Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

The power of free software is being put to best use in Africa with localised Linux operating systems such as Wazobia in Nigeria gaining in popularity.

The UK's Open Source Consortium has joined criticism of UK government education policy towards open source software, maintaining that the British Education Communications and Technology Agency 'pays lip service' to open source while effectively excluding it from purchasing frameworks.

I have an impressive talent for buying laptop computers hostile to Linux. Right now I'm using a Sony Vaio VGN-FS840/W, with more proprietary drivers than you can shake a stick at. It's so bad that even a retail edition of Windows XP won't run on it; you need the OEM Windows (and sure enough, Sony is too cheap to include the CD), or you need to go to the Sony support site, download all of the drivers, and make your own supplement CD.

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Dolphin, an alternative file manager, is imported into KDE SVN. Work on session management in Kontact becomes visible with the implementation of state remembering for tabs in aKregator. Mailody gets a better SMTP implementation, with authentication support. Many functionality improvements in Okular. An experimental generic API for integration of more online music store services (following the example of the Magnatune implementation) is proposed and developed in Amarok. Continued speed and memory optimisations in KOffice and KDE 4 (via. kdelibs).

The latest server numbers are in and Gartner and IDC agree on giving IBM pride of place. Gartner says worldwide server shipments grew 9% year-over-year to just over two million units with revenues up 4% in Q3 to $13 billion. IDC puts the revenue number at $12.9 billion, up 3.5%, calling it the fastest growth rate in four quarters and the largest Q3 outlay for servers since 2000.

According to a new Forrester study, open source databases are increasingly beating their proprietary cousins when it comes to low end applications. For databases less that 200GB, talking to technewsworld.com senior Forrester analyst Noel Yuhanna says that: "Eighty percent of the applications typically use only 30 percent of the features found in commercial databases." Open source databases already deliver these features.

VoIP provider Vonage is deploying an open source database from EnterpriseDB, complementing its existing Oracle and MySQL databases. Vonage has already ported part of its ticketing system for managing customer support from MySQL to EnterpriseDB Advanced Server, says Tim Smith, president of Vonage Network. The software is running on T1000 and T2000 servers from Sun Microsystems using the OpenSolaris operating system — so far without any problems.

Red Hat said strategic members of its ecosystem of independent software vendors (ISVs) are already supporting and testing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Beta 2 to prepare for the company's next major subscription milestone. These software partners have begun testing to ensure early certification of their solutions at general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 this winter and to guarantee that customers can benefit from the new technologies and cost-savings as quickly as possible.

Web site dispenses how-to's about OS

A freelance programmer who ordered a Dell laptop last month was able to receive a refund after he declined to accept the Windows license agreement. According to the Microsoft agreement, users are able to get a refund for unused products on the computer if they contact Dell. Dave Mitchell, the person who was able to get the refund, stated that he knew other members of the open source community who tried to get refunds in the same manner.

The sixth edition of the FOSS.in - the Free and Open Source Software event got off to a start here today. This three-day event brings together Linux developers from India and abroad and features discussions and sessions on the latest technologies, ranging from Kernel-programming and embedded systems to desktop environments and localisation to Databases and web applications.

Novell’s decision to go to great lengths to circumvent the patent framework clearly articulated in the GPL has sent shockwaves through the community. If you are an OpenSUSE developer who is concerned about the long term consequences of this pact, you may be interested in some of the events happening next week as part of the Ubuntu Open Week.

The founding principles of the free and open source software (FOSS) movement were invoked at the inauguration of the community's annual three-day conference FOSS.in, which began at the National Science Seminar Centre, Indian Institute of Science, here on Friday. This is the sixth edition of the event and for the first time an Indian FOSS developer, Suparna Bhattacharya, delivered the inaugural keynote address.

Open Country, a next-generation systems management software company, announced the debut of OCM Webmin Plus, an enhanced release of the Webmin open source IT system administration tool. OCM Webmin Plus, developed in partnership with Webmin creator Jamie Cameron, is the first open source product from Open Country, providing a new, low-cost way to easily manage Linux computing environments.

IBM unveiled new service offerings to help ease adoption of Linux and grid computing technologies. Big Blue said its new Implementation Services for Linux and Grid and Grow Express Implementation are based on a new IBM Research-designed automated Web-based tool that can significantly reduce implementation time and expense.

Tensions are already high over Novell's patent agreement with Microsoft, but Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth's invitation to openSUSE developers "concerned about the long term consequences" has kicked the tension up a notch.

“That was fast!” said one acquaintance on learning that the first openSUSE 10.2 release candidate put in its appearance on Thanksgiving afternoon not three weeks after beta 2 arrived. The release is currently available for downloading via both ftp and BitTorrent.

System builders considering a Linux desktop are faced with a dizzying array of choices. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of Linux distributions to choose from. Narrowing the field of contenders basically comes down to what works best for both the system builder and its customers.

SOA (service oriented architecture) is a big deal, I like it. But it isn't the be all and end all of computing. Here are ten things you need to know about SOA.