Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Recently, in conjunction with the rise of cloud computing, OStatic has been doing an interview series focused on the components in cloud software stacks, and how they create unique advantages. Last week, Hanspeter Christ, Deputy Process Manager of the Federal Spatial Data Infrastructure (FSDI) for Swisstopo--Switzerland's federal office of topography--caught up with us to discuss Swisstopo's cloud stack. The series began with our conversation with PHP Fog founder Lucas Carlson, where he provided many insights into a smart cloud stack.

Opera has opened an app store that works across disparate mobile platforms. The store can be accessed from virtually any mobile browser on any major phone platform, but it's built straight into the company's Opera Mobile and Opera Mini browsers, currently used by over 100 million phone owners across the globe.

When purchasing commercial software for Windows and Mac OS X you are almost always presented with the system requirements for the software and what the vendor recommends for an optimal experience. When dealing with open-source / Linux software, this is rarely the case. It's far less common to see free software projects that will list their recommended hardware/software configurations, even though in the case of computational and/or graphical intense free software, the recommended system hardware requirements are just as important.

The Freedom Box is starting to roll, with a fundraising drive that met its goals in a few short days, along with a newly formed foundation to oversee its development. What started as an idea in a talk given by Eben Moglen just over a year ago has more recently gained a lot of momentum. What can we expect to see from this "personal server running a free software operating system, with free applications designed to create and preserve personal privacy", and when can we expect to see it?

Accelerated software development company Black Duck Software is beating a fast path towards the Android mobile development platform with a bundled software and services offering designed to help developers automate and ensure compliance and simplify the operational challenges of managing Android projects. Android Fast Start is built on a customized version of the Black Duck Suite preconfigured with Android to address change-management issues and automate legal and compliance-related obligations.

Exclusive Leading Enterprise Technology Event Features the Latest Advances in HPC and OEM Appliance Technology. Danville, CA – March 7, 2011. Whamcloud, a venture-backed company formed from a worldwide network of high-performance computing (HPC) storage industry veterans, announced today their participation in the 9th Annual AMAX Technology Showcase 2011, an exclusive leading enterprise technology event, which will take place at AMAX’s corporate headquarters in Fremont, California on March 10, 2011.

A good stout Linux media server has a home in the enterprise because it's a better tool than traditional file shares for storing, archiving, and sharing company multimedia presentations.

Nokia has announced that it is selling the commercial licensing and professional services arm of its Qt group to Digia, a Finnish services and software company. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Android moves pretty fast. It's import to know when, how and what to expect when you upgrade your device. Let's step through a recent upgrade from Froyo to Gingerbread on a Nexus One.

For the last 15 years we have been living in a Microsoft monoculture, which has had very real knock-on consequences for everyone online – not just for users of its products. Today, though, that monoculture is fading away, to be replaced by something much more complex.

When one's computer becomes unstable, it's natural to think first of a particular app or the desktop. After that, one may tend to suspect the operating system. Finally one may find it turns out to be hardware at fault. This is what happened to me recently, and at the operating system phase, Debian became a last resort. At first I blamed Sabayon and tried Linux Mint. When Linux Mint seemed to also be crashy, I resorted to the newly released Debian 6.0. I thought if anything was going to be stable, it'd be Debian. Although I finally found and replaced faulty hardware, I've learned a bit about Debian on the desktop. I've used Debian on my X-less server for years, but never thought of it much as a desktop system. So, here is a summary of my Debian desktop adventure.

Red Hat CTO, Brian Stevens, has defended the company's change to how it distributes the kernel source code in a blog posting. The company had changed its policy on how it distributed the source to its Linux kernel, a key component of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Where it had previously shipped out a standard kernel with all the patches which needed to be applied to make that kernel into Red Hat's version, for RHEL6 it switched to shipping an archive with those patches pre-applied and details of the patches not explicitly listed.

Red Hat has changed the way it distributes Enterprise Linux kernel code in an effort to prevent Oracle and Novell from stealing its customers, making it more difficult for these competitors to understand which patches have been applied where. Some have speculated that the change is designed to make it harder for Oracle as well as the open source CentOS project to build their own Linux distributions. But Stevens says this is not the case. He says the change is meant to hamper Oracle and Novell's ability to offer support to customers who are already running Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

There is a monumental change occurring in the IT market. It is perhaps the biggest change since IBM unintentionally invited Intel and Microsoft to become two of the biggest technology gatekeepers of our time. Of course, every year there is someone proposing a major change in the industry. Trust me, it is really happening this time. The change I am talking about is happening in your pocket, purse, or belt clip. Yes, I am talking about cell phones, which by the way is becoming a really bad description of what these devices do. I probably use my “smart phone” as a talking device about 25% of the time. Then there are those pad things.

By any standard, Debian is the most influential Linux distribution ever. Not everyone uses Debian, but, both alone and second hand through Ubuntu, it is the source of more derivative distributions than any other. How influential is Debian? One indication is that three of the four most frequently downloaded distributions on Distrowatch are based on Debian: Ubuntu, Mint, and Debian itself. Together, these three account for 49% of the top ten downloads. Assuming that these downloads are representative of the interest in Linux, just under half of anybody's experience with the operating system comes through Debian or a distro based on Debian.

Shortly before the release of the final version of Firefox 4, the Mozilla developers have introduced the "Web Apps" project. These apps are expected to play a major role play in future browsers, and in such a future, the browser will not just be for viewing web pages but will be a platform for locally installed applications. Web Application programmers need do little more than create a manifest; this is a specification which lists the structure and content of the application, and is enough to deploy the app. Applications are able to share resources and will make use of the HTML5 specification for offline caching of these resources by means of the application cache.

Since its beginnings as a Microsoft Exchange alternative for small- to medium-sized businessed, the Open-Xchange collaboration suite has stretched a bit beyond just a messaging solution. The flagship product, Open-Xchange Server, is regarded as a full collaborative platform, particularly with the addition of the Infostore document sharing module. Here's how to install Open-Xchange Server to start on the way to replacing Exchange.

Novell has announced the release of SUSE Manager, an advanced systems management solution aimed at enterprise Linux environments. In addition to support for the company's own SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), SUSE Manager works with other Linux distributions such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

Debian is a bit unique in the Linux world. It's one of the most respected projects, it's one of the oldest distributions, and it is one of the most versatile systems. Debian comes in more architectures and more installation methods than most any other. It offers one of the widest selections of software available. In fact, it's often referred to as the Universal Operating System. It took two years, but version 6.0 finally emerged to what many say would say was worth the wait.

The iPad 2 isn't a "magical" update of the iPad, but it's an incremental update that's good enough to keep Apple on top of the tablet market for another year. Sad panda for Android.