Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

If you use the open-source ATI Linux graphics driver, there's a major stable update available. At long last, xf86-video-ati 6.14.0 has been released. This open-source X.Org driver brings official support for the Radeon HD 5000 series, Radeon HD 6000 series, and AMD Fusion Ontario hardware. This release also has a plethora of bug-fixes and flips on the KMS page-flipping support.

The Pogoplug Pro is one of three plug-computer devices offered from CloudEngines. It is the only one of the three to include built-in WiFi. In all other aspects it's virtually identical to the original Pogoplug with the exception of color (black for the Pro, pink for the original). Simplicity is the theme for all Pogoplugs coupled with easy access. CloudEngines includes their My.Pogoplug.com service to provide access to your Pogoplug device from any desktop computer (Linux, Mac OS X and Windows) and a wide range of mobile devices (Android, Blackberry, iPad and iPhone ).

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the GNU Project have announced that they are now accepting nominations for this year's Free Software Awards. The annual awards recognise an individual and one project for their contributions to the progress and development of free software.

The Cr-48 is, according to Google, the "first of its kind - a notebook built and optimized for the web." It is the next step in the promotion of Chrome OS, Google's other Linux-based distribution. As a way of showing off what it has accomplished and building interest in the system, Google has distributed Cr-48 machines widely. Your editor was a lucky, if late, recipient of one of these devices; what follows are his [Cr-48] impressions after some time playing with it. The Cr-48 and Chrome OS are an interesting vision of where computing should go, even if that vision is not for everybody.

These days, Linux distros are a dime a dozen, especially in the field of the Ubuntu remix. Just about anyone thinks they can create a usable spinoff (they’re probably right) and that it’ll be wildly successful (they’re probably wrong). For this reason, we don’t often give a full writeup to an Ubuntu remix on MTE unless it offers something really unique or interesting. Pinguy isn’t exactly revolutionary, but it is among a rare breed: an Ubuntu spinoff that might actually have some real improvements over the original.

Novell reveals in an SEC filing today supplementing its proxy statement that the US Department of Justice has sent it and Microsoft a "second request" for more information regarding the proposed sale of patents to the Microsoft-organized consortium CPTN: Also on February 2, 2011, each of CPTN and Novell received a Second Request from the DOJ regarding the sale of certain identified patents and patent applications to CPTN contemplated by the Patent Purchase Agreement. The Second Requests have the effect of extending the waiting period under the HSR Act until 30 days after both parties have substantially complied with the Second Requests, unless the waiting period is earlier terminated. Novell is in the process of gathering information to respond to this Second Request and is continuing to cooperate fully with the DOJ in connection with its review.

Originally, Google's presentation yesterday at its headquarters in Mountain View, California, was expected to revolve mainly around Honeycomb, the tablet version of Android. However, the real news was about Android app's: firstly, Android Market is now also available on the web; secondly, Android users will be able to buy content from within their apps – via "in-app" purchases.

We covered FlashVideoReplacer, a video add-on for Firefox, last year, but the new 2.x series offers several improvements. We look at what the new version offers and ask the developer a few questions.

The Prism project was launched in 2007 with a primary goal of Integrating Web applications into the User’s desktop experience. The project realized this goal for some prominent applications, and many user contributed bundles have been produced which make it possible to launch popular websites directly from your desktop as separate applications in a distraction free browser window. The Prism project itself, and the ways that it has been applied, have given us deep insights into this void between traditional desktop applications and the Web.

Mozilla has announced the availability of a new Firefox Mobile 4 beta release for Android and Maemo. The new version brings significant performance improvements, further reduces the browser's installation footprint, and introduces experimental support for reflowing text after zooming.

Datasound Laboratories (DSL) announced a compact "embedded controller" based on a 300MHz DM&P Vortex86SX CPU. The Icop VSX-6117 is just 3.14 x 1.96 inches, uses only 320mA at 5V, includes 128MB of soldered-on DDR2 memory and 2GB of flash storage, has a 10/100 Ethernet port, and includes EIDE and x-ISA expansion, according to the company.

Finding Linux-based calendar clients, like Evolution or Mozilla Lightning, is easy — but what about the server-side software? You'll find some great calendar servers for Linux, if you know where to look. From light-weight to heavy duty, Cosmo to Darwin, we've picked five of the best open source calendar servers for Linux for you to try.

There's a new dog in the house at Fedora, and he just might end up on your Fedora 15 desktop. Chris Lumens, Red Hat Anaconda developer, has proposed a new theme for the upcoming Fedora release built around hot dogs. He boldly states, "the Fedora user experience should feature Hot Dog themed artwork everywhere."

On January 26th of this year, KDE released version 4.6.0 of its Plasma Workspaces, Applications, and Development Platform. While many major versions of KDE have focused on features, 4.5 was mostly a stabilizing release, fixing thousands of bugs. The 4.6 release is all about polish. It is the icing on the cake for KDE 4, adding speed, visual enhancements, and increased hardware compatibility.

The 9th Annual Southern California Linux Expo is less than four weeks away. This Expo is shaping up to be the best SCALE ever, with five tracks of quality presenters, over 80 exhibitors, and more content than it’s ever had. The theme for SCALE 9X is “Open Source: Rising to New Heights”. Both the program and the SCALE 9x t-shirt promote this theme. You can check them both out at the SCALE 9x event page on Facebook. This year’s t-shirt will be a collector’s item!

Microsoft Research and Cambridge University's Unilever Centre for Molecular Science Informatics have assigned the Chemistry add-in for Word project to The Outercurve Foundation. An announcement from the foundation, originally known as the CodePlex Foundation, about the assignment says the add-in will now be available as open source. The Chemistry Add-in for Word uses the XML-variant, the Chemical Markup Language (CML), to enable users to "insert and modify chemical information, such as labels, formulas, and 2-D depictions, within Microsoft Office Word."

The WebKit-powered browsers were the big winners: Microsoft's Internet Explorer was the big loser. Internet Explorer reached a new all-time low of 56 percent, down 1.08 percentage points from last month. Though Internet Explorer 8 continues to perform well—up 1.15 points from December—defections from Internet Explorer 6 and 7 to other browsers continue to dominate, with those versions losing 1.63 and 0.47 points respectively. The beta of Internet Explorer 9 made minor gains, rising to 0.50 percent share.

February has finally arrived. Later this month Phoronix Test Suite 3.0 "Iveland" and OpenBenchmarking.org will be officially unveiled from the Southern California Linux Expo during the talk entitled "Making Better Linux Hardware Choices" by myself and Matthew Tippett, the former ATI/AMD Linux Core Engineering Manager. Before the California Linux event, there may also be a public demonstration in Munich of this major Linux testing/benchmarking breakthrough. While the Phoronix Test Suite 3.0-Iveland software can currently be downloaded as beta, OpenBenchmarking.org is not yet publicly available nor have we said much about the project. What has been said though is that it will cause Linux benchmarking to change, it will likely cause a greater impact than Phoronix.com, may result in my editorial departure from Phoronix, and will change the way that you find Linux compatible hardware.

Recently one of our customers sent us marketing materials from one of our competitors. One thing that stuck out was the positioning that their version of a critical system component used in *NIX OpenSSH is better than the vendor-provided OpenSSH (from Red Hat, for example). As a former systems engineer responsible for many *NIX systems, this raises a red flag and here's why.

Forget Godot, we’re waiting for CentOS 6. If you hoped to have a shiny new CentOS release under the Christmas tree, you were disappointed. 2010 slipped by, still no release. Hoping to surprise your honey with CentOS 6 on Valentine’s Day? Maybe. If you’re lucky.