Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

The KDE Community and the release team have put together a release plan for the long anticipated version 4.0, which is planned to be released in October 2007. KDE 4.0 will be a major milestone for the Free Desktop, as it offers a new foundation and set of frameworks that will shape the desktop user experience for years to come. Users will benefit from improved speed through Qt 4, integration of hardware through Solid, multimedia performance via Phonon, usability enhancements by close collaboration with OpenUsability, new real-time communication options with Decibel, spell-checking with Sonnet, comprehensive desktop search through Strigi and Nepomuk, a new desktop metaphor through Plasma and, last but not least, a completely new artwork experience called Oxygen.

Call it drinking the Kool-Aid, or just accepting business/IT reality — but more and more large enterprises are jumping on board the Microsoft/Novell agreement to provide support and interoperability between Windows and Linux.

Netfirms says its new service enables developers to use Web programming frameworks from either platform simultaneously on one Web site. Netfirms product manager Jason Matheson says the new service was created in response to customer demand and rather than just offering the ASP.NET framework, the company decided to offer the choice of developing on both.

A few weeks ago, the Kino video editor finally hit 1.0, which is usually a positive milestone that heralds a new era in an application's development. However, Kino developer Dan Dennedy says that he is done working on Kino's functionality for at least a year, and work toward another major release will not happen "for at least a year" unless someone else steps up to fork the application. However, Dennedy says he sees good things ahead for kdenlive, a non-linear video editor for KDE.

Another founder of modern computing passes away. John W Backus, team leader of the original FORTRAN development team at IBM, died on 17 March at the respectable age of 82.

Some OpenOffice.org macros have rudimentary dialog boxes that allow you to define a few parameters. If you're ready to take your macro programming skills to a new level, you can learn how to create graphical interfaces for your macros. Once you know how to do that, you can build advanced macros that are close to full-blown applications.

Santa Clara University in California next week will host a symposium on open-souece software. Titled "Virtues and Vices of Open Source Software," the symposium will focus on issues surrounding commercial and open-source software development.

Those interested in theopenEHR archetype approach but who have been missing a platform independent editor might like this announcement: The LiU Archetype Editor, version 0.5.2, by the Medical Informatics group at the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Linköping University in Sweden has now been released for public download [url=athttp://www.imt.liu.se/mi/ehr/]athttp://www.imt.liu.se/mi/ehr/[/url] This release is historical in the sense that the ongoing harmonisation among different openEHR specification and tool authors has reached a point where the tools are compatible. The official openEHR clinical archetypes [url=athttp://svn.openehr.org/knowledge/archetypes/dev/index.html]athttp://svn.openehr.org/knowledge/archetypes/dev/index.html[/url] are now in line with the 1.0.1 specifications and all tools.

Novell's rollout this week of a SUSE Linux thin client surely doesn't mean that the richer and only slightly older SUSE Enterprise Desktop (SLED) will be going away, officials said at BrainShare. On the other hand, the new Open Enterprise Server (OES) 2, also launched as a public beta this week, will feature a Linux kernel topped by NetWare, a legacy OS the company is now phasing out.

On March 21, KDE e.V, the non-profit organization behind the popular KDE desktop environment, announced its schedule to complete its next version, 4.0. If all goes well, we should see a release of KDE 4.0 this Fall. While the group's timeline is subject to change, the project announced "we will try our best to stick to them if possible. The KDE Release Team is acting as the coordinator for the 4.0 release."

Recently I needed to set up a server with all the usual server components -- Web, mail, and file sharing. It needed to be rock-solid and reliable. I didn't want to download 4GB of software from the Net, so I turned to CentOS' Single Server CD.

Are you looking for a Windows alternative for serious office work? Many people are starting to wonder about their non-Microsoft operating system options, especially given Windows Vista's hefty hardware demands, upgrade costs and license restrictions. Scot Finnie, Computerworld's online editorial director, has already examined using Mac OS X in the workplace. Now, I take a hard look at Linux by using an enterprise distribution exclusively at work. I'm not simply playing with a test machine; I've been using Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10+ day in, day out to do my job as Computerworld's online managing editor.

Research in Motion (RIM) systems architect Ian Brown wanted to give his administrators the same central identity management authentication functionality for their Linux and Unix machines that they enjoyed with Microsoft Windows Server and Active Directory -- but it just wasn't happening.

Trolltech Qtopia has been chosen by Skype as the preferred platform for connecting the Skype user interface to the operating system in Skype Certified WiFi handsets and a variety of other devices that deliver a Skype experience. Skype works with handset manufacturers who wish to add Skype capabilities to their devices. As this business expands, it becomes increasingly important that handsets share the same application platform. The Qtopia platform will reduce the time-to-market for Skype devices while ensuring that handsets can be updated easily.

As part of Mozilla Corporation's ongoing stability and security update process, Firefox 1.5.0.11 and Firefox 2.0.0.3 are now available for free download from getfirefox.com. Due to the security fixes, we strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to these latest releases.

Here is an opinion piece about FOSS and the IHEConnectathon:'...This year IBM supported the open source openEMR application participation fees. We will probably not be able to do it next year. I know of open source applications that wish to go to the '08 Connectathon (openEMR, Mirth, Tolven, MirrorMed, and more are coming). They have lots of motivation that comes with considerable barriers in the shape of travel expenses plus the investment in integration, implementation, and passing the MESA tests. From talks with them I understand that the 8K$ registration fees is something they will not be able to swallow, and I assume that it will prevent them from participating in the event...'

Oracle Corp. has gotten off to a "very strong start" with its support program for users of Red Hat Inc.'s Enterprise Linux, according to Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. Ellison announced the program back in October at Oracle's OpenWorld conference in San Francisco, but since then the company has declined to comment on the progress of the support offering aimed at both Oracle and non-Oracle users.

How do Vyatta's open source routers stack up to Cisco? David Davis took one for a test drive to find out.

Your editor has long enjoyed photography. As a high school student, he even pondered, briefly, the idea of pursuing photography as a career; for better or for worse, common sense won out and your editor went to engineering school instead. But taking pictures has remained an active hobby, even if it has tended to degrade to the creation of a stream of snapshots of the kids for grandparent consumption in recent years. The advent of digital photography has brought a couple of your editor's passions back together, with only one thing - free time - missing. But, your editor has discovered, one of the keys to the finding of free time is to take an activity of interest and redefine it as "work." Thus, this article.

Muse Research used Linux and the open source WINE Windows emulator to build a virtual instrumentation and effects box used by the Rolling Stones, U2, Herbie Hancock, John Mayer, and others. The 2U rackmounted "Receptor" runs VST-format audio effects and virtual instruments on commodity PC hardware,