Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

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.

Let's take a look at three projects that are aimed at showing calendar information through a Web interface: WebCalendar, VCalendar, and CaLogic. These projects run on a LAMP server and provide a Web interface to calendar events. For testing when one or more calendars are required I'll use the US Holidays and UK Holidays from the publicly available iCalendar files at icalshare.com. All installation and testing was done on a 64-bit Fedora 9 machine.

John Dragoon, Novell’s Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer today announced that due to the difficult economic times, BrainShare 2009 has been cancelled. The announcement made it clear that the primary reason was that Novell’s customers “are under increasing pressure to reduce travel and other controllable expenses and are hesitant to commit to attending our BrainShare 2009 conference.”

Adobe Systems is extending on Thursday its AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) technology to Linux desktops. Previously available for Windows and Macintosh, AIR is Adobe's free technology that enables delivery of Web applications that also can run outside the browser; it lets Flash programs run on the desktop. The Linux version of the software can be accessed here. The company is making available version 1.5 of AIR for users of the OpenSuse 10.3, Fedora Core and Ubuntu 7.10 or higher open-source Linux distributions. AIR 1.5 also has worked on Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop, but the company has not tested it on this implementation of Linux.

There's a long standing argument over the differences between "open-source" software and "free" software. But, a more common error outside of software ideology circles is that you can use open-source software anyway you please. Nope. Wrong. It's never been that way. Cisco, the networking giant, should know better than this, but they've worn out the FSF's (Free Software Foundation) patience. So, Cisco is now being sued by the SFLC (Software Freedom Law Center) on behalf of the FSF for Linux and other GPL copyright violations.

Linux has a strong following among those who manage corporate servers, a loyal corps of desktop users and a small but growing base of laptop users. But it's also been a big -- if stealthy -- success as a platform for gadgets. In fact, there ought to be a Linux Gadget Hall of Fame. I'll get it started with the first group of inductees: 10 of the most important gadgets of all time, each one based on Linux.

Some of us will find some kind of alleged spare time on our hands over the next few weeks. Certainly, there’s often some kind of break from “work” over the festive season. Traditionally free software developers have used such times for long coding sessions, get-togethers and “hack-fests”. Of course we’re not all hard-core (or even soft-core) hackers so here’s a few suggestions for the rest of us who might want to try something new over Christmas.

Sun Microsystems has announced the release this morning of VirtualBox 2.1 with several enticing additions. VirtualBox 2.1 introduces support for hardware virtualization (through Intel VT and AMD's AMD-V) on Mac OS X host systems, support for 64-bit guest operating systems on 32-bit host systems, support for Intel Nehalem (Core i7) virtualization enhancements, full VMDK/VHD support, a new NAT engine, and new Host Interface Networking implementations on Linux and Windows. Perhaps though one of the most exciting changes in VirtualBox 2.1 is initial support for OpenGL acceleration on the guest operating systems.

In this article, I'm going to present a whole variety of Linux games, across a range of genres. I'm going to review several titles in detail, complete with screenshots and grades. Next, I will talk about non-native Linux games, which can still be enjoyed using certain tools and methods. We will talk about the tools and methods, too. We'll also talk about mini-games that come bundled with distributions, Flash games, online game repositories, and more. It should be interesting. If you're a gamer, spend 5-6 minutes of your time reading. I promise you, you'll like it. So, if you are new to Linux and wondering if you can enjoy games on Linux, the answer is: very much so yes. Follow me.

Movial is shipping a new version of its mobile video communications software that offers high-definition (HD) PC-to-PC, and PC-to-mobile video-conferencing. In addition to releasing Movial Communicator PC 7.2, Movial announced it has partnered with Cypriot telecom carrier Cyta to offer Communicator-based video-calling services.