Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

There are two kinds of Linux users in the world – those who use Gnome and those who dislike KDE. You can't blame them – to call KDE releases so far a disaster would be something of an understatement – but the tide has now turned.Over 16,000 bug fixes and 1,700 new features later, the KDE developer unveiled KDE 4.5. The release has started popping up in many Linux distros, and it looks and feels stunning.

If you ask some Linux purists whether they use Linux in conjunction with other operating systems, lots of them will say no. At the same time, many of these same users will happily report that they use a broad, diversified set of applications. Why is diversity in applications embraced by almost everyone, while diversity in operating system usage isn't so common?

GIMP is perhaps one of the most well known imaging apps available in Libre software. Its virtues are endorsed by many in the Libre software community. In a practical sense however, within North American art and design circles, its uptake is effectively zero. There are reasons behind this, although any attempts to tackle the issues have a tendency to erupt into nothing more than hyperbole and animosity, leaving behind the core issues at hand. This is an attempt to outline three key reasons why some graphic artists and designers perceive GIMP as inadequate when it comes to its suitability in their imaging pipelines.

Thanks for the link Herschel

The GTVHacker dev team has won a cash bounty for being the first to successfully root and enable third-party application support on a Google TV device before Google – Google will reportedly be bringing support for Android applications to the platform some time later this year. According to developer Howard Harte, who originally announced the bounty at the end of November last year, the GTVHacker team used a hardware hack, adding serial console support to the UART1 header on the Logitech Revue, to enable root and install third-party apps on Google TV.

The XBMC project released version 10.0 of its integrated media center software just before the holidays, and if you haven't test-driven it in a while, do yourself a favor and grab the new build now. 10.0 is a substantial improvement in media playback capabilities, including hardware video acceleration, and there is a long list of other improvements and new features — but one in particular stands out: the ability to add and remove plugins on the fly, from within the GUI. It's as close as I've seen to a point-and-click "plays anything" open source media center solution.

This past weekend I unsubscribed from my last opensolaris mailing list. While reflecting on where technology is heading, I had to take a few minutes to reflect on where things were just a few years back. I remember vividly the day that the opensolaris.org website came online. After the announcement came out, I spent 24 straight hours signing up for mailing lists, reading documentation and reviewing the source code for a number of utilities. This had been all too easy with Linux, since all of the code and documentation was available in the public domain. But when the Solaris source came online, I felt like a 4-year old in a HUGE candy store.

SimplyMEPIS 11.0 Beta 1 was released last week, but again is plagued by start problems for many people. All during this SimplyMEPIS 11 development cycle boot problems have stopped many users from testing. Unfortunately, and probably the root of problem, is that this occurs for only some of the users with little hardware in common. To compound the issue, the boot issues haven't been caused by the same reason to the same people each release either. With so much variation, it can be very difficult to nail down corrections.

It's official: the iOS version of VLC has been yanked from the App Store. Though Apple didn't offer any reasons for its removal, the media player is believed to have been pulled thanks to a licensing dispute that started more than two months ago.

Wireless chipset maker Broadcom joined the Linux Foundation, suggesting that it will release more open source drivers for Linux. Over the last month, Timesys, Protecode, and Mentor Graphics have also joined the nonprofit Linux advocacy organization.

As Linux adoption grows, so too does the Linux Foundation as it continues to add new members to its ranks. So far in 2011, the Linux Foundation has added at least three new members companies including Broadcom, Timesys and Protecode.

Also known as GeoHot, George Hotz, familiar to many from his iPhone and Playstation 3 hacks, has released source code for a piece of software which can allegedly be used to sign homebrew programs so that they will run on Sony's Playstation 3. The code is reported to run under the current PS3 firmware version, version 3.55, modified using jailbreak software (direct download), also released by Hotz.

Behind KDE is our site for interviews with KDE contributors and a new series is being started by Pau Garcia i Quiles. The theme of the series is the different platforms that KDE is available for. The first interview is with Patrick Spendrin. Patrick works on the KDE on Windows project and tells us how the project works, what can be done with it, how he got involved and how you can get involved. Future articles in this series will talk about Mac, BSD, Solaris and other platforms.

In its continued march across the open source industry landscape, Black Duck Software, a Boston-based company which services managed and secure implementations of open source software, announced today the purchase of Olliance Group, an open source enterprise consulting firm. After acquiring open source search engine Koders in 2008, Black Duck got quiet for a while then slurped up three more companies in the last three months -- Oholoh, SpikeSource, and now Olliance. We caught up wtih Peter Vescuso, Executive Vice President of Black Duck Software to find out more about this acquisition and what the future holds for the company.

The OpenStreetMap (OSM) Project's next State Of The Map conference will take place from 9 to 11 September 2011, in Denver, Colorado. Founded in August of 2004 by Steve Coast, OpenStreetMap is an open source project that is building free online maps, not based on any copyright or licensed map data.

Today, Broadcom is announcing that it is joining The Linux Foundation, and if you've been using Linux for some time, you know that this announcement is a milestone. Broadcom was historically a frequent holdout when it came to delivering Wi-Fi drivers and source code for Linux users, heavily contributing to the reputation Linux had for not being as compatible with essential technologies as Windows and the Mac OS have been. Regarding that overall compatibility issue there are still problems, but we are steadily seeing milestones like the latest one with Broadcom shake the notion that Linux is an unloved island that the technology industry ignores.

In this economy, employees who can save their employers money are highly regarded and will potentially be in line for advancement. Using open source technology is one great way to help your company cut down on costs across the board. In this article, I’ll share twenty great open source applications that can help save your employer some money.

While the free software community was successful in coming up with open-source support for Microsoft's Kinect motion sensing device, there is better support on the way. PrimeSense, the Israeli company that developed this technology, is now putting their hardware into new devices. However, it will not be up to the community to come up with open-source drivers, but the company will be providing the support themselves.

We've talked about the concept of national Linux distributions before, and the Russians are a nation that has engaged in previous attempts to standardize on Linux. Recently, Vladimir Putin, the Russian Prime Minister, made an announcement of a renewed effort towards open source adoption on a massive, despite the previous failures.

Software installation in Linux can confuse new users, while it pleases and irritates more experienced campaigners in equal measure. Here are 20 things we'd change about it.

LXer Feature: 09-Jan-2011

In the Roundup this week we have how to choose the best Distro for a laptop, Linux returns to Walmart, Andy Updegrove reveals more about Attachmate, The "LibreOffice" future of OpenOffice and our own Paul Ferris goes on a rant about the future of Linux. Enjoy!