Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

While far from new -- the NoSQL concept has been around for 10 years or so -- NoSQL has been attracting a lot of attention in recent years, primarily due to big-name production implementations. Amazon’s Dynamo and Google’s BigTable are among the best known implementations. While NoSQL offers a number of benefits, it is not without inevitable downsides.

Rather than installing a server, such as a web server, directly onto your main computer, why not install it in a VM? This sort of setup has a few advantages of security and convenience. These days, spreading resources out into the cloud is the in-thing, but consolidation is often underexploited. Hosting a server in a virtualizer such as VirtualBox is often a good approach for casual or occasional server needs on a home network.

One of the constant complaints about the Android diaspora is its fragmentation — the increasingly diverse multiplicity of OS versions and devices that are so relevant yet so confusing to the average consumer’s mobile decision-making process. Apparently, the powers that be (at Google, that is) have heard users’ complaints on this score and have created the Google Phone Gallery, a carousel of devices that displays images, phone features, manufacturer and carrier information and more.

The beauty of an open development platform is that anyone can take a stab at creating an application. KDE, which is built upon the Qt application and UI framework, is a shining example of this. A quick look at KDE-Apps.org reveals that new apps are added daily. I periodically browse through the latest KDE apps to see if anything stands out, and I found these five, some of which are in early development.

Linutop released version 4.0 of a Ubuntu Linux-based distro optimized for kiosk applications on small, energy-efficient fanless PCs, including legacy 386-based PCs and the company's own mini-PCs. Linutop OS 4.0 is based on Ubuntu 10.04 ("Lucid Lynx"), has a 700MB footprint, is available in a bootable USB key, and offers a variety of display and security features, says the company.

Version 9.0 of the PostgreSQL database management system was released on September 20, with considerably more "buzz" than a PostgreSQL release has had in a while. The PostgreSQL Project does a major release every year, but this one is special. It has more than a dozen major features and nearly 200 minor improvements, so the release has more new goodies in it for database geeks than any release before it, hence the "9.0" version number.

This month we have been testing a new kernel patch named bcache that takes SSDs and uses them as a cache for block devices (with the typical device being hard drives). This article wraps up the testing with an investigation of the throughput of large files and summarizes all the testing to date (and there’s a lot of that).

One of the reasons for the popularity of the Firefox browser is the wealth of downloadable add-ons, and the customization options available via the about:config hacks. However, there are some tidy tricks you can employ from within the “as is” browser that can greatly improve your web surfing experience. These simple but powerful tips and tricks for the open source browser will have you cruising the web faster and smarter in no time. So, if you’re a Firefox user, check out these 10 features we’ve highlighted and, as always, please do share any other Firefox hints you’ve found useful in the comments.

Few days ago, we discussed the usefulness of Spark and how it enables you to create custom shortcut keys in Mac. Alternatively, in Windows, we can use the popular AutoHotKey to create custom shortcuts. So what about Linux? Autokey is probably the best answer. AutoKey is a desktop automation utility for Linux and X11. It allows you to create scripts and assign hotkeys to these scripts, allowing you to execute them on demand in whatever program you are using.

Yesterday Red Hat has submitted comments to the U.S Patent and Trademark Office regarding interpretation of the Supreme Court’s Bilski decision. The submission was made in response to the PTO’s request for public comments to assist it in determining how to apply the Supreme Court’s decision in that case. Although the Bilski decision did not expressly address the standards for refusing to allow software patents, interpretation of the decision will determine whether certain patents are granted. Thus the PTO’s approach to examining patent applications will have a substantial effect on the patent landscape.

It could go either way. After a week of using GNOME Shell, the preview of GNOME 3.0, on Fedora 13, that is the closest I can come to a prediction about how GNOME's new desktop will be received when it is officially released in the spring of 2011. On the one hand, GNOME Shell is an attractive and easy to use interface that integrates multiple workspaces better than any desktop that I've seen. On the other hand, it requires some adjustments in the way you work, and, in its present form, feels inflexible -- although part of that inflexibility may be due to features that haven't been implemented yet.

OpenOffice.org has established itself as the free alternative to Microsoft's Office suite—but not necessarily the better alternative. Now the project heads are breaking off and starting LibreOffice. It's a great chance to remake the project. So, what should they prioritize?

The Fedora Project announced the Beta release of "Fedora 14 "Laughlin," featuring faster JPEG downloads and MeeGo 1.0 for Netbooks. The Fedora 14 Beta also adds improved debugging and IPMI server management, and debuts the "Spice" virtualization desktop framework and "Systemd" management technology for faster start-ups.

The Red Hat sponsored Fedora Linux community distribution is out this week with the first beta of the Fedora 14 release. The new distribution updates key applications and introduces new security and virtualization capabilities as well as support for the latest open source programming languages.

Thanks to Oracle, not only is OpenSolaris now dead along with other open-source projects previously funded by Sun Microsystems now facing hardship, but the OpenOffice.org community has now decided to part ways too. The OpenOffice.org community has decided to launch The Document Foundation as a new, independent organization. The Document Foundation will now be backing "LibreOffice" as the brand rather than OpenOffice.org.

There are no profound revelations here...at least not in this post. It just serves to reinforce something we already know.Chase, Ami and Zeneda are three fairly recent recipients of HeliOS Project computers, ages 12, 13 and 11 respectively. When we go into a home to give a child a computer, one of the first things we do is explain to them that we have installed Linux on their computer, not Windows. This announcement is usually met with even stares or shrugs. They don't care...they are just jacked that they are finally entering into the tech age at home. Most times, any concern expressed is with the parent. Of course it would be.

One thing you may not know about SSH is that it has an escape character: ~. To try it out, hit return (the escape character is only picked up at he start of a line, so you must make sure you are) at the console in an active SSH session, then enter ~. Nothing will show on screen; so far so good. Next, hit Ctrl-Z and the session will be suspended -- handy if you want to check something on your local box without logging all the way out of SSH. This trick will also work from within screen, and even from within mutt. To return to your SSH session, type fg and hit return.

A couple of days ago, I talked about Yahoo's warning messages saying my system (Linux) had not been tested with their mail program and that resulted in a very impassioned plea to help a group of Yahoo Groups users to protest the changes that Yahoo has apparently made to the way Yahoo Groups work. Changes to the way mailing lists work are nothing new. I am a member of several Yahoo Groups. But I am also a member of a number of Google Groups and a mess of mailing lists running on Mailman. While reading the complaint, I had two thoughts.

Freescale Semiconductor announced a Linux-ready, ARM9-based i.MX28x SoC and a Coldfire-based MCF5441x MCU, both targeting fanless industrial applications as well as automotive systems. The i.MX28x and MCF5441x each consume less than half a Watt, support extended temperatures, offer clock synchronized Ethernet, and with some models, include a Layer 2 switch for low-cost daisy-chaining of devices.

The Eclipse development team has released version 3.6.1 of the open source development environment. This is a first service release of the IDE, which was released in the summer as part of Helios and consists of around 40 Eclipse projects. The new version is primarily a bug fix version and does not contain any new functionality. The release notes provide detailed information on what's new in Eclipse 3.6.1.