Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

he London Stock Exchange, which is currently in the process of moving its trading platforms to Linux, has lost its chief technology officer, Robin Paine. Anyone trying to contact Paine via email receives the following message, “Robin Paine no longer works for the London Stock Exchange”.

Not long ago, the overwhelming issue on the Linux desktop was catching up with Windows and OS X. Partly, the concern was usability, but it also included the need for a rich ecosystem of utilities. But some time in the last few years, that goal was reached, so quietly that exactly when is impossible to say. Some might still quibble over a feature or two, but the competitiveness of the free desktop is strong enough that equaling rivals no longer seems a major concern.

Can we talk about licenses for a bit? It's something I've wanted to talk to you about for a long time, and it's a good time for it, because Mozilla is redrafting its license and would like your input. Here's where you can find the Mozilla Public License, the current version, along with a FAQ that explains it and an annotated version, and here's where you can get the draft of the revised version, and here is a red-lined version. Nothing in the draft revision is yet set in stone. You'll notice that they are working on it like Legos, issue by issue, and this draft isn't addressing all the issues they hope to address.

Linux.conf.au announced a Call for Papers for its 12th annual open source Linux conference for developers, to be held in Brisbane, Australia, on Jan 24-29. Linux.conf.au 2011 (lca2011) starts off with two days of mini-conferences, and is followed by three days of main sessions and an "Open Day" of events and presentations that is open to the general public.

How is a Linux distribution put together? For Novell's openSUSE, it starts with its newly improved Build Service 2.0. Building a Linux distribution is a complex task that involves both project and package management skills. For Novell's openSUSE community Linux distribution, the key tool it uses is the openSUSE Build Service, which was recently improved with a 2.0 release in June.

The OpenSUSE Project announced the final 11.3 release of OpenSUSE, featuring Linux 2.6.34, the Btrfs file-system, improved netbook support, and desktops including KDE 4.4.4, GNOME 2.30.1, XFCE, and LXDE. Meanwhile, eWEEK Labs reviews Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11, praising its virtualization features, despite some "snags."

Microsoft might be "all in" on tablets (here and here), but it's Linux that will dominate this new category of device, according to latest research. ABI Research reckons Linux-powered non-smartphone mobile devices will comprise 62 per cent of operating systems by 2015.

Yesterday we found it interesting that Intel is not even able to ship their own Linux driver for their own hardware with their MeeGo operating system. The driver in question is their new EMGD driver for the Menlow and Tunnel Creek platforms that have a graphics core that's designed by Imagination Technologies rather than their own in-house intellectual property. The EMGD driver from Intel currently requires signing a Non-Disclosure Agreement with them to gain access to this driver, but it's not the only driver available that targets the Intel GMA 500 / GMA 600 graphics core that's derived from the Imagination Technologies PowerVR SGX 535.

At a recent local LUG I regularly attend, Braddock Gaskill gave a wonderful presentation on an open source 8-bit computer he had created. This was his first public debut of the device and every person in attendance was enthralled. Later, we met over coffee since I wanted to let him know (and ask if it was ok) that I thought his device would make for a great piece for Linux Journal. Braddock agreed and we started to chat about both the Humane Reader & Humane PC.

VPN connections let you remotely access file or connect remote offices together via secure tunnels over the Internet. They can even come in handy to secure connections on public Internet ports or Wi-Fi hotspots, hiding Internet traffic from local eavesdroppers. If you aren't going to have more than two-dozen VPN users, you might consider setting up your own VPN server using the DD-WRT router firmware. If you have a compatible wireless router, you can load the firmware on it. This gives you an OpenVPN server and client, and many more cool features. You can then set it up for remote access connections or site-to-site connections to connect offices together.

The Linux kernel development process stands out in a number of ways; one of those is the fact that there is exactly one person who can commit code to the "official" repository. There are many maintainers looking after various subsystems, but every patch they merge must eventually be accepted by Linus Torvalds if it is to get into the mainline. Linus's unique role affects the process in a number of ways; for example, as this article is being written, Linus has just returned from a vacation which resulted in nothing going into the mainline for a couple of weeks. There are more serious concerns associated with the single-committer model, though, with scalability being near the top of the list.

PHP is coming to Google's Android phones for those averse to programming in Java or going native. The PHP for Android (PFA) site says here that its goal is to make PHP development in Android "not only possible but also feasible providing tools and documentation."

GUI debuggers are the norm these days, however, I still feel the urge to do a little printf-debugging now and then. It might be wrong, it might be silly but it works. I like to develop the odd graphical application and I like use Qt. For Qt, the nice Norwegian Trolls have provided the qDebug function.

With the introduction of Intel's Poulsbo (GMA 500) chipset it marked a point at which Intel's Linux graphics support was no longer stellar, but as they had outsourced the graphics IP from Imagination Technologies, they could not provide an open-source driver stack like they do with their in-house IGPs. Not only was this Intel Poulsbo Linux driver closed-source, but the level of support was appalling and it was a bloody mess of a situation. The overall situation since has only become worse and even MeeGo (their own Linux OS) will be shipping without Intel's EMGD driver.

Mandriva S.A. issued a press release to announce the restructuring of its core business organization. While specifics were still not given, the main message did come through: Mandriva will survive, in some fashion, for a while anyway.

This time of year the HPC world seems to be a little slow. Of course, it is summer and many people are on vacation (I have just returned) and normally not much seems to happen until September. Although in the middle of writing this I just read the news that Amazon introduced EC2 for HPC. I’ll be looking into this later and try to get some more details.

In keeping with our current theme of cool user-space file systems, this article examines the first user-space file system I ever used: SSHFS. SSHFS has a client that can mount and interact with a remote file system as though the file system were local. It uses sftp so it’s as secure as sftp is (I’m not a security expert so I can’t comment on the security of ssh). SSHFS can be very handy for working with remote file systems instead of copying files back and forth from remote systems or having to worry about a shared file system. People have even used it for making backups.

ast week I published a short correspondence I had with Richard Stallman on the subject of the GNU GPL and copyright. As I mentioned, that was from a couple of years ago, but I thought it might be worth posting now given the lively interest in the issues it raises. Inspired partly by that older conversation, and also by some rather more heated ones on identi.ca, I sent off some questions to RMS on another subject: that of free software implementations of Microsoft's .NET.

There are 13 million-dollar open source hardware companies, but there have been no standards governing what defines the still nascent field. Until now, that is. Unlike open source software, because there have been no formal definitions, many people may not even be aware of the growing industry. But already some of those practicing its general principles have become household names among the geek set: Arduino, the programmable single-board microcontroller and software suite; Chumby, a popular Wi-Fi device; MakerBot, a low-priced 3D printer; and Adafruit, a maker of do-it-yourself hardware kits for things like MP3 players and more.

Pardus Linux is one of those distributions that doesn't get the attention it probably deserves. Pardus makes a wonderful desktop system for those that prefer ease of use. Available as an install image or live CD, it ships with lots of great applications, multimedia support, and browser plugins.