Showing all newswire headlines

There’s a dirty little secret to technology conferences: Most of them suck to some degree. It’s about time someone started thinking about how to make conference time more valuable and less stale, especially now that companies are cutting back on travel to shows.

In a surprise declaration, I am still trying to process, President Barack Obama has announced a massive deployment of XO laptops to every public school student in America - to both improve education and stimulate the American economy. While that's game-changing just in itself, here's the real kicker - these will be XO-1.5's made by Intel & Dell!

[I think this is great, if it actually happens.. - Scott]

I.B.M. appears on the verge of acquiring Sun Microsystems, a longtime rival in the computer server and software markets, for nearly $7 billion. The two companies have been negotiating for weeks, ironing out terms of an agreement that would turn I.B.M. into the dominant supplier of high-profit Unix servers and related technology. I.B.M. is offering $9.50 a share, down from a bid of $10 a share, said people familiar with the discussions who were not authorized to speak publicly. The new agreement would restrict I.B.M.’s ability to walk away from the deal, these people said.

Take a screenshot tour of Novell’s latest release of SLED. Get the scoop on what’s new and what works (and what doesn’t).

Microsoft might be betting big on Windows 7, the next version of its flagship operating system, but to Ubuntu Linux founder Mark Shuttleworth, the upcoming release is really an opportunity for Linux to shine. "The next billion PC users won't be as interested in compatibility with Microsoft Office as they are in connecting to Twitter and staying connected to their social network through the Web," Shuttleworth said. "The business models are changing and it means that the growth of the PC industry is going to be strongly attracted to alternative to Windows -- that's my belief."

What happens when you start using the 'T' word in connection with computer operating systems? All hell breaks loose in the blogosphere, that's what. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer started it, with his assertion that Mac users pay an "Apple Tax." One thing led to another, and now the Linux community is debating whether Linux users pay a "Microsoft Tax."

Here's a review of no less than 10 file managers for Linux: Nautilus, Dolphin, Konqueror, Thunar, PCManFM, Krusader, Xfe, ROX-Filer, Midnight Commander and Vifm.

Only a few days ago, we ran an article on the future of KDE and GNOME, and which of the two had the brighter future based on their developmental processes. Barely has that discussion ended, or the GNOME engineering team comes with a pretty daunting plan to introduce a fairly massive reworking of the GNOME interface for GNOME 3.0 (2.30). Read on for the details.

As of today, the latest version of the KDE desktop and software distribution carries the version number 4.2.2. The release, as is usual for our monthly point-releases does not have a lot of exciting new features, but makes your life just a bit easier. Many bug fixes have been backported from the trunk of KDE development.

We hope yesterday you enjoyed our interview with the Wallbuntu Linux distribution and then on a serious note the X.Org 7.5 release or there the lack of. With the start of a new month though, there's a few items we need to remind you.

When the Free Software and Open Source movements started, the question was always "How do you make money?". The answer was you give away the software and sell support and services. It is this simple business model which has been evolved by the current set of open source based Enterprise software vendors. Many vendors say their software is open sourced, but that isn't an assurance that as a customer you'll get the benefits of open source.

Opinions on whether Mono is dangerous, and on whether it should be avoided or accepted fly thick and fast. If you're bored with the whole deal feel free to go read something else, but I suspect that the controversy is going to grow as more Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu, ship with Mono applications by default. Here are some comments collected from here and there that I thought represented the major points in the endless Mono debates, and that are understandable to non-coders. I'm not a developer so I could be totally off the rails here, but these made a lot of sense to me and seem to clarify the issues.

To hear some media outlets talk on Tuesday, one would have thought that the Apocalypse was closing on the world like Jaws on an innocent swimmer. Havoc, mayhem, hemorrhoids, male pattern baldness — just about everything imaginable was supposed to break loose yesterday as the Conficker worm came crawling out of its hole. Why, then, is Preparation H stock up a mere quarter-point and we all still have our hair?

Envizions announced that it is taking orders for an open-source Linux gaming system, and will start shipping beta units to game developers, resellers, and software partners on April 10. The EVO Smart Console is based on a 2.4GHz Athlon, and includes a Fedora-based Linux distro.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales announced that Wikia Search, a community-based search engine, is officially shutting down. Unlike Google, whose search relies on algorithms, user ratings and input determined the results ranking in Wikia Search....Wales wrote on his personal blog. "In a different economy, we would continue to fund Wikia Search indefinitely. It's something I care about deeply."

"Today I would like to discuss the present state of Free & Open Source email clients. I do not intend to present a comprehensive state of the art of email clients but rather to share my experiences over several years as an user who has accumulated gigabytes of emails. I will mention non-Free Software applications such as Outlook and Apple Mail, which I also used. "

Scott Guthrie ---the inventor of ASP.NET--- just announced that Microsoft is open sourcing the ASP.NET MVC stack under the MS-PL license.

This tutorial shows how to prepare a Fedora 10 server for the installation of ISPConfig 3, and how to install ISPConfig 3. ISPConfig 3 is a webhosting control panel that allows you to configure the following services through a web browser: Apache web server, Postfix mail server, MySQL, MyDNS nameserver, PureFTPd, SpamAssassin, ClamAV, and many more.

With the launch of the Radeon HD 4800 series in June of last year, AMD made an evolutionary leap in their Linux support. For the first time, when introducing a brand new graphics processor (the RV770) it was greeted by same-day Linux support, compared to the past where Linux users had to wait many months for any new level of support. Not only was there this Linux support via the Catalyst driver, but there was even open-source support in the X.Org driver the very same month. In the months that followed, they then introduced CrossFire support, OverDrive, and other features to put their Linux Catalyst suite closer to their Windows driver. This morning AMD is announcing a high-end refresh of the RV770 GPU that will be known as the RV790 and is found in the Radeon HD 4890 graphics card. Is AMD continuing to play ball with Linux? We will tell you this morning as we look closely at the ASUS Radeon HD 4890 on Ubuntu Linux.