Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

GIMP logo The GIMP development team has released version 2.7.4 of its open source GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) image editing software. Aimed at developers, testers and early adopters, the fourth point update to the 2.7.x branch is an unstable development snapshot that fixes bugs found in the previous release and includes changes to the user interface.

There will continue to be discussions and debates about Linux on the desktop, including popularity, vitality, usability, commercial connections and more, which is good for users and vendors. However, based on trends in cloud, mobile and consumer computing, Linux should and will move to these areas, leaving its longstanding low use on the desktop as it is.

I somehow never discovered the existence of Scribes until recently. I thought I had tried every word processor and text editor that existed in Linux. But my experiences in using Scribes the last few weeks to enter research notes and create writing drafts has convinced me of its power and usefulness.

Standards icon IT authorities from Germany and Switzerland have announced that they are working together, under the auspices of the Open Source Business Alliance, to improve the way that LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org display and process OOXML-formatted documents. The authorities involved include the IT groups from the cities of Munich, Jena and Freiburg im Breisgau, the Swiss canton of Waadt, the Swiss Federal Court and the Schweizer Informatikstrategie Bund (Swiss IT Federation) whose representatives met at a workshop in Zurich in October to launch the "Precise reproduction of OOXML documents in Open Source Office applications" project. Slides for the workshop provide more details of what was discussed.

Changes to the memory subsystem promise improved response times and performance. From Linux 3.2, device-mapper supports thin provisioning and is able to use this ability for improved snapshot functionality.

LinuxSecurity.com: Using password guessing as an attack vector. Over the years we've been taught a strong password must be long and complex to be considered secure. Some of us have taken that notion to heart and always ensure our passwords are strong. But some don't give a second thought to the complexity or length of our password.

On August 15, LinuxCon celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the Linux kernel with a Roaring Twenties party, complete with swing bands and tuxedos and flapper costumes. The milestone was one that conference attendees were happy to celebrate, despite the obvious embarrassment of Linus Torvalds himself. Unfortunately, 2011 as a whole didn't measure up to those few hours of partying. In fact, whether you are looking at business, the community, or the technology, for free and open source software (FOSS), 2011 was in many ways a disappointing year

In the days of yore we had a System V (SysV) type init daemon to manage Linux system startup, and it was good. It was configured with simple text files easily understood by mortals, and it was a friendly constant amid the roiling seas of change. Then came systemd, and once again we Linux users were cast adrift in uncharted waters. Why all this change? Can't Linux hold still for just a minute?

Novell and SUSE Linux may technically be separate companies, but they are owned by the same Attachmate conglomerate and they still have to work together on specific products, such as Open Enterprise Server, which bolts NetWare print and file services to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

LXer Feature: 12-Dec-2011

In this week's Roundup we have another dagger in the heart of the desktop proclaimed, the Mozilla - Google deal still lives, a cool developerWorks article on shells in Linux, HP to contribute webOS to FOSS, Glyn moody and the Open Source TCO as well as the late addition of a LXer Feature entitled "Gnome 3, Try 3". Enjoy!

LXer Feature: 11-Dec-2011

I just finished my third try with gnome 3. This time was the longest. I spent the month of November using it daily.

It's starting to look like the end of an era for Ubuntu users as Canonical mull the creation of an ISO that won't fit onto a CDR. The question is, does it matter? Canonical owes at least part of its success with Ubuntu Linux to the unique way that it has been distributed. From the start it has been available as a downloadable ISO image and a free CD, posted at no cost to the user. This was great news for people who wanted to install Linux but did not have the luxury of a decent Internet connection. In a sense, installing via a CDR image has always been like a kind of cache, in that you're moving part of the content that you need onto permanent storage rather than pulling it through the network connection.

Most, but not all, open-source apps are being welcomed by Microsoft into the Windows 8 Windows Store. The Store’s App Developer Agreement (here) allows developers to build their apps for download and installation on Windows 8 machines using any open-source licence as long as it has been approved by the Open-Source Initiative (OSI). The OSI is the body that monitors all open-source licences.

On the Linux Planet, success begets more success. Linux revenue continues to rise, which continues to fuel more demand for Linux and more development. This past week, the first alpha release of Ubuntu 12.04 debuted, and GNOME developers came to the conclusion that every detail matters.

LXer Feature: 05-Dec-2011

In the LXWR this week we have the news of a secret application on millions of smart phones that logs everything you do, Cloud predictions for 2012, Continued debate over Distrowatch rankings, R.C. Harner responds to Lisa Hann's "Disadvantages of Using Linux." article and Linus says he is actually starting to like Gnome 3. Enjoy!

Over the last four years or so, I have attended numerous conferences in many different locations. It has been, really without any exceptions, an incredible experience. Conferences are one of the main ways that our communities come together and meet face-to-face—something that's important to counterbalance the standard email and IRC development environment. In that time, I have also seen many different ways to organize, schedule, and produce those conferences, and, as is the case with free software projects, there are bits and pieces that conferences can learn from each other. What follows is my—fairly opinionated obviously—distillation of what works well and less well, which will hopefully be useful as new conferences spring up, or as existing ones plan for next year.

The Apache Software Foundation has come under withering attacks lately, with accusations of its politics and bureaucracy getting in the way of its ability to foster open-source software. The common rallying cry of the Apache attackers is GitHub, a source-control system that has almost blossomed overnight into the industry's top open-source code repository. But while GitHub clearly does offer a superior code-hosting alternative to Apache and other foundations in many respects, it is deficient in one of the most important ways: branding.

This is perhaps the easiest authentication helper to configure in Squid, but also the most insecure. The biggest problem with Basic is it transmits username and password in clear text, hence very susceptible to network sniffing or man in the middle type attacks. The only reason I'm writing about it is it's a valid authentication mechanism in some limited circumstances. Secondly I want to show you how authentication has evolved over the years.

The votes are in, the tallies are counted, the hanging chads have been evaluated, and we have our winners. This year holds a few surprises, a couple dominant players and as much open source as you can handle. We don't encourage gambling here at Linux Journal, but if you had an office pool going for pizza money, it's officially too late to make your wager.

Over the last couple of years the KDE Mobile project has been evolving as it targeted many embedded platforms. Currently, the focus is on the shiny Nokia gadgets (N9 and N950) running the platform called Harmattan. Eleven talented developers met in person at a recent KDE Sprint, giving a boost to porting KDE Applications onto this platform, creating new working relationships, and discussing various issues around the KDE Mobile project for handsets.