Showing all newswire headlines

After Sony's PS3 slim announcement last week, many fans were dismayed the new model would no longer include backwards compatibility and the option to run Linux as an alternative operating system. Sony stated the console's ability to run PS2 games wasn't a major "purchase intent driver" and therefore not worth the cost of including, yet remained relatively silent on the missing "OtherOS" option.

Not many people know that it was an obscure battle between Richard Stallman and a company called Symbolics that led directly to the creation of the GNU project - and hence free software. As well as losing to RMS, Symbolics has another claim to fame: it was the first doman name registered. And now, after all these years, that name is finally being sold.

If you can't access some of the files on your very own Linux system, it's usually because of misconfigured file access permissions. If you are the only user on your Linux box, you may be wondering what's the point of having all these permissions (or lack thereof) that restrict your access to your own files. However, before pulling your hair off, you must keep in mind Linux is designed to be a multi-user environment. In an environment with more than one user, it is crucial to have a secure system for deciding which files are yours and who can fiddle with them.

At first glance, Dell’s Ubuntu Linux strategy has hit a couple of bumps in recent weeks. But The VAR Guy has done some digging and learned that Dell and Canonical are working on a few surprises that could bolster Ubuntu’s presence in PC markets around the globe. Here’s the scoop.

C represents more than 40% of all code written for open source software. But this figure comes from counting lines of code. What about Java and PHP, or C++?

Modern society harbors many bad habits. One is its penchant for enthusiastically embracing the benefits of new technologies before considering their less desirable side effects.

Wine stands for “Wine Is Not an Emulator”, simply because it’s not an emulator. It is in fact a compatibility layer. What does all this mean? Doesn’t really matter, but if you care to find out Google can help. But what does matter is how to install Adobe CS4 in Wine.

Songbird is a free and open source software audio player and web browser founded by Rob Lord and developed by Pioneers of the Inevitable , with a stated mission "to incubate Songbird, the first Web player, to catalyze and champion a diverse, open Media Web." Songbird employs Mozilla's XULRunner platform, and is thus capable of running on Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, Solaris and Linux. Songbird utilizes the GStreamer media framework.

This guide explains how you can configure your SquirrelMail webmail application on an ISPConfig 3 server so that email users can change their passwords themselves directly in SquirrelMail.

Even though Nokia's Symbian mobile OS is the most dominant smartphone operating system in the world, the Finnish phonemaker has opted to fit its new touchscreen smartphone, the N900, with Maemo. Maemo is a Linux-based operating system normally used in Nokia's tablet computers.

Yes it's that time again! After many months of development and careful testing, we are proud to announce the release of Slackware version 13.0! We are sure you'll agree that the improvements made in this release more than warrant the major version bump up from the 12.x series. We've done our best to bring the latest technology to Slackware while still maintaining the stability and security that you have come to expect. Slackware is well known for it's simplicity and the fact that we try to bring software to you in the condition that the authors intended. Probably the biggest change is the addition of an official 64-bit port. While the 32-bit (x86) version continues to be developed, this release brings to you a complete port to 64-bit (x86_64). We know that many of you have been waiting eagerly for this, and once you try it you'll see it was well worth the wait.

Unless you're lucky enough to live within mesh range of many other XO users (or are part of an XO deployment or an innovative classroom project, you probably have a pretty empty "neighborhood," and look to Internet jabber servers to connect with other XOs. The state of the public jabber servers of recent has been in flux for a while, but seems to be settling down.

The recent release of the PS3 Slim brought about joy for those who were waiting for a less expensive/smaller gaming system and indignation for those who were waiting for a Linux experimental machine of the same type as there was no "OtherOS" or Linux option on this model. Why? we cry sadly. Because, the deep, omniscient voices of two Sony representatives boom back.

Sony has been trying lots of new strategies lately to gain marketshare, including adopting the open ePub eBook standard, but are they doing enough to attract a mass market and overtake the Kindle?

In a time when Microsoft is feeling the full impact of the global economic downturn, the open-source Linux operating system is flourishing. While Windows client revenue has let the Redmond company suffering in the 2009 fiscal year, producing three quarters inferior when compared to FY2008, Linux revenue continues to grow and is right on track of making the open-source OS a $1 billion a year business. Market analysis firm IDC estimates that between 2008 and 2013 Linux revenue will deliver a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of no less than 16.9%.

Novell's latest quarterly financial results reinforce the company's biggest challenge: While SUSE Linux sales continue to grow, the rest of the company -- even the security business -- faces falling revenue.

Describing itself as a philanthropic investment company, the Omydar Network has donated two million dollars to the Wikimedia Foundation.

m Berners-Lee has announced the strengthening of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) HTML Working Group. Chris Wilson of Microsoft has stepped down as co-chair.

Novell distinguished engineer James Bottomley believes Linux desktop environments need a dose of open source ingenuity rather than ape ideas from Windows and OS X. Bottomley, who also wears the hat of Director of the Linux Foundation and chair of its technical advisory board, says the next challenge for Linux as a whole is to take the lead in interface advancements. He described his position today in an interview with Brian Proffitt on the Linux Foundation blog.

Getting comfortable with GNU and UNIX commands. GUIs are fine, but to unlock the real power of Linux®, there's no substitute for the command line. In this article, Ian Shields introduces you to some of the major features of the bash shell, with an emphasis on the features that are important for LPI certification. By the end of this article, you will be comfortable using basic Linux commands like echo and exit, setting environment variables, and gathering system information.