Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

UNIX is being attacked by Linux from the top and bottom ends of the market. The signs are that it is losing the battle on both fronts. A couple of weeks back I wrote that Linux is becoming increasingly capable of doing the less-demanding tasks that UNIX has historically been asked to do, so there is less and less need for UNIX. That explains its falling share of the server market.

For programmers on big projects, a version control system for managing source code is vital, but working on files in a large project from one of these programs' command-line interfaces is cumbersome. Worse, the results of the commands lack highlighting to show the differences between files and revisions. ViewVC is a handy browser-based code viewer that allows users to browse a source code tree managed by either CVS or Subversion, look at changes, compare revisions at the file or line level, and perform other operations -- just about anything except allow users to check out or commit files.

In the beginning were C and C++, and hosts of other computer programming languages. These are all based on ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange), which as the name implies is based on the English alphabet. Which wouldn't be an issue except there are lot of other humans in the world, and they don't use the English alphabet.

The Open Solutions Alliance, a nonprofit industry group that pushes for the adoption and interoperability of open-source software, has named an executive of the giant systems integrator Unisys as its new president. Anthony Gold, vice president and general manager of open-source business at Unisys, is taking over the role previously held by Dominic Sartorio, senior director of product management at SpikeSource, which makes a platform for testing, packaging and maintaining applications. .

The Minimalist GNU for Windows (MinGW) project is a way to get GCC and tools like binutils working to build software for the Windows environment—something that might not sound very interesting to Linux users or developers. But there are a number of advantages to porting and regularly testing free software on Windows, as Red Hat's Richard Jones and Dan Berrange explain in the following interview. Richard and Dan also describe Red Hat's involvement, how developers can participate, as well as how it all helps the free software cause.

S3 Graphics today released Beta drivers for the latest version of the OpenGL 3.0 API to take advantage of the Khronos Group's open, cross-platform 3D standard on the newly released Chrome 500 Series programmable GPUs. This major milestone allows software developers to start OpenGL 3.0 development on S3 Graphics hardware using the latest beta driver and GLSL 1.3 shading language on Windows XP and Vista.

All major Linux distros now support IPv6 according to the Linux Foundation. The non-profit organisation has announced that the companies now comply with the standards laid down by the US Department of Defense (DoD) and are now ready to be deployed in IPv6 networks. In 2005, the US government mandated all of its agencies to meet the next-generation Internet protocol requirements for any computing and networking equipment they acquire.

Today we will present the first of what will ultimately be a three-part series where we take a closer look at OLPC Oceania. We're going to start off by giving you a brief summary of their extensive concept note which contains a lot of interesting and relevant information on their plans to achieve One Laptop per Pacific Child. On top of that we have conducted an extensive two-part interview with two of the key people behind the initiative which we'll post over the coming days.

Mounting and unmounting filesystems used to be straightforward in GNU/Linux. A basic knowledge of the mount command or some editing of /etc/fstab in a text editor and you were done. However, with the addition of udev in the 2.6 kernel for autoplugging, and the demand for hotswapping USB devices, along with the increased use of logical volume managers and other complications, the process is now more complicated -- perhaps too complicated for many among the growing number of desktop users. That is where graphical mount managers such as Forelex Mount Manager, PySDM, and MountManager find their niche.

The team studied Debian Linux, a free operating system continuously being developed by more than 1,000 volunteers from around the world. Developers create software packages, such as text editors or music players, that are added to the system. Beginning with 474 packages in 1996, Debian Linux has expanded to include more than 18,000 packages today. The packages form an intricate network, with some packages having greater connectivity than others, as defined by how many other packages depend on a given package. "Open source offers a unique opportunity provided by the high completeness of data concerning open source (thanks to the disclosure policy of the open source terms of license)," lead author Thomas Maillart of ETH Z?rich told PhysOrg.com. "Debian Linux allowed us to retrieve exhaustive information from several years ago. Many other complex systems are not so well 'documented.'"

You don't need to fork over big bucks – or even any bucks – to keep your online activities and identity secret. The open source community has dozens of privacy-related projects in development, and some of them have already proven themselves to be among the best privacy protection tools available. These tools are targeted at three broad groups of people. First are products aimed at the general public. Everyone with a computer needs applications like firewalls, anti-spyware, intrusion prevention, and password management. But there are also email encryption, anonymous file sharing, anonymous surfing, and other apps for those with more pressing privacy needs.

The PasTmon passive traffic monitor keeps an eye on your network, recording which clients are interacting with which services, when and how long things took. You can then use the application's PHP Web interface to investigate these figures to see if any host is connecting to Web services that it shouldn't, or is contacting services suspiciously more frequently than you would expect for normal operation, or when response times become excessively long. The Ubuntu, openSUSE, and Fedora repositories do not include packages for PasTmon. Although the version number is still low, the project has had releases available for three years.

The economy may be a shambles, but Brian Gentile's software company, JasperSoft, is doing better than ever. JasperSoft posted record revenue for the quarter that ended in October, and its customer tally rose 63 percent over the previous period. The gain is all the more notable considering the record cutbacks in corporate software spending.

Below Mac user numbers, we're talking much smaller shares of internet traffic. Linux had a bump to 0.82 per cent from 0.71 per cent of web browsers. The iPhone grabbed 0.37 per cent of traffic, which also was a small increase. Obviously, Microsoft's 89.69 per cent isn't something to sneeze at (as made clear by El Reg's super scientific graph below) — but hey, it's a big symbolic loss in our deca-based number system.

[They better lookout, we're almost to 1% lol!- Scott]

The global economic crisis is taking its toll on many technology companies and Mandriva, the Linux company based in France, has now taken a hit. Last week, the company announced that it would be terminating the services of all its external contractors, that is those who work from remote locations.

For the first time, Apple is recommending the use of anti-virus tools to protect Mac systems. Long something of a phantom menace, strains of malware capable of infecting Mac machines have gradually been increasing in prevalence over recent months. In addition, VXers are making more use of web-based attack and applications specific vulnerabilities to infect PCs whatever their underlying operating system might be. Windows-specific malware attacks are still orders of magnitude greater than assaults on Mac machines, but the risk to Apple fans is now enough for the Church of Jobs to admit a risk exists.

[Steve says the vaunted Apple OS needs an anti-virus, but I thought it was secure? Sorry, couldn't stop myself..;-)- Scott]

Valve Software was in the market a little over a year ago for a software engineer who would, among other duties, work with porting Windows-based games to Linux. No word on who got the job, or how that engineer's first anniversary review went, but evidently, this year was productive. It seems, according to Phoronix, the "Left 4 Dead" demo (Windows client version) shipped with some very suspicious sounding Linux libraries. The file names (such as steamclient_linux.so) lend some weight to the theory that these files have little to do with the Linux server build.

Last year a new Linux distribution came about and immediately began appearing on some budget PCs within retail establishments. Good OS, the company behind the gOS Linux distribution, that launched the conceptual Google OS last year has had a quite successful 2008.

A few months ago I started sensing the need for a replacement for my aging and ailing HP Omnibook 4150. That machine's audio capabilities were negligible even with external hardware, but it had been serviceable for writing articles and as a portable MIDI composition environment. Alas, after years of travel and abuse the Omnibook's hard drive gasped its last breath of life. I had no fear for my data, the drive had been backed up, but clearly the time had come to buy a new portable computer.

Google has published its plan to build into Chrome what is arguably its most requested feature: the ability to accept extensions that can customize how the open-source Web browser operates. And guess what? Google's dependence on advertising notwithstanding, one of the extension examples the company points to is the ability to block advertisements.