Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

When Gnome Shell was first becoming available over a year ago, we took a look at it to see what the foundation was like, and to see what direction the Gnome desktop was likely to go. At the time, we liked it, though it was clearly a “rough draft” of what it could eventually become. Since then, time has gone by, and while Ubuntu may have decided to go with Unity instead, others have taken Gnome Shell up to the next level. Fedora, among others, will be putting it front and center in future releases. Today we’re going to take a look at one of the most recent builds available to see what this slick desktop environment has got to offer.

Summary: This series of articles explores how to use Python to create scripts for the GNOME desktop, the screenlets framework, and Nautilus to deliver a highly productive environment. Scripts on the desktop enable drag-and-drop functionality and quick access to the information and services you commonly use. In this installment, learn how to use Python to add functionality to extend Nautilus on your desktop.

In real estate it's about location. In storage it's about capacity. The next crop of high density drives are available but there are some gotchas related to some 3TB drives that you need to know before making a land grab.

For legacy reasons we standardized our environment on Ubuntu Server. Generally when a new Ubuntu LTS release comes out, we, like many others, start deploying any new installations on the new release while we start planning upgrades for our most out-of-date servers. When 10.04 (lucid) was released, we already had everything up to 8.04 (hardy), so it it wouldn't be terribly painful to bring everything up to the newer release. At least that was our thinking, but when we installed our first 10.04 server, we got a surprise.

You have something to say, but you’re only allotted several minutes and the presentation slides automatically change as you speak. Think you can do it? UpSCALE talks, held in the style of the Ignite presentations made popular by various O'Reilly-sponsored events, allow the six scheduled participants five minutes to speak on a topic, accompanied by 20 automatically-advanced slides provided by each speaker. This makes UpSCALE a fast-paced, fun event for participants and audience.

Two weeks ago we took a peek at the 3D studio Blender's revamped user interface and found a lot to like. Still, that doesn't make it the kind of application you can fire up and run away with your first time through. It is clear that talented artists can get amazing results out of Blender — just look at the Sintel animated featurette for the latest example — but what are we mere mortals to do? Let's take a look at the best places to dive in, and at what resources you'll need to shorten the learning curve.

With so many new devices -- with so many new interfaces -- coming out all the time, is your desktop starting to seem a little, well...boring? Are you frustrated by how slow and buggy Windows is? Are you tired of winter weather and wish that something – anything – would change? If so, this list is for you.

Mozilla has published an updated roadmap in which it lays out its plans for 2011. The organization hopes to significantly shorten its release cycle and deliver a total of four major releases during 2011, cranking the browser up to version 7 by the end of the year.

Oracle loves open-source projects and technologies – it's just not crazy about other people running them. Now, Oracle has a growing reason to dislike the projects themselves and it's got everything to do with the two things Oracle values most: money and control. Oracle has said that customers are picking the former Sun Microsystems' open-source GlassFish Java application server as an alternative to IBM's WebSphere and Red Hat's JBoss app servers. This means that those moving to GlassFish are not taking out an Oracle license for WebLogic, Oracle's flagship application server that they bought with BEA Systems in 2008 for $8.5bn. Oracle picked up GlassFish with a grab bag of other software – including Java – from Sun for $5.6bn.

The Sendmail mail transfer agent tends to be one of those programs that one either loves or hates. Both its supporters and its detractors will agree, though, that Sendmail played a crucial role in the development of electronic mail before, during, and after the explosion of the Internet. Sendmail creator Eric Allman took a trip to Brisbane to talk to the LCA 2011 about the history of this project. Sendmail is, he said, 30 years old now; in those three decades it has thrived without corporate support, changed the world, and thrived in a world which was changing rapidly around it.

Yesterday Juliet Kemp showed us how to perform basic server tests with telnet. Today Carla Schroder shows how to test TLS/SSL-enabled POP3 and IMAP servers.

Many large projects mark their significant releases with launch parties. Some become legend for their over-the-top festivities. Photos populate the share sites. Blogs are written for weeks following. But openSUSE has come up with a uniquely Gecko idea: a Secondlife.com virtual dance party.

The first Alpha release of Mandriva 2011 is now available along with the first alpha release of its newest offspring, Mageia Linux. This is the first-ever ISO release of Mageia Linux since this free software project was formed last year by many Mandriva developers after the uncertain future of Mandriva's parent company. The Mandriva 2011 Alpha 1 release carries the Linux 2.6.37 kernel, RPM 5.3.8, NetworkManager 0.8.2, KDE Software Compilation 4.6.0, GNOME 2.32.1, Xfce 4.8.0, GCC 4.5.2, Chromium browser, Firefox 4 Beta 11, Wine 1.3.13, and many other updated applications.

Who has two thumbs and isn't at all surprised at Nokia throwing MeeGo under the bus? This guy. The Nokia partnership with Microsoft is appalling and bad news for MeeGo, but not a surprise at all. What comes next? That's up to Intel.

HTML5 won't be finished for another three years, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has warned. On Monday, the standards body said that it has extended the charter of its group hammering out HTML5, with plans to advance the proposed spec to last-call status in May. Then we wait – for three years.

A Qt loyalist reckons that his cross-platform app and UI framework has got a bright future, even though Nokia has swallowed Microsoft's Windows Phone. Qt ecosystem director Daniel Kihlberg, responsible for Qt sales, marketing, and services, has blogged that Qt "will continue to play and important role in Nokia".

A Scribus document consists of a series of objects that are added to a page, and contained within a frame. In addition to the usual cut, copy, and paste functions available in most applications, frames in Scribus share a general set of editing attributes and, so far as possible, the same set of properties.

Mike Beltzner – the man who oversees development of Mozilla's Firefox browser – will leave the organization after the release of Firefox 4, the latest version of the browser due for official release later this quarter. Beltzner joined Mozilla six years ago from IBM Canada and worked on six major Firefox upgrades, beginning with Firefox 1.5. "I’ve been getting antsy for the past few months, as some people may have noticed," Beltzner wrote on his personal blog, "and have decided that it’s time to challenge myself by jumping into an industry about which I know next to nothing."

The venerable telnet is still a useful tool in the server administrator's toolkit. Juliet Kemp shows how to test basic SMTP, IMAP, HTTP, and IRC server functions with telnet.

The MPEG standards body – not to be confused with the MPEG LA patent-pool organization – has announced plans for its own royalty-free codec. At its annual meeting in March, the organization will begin accepting proposals for a new video-compression technology designed to provide better performance than MPEG-2 under a royalty-free ISO/IEC Type-1 license.