Showing all newswire headlines

The Linux Plumbers Conference 2009 is now accepting proposal submissions. Proposals can be edited and created until Monday 22 June 2009 PDT (7 AM Tuesday June 22 2009 GMT). Submissions are invited for speakers in our microconference tracks as well as the general track session.

A home-cooked Microsoft license has carved out a small but growing following among the open-source community in less than two years. Microsoft's Public License (MS-PL) is used by 1.03 per cent of open-source projects less than two-years after it was officially recognized by the Open-Source Initiative and is poised to overtake the Mozilla Public License (MPL) in terms of popularity.

In part one we wrote a basic bare bones port check program, in this part of the series we take the next step and fixup a few issues plus begin breaking out the code. This small program is a decent introduction (but definitely not definitive) to network programming.

Yet another beta! Changes in 1.8.1 Fixed bug in 1.8.0 which defaulted to "nl" (Dutch) instead of "us" during boot (Live CD). Changes in a nutshell (1.8.0): + Updated kernel 2.6.28 * New module powernow-nx + Updated Firefox. + Default keymap for Dutch is now "US". + LiveUSB with options toram and myconfig=usb works now. + Nautilus script TextEdit: Yes/No Buttons instead of Cancel/OK. + Grub background now available for isolinux CD. + Infamous "i810" and "trident" bug in Xorg fixed. + CPU frequency scaling should work now with Intel (Centrino/Speedstep/...) too. + Added firmware for Broadcom 43xx wireless chips.

The OpenSource World conference — previously known as LinuxWorld — is fast approaching &mdsah; it convenes in San Francisco from August 12 - 13, showcasing everything Open Source and more. Conference organizers this week drew back the curtain on one of the conference's main attractions, its keynote speakers, and the lineup promises to be an interesting listen.

Is it time to scrap Fedora? I've been in discussions with a group of other writers, Linux distribution watchers, Linux community leaders and developers in the past few days concerning Linux commercial vs. Linux community versions and some of us came to the conclusion that Fedora's relevance has waned. In fact, it might be time to scrap it completely. Or maybe it's time for Red Hat to step up and support it formally and unconditionally.

Apache (and other web servers) have some kind of DOS-able flaw. IIS does not have this flaw. Do "all computers" suffer from the problem? No - only Apache and other open source web servers. An example of the "when MSFT software has a problem, all computers are at risk" FUD, only in reverse.

As I wrote a few days ago, I replaced Kubuntu and Ubuntu on several of my home PCs with PCLinuxOS and 64 Studio. I was intending to wait a couple of months to post a followup because long-term performance is what matters. But a few things have impressed me so much these two newcomers to my little computing empire deserve an extra mention.

I've written quite a bit about using Linux to help educate people. In the past, I've discussed using Linux to teach astronomy, programming and computer logic design. So today, I'm writing about using the KDE Interactive Geometry (Kig) program to teach mathematics. Kig allows you to use various tools to diagram and demonstrate different mathematical concepts. With Kig, you can draw points, lines, line segments, half lines, vectors, circles and various other conic sections. When Kig refers to a “half line”, it means what I was taught was a ray—essentially a line with one endpoint. Drawing hyperbolic curves on the computer sure beats getting dry-erase marker all over yourself or sneezing because of chalk dust.

It's been a while since I had a look at Songbird, and that was when 1.0 came out. The new release was put out a little earlier this month and comes with a brand new equalizer, a new mode to auto-organise media files included in the collection and Last.fm radio integration. However, the most awaited feature is probably the 10-band equalizer and it is available using the Controls -> Equalizer menu option (or Ctrl+E). Here's how it looks:

With the release of Ubuntu 9.10, which is due out this October, Canonical and the Ubuntu developers hope to fix at least 100 "paper cuts" on the Ubuntu Linux desktop. Paper cuts are rather trivial usability bugs that are small, but in one way or another could impair the Linux desktop or increase the burden placed on a new Linux user ever so slightly.

One thing that I love about Linux (and Ubuntu) is that it is fully customizable and I can configure it to the way that I want it. Previously, I have already illustrated its flexibility by showing how you can transform Ubuntu Hardy and Intrepid into Mac OS X. Today, let’s bring a step further and see how we can transform Kubuntu Jaunty to Windows 7 in 3 simple steps.

SourceForge is keenly aware of its roots in the open source community, and its strategies for growth encompass ways to better serve its base. Among its goals are a transformation of the Sourceforge.net Web site into "a world-class development environment," said Jon Sobel, SourceForge's group president of media.

Qmailtoaster is a project that aims to make the installation of Qmail onto RPM based systems a snap. All of the packages are distributed in source RPMs so building the packages for your particular distro and architecture is as easy as running a script or a simple command for each package. The RPMs have all of the needed and commonly asked for patches included so you can have a mail server up and running in about an hour. When it's all complete, you'll have a full Qmail mail server installation ready for just about anything. I personally run Qmailtoaster servers for other companies and ISPs who have tens of thousands of users on their systems.

After launching the GeForce 200 series last year, NVIDIA unveiled the GeForce GTX 260M and 280M GPUs for notebook computers earlier this year. The GeForce GTX 280M is currently NVIDIA's fastest notebook GPU, even though it is derived from the GeForce 9800GTX+ core rather than the GTX 280 desktop variant. This 55nm notebook GPU has 128 processing cores, supports two-way SLI, features NVIDIA PureVideo HD technology (important for VDPAU usage under Linux), and other features to pack a desktop performance punch in notebook computers. The Linux-friendly System76 manufacturer recently introduced the Bonobo Professional notebook computer with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280M and an Intel Core 2 Quad processor, which we happen to be looking at now and today are delivering some initial performance results from this high-end NVIDIA GPU under Ubuntu Linux.

Think for yourself for a change. Stop to think that upwards to 70 percent of the Internet runs on Linux. Is that obscure? If what you say were true, wouldn't the Internet be brought to its knees on a daily basis? If it were Microsoft servers running the show, it may very well be. The fact that Linux exists gives you a stable environment to dwell on the Internet. I'd be a bit more respectful and check my facts before I went leaving public record of my ignorance. What you say or do on the Internet never goes away. Carla should have posted those comments.

The company providing technology to the US intelligence community has invested in an open-source firm to provide enterprise-search technology to the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

This is a story of hubris, nemesis and very bad language. Mine. We all like to have our egos flattered and I’m no exception, so when two old acquaintances told me their Windows laptops were infected with viruses I knew they were about to put the bite on me. They did. Could I fix them? Well, my vanity was flattered of course but it was to be a salutary experience that got me to thinking about whether it will ever be possible to wean users off Microsoft products. Read the full story Free Software Magazine.

Will ARM-powered smartbooks make all the difference for Linux? There's no unanimity of opinion in the FOSS world, except perhaps the general agreement that the $200 units Freescale and Qualcomm debuted at Computex are, well, interesting. Unlike Windows, most Linux software is "only a recompile away from running on ARM," noted Slashdot blogger Peter Brett.

Currently, there's a lot of hype around Android on ARM-based netbooks, a type of netbook arriving later this year. However, despite the obvious choice for Android and other Linux systems, NVIDIA has openly stated their preference for... Windows CE. ARM and Asus are also quite sceptical about Android on ARM netbooks.