Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

"Finally found it ... the patch below solves the sparsemem crash and the test system boots up fine now," announced Ingo Molnar. He described the patch as fixing a "memory corruption and crash on 32-bit x86 systems. If a !PAE x86 kernel is booted on a 32-bit system with more than 4GB of RAM, then we call memory_present() with a start/end that goes outside the scope of MAX_PHYSMEM_BITS."

Organizers of Debian are taking too long too approve new contributors and are threatening the future of the project according to some working on the open source initiative. Many Debian members are using the Planet Debian forum to express their dismay at delays of more than four months in approving new developers. The last new developer was approved in November 2007.

Under its new owner, Sun Microsystems, MySQL will remain true to its Linux roots and won’t be pulled towards Solaris or become overshadowed by the Solaris-distributed Postgres. Former chief executive Marten Mickos told Uberpulse that MySQL would stay focused on Linux, which accounts for the majority of its business (Windows rules when it comes to downloads). The MySQL team will work on Solaris "but in proportion to what it represents in our marketplace."

Before the days of Internet searches and Google maps, having an unlisted number really did largely protect you from snoops. Sure, if a person was persistent enough (read: creepy), they could follow you home from work, and learn where you lived. The Internet allows everyone to be slightly creepy, however, and no one is the wiser. Add Flickr, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Pownce, YouTube, etc -- and it's very difficult to remain anonymous anymore. It's almost like our lives themselves have become Open Source.

What we'd like to be able to do is efficiently keep two or more servers completely synchronized with each other no matter what gets changed on any of the servers. In the simplest case, we have a production server and a backup server that we need to keep in sync. We might have a cluster of servers used in a load balancing configuration. In the worst case, we might have a group of computers where changes are occurring on any or all of the devices. Consider the case where we have a computer at the office, a laptop, and a work computer at home. We want to be able to work from any computer at any time.

MySQL is targeting improved security and privacy with a version of its database codenamed Citadel due in 2009 that’ll also see MySQL speed up product release cycles. Citadel will try to close the gap on IBM and Oracle with security and privacy capabilities in the areas of group-level access privileges and transparent data encryption at the table and column level.

Desktop on Demand (DOD) is the latest contender to give users a full-fledged remote desktop instead of Web-based applications to help users to stay productive when they are on the move. Similar to Ulteo (which we reviewed not long ago), DOD gives you a full-blown remote Linux-based desktop -- but that's where the similarity ends. Unlike Ulteo, which is based on the VNC protocol and runs entirely in the browser using a Java-based applet, DOD employs the NoMachine NX technology for accessing the remote desktop.

As Dell Inc. approaches its one-year anniversary of selling laptop and desktop computers preloaded with Ubuntu Linux, the company is continuing to expand the fledgling program to new computer models and markets. In interviews at Dell's Parmer campus north of Austin last week, four Dell representatives said sales of the Linux-loaded machines are encouraging.

Linux XP is a strange beast. From what I gather it tries very hard to emulate the look and feel of Microsoft Windows in order to make the transition to Linux easier to the Microsoft-familiar. That is an admirable goal shared by some rather successful commercial entities like Xandros. Apparently with this release, Linux XP is more like "Linux Vista," however. I question the logic of emulating an OS that has received such a chilly reception among end users.

Nokia will introduce Qt to the maemo platform in addition to GTK+. The plan is in the earliest stage and recruitment offers for Qt/C++ developers will pop up soon. Don't expect any Qt application developed by Nokia for the tablets anytime soon, though. The first actual step will be the distribution of the Qt libraries for application development in maemo.org during 4Q2008.

Apple's recently released a software development kit (SDK) for the iPhone, but if you were hoping to port or develop original open source software with it, the news isn't good. Code signing and nondisclosure conditions make free software a no-go. The SDK itself is a free download, with which you can write programs and run them on a software simulator. But in order to actually release software you've written, you must enroll in the iPhone Developer Program -- a step separate from downloading the SDK, and one that requires Apple's approval.

A Kate Developer Meeting was held last weekend hosted by basysKom GmbH in Darmstadt to great success. Developers interested in improving KDE's advanced text editor met to shape the roadmap of Kate. An impressive nine attendees turned up including several new faces.

When I wrote the article appearing in issue 169 of the Linux Journal we had only had George (that's what we named our Chumby) for a couple weeks. We've had him for a couple months now, and George has become well integrated into our family. Things have settled down from the initial excitement we all had when he arrived and now it almost seems like he's always been there, sitting in his corner of the kitchen, there when you need him, and quietly waiting when you don't. That's not to say our relationship has not had some bumps along the way.

MySQL owners past and present opened the annual user's conference to re-assure them Sun Microsystems has no hidden agenda for the open source database. Sun chief executive Jonathan Schwartz and software executive vice president Rich Green pledged it's not just business as usual for MySQL - they'll also commit Sun's engineering resources, sales and global support.

JWChat is a Jabber instant messaging client that is written using only HTML and JavaScript. This means that you need not install a Jabber instant messaging client in order to use Jabber, assuming you already have a Web browser installed. A Jabber client that runs in a Web browser could be just the ticket for such uses as providing instant messaging to visitors to your Web site.

The open-source Eclipse Foundation announced four initiatives that address embedded and mobile device development. The new Device Software Development Project (DSDP) initiatives include a framework for communications among debugging and monitoring devices, and a Texas Instruments (TI)-sponsored project devoted to creating and configuring C/C++ tools for "highly constrained" devices.

Everyone grumbles about Linux driver problems, but kernel hacker Greg Kroah-Hartman actually did something about it. Kroah-Hartman created a program by which open-source developers would create drivers for hardware vendors even if their equipment was proprietary. Over a year later, though, Kroah-Hartman has found that the vast majority of hardware OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) already offer Linux support.

This is the second in our series co-publishing with Fedora Interviews. In Fedora, the supported method for upgrading from one release to the next is by downloading the media and rebooting from the media and using Anaconda. Why was this the case, and what's wrong with a yum upgrade?

You may recall about 4 months ago, I reviewed the Eee PC. As it turned out, the computer was actually a gift from my wife, so unlike many of the other products I review, I got to keep it. I'm going to give you the quick rundown of how those 4 months have been with the little lappy at my side:

Free operating systems differ from the proprietary variety in a number of ways. One of the differences which is most evident to all users is in the provision of device drivers. With free systems, device drivers are free software, provided with the system itself. Proprietary systems tend to provide relatively few drivers; instead, proprietary drivers are shipped with the hardware itself and installed separately. Anybody who wonders about which model works better would be well advised to look at the events of March 28, when Creative Labs shut down an outside developer who had been working to improve Creative's drivers.