Showing headlines posted by Steven_Rosenber

I'm always on the lookout for ultra-small PCs that are also a) fanless and b) not super-expensive. I've found a good candidate, via this link on Linux Devices, called the PicoPC, from Devon, England's Sharp and Tappin Technology. They use the pico-ITX boards from VIA, and they look great, are really small ... and don't cost an arm and a leg. Well, maybe an arm, but you can keep (at least half of) your leg.

Over the past few days several of you have suggested that I take a look at the new KDE 4 for Windows. Well, yesterday I downloaded the installer and took a look - and I’m pretty impressed by what I’ve seen so far. KDE stands for K Desktop Environment and this is free software that provides an easy to use and application rich desktop environment. KDE’s origins are rooted in Linux but the latest release brings with it support for both Windows and Mac.

And so it begins. One challenge Dell has had over time is getting the right lists of hardware included in the right Linux packages. Today's example - monitors. Dell, over the years, has by my count sold 197 different monitor types, and releases several more each month. We'd like to see those monitors appear in the drop-down list of your favorite Linux monitor configuration tools.

That crazy penguin is making some huge strides toward the mainstream, because Dell has announced that they will be preloading the Linux-based Ubuntu 7.10 OS in their new XPS 1330n notebook computer. From what I can gather, this unit is similar in many ways to the Windows-based XPS m1330, with the obvious difference of the operating system.

For years, the poster child of the anti-open source movement was Microsoft, with its proprietary software model. In recent years, however, the company has changed its views, opening an open source software lab to work on interoperability issues. It's even become a purveyor of its own open source-approved licenses.

KDE isn't just for Linux anymore. With the recent release of KDE 4, the K Desktop team has set their focus on porting the core libraries that power KDE applications over to both Windows and OS X. Although still in the early stages, there are already builds available for both platforms that will enable you to compile and run popular KDE application like the Amarok Jukebox or KOffice suite on either Windows or Mac, and KDE's goal is to have production-ready versions out later this year.

Canonical Chief Executive Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Ubuntu version of Linux, called Tuesday's interest-rate cut the "most extraordinary failure of economic leadership in recent years."

A while ago Roy Russo had made a comment to the effect: "OSS needs to stop competing on price". Regardless what you read about him on the Interweb, I say, he's a smart guy! ;-) I've never really looked at the price of Windows vs. RHEL or Ubuntu. The simple answer is that CentOS/Fedora (near RHEL replacements) and Ubuntu are free without commercial support, so end of discussion. But, if you want commercial support and consider a typical Windows replacement cycle (~5 years), it seems that Windows is actually cheaper than purchasing RHEL+support or support for Ubuntu.

Linux is not just for computer whizzes. In fact, buying Linux and learning how to use it are easier than ever, thanks to the open-source operating system's expanding presence in affordable computers and mainstream retail outlets. In quick succession, the number of mass-market, sub-$200 desktops has tripled--from one to three--in less than three months.

In the next three days, every Linux or Unix people will start the thirty years of countdown before the unix timestamps overflows. This bug is called Y2K38 and it affects all unix-like operating system which represent system time as the number of seconds since January 1, 1970.

new world from the old one, even though it is glaringly obvious once you’ve crossed over. Empirical evidence is one way to bridge the gap. To that end, I want to show some solid evidence for the “impossible” things that commons-based peer production (CBPP) has already accomplished—things that the old conventional wisdom would tell us “can’t be done”. This week, I’ll look at what is probably the most obvious case: free software.

While Slackware isn't as hard to use as some would lead you to thing, it is different enough from Ubuntu, Debian and Red Hat that a how-to is in no way a bad thing. In fact, a lot of things are easier in Slackware than in other distros because Slack's command-line tools do more of the work for you than many Slackware users would have you believe. (I love xwmconfig, netconfig and pkgtool and wonder why Debian doesn't have similar utilities ... although apt probably makes up for all other omissions.) Still, if there were any up-to-date books on running Slackware, I'd be the first in line to buy one or all of them. Alas, there's nothing out there.

I half-expected today's massive Debian Lenny update to solve my Nautilus-crashes-when-I-try-to-get-the-properties-of-a-file bug. It did not, but I'm not disappointed. I went back to the original bug report, which was filed with GNOME, not Debian, but is clearly a Debian-only bug. I saw the "solution," but didn't understand it until now. I still don't know how to actually "do" the solution, and for now I'm content to let it ride and see if Debian Testing catches up.

How Distrowatch's Ladislav Bodner does what he does is a complete mystery to me. Like LXer, the organization, leanness and general programming genius behind the Web site itself makes Distrowatch an invaluable resource not just for what's currently happening with just about every version of Linux and BSD, but also for the packages and people that go into making up the many hundreds of operating-system software distributions that Distrowatch tracks on a daily basis.

The latest entry into the Linux-powered low-cost PC space is a Sears/Linspire box that features the Freespire version of the propretary-friendly operating system, with specs that seem to beat the $199 Everex PC featuring the gOS version of Linux and selling through Wal-Mart.

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS -- the distribution's first "long term support" release -- now has a new installer that incorporates some 600 bug and security fixes and makes installation easier, especially on servers. It's no secret that Canonical, the company that runs Ubuntu, is making a big play both for the desktop and more-lucrative server markets, and a big part of that play is the LTS release.

My lack of enthusiasm for the gOS Linux distribution notwithstanding, the Everex Cloudbook -- a light, small and relatively cheap laptop running the aforementioned gOS -- is coming to a Wal-Mart near you on Jan. 25. It sure looks nice. Main competition? The ASUS EeePc. WARNING: don't click on this last link unless you enjoy annoying Flash-heavy trainwrecks). If you value not being annoyed by Flash, just go to Amazon, which is selling the ASUS for $399.

I've been looking into getting a dumb terminal. I've seen quite a few used ones. I don't want to pay much, but I do want it to work. US Computer Exchange has a quite few that fit the bill, but I have no idea whether the keyboard is included, or what exactly I'd be getting. Ideally, I'd like to find a working DEC terminal, or even an old adm3a (hopefully one with lower case ... yep, they made them with upper-case only), even though they were dying when I first used them in the 1980s. I can only imagine what shape they're in 20 years later. Ideally, I'd like to spend no more than $25.

I knew that Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 had Gslapt -- the graphical front end to the get-slapt package manager for Slackware -- but for some reason I had no idea that it would be useful for updates. But commenter Morten Juhl-Johansen Zölde-Fejér gently told me that Wolvix's get-slapt/Gslapt indeed points to a Slackware 11 mirror, as well as Wolvix's own repository. So I opened up Gslapt, updated and upgraded. I didn't add anything, so I can't vouch for get-slapt/Gslapt's ability to satisfy dependencies, but the upgrade went perfectly, and now I've got a fully up-to-date Wolvix distribution.

I haven't linked to Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of Desktoplinux.com in awhile, and he had a great opinion piece today about the $150 PCLinuxOS box and other cheap computer solutions called "How low can you go and still run Linux?" He does a good job of going through the distributions and recommending many low-spec software solutions for hardware of less than current vintage. He mentions many of my favorites, including Damn Small Linux, AntiX (which I haven't tried in awhile ...), Zenwalk, plus another I really should try: the PCLinuxOS "Mini-Me" spin.