Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

As I walked through the war zone that is Wall Street yesterday on my way to a Red Hat meeting, I assumed the worst. I scanned the rooftops for Paul Cormier, Red Hat's EVP of Products and Technologies, ready to catch him if leaped. I scanned the cardboard boxes along the pavement, expecting to see Red Hat CTO Brian Stevens claiming a cozy spot on the curb. Finally, I dug through dumpsters in search of Jim Whitehurst, Red Hat's CEO and no stranger to market meltdowns as the former COO of Delta Air Lines.

If I had had SpeedCrunch or Qalculate! during high school, finishing homework really would've been child's play. From breaking down complex algebraic equations, to solving your calculus problems, to performing geometric computations and providing statistical answers, SpeedCrunch and Qalculate! are tools that offer quick solutions to difficult questions. SpeedCrunch is the lesser of the two beasts. It runs not only on Linux but also on Windows and Mac OS X, and offers over 50 mathematical functions, unlimited variable storage, automatic completion, expression history, and more. It's available in the software repositories for most distributions, or you can grab the tarball from the project's Download page.

As we continue the classic Networking 101 series, Charlie Schluting gives us a clear, understandable introduction to routing, which is quite possibly the most important part of computer networking.

A reliable network monitoring and management solution must accurately detect network devices such as routers, servers, and client workstations. It must be able to display a map of the whole network, monitor the health and performance of each device, and have a way to notify someone of a problem by email, text message, or other form of communication. It should be able to fix a problem by restarting services or running specific programs. It should generate detailed reports that you can analyze easily to help prevent future incidents. Finally, a decent monitoring system must be easy to use, deploy, and customize according to your monitoring needs. Let's use these standards to see if GroundWork Monitor Community Edition is up to the task.

AppDeploy, an online community for both systems management professionals and application and computer administrators has released a free software tool called"AppDeploy Repackager." The tool is the industry's first free application dedicated to the complex task of Windows Installer repackaging, according to the company.

Sidux, a relatively new desktop Linux distribution, is based on Sid, the unstable developmental branch of Debian. The developers strive for an easy-to-install and easy-to-use modern Debian derivative, and pride themselves on remaining true to the principles and values of the Debian project. Despite a few inconveniences, I like Sidux a bit more each time I use it. Sidux comes as a live CD in a few different configurations. I chose the 2GB DVD with a full KDE desktop for both i686 or AMD64 architectures, but you can also choose from a KDE-Lite or XFCE desktop version for either architecture; each uses less than 500MB.

One of the most annoying experiences for any desktop Linux user is installing a Linux on a laptop, switching it on, and... discovering that the Wi-Fi chipset doesn't support Linux. That used to be a commonplace experience, but over the years it's gotten much better. Unless, of course, you were using a laptop with a Broadcom chipset; then, chances were, you were in for some trouble. -

In the old childhood folktales, trolls are big, mean, ugly creatures that live under bridges and exact payments in exchange for allowing travelers to pass. That, according to Jeff Matsuura, is very similar to how patent trolls operate. Matsuura is an intellectual property attorney with the Alliance Law Group, based in Falls Church, Va.

Sun Microsystems has lost a key individual responsible for getting its aspiring open-source software included in leading Linux distributions. Barton George has quit Sun after 13 years, hard on the heels of having helped secure the inclusion of an open-source friendly version of Sun's Java Development Kit (JDK) - OpenJDK - with major GNU/Linux distros.

"The Green Penguin" is a new blog devoted to ‘green’ IT related to Linux (though at times loosely). This week´s topic is about Google and General Electric´s recently announced plan to promote a ‘smart’ electric power grid and thus encourage greater use of renewable energy.

Some are apparently up in arms that Google is refusing to allow Chrome developers to use its trademarks and the comic book it released to help explain Chrome. To these and others that equate open source with"up for grabs," please pay attention..

The international standards body ISO has offered to help maintain the ODF document standard alongside its work on the rival Microsoft-originated OOXML specification, saying its creator Oasis is not dealing with defect reports quickly enough. At a meeting in Korea last week, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) committee for document standards, SC 34, issued a liaison statement to Oasis, the body that created ODF. It requested an "alignment" of maintenance of ODF between the work done at Oasis and that within ISO.

Mozilla, the company behind the Firefox browser, has released technology that helps websites detect the physical location of computers. The system will allow users, for instance, to find local restaurants when they travel to a new town. The Geode project is an experimental add-on ahead of a full blown launch of geolocation technology in version 3.1 of Firefox.

Commercial Linux distributor Red Hat hosted its annual analyst day in New York today, and as Wall Street continues to hemorrhage, the company couldn't have picked a gloomier time for the occasion. But harsh economic conditions tend to accelerate technology shifts, so the top brass at Red Hat were a pretty chipper bunch as they explained to Wall Street how they intend to make money in the coming years. Those in attendance were probably just grateful to have something else to listen to and talk about, and more than a few were probably reminiscing about the killing they made when Red Hat went public so gloriously little more than nine years ago.

Many audio, video, and graphics professionals would like to make the switch to Linux, but don't want to deal with the hassle of figuring out multimedia on Linux or are scared off by the purported lack of such tools. I created Vector Linux Multimedia Bonus Disc (MMBD) to address this problem and perception. It's a complete multimedia creation and production system that contains hundreds of the best multimedia applications available on Linux. The MMBD is an add-on for Vector Linux that installs directly into a preinstalled copy of the distribution. Vector is a Slackware-based distribution that is built for speed and flexibility. Although Slackware is sometimes viewed as an archaic, crude operating system, it is famous for its stability and clean, reliable core.

Sales of Apple's iPhone 3G have given the hardware maker a six-point boost in the consumer smartphone market, from 11 percent to 17 percent, according to a new report from The NPD Group, a consumer sales tracking firm. The report placed the iPhone in the top spot among the four best-selling smartphones based on unit sales to customers from June through August.

A developer of Mac-based sync utilities is seeking beta testers for what it calls "the first Linux-to-BlackBerry sync solution." Information Appliance Associates (IAA) is initially testing its free "PocketMac for BlackBerry, Linux Edition" software on Xandros Linux running the KDE PIM suite.

Rob Reilly introduces us to the revolutionary and accessible new world of inexpensive microcontrollers, open hardware, and development environments that run on Linux. Unleash your inner mad scientist with these inexpensive yet sophisticated tools.

Expanding Linux adoption beyond key vertical markets is an important driver for Red Hat's growth, which remains steady even as one of its strongest customer sectors, financial services, is getting hit hard by the U.S. crisis, the company's CEO, Jim Whitehurst, said Tuesday. At a Red Hat analyst event in New York, which was available via webcast, Whitehurst said that while Red Hat does well with "companies that use technology for competitive advantage," mainstream companies that don't care about being on the leading edge of technology adoption are still largely an untapped market for the vendor.

The first essays of the school year are coming due, and with the essays comes the need to outline and plan. GNU/Linux users are fortunate to have a number of outlining applications from which to choose. True, some outliners have become obsolete, and you will be lucky to get programs like GNOME-Think or the once-popular KnowIt to run on a modern distribution. But you can still choose among OpenOffice.org, TuxCards, NoteCase, Emacs, and VimOutliner for doing your planning.