Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

GNU Project and Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman posted a message on the OpenBSD -misc mailing list titled, "real men don't attack straw men", suggesting that some comments he had made were being misrepresented. He noted, "one question particularly relevant for this list is why I don't recommend OpenBSD. It is not about what the system allows. (Any general purpose system allows doing anything at all.) It is about what the system suggests to the user." He went on to note that though he knew of no non-free software included in the base OpenBSD system, there was non-free software distributed via the ports collection, "if a collection of software contains (or suggests installation of) some non-free program, I do not recommend it."

Sometimes when I run ls to get a directory listing, I am looking for a specific file, but I want to see the whole context where the file resides. While you can pipe the output of ls to grep, that doesn't show you the whole directory with the matched files highlighted in a different color. I create a small script to do just what I want.

Thanks to a Filipino organisation, open source software is once again stepping in to help humanity with the release of a toolkit to assist human rights organisations in monitoring human rights violations.

It's good news, bad news situation when it comes to Adobe's new Flash player for Linux. On the plus side, Adobe Flash Player 9 Update 3, version identifier 9.0.115.0 was made available for Linux at the same time as Mac and Windows versions. It's nice to see Linux not being treated as the little brother who only gets the older, hand-me down programs by a major software vendor. An even bigger win for Flash Player users, regardless of their operating system, is that its supports H.264.

Everex has confirmed plans to ship a UMPC (ultra-mobile PC) with a 7-inch screen, similar to competitor Asus's EEE PC. A source close to the company revealed that the device -- codenamed "Cloudbook" -- will ship with the Google Apps-oriented "gOS" Linux distribution early next year.

Nemo is the latest effort to provide a new paradigm for file managers. Its approach, at least in its first early development release, is to combine file management with calendar views. Questions remain, however, about whether the concept will scale, and whether it is an improvement on traditional file managers, or simply different.

Those who have experienced free software projects firsthand know that they depend on innovation and genrally foster it. And although this isn't a highly innovative era for the computer industry as a whole, free software is an exception--and likely to become more of one as it continues to come into its own. In fact, the very idea of free software is one of the most innovative ideas in the history of computing.

OpenOffice is the darling of the FOSS office suites, and it is a nice suite. It's cross-platform, and OpenOffice Writer is a first-rate word processor with a lot of advanced features. But it's not the only good option for Linux users: Abiword and KWord are excellent lightweight word processors with good feature sets, and both are licensed under the GPL. All three are wonderful. In this two-part series we're going to dig into KWord 1.6, and mine some of its hidden jewels.

Sysreport is a diagnostic utility. It collects information about the running system, which is used for Red Hat Support to analyze current problems with the system. While sysreport is generally considered non-invasive, diagnostic utilities should always be run with caution.

The Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum has announced the completion of the LiPS Release 1.0 specifications, aimed at setting up interoperable standards for the development of applications on Linux-based cellphones.

SourceForge has launched a free online marketplace for buying and selling service and support for open source software (OSS). Building on its well-established position as a free software distribution and development site, the site has already attracted more than 600 service listings, further undermining the old argument that one can't get support for OSS.

The world of Linux moves quickly with new releases every day. Here are a couple of the releases that caught our eye this past week: OpenSuse 11.0 alpha and Geubuntu Luna Nova.

Thanks to LXer for republishing this. Due to some information that was published in the initial report, we had to pull the blog down until we got legal clarification and that we were sure that a good deed was not going to get punished. This is a tragedy for this family and anything you can do to help is appreciated far beyond this families ability to express it. - h

Tristan Nitot, president of Mozilla Europe, talks to ZDNet U.K. about the security of Firefox and Internet Explorer, online privacy, and the future of open source.

In my last article I introduced the idea of the Geek Ranch. The facility will be more than just a place for geeks to write code. We are going to need a web site to promote the facility to the various audiences. All the pieces of that web site are not yet determined but we do have an initial features list.

LXer Feature: 09-Dec-2007

In this weeks roundup we have several articles concerning the OLPC and Microsoft. Plus the MPAA is forced to take down its university toolkit, Dell may have helped boost Linux's market share, when bad things happen with your good software, a review of Mint 4.0 and the X11 Desktop Environment. I wrap things up with a couple of funny articles about 'someone' dropping support for OOXML and trusting your bartender, enjoy!

Living in Africa we have abundant sun, a power source we rarely consider when we buy yet another gadget. Along comes the Aleutia E1, an ultra low power computer setup that can be run from a roll up solar panel or a car battery and runs Puppy Linux.

Microsoft wants to rule the world, even Third World countries where $100 laptops for children will soon be prevalent. In a move bound to spark controversy, Microsoft announced it wants Windows XP to be installed in the computers for the project One Laptop Per Child (OLPC). The software giant wants to extend its reach by bringing XP to the XO laptop, a low-cost Linux laptop available to developing countries for around $100. Microsoft is requesting XO designers add a port to boost the storage capacity via an SD card so Windows XP can run on the system. The XO can only hold 1GB of flash memory, but Microsoft says XP could run on 2GB total memory.

On a mailing list of its 64-bit Linux web page x86-64.org, AMD has released a first description of the TLB bug which affects all current K10 processors, namely Phenoms and Barcelonas. "Erratum 298" is to be described in detail in the next edition of the Revision Guide for AMD Family 10h Processors. The current version 3.00 does not list the bug.

Ted Ts’o, a Linux kernel file maintainer who works for IBM outside Boston, will spend the next two years with the Linux Foundation as chief platform strategist. Linux Foundation CEO Jim Zemlin is what the Brits call “over the moon” about getting him. “It’s rare to have this level of technical expertise, the ability to engage on any level, and the ability to engage substantively on a business conversation, and conversations about marketing, and about building ecosystems. That’s an ultra-rare skillset.”