Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Although the actual documentation you get with many open source applications and platforms can feel paltry compared to what you get with proprietary alternatives, many book authors have served up free, online books on open source topics. We round these up on a regular basis here at OStatic, and in this post you'll find seven online books that you can get comfortable with quickly. They introduce essential concepts for getting started with Linux, Firefox, Blender (3D graphics and animation), GIMP (graphics), the OpenOffice suite of productivity applications, and more.

Enea announced the release of a Linux configuration and build environment integrated with NetLogic Microsystems' Linux software development kit (SDK). Billed as "an intuitive and extensible Linux jump start kit," and free to customers using NetLogic's MIPS-based XLP, XLR, and XLS processors, Enea’s offering is said to incorporate graphical configuration, build, and debug tools.

LXer Feature: 21-Sept-2010

Could things be more exciting in the the world of FOSS right now? Yes it could, but let's not be too hasty..

The 802.1X authentication protocol plays a major role in Wi-Fi security of business networks. It enables the Enterprise flavor of Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA and WPA2) encryption for wireless networks, and can also provide authentication on the wired side. Here are six open source projects that deal with 802.1X authentication:

After major layoffs at Paris-based Mandriva, which is refocusing on the server edition and emerging-nation market, former employees have launched a new distribution called Mageia. The Mandriva Linux fork is being developed by a new community-based Mageia project, and will maintain both KDE and GNOME versions.

I was riding around with Scott Bradner the other day when he uttered a piece of wisdom that brought great clarity to the black-hole argument-sink that network neutrality has become — and which had been depressing me for so long that I had all but given up trying to get past it. He said the argument had become a religious one, in the sense that opposing sides had very different beliefs. In particular this line stood out: The carriers believe the Internet doesn't work.

Nine years after the Canton of Solothurn decided to migrate its computers to Linux, the Swiss authority has made a radical U-turn: All its desktops will run Windows 7. Has Linux failed? The Linux migration project in the Swiss Canton of Solothurn was ill-fated from the start, those who followed the reports concerning the project over the past few years couldn't avoid the impression that it was nothing but a series of failures, faults and unfortunate events. Particularly, Swiss media like the Solothurner Zeitung and the Berner Zeitung re-ignited discussions with crotchety headlines such as "Auf Irrflug weg vom Fenster" (Erratic flight to avoid windows) and "Wieder Ärger mit dem Pinguin" (More trouble with the Penguin).

This article is a brief report on some of the current news and activities going on in the world of Ardour, Paul Davis's superb open-source digital audio workstation (DAW). What began as a labor of love has become one of the most significant projects in the world of Linux audio and in the more general world of Linux applications development. Its importance reaches beyond its status with recording musicians by supplying an open-source realization of software on the order of professional-quality (and typically closed-source) commercial products. Designing an audio/MIDI sequencer with fully professional capabilities is a non-trivial task, but thanks to the efforts of Ardour's development team future programmers will be able to access Ardour's freely available codebase to extend the DAW itself or to develop new projects based on its many innovative software resources.

Oracle has given up on copying Red Hat and is delivering its own Linux to squeeze the last ounce of performance from new cloud-in-a-box and OLTP server giants. Four years after Larry Ellison announced Oracle's Red Hat-compatible Unbreakable Linux distro, intended to sink Red Hat, he has dropped any pretence to compatibility and announced Oracle's Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel instead.

He showcased the Exalogic Elastic Cloud, a system containing 30 servers, each loaded with two six-core processors for a total of 360 processor cores. They are interconnected with each other and storage via Infiniband connections. The systems support both Solaris and Linux guest OSes and include all the middleware customers need to run applications.

LXer Feature: 20-Sept-2010

The big stories to hit our newswire this week raised some questions it seems. We have Joe Brockmeier asking why e-mail is still stuck in the 1990's, who is in the running to buy Novell, could it be VMWare or possibly even Red Hat? Steve Rosenberg is intrigued by the latest Linux Mint, a review of TinyCore 3.0, Linux applications with peculiar names, the bully in the Linux schoolyard and to wrap things up we have some Microsoft FUD on how Android is not really free. Enjoy!

Shell In A Box is project that includes a web server, Javascript files and CSS templates to setup web-based terminal access to your system. You might remember that Shell In A Box was part of last week’s TurnKey Linux project. It is a fascinating project of its own and it deserves some focused attention.

So, you’re not content with just using the social web; you want to be part of building it, too. As a budding or beginning web app developer, you’ve got a difficult but rewarding path ahead of you. You have to master (or at least attempt to master) the intricacies of OOP and scripting languages, learn to build web apps the hard way (practice, practice, practice), and network your way into a few job opportunities. You must also decide whether you’d like to work as a solo/consultant/freelancer, a startup employee or founder, or a rank-and-file developer at an established company.

Earlier in the year Linux Australia approved a grant for the production of a research note on the Trade Practices Implications of Infringing Copies of Open Source Software. The note has been completed and reviewed by the Linux Australia committee and is now ready for open release.

The Mandriva Linux distribution has been forked by a number of Mandriva contributors with the fate of this distribution formerly known as Mandrake being unknown due to financial troubles and layoffs facing Mandriva's parent company. This new forked version of Mandriva is being called Mageia.

On September 9 the news of Broadcom's release of the code for some of its wireless Ethernet chip sets sent shockwaves throughout the Linux community. Broadcom owners, as well as distribution developers have a reason to celebrate.

Microsoft has jumped on Oracle's prosecution of Google to attack Android and promote Windows Phone 7, while revealing a limited US rollout for its mobile phone platform. Even before Android's day in court, the chief financial officer of Microsoft's mobile phone group is reported to have taken Android's patent infringements as a fact.

The reason it caught my attention was not because I agree with him (I do), but because the idea of simple authentication, especially among disparate systems, has been the Holy Grail of IT, and every time we think we have it solved, the solution seems to fall apart in our hands. In fact, OpenID/OAUTH/OATH is only the most recent attempt at solving the authentication problem. The last attempt was a little standard called X.500, and Jan's tweet this morning reminded me, not only of x.500 and its promises, but how far the standard has failed, because of its complexity.

One of the first things to learn about programming is to check your ego at the door. It's a complicated craft, and even the most hardened pros are regularly amazed by what they don't know. "Programming is one of those things that humans are not quite smart enough to do," warned Slashdot blogger Thangodin.

We reported last month that a native ZFS module was coming to Linux and would be released in mid-September. Rather than using ZFS-FUSE that runs the Sun/Oracle ZFS file-system under the FUSE module so that it lives outside the Linux kernel (and runs rather slowly as our benchmarks show), this new ZFS module is native to Linux and open-source but due to the CDDL license it's being distributed as a module and will not be included in the mainline Linux kernel. This module has now entered a closed beta testing process.