Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

In a recent interview with Microsoft's COO Kevin Turner, the executive was asked about the future of Windows. In response, Turner had this to say: "Certainly, this last year has been an unprecedented year for Vista and Office and the launch," Turner said. "And we are still committed to the desktop. There will be another release and launch of a Vista-type operating system. [And] there will be another release of Office."

LXer Feature: 19-Jul-2007

A few days ago Rob Enderle proclaimed that Open Source and Linux are losing momentum, without any evidence to back this up and despite that IDC and Gartner are saying the exact opposite. The FOSS community responded with rebuttals after which Rob posted a follow-up in which he makes some particularly nasty accusations. However, trying to follow Rob's logic in the original article quickly showed that it was not about a loss in momentum at all. That was just a framework on which to hang a different tale, one that gives us some insight in how he sees the world of software development.

Supergamer is a unique Linux distribution whose primary focus is on fun -- specifically, gaming. Supergamer VL, now based on VectorLinux, is all new, with additional games, new code base, and new look and feel. Let the games begin.

In the world of Linux, many things have changed in the last decade. The operating system itself has grown up, and is no longer an"upstart." But one mainstay of the Linux community, the Linux user group (LUG), appears to be on the decline in some areas. Attendance is down, LUG presidents say, and some groups have stopped meeting. Does this mean we don't need LUGs anymore?

It's a bit later than Linspire had planned, but the company's CEO Kevin Carmony told DesktopLinux that the new commercial version of its Linux distribution, Linspire 6.0, along with the free version, Freespire 2.0, and its revised CNR (click-and-run) software update system, should be out before Augus

A recently merged KVM patchset included support for guest SMP, various performance improvements, and suspend/resume fixes. KVM stands for Kernel-based Virtual Machine, "a full virtualization solution for Linux on x86 hardware containing virtualization extensions".

Updating the pluggable scheduler patches for the 2.6.22 kernel, Peter Williams noted, "probably the last one now that CFS is in the main line". CFS author Ingo Molnar asked, "why is CFS in mainline a problem? The CFS merge should make the life of development/test patches like plugsched conceptually easier." Peter explained, "it means a major rewrite of the plugsched interface and I'm not sure that it's worth it (if CFS works well). However, note that I did say probably not definitely :-). I'll play with it and see what happens."

OK, Desktop Linux heads, I'm a confessed newbie trying to switch to Linux from XP. My simplyMEPIS install from an ISO went well, but now, on day two, my attempts to install the just-released Firefox update have failed.

Thanks to everyone who commented on The Dubious Benefits of Porting F/OSS to Windows. There are a lot of good points in the comments. For example, Simon Hibbs responded that more users of a piece of software increased the value of that software. This is important for programs that follow open standards, such as Mozilla Firefox, or OpenOffice.org and Abiword. In one sense, I see the value of open standards and unfettered access to data as more important than the four software freedoms. If I had to choose one over the other, I’d choose open standards… but I think that’s a false dilemma.

A U.S. vote on whether or not to support the application for ISO approval failed to pass.

Linux distributor Xandros along with NoMachine, maker of NX virtualization desktop, remote access and server management software, will announce on July 18 that NoMachine's NX Enterprise Server will start shipping immediately with Xandros Server 2.0.

Xandros CEO Andy Typaldos told DesktopLinux.com July 9 that his Ottawa-based Linux desktop and server company has acquired privately owned open-source e-mail and calendaring provider Scalix under terms that were undisclosed.

The 2.4 stable kernel tree has been maintained by Willy Tarreau for a year, since July of 2006. When recently asked if the tree had been abandoned, Willy replied,"no it's not abandoned at all! The difficulty with 2.4 is to get user feedback on patches. While in 2.6, there are hundreds or thousands of testers for every release, in 2.4, I have to wait longer after every release in order to start collecting problem reports, or confirmation of fixes. People using it in production generally cannot reboot a machine in the evening just to try a patch. Also, subsystem maintainers have less time to spend on it and are themselves slowed down by the slow feedback process."

The Italy-based Sabayon Linux project has released version 1.0 of the new enterprise-oriented edition of its desktop operating system. Sabayon Business Edition Linux 1.0 features a 2.6.22 Linux kernel and both KDE and GNOME desktop environments, along with a comprehensive set of application software.

Unless you have been living in an underground bunker, you have probably heard of Version Control, and possibly even Subversion (SVN). If you want to get the latest source code to compile it yourself, contribute to an open source project, keep track of files and documents, or work on the same document tree with a team of people, then you will need to use SVN.

Deep Freeze system consistency software, popular in Windows and Mac settings, is now available for Linux desktops. "Deep Freeze Linux" is said to reset a Linux workstation's boot process to a pristine state, enabling successive users to avoid misconfiguration by previous users of the computer.

The recently merged Completely Fair Scheduler changes how the Linux kernel handles scheduling priorities set with the nice command. Ingo Molnar explained that each level of nice adds or substracts 10% of CPU utilization,..

In October 2006, Terra Soft announced its plan to build the world's first supercomputing cluster using the Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3), which utilizes the IBM Cell Broadband Engine and the Linux operating system. The idea emerged when Sony Computer Entertainment came knocking on Terra Soft's door, interested in showing that the PS3 is more than merely a game box. After building a 3,000-sq-ft supercomputing facility, located at Terra Soft's headquarters, and adding a heavy dose of good old-fashioned tinkering, the cluster is well underway.

Suppose you want to have some options on your bash shell script, some flags that you can use to alter its behavior. You could do the parsing directly, using ${#} to tell you how many arguments have been supplied, and testing ${1:0:1} to test the first character of the first argument to see if it is a minus sign. You would need some if/then or case logic to identify which option it is and whether it takes an argument. What if the user doesn't supply a required argument? What if the user calls your script with two options combined (e.g., -ab)? Will you also parse for that? The need to parse options for a shell script is a common situation. Lots of scripts have options. Isn't there a more standard way to do this?

For average hackers in their cubicles, the relation between environmental and free software issues may seem remote but the Green Party of England and Wales (GPEW) is working to connect the dots. Since adopting a motion in favor of free and open source software (FOSS) in 2005, party members have not only spoken frequently in favor of FOSS, but also on related issues, such as software patents and lockdown technologies in Vista.