Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

The fact that Linux is big business for IBM should come as no surprise to those who follow Big Blue. During the last decade IBM has steadily ramped up its Linux efforts to the point where it has now become a core offering across IBM's server and software product lines. In this interview, IBM's Inna Kuznetsova spoke about her role at IBM, the challenges she faces and her view on Microsoft's patent allegations and GPL version 3.

Nautilus, the official file manager for the GNOME desktop, can help you perform tasks from browsing the filesystem to accessing Samba shares on your local network or FTP sites on the Internet -- and more. Here are a couple of tips and tools that will allow you to open a terminal window from Nautilus and resize and rotate images without opening any other program.

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Continued work in Plasma, including a KMLDonkey data engine, a RSS data engine and news feed applet, and a Virtual Desktop switcher applet. More interface work for Amarok 2.0, with progress on alternate music service integration. Support for webseeding in KTorrent. Support for network access of colour palettes in KolourPaint. An Akonadi resource for the del.icio.us bookmarking service. CMake support for PyKDE4 applications. Wider logging support in KSystemLog. SVG caching optimises usage, resulting in speed gains in many applications. KTeaTime rewritten for KDE 4, KPlayer ported to KDE 4. New game based on "Deal or No Deal" arrives in playground/games. More code reorganisation in KDE SVN. KAider translation utility moves to kdereview.

Let's imagine that you set up a non-profit to recycle electronics and divert computers from going directly into landfills or otherwise being destroyed by a grinder. You look for ways to refurbish these components and possibly recombine them into functional computers that go out to areas and institutions that have difficulty obtaining computers. You might even collect some of the vintage electronics that comes through the door and hang on to this stuff because you think it's cool and somebody may want it someday.

As the Atheros driver issue continues to simmer on the OpenBSD -misc mailing list and the Linux Kernel mailing list, with debate continuing over when the license of source code can be altered or added to, Eben Moglen made a statement for the Software Freedom Law Center. He began by defending their own actions, "it might be useful to recall the first stage of this process, when OpenBSD developers were accused of misappropriating Atheros code, and SFLC investigated and proved that no such misappropriation had occurred? Wild accusations about our motives are even more silly than they are false." He went on to acknowledge, "we understand that attribution issues are critically important to free software developers; we are accustomed to the strong feelings that are involved in such situations. In the fifteen years I have spent giving free legal help to developers throughout the community, attribution disputes have been, always, the most emotionally charged."

openSUSE News is running a "Sneak Peeks at openSUSE 10.3" article which takes a look at KDE 4 in the upcoming release. In this version openSUSE will be providing a 1-CD KDE installation ISO that comes complete with some KDE 4 games, KRDC and KRFB. It also features an interview with KDE core developer Dirk Müller. He discusses KDE 4 development, plans for KDE applications developed by openSUSE, and general targets of the openSUSE KDE team in the future.

LXer Feature: 16-Sept-2007

Some of the big stories this week, SCO files for chapter 11, Microsoft pushes through another shadow update, IBM finally decides to officially support OpenOffice and Apple modifies their new iPods to not work with Linux.

Randy Dunlap sent a patch to the Linux kernel mailing list described as adding "info about various email clients and their applicability in being used to send Linux kernel patches." The first revision generated quite a bit of discussion, quickly resulting in a second version, and eventually a third version that Andrew Morton referred to as "soon to be merged". In addition to some general suggestions about emailing patches, it also offers some specific configuration suggestions for a number of popular email clients.

Modern Healthcare's Joseph Conn has aninterview about the Harris County Health Information (HCHIC) in Houston putting on aninaugural fundraiser at St. Arnold's Brewery for a city-wide EHR:'After hearing a talk by Stephen Foreman, a Robert Morris associate professor of healthcare administration and economics, Valdes said he gained the"intellectual firepower to do this now.""He gave this chat on why (proprietary) electronic medical software is not going to work and probably never will," Valdes recalled."It's a public good and not a private good. People are going at this like it is a piece of furniture when it is really like a lighthouse. What he said was, according to economic theory and practice, you need to treat it like a public good, and free and open source shifts it toward a public good."

