Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Creating a high-quality chart for the Web can be a challenging task, but open source software like Open Flash Chart (OFC) makes it a cinch. As you might guess from its name, the core engine of OFC is written in Adobe Flash. Although this means that users need a Flash browser plugin to view charts created with OFC, this approach has a significant advantage: it allows you to produce professional-quality graphs with minimum effort, because the core engine does all the heavy lifting, and all you need to do is to specify configuration options for your chart and feed data into it.

Issue #7 of Full Circle, the community-driven Ubuntu Linux magazine, is out with features on Ubuntu Studio, Wabi the Windows Ubuntu installer, and the best audio and video apps.

Slackware Linux today features a powerful and easy-to-use package management system, but making Slackware packages has not always been straightforward. Now Slackware application developers have a tool for easily making Slackware packages from source code and precompiled binaries. Src2pkg, now in version 1.6, very nearly lives up to its author's tag of being Slackware's "magic package maker."

Free-wheeling Linux was an improbable enough operating system to be used on IBM's mainframe line, but now an even more unlikely operating system is making an appearance there: Sun Microsystems' Solaris. Sun and IBM have been arch-enemies for decades, but through the combination of open-source flexibility and something of a detente between the companies, the operating system has arrived.

Bitter adversaries IBM and Sun Microsystems have been adding a little sugar to their parley. Their corporate fisticuffs have even recently given way to hand-holding. In August, the two companies revealed that IBM will offer Solaris x86 as an option to some Xeon- and Opteron-based servers. IBM's systems chief Bill Zeitler also hinted at seeing Solaris on the System Z mainframes.

I opened the morning paper and turned to the front page of Business - Section D. Right in the middle of front page at the top, four columns wide and headlined with major graphics a story line asked "Mind if we share?" The lower headline read, "BitTorrent pours out movies, TV shows - and controversy".

On the face of it, it's hardly news worth noting. On Nov. 27, Eaton announced that its Personal Solution Pac for Linux and Network Shutdown Module v3 are the first UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) power management solutions to receive Ubuntu's IHV (independent hardware vendor) Certification.

Dell agreed to ship PCs and laptops with the Ubuntu operating system after more than 130,000 people promoted the notion on the company's IdeaStorm web site. It would seem, however, that only a fraction of these zealots were willing to back their votes with cash. Dell has shipped close to 40,000 systems pre-installed with the Ubuntu flavor of Linux, according to multiple sources. By most accounts, that's a heck of a total for what remains more or less a fringe operating system.

As things start quietening down for the year, we may just get a chance to while away a few hours with games. Slipping into the holiday spirit, Tectonic has put together a list of some of the better free Linux games out there, but we want your input to decide which are the best.

Try to describe Hotwire, and you'll eventually wind up saying something that sounds like an oxymoron, like "command-line GUI," "graphical shell" or "GUI xterm." Well, that's pretty much what Hotwire is: something halfway between a text-based shell and a modern graphical user interface. In part, the confusion stems from the fuzzy definition the typical desktop user has of the Unix shell. For the most part, it is transparent to us. We probably know that some commands (like ls and chown) are separate binaries, while others (like cd and umask) are actually internal functions provided by the shell. But unless we do a lot of scripting, it can be hard to remember which is which; we type whichever we need at the prompt and get back to business.

Tim Bray recently posted the results of his Developer Tool Survey (although, I think it was really an editor/IDE survey). He asked Ruby and Rails developers about what kind of development they do (primarily Ruby or primarily Rails), and which editor/IDE they use.

Building on the success of the its last three Summer of Code programmes, Google has announced the Google Highly Open Participation Contest geared for pre-university students.

Legend has it that a Moleskine notebook and a pen were the tools of choice for Chatwin and Hemingway -- but that's because they didn't have Writer’s Café. Designed specifically for writing professionals, this application suite includes a few clever features that make it a must-have tool, whether you write for a living or for fun. Although the Writer's Café developers state that it's most suited for writing fiction, novels, and short stories, you can easily use it for all kinds of writing activities.

Recent crackdowns in pirated software among Kenya internet cafes has seen a number of cafe owners opting for open source software to keep on the right side of the law and to avoid what are often prohibitively costly licence fees.

While I was cleaning up my office I ran into the March 1986 issue of UNIX/WORLD, a long-since deceased magazine. I had saved this particular magazine because I am the author of the article featured on the cover: The Unix System on the IBM PC.

In theory, GDB, the GNU debugger, can ease the chore of debugging applications running on a Linux-based embedded system. In practice, setting up GDB for this task is a bit of a challenge; it takes some work, and there are some technical hurdles to overcome. However, the benefits of having a way to methodically debug a program instead of guessing what's wrong with it far outweigh the effort involved. Here are some tips for easing the difficulties.

Did the OpenDocument Foundation recently shutter its doors for good because it was unable to convince Oasis to support its converter, known as Da Vinci? Or was it because OpenDocument Format was simply not designed for the conversion of Microsoft Office documents, applications, and processes? The debate on these issues continues two weeks after foundation members confirmed the organization had shut down.

In a recent Red Hat Magazine article, Paul Frields gave some examples of how SSH port forwarding can be used to remotely gain access to resources, or ports, from a remote location. This article will show a pragmatic implementation of SSH port forwarding by demonstrating how to use configuration files and conditional statements to create permanent, yet dynamic, SSH configurations for your home, office, and any virtual machines you may have on your systems.

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: A Trash applet, various general improvements, and support for sharing configuration layouts in Plasma. "Undo close tab" feature in Konqueror. Development continues towards Amarok 2.0, with services becoming plugins and support for the Amapche music server. Continued progress in KDevelop and KEduca. More work on album display and improved thumbnails (with RAW format support) in Digikam. A BitTorrent plugin for KGet, based on the recently created libktorrent. Directory monitoring-and-update support in NEPOMUK. Work returns to Okteta, a hex editing utility. "Connection Status" plugin removed from Kopete. Kile begins to be ported to KDE 4, whilst work begins on KGPG2. Goya, a GUI widget framework, is imported into playground.

When SCO filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, it was widely seen as a move to avoid the final steps in its case with Novell. On Nov. 27, however, the bankruptcy court lifted its stay on the Novell trial, and so the SCO/Novell court case is once again free to proceed.