Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

If you want to know how much disk space you have on a Windows machine, what do you do? There's a number of different ways of getting that information, but the way that I usually use is to go to Windows Explorer and right click on the drive letter and select Properties. This opens up a window which looks at the drive and tells me how many folders and items there are, how big it is and how much space is left. In Linux, how can I see how I get the same information?

Everyone knows about the infamous internet wars. Ranging from operating systems to text editors to code indentation style, these wars have wreaked havoc on the web for years. The topics range from serious topics like religion to serious geek topics like operating systems to just plain stupid topics like code indentation style. So today, I’m going to go through a list of some of the most famous topics and remind you of a few of the more, er, “famous” battles.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) have given the green light to publish the Microsoft-backed Office Open XML (OOXML) specification after organization leaders rejected appeals from four countries to protest the vote that approved OOXML as a standard.

The way he has gone about establishing Ubuntu as the desktop Linux distribution most in demand by enthusiasts is remarkable. And he is now quietly beginning to muscle in on the enterprise market. One trait has stood him in good stead and will continue to help him and his company, Canonical, make headway - patience. He has always shown himself willing and able to wait for the right moment to do something. Time appears to be of little importance to him; he has a goal and he intends to attain it.

This is the eighth article in a series on common usability and graphical user interface related terms [part I | part II | part III | part IV | part V | part VI | part VII]. On the internet, and especially in forum discussions like we all have here on OSNews, it is almost certain that in any given discussion, someone will most likely bring up usability and GUI related terms - things like spatial memory, widgets, consistency, Fitts' Law, and more. The aim of this series is to explain these terms, learn something about their origins, and finally rate their importance in the field of usability and (graphical) user interface design. In part VIII, we focus on the tab.

A guide to the kernel development process aims to encourage participation by new programmers by explaining what's involved. Some developers and businesses attempting to submit changes to the Linux kernel find themselves tangled up with the processes used, according to the guide, which was written by Jonathan Corbet, executive editor of lwn.net and himself a Linux developer. "A developer who does not understand the kernel community's ways (or, worse, who tries to flout or circumvent them) will have a frustrating experience in store," Corbet warned.

Ever since I read Jeremy Allison’s blog post about why we need to hear criticisms from people who dislikes Linux, I have been thinking a lot about what he said and how it hits very close to my own philosophy about life: In order to improve, you need to be open to criticisms; even from your enemies. One of the (many) things that most people dislike about Microsoft is that they don’t have any real communication between the developers and the users; so when you discover a bug or have opinions about a feature that can be improved or added, there is no real easy way to directly (or indirectly) communicate with a developer. However, recently they have showed some improvement by opening up blogs for IE8 beta and Windows 7, where product developers actively communicate with users. So why should we turn a blind eye towards Linux critics?

Most Linux Distribution websites have been redesigned to sport a Web 2.0 look. To give credit to their talented web designers/developers, I’ll pick 10 Linux Distribution websites that I think stand out from the rest. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so you don’t have to agree with me. Anyway, you can always comment later on and share your views.

John Washburn takes public records seriously. Recently, the 45-year-old computer software tester from Wisconsin decided to take on Texas Gov. Rick Perry over his e-mail retention program -- or lack of one. Perry's office automatically deletes virtually all its e-mails every seven days, according to the Dallas Morning News.

We have written about the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project many times, but we have yet to explain how to get started with it as a contributor. Since it is the vacation high season in the Northern Hemisphere and many more people will be hitting the maps, this is the perfect time. You can contribute a lot to the project even if you don't own a Global Positioning System (GPS) device -- or even a compass. This is not meant to be an authoritative guide to the project; OSM maintains a detailed wiki with extensive documentation for newbies and experts alike, in multiple languages.

Networking is a must-have on all levels of computing. Be it home or corporate, networking is the one aspect of computing that is, without a shadow of a doubt, a deal breaker. And with some help, the Linux operating system can be the king of networking, in both ease of use and security. But that doesn’t mean the average (and sometimes even the above-average) user can’t use some help. These tips should help make Linux networking go a little more smoothly.

Kernel wireless maintainer John Linville outlined the past, present, and future of the Linux wireless stack on the first day of this year's Ottawa Linux Symposium. In his presentation, he ranged from early efforts, which were "a sore spot for Linux" to the future where it is likely that Linux will have support for some features before "that other OS". Along the way, he looked at various issues that wireless support in Linux faces, including vendor participation, suspend and resume, and regulatory issues.

It's not every day that the New York Times writes articles about the Domain Name System, but then again this DNS bug is anything but normal. It's been over five weeks now since Dan Kaminsky first announced the major flaw that he found in the DNS protocol. Although most of the details of the bug have been public for a few weeks now, it wasn't until last week at the Black Hat and Defcon conferences in Las Vegas that Kaminsky explained the depth of the issue. As I listened to him describe the ways this bug can be exploited my heart dropped down into my stomach and I felt a little sick. My friend was only half joking when he whispered to me "I'm thinking about transferring to accounting."

Since the Chinese government began supporting domestic open source communities in 2005, hundreds of thousands of young people in the world's most populous country have become a part of the open source world. With the help of the government-supported Leadership of Open Source University Promotion Alliance (LUPA), Zhejiang Technology Institute of Economy (ZJTIE) founded its Linux Training & Examination Center in 2006. The center started out offering a simple 48-hour course; upon completion, students received a Linux operator certificate or a Linux network administrator certificate or both. According to ZJTIE, 1,500 students in the last two years have passed the examination. However, those students who wanted to learn more had to learn by themselves.

T-Mobile may be partnering with cell phone handset manufacturer HTC to deliver the first smartphone running Google's Android platform, according to reports. Unnamed sources briefed on T-Mobile's plans have said the carrier could announce the phone as early as September -- and would almost certainly have an offering out in the wild as early as October, in time for the holiday selling season.

Digital video recorders (DVR) are becoming more and more mainstream. TiVo, in fact, has passed the truest test of any popular technology -- having its name transformed into a verb. MythTV, a free and open source application that lets you turn a computer into a DVR, burst on the scene a few years ago, and has found fans among Linux users. However, with a little effort, it's possible to run MythTV front ends on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Xbox, and even an Apple iPod Classic.

Sun has released a new development kit aimed at mobile software developers. The toolkit will allow developers to create user interfaces for Java-based mobile phone applications. The package is being made available for download by the company under the title"Light-Weight UI Toolkit" or LWUIT.

Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel, says he's fed up with what he sees as a "security circus" surrounding software vulnerabilities and how they're hyped by security people. Torvalds explained his position in an e-mail exchange with Network World this week. He also expanded on critical comments he made last month that caused a stir in the IT industry.

I first heard of gOS when it was chosen to power the $199 Wal-Mart gPC. The third iteration of the OS, gOS 3.0 "Gadgets" Beta, was released last week. It's a great Web-focused desktop, but it doesn't offer much to experienced or current Ubuntu users. I downloaded the ISO image of gOS 3.0, burned it to a CD, and installed it on one of my test systems. I used a basic PC with a 1.7GHz AMD Duron processor and 512MB of RAM, to see how well gOS fared on an unimpressive machine.

This year Akademy held a dedicated day for mobile and embedded talks. With Trolltech being owned by Nokia, mobile is suddenly a hot topic for KDE and several variants of Qt and KDE on mobiles were in progress at Akademy. Read on for an overview of the talks. The day opened with Kate Alhola from Nokia showing off the Nokia N810. As already reported, the talk was followed by handing out the devices to the audience. Her blog says she hopes to see lots of Qt and KDE applications in Maemo Garage soon.