Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

"Open" is a word too important to apply merely to source code. Although open source code is important to free and unfettered computing, openness encompasses far more components of a computing system. Adrien Lamothe explores other degrees of openness and their implications.

Oracle's decision to trigger a Linux turf war has thus far produced the exact results Larry Ellison desired. Red Hat investors freaked out, and Red Hat customers gained a new avenue for putting pricing pressure on their Linux supplier. Despite such concrete turns in the Linux market, Oracle's support plan continues to be more bluster than muster, according to Mark Shuttleworth, whose company Canonical oversees Ubuntu Linux.

As hard drive capacities outstripped CDs and DVDs, hard-drive based backups became necessary. (I know y’all tape backup fans are still out there. You may have your cumbersome, slow, unwieldy, mechanically clunky tape backups with their even slower, more cumbersome restores. Kthxbye). For my clients I am very diligent and make sure they are well-protected. But for me- well, you know how it goes.

Red Hat today announced at the 2nd Annual Red Hat Government User Conference that it has partnered with Tresys Technology to enhance the services backing Security-Enhanced Linux-based Red Hat Enterprise Linux and has enhanced its security evaluation program, reinforcing its commitment to IT security for public sector customers.

Performance Improvements and Support for Windows Forms Makes the Latest Version of Mono a Powerful Framework for Hosting .NET Applications on Linux and an Important Milestone Toward Compatibility With the .NET Framework 2.0

Security and Stability updates for Mozilla products based on the Gecko 1.8 branch have been released. Firefox 1.5.0.x will be maintained with security and stability updates until April 2007. All users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to Firefox 2.

NVIDIA has just released two new drivers for Linux, BSD, and Solaris.

With proprietary software packages costing a lot (most come from international giants in the field), home PC users and even small businesses cannot easily afford them. Or keep upgrading their software as new versions are released. An answer to them comes in the form of an IT event, FOSS.IN, to be held here from November 23 to 25. The abbreviation stands for Free and Open Source Software, licensed freely for users to study, change, and modify its design for their individual requirements because the source code is easily available unlike most other software.

Seamonkey 1.0.6, a security and stability update for the all-in-one Internet Suite has been released. The Seamonkey 1.0.6 Release Notes have more information. SeaMonkey 1.1 Beta, a version aimed at developers and testers has also been released. New features include tab previews, spell check, an e-mail tagging system, an improved Linux startup script, better new mail notifications and an updated Chatzilla IRC client.

KnowledgeTree, the Cape Town-based open source document management system, released a a technology preview of their upcoming version 3.3. The new version has significant user interface enhancements for easier use.

One of the IT vendors with a particularly active and creative marketing department is Oracle. This means that while the company is undoubtedly doing a lot of good stuff, it is sometimes difficult to tell what's real among all the positively spun positioning. An area in which the Oracle messaging machine has been in overdrive is the coming together of its various existing application product lines. The idea is to combine the best bits from the Peoplesoft, JD Edwards, Siebel and the original Oracle E-Business Suite applications to create a single product line known as Oracle Fusion Applications.

For a number of weeks now, I’ve been pondering exactly who chooses to migrate to Linux and perhaps even more importantly, why. Seriously, what is the motivating factor when it comes to making the move to a new OS? Generally speaking, it comes down to a need for a change. Whether this stems from the need to try something new, or the fact that Vista is making people in Windows land very nervous, the fact remains that there is a relative flood of new users coming over to the Linux world hoping to find a more effective alternative to proprietary operating systems.

VMware, long an advocate of pre-packaged software appliances that can be loaded onto virtualisation software, launched a programme on Tuesday to certify and sell such virtual appliances. The move expands VMware's earlier support for virtual appliances as a good way to try software. Now its Virtual Appliance Marketplace provides a way to buy as well. The EMC subsidiary also launched a certification programme to ensure such appliances are working properly.

A Linux-based, dashboard-mounted data acquisition (DAQ) device was named "Best New International Product" at the SEMA (Specialty Equipment Market Association) tradeshow this week in Las Vegas. Drew Tech's "DashDAQ" interfaces via ODB2, displaying a rich variety of engine diagnostics information.

Virtualization, mobility and open source are among the most promising technologies for enabling companies to become more agile, but these network and IT advances still have a lot of maturing to do, according to analysts at an IT conference in Boston this week. "There are parts of [the virtualization] market that have matured…and when I say parts of this market, I mean VMware," said Rachel Chalmers, senior analyst of enterprise software at The 451 Group, a New York-based industry research and analysis firm that orchestrated the Enterprise IT Innovation Summit.

Trolltech has announced the Qt Jambi Developer Contest, which is now open to all developers following the release of the third Technology Preview (TP) of Qt Jambi. The contest is aimed at encouraging both Java and Qt programmers to try out the new features available in the Qt Jambi TP3. This third and final technology preview is built on the newly-released Qt 4.2, giving Java programmers access to powerful new Qt features like the powerful 2D graphics canvas (Qt Graphics View) and simplified application styling through Widget Stylesheets.

Wake up little SUSE, Wake up. No, that's not good enough. Wake up SUSE customers, wake up. Novell is jeopardizing the future of Linux for its own short-term rewards. If you want to see Linux flourish, let alone survive after Novell's five year deal with Microsoft expires, I suggest we make an alternative five year deal with Microsoft. In this case, our part of the deal is to spend the next five minutes, months, or years migrating away from every shred of Novell/SUSE software in our home, office, or enterprise.

Novell is not SCO. Novell is not the great anti-GPL. Get over it. I'm getting a little tired of the constant Novell-bashing. Do I think that Novell made a smart long term move by partnering up with Microsoft? No, I don't.

At the inaugural "Open Source in Mobile" conference this week in Amsterdam, Nokia's director of open source, Dr. Ari Jaaksi, compared community- versus corporate-controlled distribution and middleware development for mobile phones. Jaaksi generously agreed to share his presentation with LinuxDevices.com readers.

GreenPlum Inc has teamed up with web-development firm SitePen Inc to offer real-time data charting capabilities into a systems administration component planned for its Bizgres open source data warehousing platform later this year.