From theClearHealth forum the announcement has just been made,ClearHealth 2.0 final has been released.. It looks like there will be more information about new features coming in the next week. Congratulations to theClearHealth team!

Sam Ravnborg took a look at the x86 unification patches and commented, "from the mails and discussions I expected it be be obvious what was i386 only, what was shared and what was x86_64 only." He listed 16 files in x86/pci and noted, "in the filename there is NOTHING for most of the non-shared code that tell that this file is used by only i386 or x86_64." Andi Kleen concurred, "exactly my point from KS. The big mash-up will not really make much difference in terms of Makefile clarity or whatever Thomas' point was. Apparently he wanted to eliminate a few lines of code from the Makefile and merge the header files completely?"

Lucas Nussbaum suggests that Linux distributions should have a place to collaborate more effectively than just with upstream projects: I am both a Debian and an Ubuntu developer, and I’m sometimes amazed that Ubuntu discusses technical choices that were discussed (and solved) a few weeks earlier in Debian. And it’s even worse with the other big distros out there. Couldn’t we try to improve this ?

The ath5k driver has been through more than the usual amount of legal trouble. This driver, for Atheros wireless chipsets, was originally reverse engineered and developed in the BSD community. It was reputed by some to have been improperly copied from proprietary Atheros code, requiring two different studies by the Software Freedom Legal Center before Linux developers were willing to believe that it was safe to use. This driver should be the cause of great joy - it will make it possible for vast numbers of laptop owners to run Linux with free drivers for the first time. But, first, there would appear to be one more set of legal hassles to overcome.

This technology is a browser-based visual editor and run-time environment that enables developers to visually assemble Web applications without adding any imperative code. IBM Web Relational Blocks Software, Personal Edition (WebRB-PE) is a downloadable version of alphaWorks service, Web Relational Blocks.

OpenEMR HQ, a consultancy and integration firm focused on the popularOpenEMR medical records software package, has officially began offering service. The company, based near Tulsa, Oklahoma, offers a full range of products and services including installation, customization, and hosting and is primarily focused on small to mid-sized medical offices and clinics. According to company spokesmanMark Jennings, OpenEMR HQ is working on several extensions to the software that will better integrate it into busy medical offices and will streamline the way staff interacts with both clinicians and patients. Major changes should start appearing in the product by the end of the year and the modifications will be contributed back to the general OpenEMR community according to Jennings.

Years after it was first predicted, The SCO Group, a Unix and mobile software distributor better known for its Linux litigation, has filed a voluntary petition for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code.

When it rains, it pours, they say. First, SCO files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and now on the same day Judge Dale Kimball has denied SCO's Motion for Reconsideration or Clarification of the August 10, 2007 Order. Here's his Order [PDF]. I wrote an article earlier today about SCO's Reply Memorandum in support of this motion, and as you'll see, I am not surprised at the denial.

Nation's largest transportation agency chooses Novell to secure and manage its employee identity infrastructure.

When I started using GNU/Linux eight years ago, I was dumbfounded to encounter Debian users who started their day by upgrading their entire system. Yet now, with the updaters that sit in the notification trays of recent GNOME and KDE-based distributions, I realize that these daily upgraders were not daredevils, but pioneers in the idea that all upgrades are desirable. Never mind that this idea is an nuisance and an unwarranted assumption -- let alone that constant upgrades are unsuitable to many styles of computing and contrary to responsible system maintenance.

"In the patch you really remove _a_lot_ of stuff," commented Roman Zippel in his reaction to Ingo Molnar's latest updates to the Completely Fair Scheduler. Roman has been consistently critical of Ingo's efforts, asking questions and criticizing Ingo's feedback. He continued, "you also removed a lot of things I tried to get you to explain them to me. On the one hand I could be happy that these things are gone, as they were the major road block to splitting up my own patch. On the other hand it still leaves me somewhat unsatisfied, as I still don't know what that stuff was good for."