Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

A lengthy debate that began with a suggestion to dual license the Linux kernel under the GPLv2 and the GPLv3 [story] continues on the Linux Kernel Mailing List. Throughout the ongoing thread Linux creator Linus Torvalds has spoken out on the GPLv2, the upcoming GPLv3, the BSD license, Tivo, the Free Software Foundation, and much more. During the discussion, he was asked we he chose the GPLv2 over the BSD license when he's obviously not a big fan of the FSF.

All modern operating systems are able to run many programs at the same time. For example, a typical Linux server might include a Web server, an email server, and probably a database service. Each of these programs runs as a separate process. What do you do if one of your services stops working? Here are some handy command-line tools for managing processes.

The Baylor College Human Neuroimaging Lab (HNL) uses Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to record and research brain activity. The fMRI scans human brains at work, detecting areas of greater blood flow that indicate which part of the brain is active as subjects perform a variety of activities. The data flows from the scanners to a high-performance 32-node CentOS cluster to be analyzed and returned to researchers in statistical form. HNL Systems Administrator Justin King is a big fan of open source software and frequently writes his own applications when he can't find what he needs in the community. King also takes advantage of commercial open source projects.

Going head to head with Microsoft 2007, the latest version of the free-for-all OpenOffice.org touts across-the-board improvements in the software's word processing, spreadsheet, database and presentation applications.

What Kodak's camera breakthrough means to you, behind Microsoft's Linux love affair, and the "greening" of the friendly skies.

Intuit said it is making this move in response to users' requests for an open-source option.

Comprehensive Upgrade Improves Performance and Extends Usability for Leading Open Source Alternative to Microsoft Exchange

In the lead-up to KDE 4, Amarok will be undergoing a number of large changes both under the hood, and cosmetically with the user interface. I managed to interview a developer, Jeff Mitchell, to talk about the things changing in Amarok from the 1.4 stable branch to version 2.0, including the playlist redesign, the context view and the new web services framework.

We see the headlines all the time: "Company X Loses 30,000,000 Customer Social Security Numbers and Other Intimately Personal and Financial Data! Haha, Boy Are Our Faces Red!" And it always turns out to be some "contractor" (notice how it's never an employee) who had the entire wad on a laptop with (seemingly) a terabyte hard drive, which was then lost or stolen, but nobody is quite sure where or when.

The deadline for the biggest ever synchronised release of open software is looming. On 29 June, the long-awaited Europarelease from the Eclipse Foundation will see updates in 20 categories of Eclipse open software. The unprecedented release covers around 30 separate components - with several making their public début.

Major players including Ubuntu, Microsoft, and Red hat join network intent on setting new targets for energy efficient PCs.

When you power on your computer, the first software that runs is a bootloader that invokes the computer's operating system. GRUB, the GRand Unified Bootloader, is an integral part of many Linux systems. It starts the Linux kernel. Here's some background on GRUB, and some tips on installing and configuring the software.

When not threatening to sue Linux makers, Microsoft can't help itself from partnering with them. Redmond today announced a buddy-buddy deal with desktop Linux maker Linspire.

Mandriva announced this week that it has revamped its eTraining website interface for better ease of use. In addition, the free online management modules have been improved, and there are two new free courses: one on urpmi and rpmdrake, and the other on Mandriva Flash.

Chris Mason announced an early alpha release of his new Btrfs filesystem, "after the last FS summit, I started working on a new filesystem that maintains checksums of all file data and metadata." He listed the following features as "mostly implemented": "extent based file storage (2^64 max file size), space efficient packing of small files, space efficient indexed directories, dynamic inode allocation, writable snapshots, subvolumes (separate internal filesystem roots), checksums on data and metadata (multiple algorithms available), very fast offline filesystem check". He listed the following features as yet to be implemented: "object level mirroring and striping, strong integration with device mapper for multiple device support, online filesystem check, efficient incremental backup and FS mirroring".

There are financial programs for Linux, but none of them have achieved the incredible mindshare of Quicken. Now, Intuit has decided to give Linux a try with its release on June 13 of QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions—Intuit's financial and business management software for mid-market companies.

The OpenOffice.org community yesterday released a bugfix and security update of the latest OO.org release and dubbed it version 2.2.1. No new features have been added since version 2.2 was released in late March, a team spokesperson said in the release announcement.

I find myself not browsing the Web as much as I used to, thanks to Liferea, a Linux-based aggregator for online news feeds.

Hot on the heels of Apple's announcement of Safari for Windows, Clint Ecker has published a short discussion with Lars Knoll, one of the original coders behind KHTML. The article focuses on the connection between KHTML and Apple's Webkit, and in turn shows how Apple's announcement of Safari for Windows can benefit KDE and Qt. Safari on Windows will help KDE in two additional ways: improved website compatibility as more coders can now check site rendering when on Windows; and mindshare for KDE technologies for cross platform applications.

Microsoft's standards format has been misunderstood and being "pro Open XML" doesn't make one "anti ODF", claims Australian activist Rick Jelliffe.

[Seems to me like arguing for 2 standards leaves us right where we started - having to convert the freaking documents, when we could have one standard that everyone uses!!! That's not anti-Microsoft; it's pro-users - dcparris]