Showing headlines posted by dave

In a bid to make greater use of the open-source community, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration has submitted an open-source licensing agreement to the Open Source Initiative. If approved, the NASA (news - web sites) Open Source Agreement will require developers using NASA code to share modifications with NASA and the open-source community.

DeviceLogics is shipping a DR-DOS based Linux loader that loads the Linux kernel while preserving DR-DOS in memory so that, upon Linux session completion, the system returns to DR-DOS. "DRLX" targets companies migrating embedded systems from DOS to Linux, as well as single-board computer OEMs wishing to simplify Linux installation.

The Training Camp Designated as First LPI-US Approved Training Partner

...real-time performance is a key requirement for embedded systems, along with ability to run on inexpensive hardware. Reliability and high performance under high load are additional considerations, as is graceful crash recovery, he says. Linux meets most of these requirements...

Just a reminder for people. The following products have adjusted support at the noted dates:

Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) announced its latest "OMAP" processor, a multi-core ARM + DSP. TI says the OMAP5912 processor is optimized for portable data terminal (PDT) applications requiring high-performance signal processing capabilities as well as high-level application support via multiple operating systems.

The Linux Professional Institute's United States Affiliate (LPI-US) has announced that The Training Camp has been approved to receive designation as a LPI-US Approved Training Partner (LATP).

This article describes a project to develop a free, open, alternative Linux distribution for the Terapin Mine, a small portable device that can function as a USB hard drive, MP3 player, or photo slide show viewer.

Brian Behlendorf, who co-founded the Apache Web-server project, says he never considered founding a commercial busines based on the open-source code.

More companies are implementing the Linux operating system and other open-source software because it can be used without incurring licence fees. Forrester Research reports that 14% of US companies recently interviewed have implemented Linux in some parts of their business, and 70% plan to use it more in the future.

Embedded RISC core vendor ARM says Linux 2.6 and the GNU tools now support the ARMv6 Instruction Set Architecture (ISA). ARMv6 patches were accepted from ARM kernel legend Russell King into the 2.6.0-test4 release, and ARM has worked to bring ARMv6 support to the GNU GCC tool chain as well.

SIPfoundry, a Massachusetts-based non-profit organization for the development of open source Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based VoIP communication solutions, today announced its incorporation, the formation of its board of directors and availability of its web site: http://www.SIPfoundry.org. SIPfoundry will be the industry's premier open source community focused on Internet Protocol (IP) telephony, messaging, presence and collaboration and has already received the backing of leading SIP-based open source projects. SIPfoundry's governance structure ensures the organization's autonomy with its activities defined and administered by an independent, elected board of directors from throughout the industry.

Usually, as Senior Editor of LinuxWorld Magazine, I restrict my potshots to complaining about how much work is left to make Linux a usuable desktop OS, or heckling SCO and Microsoft. But it's a little-known fact that I have an secret identity as a Java developer. So, for a change, I thought I'd take a potshot at Java.

So far, it's been a banner year for MandrakeSoft, makers of Mandrakelinux. In January, they announced a return to profitability, followed by a return to the stock market in mid-March. Sandwiched between these two significant business events, MandrakeSoft released Mandrakelinux 10.0 Community, an early-adopter's release of Mandrakelinux 10.0 Official, due out in May. Even though it's only a public beta, the newest Mandrakelinux is definitely worth the download, some rough edges notwithstanding. Here's why I think so.

MontaVista is launching an initiative to help hardware vendors create and "self-certify" their own board support packages (BSPs) for MontaVista's embedded Linux distributions. The initiative revolves around a tool, expected within 90 days, that can test, verify, package, and certify BSPs that MontaVista will support according to the same terms it offers on internally created BSPs -- or "LSPs" (Linux Support Packages), in MontaVista lingo.

EQware Engineering is marketing a general-purpose Linux-based PCI board with two Motorola G4 PPC processors that can be used as a co-processor card on an active motherboard, or as a blade server in a passive PCI backplane. The G4Card targets scientific and medical research, high-speed datacomm, or sophisticated signal acquisition and signal processing applications.

Conditional probability -- the probability of observing one event as a result of having observed another event -- is a potentially important factor in designing intelligent Web applications. Paul Meagher introduces Bayesian inference by discussing the basic mathematical concepts involved and demonstrating how to implement the underlying conditional probability calculations using PHP. In this article, the author discusses how Bayesian inference can be used to build an online PHP-based wizard that guides a user through the process making a medical diagnosis. This three-part series features interesting applications designed to help you appreciate the power and potential of Bayesian inference concepts.

Is it possible that, despite all the hype, open source is not necessarily the best way to develop software? That it's not about to take over the software industry, and that it's no more a threat to Microsoft than were Netscape, the Macintosh or Word Perfect? A report released today by the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) reveals why it's absolutely possible.

Crashes, viruses and headaches. You have had it with Windows and you want to switch to Linux. Where to begin? How do you save your documents? Will my hardware work?

Something I've been promising for a couple of months has been a comparison of Linux kernels 2.6 and 2.4. The 2.6 series has been available for awhile now but the development has been going at a very rapid pace. It seemed everytime I'd be half-way through my benchmarks, a new version would be released. In a desire to stay as current as possible, I held off until now. We'll be taking a look at versions 2.6.4 and 2.4.25 in a variety of benchmarks; both server and workstation-oriented.