Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

In the Phoronix Test Suite 1.2 "Malvik" release our flagship Linux benchmarking software was brought to OpenSolaris and FreeBSD. With Phoronix Test Suite 1.4 "Orkdal", to be officially released later this year, we are now extending our test support to include Apple's Mac OS X operating system. In Phoronix Test Suite 1.4 Alpha 2 that was released this morning there is full support for Mac OS X within this open-source benchmarking framework and there are about three dozen tests that will run "out of the box" in this environment. We believe this is now the most comprehensive benchmarking platform for Mac OS X and it allows real-world test results to be compared from Linux, OpenSolaris, and FreeBSD.

The open-source implementation of Microsoft's .NET is due to hit its second release today, with many .NET 3.5 features and a few notable exceptions. Mono 2.0 will be announced today a year and a half later than expected but - thanks to that delay - it features an open-source version of C# 3.0 and Language Integrated Query (LINQ). Mono lets you build and run .NET-style desktop and server applications on Linux, OS X and Solaris in addition to Windows.

Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer was in Oslo and visited Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, who was quick to hail Microsoft's move. Stoltenberg claimed that Microsoft's selection of Norway signaled major recognition of Norway's search technology expertise. He called it "a fantastic thing," and said Microsoft's commitment to Norway would also stimulate and strengthen local competence.

LXer Feature: 05-Oct-2008

Here are the most prominent stories that hit the LXer Newswire this past week all gathered together for your reading pleasure. Gentoo looks to restructure, a look at who really is contributing to Linux development, is gOS better that Ubuntu? And last but not least we celebrate the birthday of the Linux Kernel as it turns 17.

Norwegian members of the Technical Committee of that country's International Standards Organisation (ISO) body Standard Norge have resigned their posts to protest the approval of Microsoft's OOXML document formats proposal in defiance of the majority recommendation. In all, 13 of the committee's 23 members have resigned, a majority of the membership. In Standard Norge deliberations regarding OOXML earlier this year, only two members – Microsoft and Statoil – voted for approval, while the remaining 21 voted against it. Defying the overwhelming vote, the officials of Standard Norge went ahead and approved OOXML anyway, and transmitted that "decision" to ISO.

When your laptop battery is about to give up the ghost, you are probably thinking of the typical three alternatives. The most obvious, of course, is "wow, what a great justification for buying a new laptop". With laptop prices falling and no such luck with battery prices, this almost makes sense. But, most of us will probably just bite the bullet and buy a new battery. The third alternative would be to replace the cells in the battery you already have. This article is about the third alternative. If you are not fairly skilled in working on electronics, this is not necessarily a good alternative. But, it is possible. Personally, I was inspired to do this the first time because the small (3-cell) battery for my ASUS laptop was very ill and I couldn't find a replacement.

Recently I had to write an article on Linux green computing. During the writing of that article I was sent on yet another quest to get some form of hibernate and or suspend working on a Linux laptop. This quest had me digging through nearly every configuration file and every package I could find in an attempt to get an off-brand laptop (Everex Zonbook) running Mandriva Spring 2008 to either suspend or hibernate. I was surprised at what I discovered and the results I came up with.

Free minix-like kernel sources for 386-AT, was the subject of Linus Benedict Torvalds post to comp.os.minix on October 5, 1991 -- seventeen years ago today. it began,

Search giant Google has finally launched a repository of its software for Linux users. The repository will house the latest Linux versions of its software and make it easier for Linux users to keep up to date.

John Lilly became chief executive of Mozilla in January, moving up from his role as chief operating officer. He's been with the company that created the open source Firefox browser since 2005, the year Firefox 1.5 was released. Before Firefox, Microsoft's Internet Explorer dominated the Web. Now Microsoft's share is down and Mozilla's share is 20 percent.

"Lawyers in the Windows Vista Capable lawsuit against Microsoft want a federal judge to force the company to use Windows Update to notify potential class members of the suit, according to court documents." This is the opening paragraph in an article in ComputerWorld. A number of people, including myself think this is a bad idea.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has never been shy about voicing his opinions on any given issue. At an interview conducted during a recent Churchill Club event in California, Ballmer chose to weigh in on Apple and the iPhone, and even gave the company some friendly advice.

Since May when Intel first introduced their Graphics Execution Manager after X.Org developers were enraged over Tungsten's TTM memory manager and its development challenges, we've been talking about GEM several times since then.

Lawyers in the "Windows Vista Capable" class-action lawsuit against Microsoft have asked a federal judge to force the company to use its Windows Update service to notify potential class members, court documents filed yesterday revealed. In a motion submitted to U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman, lawyers for the plaintiffs laid out a notification plan that would include print ads in publications such as USA Today, banner ads on sites including Yahoo.com and MSN.com, and a message that would be delivered to Windows users by Microsoft's automatic update service.

Another year has passed and the Amarok team wants to celebrate with its fans: it's Roktober again! This is the time of the year when the Amarok team reviews what they have achieved during the past year and call for your help for the coming year.

Larry Cafiero is sitting in his cluttered office in the Santa Cruz Mountains looking nothing like a revolutionary. Friendly bearded face. Casual blue jeans. Comfy work shirt with the little penguin logo. Yeah, penguin logo. See, Cafiero is a Linux guy. Maybe you know one -- or a Linux woman.

This week the BBC World Service's Digital Planet programme is in Brazil. Here the show investigates how the country's enthusiasm for technology is now reaching schoolchildren from all backgrounds. There are an estimated 45m PCs in Brazil, making it the world's fifth biggest market for computers. The more striking number, however, is the fraction of the population that does not have access to technology.

Last week we had looked at the Corsair DHX 4GB DDR2-800MHz memory, which performed and overclocked very well and featured Corsair's exclusive Dual-Path Heat Xchange cooling technology. Today though we are looking at the more mainstream A-DATA Gaming DDR2-800 4GB Kit. This memory is less expensive than Corsair's DHX memory, but has higher latencies and simple heatspreaders. As you will find from reading this article, the overclocking potential is quite limited.

Microsoft is posting code to its much-trumpeted CodePlex open-source projects site using licenses and conditions that go against the principles of open source. The company has been posting projects under Microsoft licenses that stop you from running CodePlex projects on non-Windows platforms or restrict access to code.

Audio is a fitting topic for the first day of the Linux Plumbers Conference. Users want sound to Just Work, and there's lots of working code in individual projects. But so far, it seems like nobody has everything quite plumbed together in an annoyance-free way. Lennart Poettering, a lead developer of PulseAudio and Red Hat employee, moderated the miniconference and started with a summary of the state of Linux audio: "it's a mess." The audio miniconference came up with two steps toward cleaning up the mess, though. First, come up with a coherent story for application developers on what sound API to use, and how. Second, clean up the often-confusing array of user-visible audio level controls.