Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory (or ET for short) is a FPS (First Person Shooter) game, native for Linux, which borrows concepts from Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and uses the Quake 3 engine. The idea initially was to develop it as a new commercial RtCW mod, but, ultimately, it was released as a free standalone, multiplayer game, after the developers abandoned the development of the single player part of the game.

At BrainShare 2008 in March, Novell introduced a set of Linux certifications for administrators. Rather than being directed at higher-end Linux managers, like the Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) or Novell's own Novell Linux Certified Engineer (NLCE), the new certifications are meant for entry-level Linux administrators, one step above the Linux Professional Institute's entry-level LPIC-1.

The Open Source Health Information Platform (OSHIP) project is now public. It is a Python[http://www.python.org] implementation of the openEHR[http://www.openehr.org] specifications Release 1.0.1. OSHIP is not a clinical application. It is a Python framework for quickly building future-proof, inter-operable healthcare applications based on a multi-level modeling principle [http://www.openehr.org/201-OE] that has already been proven in implementations.

As the Mozilla-based OS X Web browser project Camino continues to grow, so do the number of add-ons and plugins at PimpMy Camino. Although PimpMyCamino is not officially endorsed by the Camino developers, the project's Web site calls it "your one-stop shop for Camino add-ons." While there aren't as many ways to accessorize Camino as its cousin Firefox, there are still some useful options to enhance the look and feel of this popular open source browser. Camino's plugins can be divided roughly into two groups: things that please the eye, and things enhance productivity. Let's have a look at both.

Once upon a time, there was an open source project called Subversion, and it needed a new date parser. One day, a coder came along and wrote one. But he insisted on tagging the source code with his John Hancock. And that was against the rules. Subversion's founders said that name tags would undermine collaboration. When the founders asked the coder to remove his name, he refused, threatening to leave the project and take his date parser with him. It was a good date parser - just want the project needed - but the founders stood their ground.

Free software lovers can rejoice at this month's release of gNewSense 2.0 (pronounced "guh-new-sense"), the latest version of the popular distribution based on Ubuntu Hardy Heron. Code-named DeltaH, this operating system includes only software where users have the right to run, study, adapt, redistribute, and improve all of the software and code. To that end, gNewSense is supported and sponsored by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The strict freedom-ware requirement excludes a great deal of software, including proprietary drivers for wireless and video cards, leaving most users with a less functional -- albeit less tainted -- derivative of Ubuntu 8.04.

Seven years ago this week I published my first online commentary piece. The topic was the predicted death of the Linux desktop brought on by the demise of Eazel, the original developer of GNOME’s Nautilus file manager. A lot has happened since that time, but not precisely how I would have predicted it would. Let’s review.

Profiling an application lets you see what functions are taking up most of the CPU time so you can concentrate your optimization efforts on making the those pieces of code run faster. With sysprof, you can profile all the applications that are running on your machine, including a multithreaded or multiprocessed application or a complex server application that has multiple parts. sysprof collects information about how much time is spent in each library and function as the applications execute.

South Africa was the first, but not the last. Now Brazil has sent a letter protesting the adoption of OOXML as an ISO standard also, and Andy Updegrove says he has heard there will be more:

A decision on whether to press ahead with a re-usable architecture from Google to simplify the development of applications spanning multiple social networks is due in the next few days. Members of Google's OpenSocial project are next week expected to vote on a proposal for a new template language that'll be used to build tags for use with OpenSocial. OpenSocial defines common APIs for applications across multiple sites using JavaScript and XML.

Like many Linux Journal readers, I have been upgrading my Gibbons to Herons recently. And like many readers, I imagine, I have been finding a few little challenges along the way. That was no surprise, since it's pretty much par for the course when carrying out a major upgrade. But something else did surprise me, although in retrospect I see that it shouldn't have.

Everybody who owns a computer will someday need to dispose of a disk drive. Before you do, it is a good idea to cleanse the drive, so no one can read your sensitive information. Deleting files and reformatting is not sufficient; determined effort can still reveal data from a drive even after it appears to be gone. To do a more thorough job, I suggest using wipe.

Novell Thursday reported net income of $5.8 million for its fiscal 2008 second quarter pulling earnings up from a loss of $2.8 million in the same quarter last year. The company said it showed healthy growth in its core business units around the Linux operating system, identity/access management software and systems management tools.

Among its list of top ten tech problems are open source software and the popular music player iTunes, according to BDNA's survey of its customers.

The Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit held on April 8-10 in Austin, Texas, may have been invitation only, but fortunately the LF has posted videos for the rest of us. The videos include keynotes from Red Hat and Sun/MYSQL, and a panel on Linux PCs.

SIMchronise, a mobile technologies company based in the United Kingdom, recently launched a mobile data backup service called PhoneBackup.eu that is built on the Open Mobile Alliance's Data Synchronization and Device Management standard (a.k.a. SyncML). SIMchronise principal Philippe Joly says that with the "high number of device models and manufacturers" of wireless phones, open standards make it easier for companies to provide data synchronization services.

KeyTouch is an application designed to allow you to make full use of all the special function keys on your keyboard, whether the hardware supports Linux or not. It's a great idea, especially with all the multimedia applications that come standard with today's PCs. But as is often the case, the devil is in the implementation details. Marvin Raaijmakers wrote the first version of KeyTouch in 2004, after finding he could not configure the extra function keys on a new keyboard he had just bought. Today, KeyTouch is included in most modern distributions (Mandriva, openSUSE, Fedora, and Ubuntu, to name a few) and the project is actively seeking packagers for other distributions.

Everyone knows the drama of Microsoft and Yahoo. Or at least, most know the most recent developments, as the series' beginning at the end of January has been so long-running and drawn out that many have put the early developments out of mind. When DailyTech last reported on the ongoing drama, billionaire Icahn was preparing his board ouster with the help of potential future board member and vocal billionaire blogger Mark Cuban. Microsoft said that it didn't want Yahoo, when Yahoo expressed fresh interest, but it softened a bit and applied for FTC approval of buying a portion of Yahoo stock to help Icahn, a pro-merger enthusiast, succeed in his takeover bid.

In this final installment to the series I'll double your reading pleasure by presenting two new Linux softsynths. Such a deal, two reviews for the price of one! When I wrote my article on the LinuxSampler Project I noted the distinction between a performance sampler and a studio sampler. It occurs to me now that the same distinction should be made with regards to synthesizers. The synthesizers profiled in this review are best considered as performance synths, so let's see what makes the difference.

Earlier this month Novell quietly released Moonlight -- a Linux client for Microsoft's Silverlight technology. Silverlight is a .Net-based cross-browser, cross-platform plugin for delivering rich media to the Internet. In a nutshell, it is Microsoft's version of Adobe Flash. To use Moonlight you need to make sure you have all of the current Mono packages installed. Ubuntu and Fedora come ready out of the box. On other distributions, check the package manager. You can also compile Mono from source.