'o has served as a foundation fellow and chief platform strategist. He is considered one of the most highly regarded members of the Linux and open-source community, according to the foundation. He replaces Markus Rex, who has returned to Novell to work as acting general manager and senior vice president of Novell's Open Platform Solutions business unit.

The past couple of years have seen an explosion of open source programming languages and utilities that are geared toward children. Many of these efforts are based around the idea that, since the days of BASIC, programming environments have become far too complex for untrained minds to wrap themselves around. Some toolkits aim to create entirely new ways of envisioning and creating projects that appeal to younger minds, such as games and animations, while others aim to recreate the "basic"-ness of BASIC in a modern language and environment.

It doesn't pay to pinch pennies on computer power supplies, because inferior power supplies cause slowdowns, lockups, crashes and worse. Here are some tips for how to pick quality power supplies.

Ubuntu Linux 8.10, aka Intrepid Ibex, is the most popular Linux distribution available for installing on your PC, thanks to its steadily improving hardware compatibility and installation software, along with a wealth of free applications and utilities that run on any version of Linux. But even though the bad old days of disappointing Linux installations are mostly over, putting Ubuntu on your PC can still be tricky if you haven't done it before. Many PC users have never had to boot their computers from a CD or had to partition a hard disk. And most of us take for granted that the OS will include drivers to handle crucial hardware devices such as graphics cards and wireless networking controllers.

It's that time of the year again. No, not Christmas -- it's the time of the year we get the latest versions of our favorite Linux distributions. Version 11.1 of openSUSE is being released today. Designated as a point release, there are enough new goodies to warrant a new install or upgrade.

Ubuntu's default installation is pretty secure, but the wise computer user knows that security is something that requires continual attention. Fortunately, Matt Hartley shows how easy it is to keep on top of prudent security measures and useful applications: firewall, secure remote networking, anti-malware, and more.

Red Hat Inc. today unveiled a new service aimed at making it more cost-effective for its customers to run and maintain one version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a longer period of time, reducing management and administration costs, the company said. Extended Update Support (EUS), a new maintenance option, allows customers to standardize their IT environments on a version of RHEL for 18 months instead of six months, the current time frame for Red Hat's maintenance contract, said Gerry Riveros, product marketing manager for EUS.