Showing all newswire headlines

The Free Software Foundation's Holmes Wilson is just back from Berlin, where he participated in the Ogg Theora book sprint put on by FLOSS Manuals. Here is a broad look at Ogg Theora and how it fits into the push for free formats: where we're winning, what works, and what could be improved.

This two-day introduction to Linux broadens attendees horizons with a detailed overview of the operating system. Attendees learn how to effectively use a Linux system as a valuable tool. They get familiar with the architecture and various components of the operating system, learn both graphical and command line tools, and learn to do basic networking. This class is scheduled for August 27th - August 28th, 2009.

Way back in April 2008, the Linux Foundation published a little report that upended a lot of perceptions about Linux development. Now, they've done it again. The report in question — Linux Kernel Development: How Fast it is Going, Who is Doing It, What They are Doing, and Who is Sponsoring It? — revealed a number of things about the Linux kernel. At a total line count of 8,859,683, the kernel was growing at roughly 10% per year, with an average of some 3,621 lines of code added every day, while 1,550 lines were removed and 1,425 lines were changed. Possibly the most interesting numbers, however, were those regarding the faces behind those changes.

Linux Newbies, you also have an ally: Me. Nothing gets people in the Linux World riled up like comparing distributions, desktops or editors. But for the new Linux user, the whole thing is a bit confusing. What do we tell them? Do we verbally slug it out in forums or do we offer gentle guidance to those entering the Linux jungle for the first time? It's hard not to offer an opinion in such emotional matters. One might believe that Linux, choice of desktop and editors are religious notions instead of technical ones. I offer the following gentle guidelines for the newbie who dares enter our sacred space.

Linux comes with software-based RAID that can be used to provide either a performance boost or add a degree of data protection. This article gives a quick introduction to Linux software RAID and walks through how to create a simple RAID-1 array.

The KMyMoney development team is pleased to announce a major step forward for what has been described as "the BEST personal finance manager for FREE users". KMyMoney 1.0 has been released. With over 3 years of development, this new stable release has many new features and a refreshed user interface.

So you think companies sell $1bn in Linux support contracts a year worldwide? Think again. That isn't going to happen until 2012, and maybe not at all if the trends of using commercial distros without paying for support continue apace. Al Gillen, the operating systems and virtualization analyst at IDC, wrapped up his worldwide Linux operating environment forecast, which spans from 2009 through 2013, just before ducking out on holiday. And according to that report (which you can get here if you feel like shelling out $4,500), the for-fee global revenues for Linux operating system support, which is mostly for servers, rose by 23.4 per cent in 2008 to hit $567m.

Shutter, according to its website is a feature full screen shot program. As a tech blogger experimenting with GNU/Linux and its derivatives, it offers me a number of handy features. In fact, I have replaced it as my default screen shot tool. When I press Print Screen on my keyboard,shutter pops up and does a nice job.

The Linux Foundation, which is something akin to the marketing arm of the open source operating system kernel and its related systems software, has today released its second report detailing how the Linux 2.6 kernel is evolving. The report reveals how it is coding the changes in the kernel and what companies are sponsoring the programmers who are making the changes - if any. And what is immediately clear is that Linux is much bigger than its namesake and creator, Linus Torvalds.

We receive all sorts of unique products on a weekly basis and I use the term unique loosely in this case. Let’s just say a majority of these trinkets are barely good enough for target practice, much less taking up valuable shelf space. In fact, it is not every day we open a non-descript box in the lab and discover an Emperor Penguin snuggled amidst the packaging peanuts. Today was such a day and I have to say it was a pleasant surprise.

Ah Twitter in the news again, the bad guys sure do keep up with new trends. After being taken offline for a while by a Joejob DDoS attack Twitter is in the news again – this time it’s being used as the command channel for a Botnet.

[Didn't this come up a theory in conversation recently? - Azer]

Now let me explain to those who might not have experienced something like this. Here you have two complete strangers, encased into a compartment roughly six feet by six feet by four feet, traveling a total of 2300 plus miles for hours on end. Two people with their own idiosyncrasies, habits and ways... What are the odds that a combination of ten fingers would be around a one or more throats halfway through the endeavor? One would imagine very good...

More developers are contributing more code to the development of Linux, and are speeding up in the process, according to a new study from the Linux Foundation. The latest "Who Writes Linux" report is now its second year, tracking the development of Linux from the 2.6.24 kernel to the recent 2.6.30 kernel release. The report found that that there Linux saw a net increase of 2.7 million lines of code between the 2.6.24 and 2.6.30 releases, compared to the almost 300,000 lines added in the run-up to 2.6.24. That code was contributed to Linux at a faster rate and by more developers than the previous release, the report also found. Surprisingly, Linux founder Linus Torvalds is no longer among the top 30 Linux contributors over the course of the last year, as measured by the total number of changes. Since the 2.6.24 kernel, Torvalds contributed 254 changes. In contrast, Red Hat kernel developer Ingo Molnar contributed 1,164 changes between the 2.6.24 and the 2.6.30 kernel releases.

Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux, is considering a new version of its Landscape remote management tool that may appeal to solutions providers and service providers. Here’s the scoop.

Greg Luck, founder of distributed Java caching technology Ehcache, is to join US start-up Terracotta. Ehcache will now find itself under the umbrella of Java specialist Terracotta, whose eponymous Java clustering application is available both as an open source edition and as a commercial edition with maintenance and support.

A few recent stories from experts in the field or journalists have raised my ire more than a bit. Seemingly well intentioned, to inform and educate the reader, criticized where more research (or common sense) would have served better.

What are the first things you should look at after learning of a sudden change in MySQL server performance?

The Fraunhofer Institute has published a whitepaper on the interoperability of Office Open XML (OOXML) and the Open Document Format (ODF). Microsoft had a hand in its development.

You think you own your stuff that you paid your own money for? The Sony PS3, the XBox, the Palm Pre? Think again---these titans of tech are not selling products...

PySide, a new API for Python programmers who want to use Nokia's Qt framework, has been released. PySide is LGPL licensed and Nokia funded. The developers hope that this first public version of the PySide library, while it is still a work in progress, will become a new standard for developing Python/Qt applications.