Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Embedded Linux specialist TimeSys Corp. has a new CEO. Larry Weidmen has resigned as President/CEO, in order to pursue other interests, and TimeSys boardmember Joseph Raffa (pictured), a semiconductor industry veteran, has been appointed acting CEO by the company's board of directors, according to the company.

Art production in an open source environment is more of a challenge than most people think. I know this from my experience in the Ubuntu interface design project in past few years. It has become clear to me that it is impossible to produce high quality visual content in an environment that is lacking coordination. That insight prompted me to investigate other models that could be adopted and used in the open source context. I found the commercial agency to be one of the most efficient and productive models that I can recommend for adaptation, thanks to one single factor -- art direction. Art direction assures the unity and consistency that are the main characteristics of professional artwork.

The 20th Large Installation System Administration (LISA) conference continued Wednesday with the LISA award ceremony, a keynote by none other than Cory Doctorow, noted sci-fi author, former Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) employee, and consumer privacy advocate, and a slew of technical sessions.

Gaël Duval already has a place in the history of free software as the creator of the Mandrake distribution and the co-founder of MandrakeSoft (now Mandriva). After being dismissed last March from Mandriva, Duval plans to make his mark a second time with Ulteo, a new distribution designed to simply computing by taking administration out of users' hands. With the alpha version of Ulteo released this week after six months of secrecy, Duval talked to Linux.com about his plans.

Organizations sometimes avoid adopting project management standards because they fail to recognize their practical application or fear unnecessary overhead -- until it becomes painfully clear that standardization is necessary. However, you can create an environment that makes following standards easier than not. Here are some practical tasks that will make it easier for you to adopt a project management methodology and deliver quality products and services.

According to research carried out by French firm Xiti Monitor, use of the Firefox browser continues to grow in Europe. Since April this year, the geeky alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer gained an extra four percent of the market across the continent.

It's been nearly a year since the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the "vulnerability discovery and remediation open source hardening project," a $1.24 million, three-year grant through its research and development arm, the Directorate for Science and Technology. Now, the security project is entering its research phase.

While Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project has garnered a tremendous amount of support worldwide, it has also become a lightning rod for critics who have questioned the viability of its long-term success and impact. As the OLPC receives its first shipment of laptops and continues to formalize agreements with developing countries, the cost of individual laptops hover at about $130. Critics, however, suggest that the "true cost" may be several times that amount.

Some smartphone users are pretty adept at moving their thumbs at seemingly supersonic speeds to write SMS and e-mail messages with a traditional keypad when a QWERTY keyboard isn't present. Most of us tire quickly and would like to find a better way, however.

Sooner than anyone expected it, Novell Inc.'s openSUSE community Linux distribution project has delivered a new version: openSUSE 10.2. As a dyed-in-the-wool SUSE user since S.u.S.E Linux 4.2 first appeared in 1996, I decided to immediately give this version a try.

The Mozilla Foundation has agreed to make changes to its development and distribution processes in order to better accommodate the needs of Linux distributors. The foundation says it will work directly with representatives of all interested Linux distributions to manage patches, create distro-specific packages, and make collective decisions on policy.

Bugreport for December 8, 2006

Continuent, commercial open source middleware solutions provider, announced general availability of an updated version of its Continuent uni/cluster software. This new uni/cluster version includes among other things a new management and configuration tool. Continuent uni/cluster for PostgreSQL also now supports new PostgreSQL 8.2.

Open source code is now used by over 70 per cent of software developers in Asia, according to a new report. The number of developers using open source in the region has surged more than 40 per cent in just three years, Evans Data Corporation revealed in a recent survey of software engineers.

OS X is more appealing to enterprises as a desktop operating system than ever before and although it is unlikely to take market share away from Windows, the Mac could reduce the number of Linux-based desktops, according to research group Gartner.

Microsoft has challenged an altruistic scheme to get pared-down computers into the laps of African school children by preparing its own software for sale on the machine.

Open source provider Red Hat announced Satyam, an IT service provider, has joined its Advanced Business Partner Program and plans to open a Center of Excellence (CoE) and open source lab in Bangalore for developing horizontal competencies and business solutions on Red Hat and JBoss platforms.

LiveCDs provide a quick and easy way to get started with Linux. If you're not already familiar with them, LiveCD distributions (such as Knoppix) are nifty CDs that can run Linux from the CD-ROM drive without installing anything. It's as simple as popping in the CD and starting up the machine. This neat technology not only lets you get acquainted with Linux; it also offers system administrators a back door method of accessing files on the hard drives of compromised machines – and this even works with Windows boxes.

There are many things about GNU/Linux which merit complaint. But it is extremely doubtful whether anyone can find anything to complain about with regards to the versatile nature of the operating system.

Enea plans to market a small-footprint TCP/IP stack add-on for OSEck, its compact RTOS (real-time operating system) for DSPs (digital signal processors). The "DSPNet" stack should enable DSP farms running OSEck to connect via gigabit Ethernet to heterogenous, distributed systems running Linux and other OSes, according to the company.