Showing all newswire headlines

Economic downturns have a tendency to accelerate emerging technologies, boost the adoption of effective solutions, and punish solutions that are not cost competitive or that are out of synch with industry trends.

So begins a new white paper from research analyst IDC. History supports the logic of the statement, but applying the same logic to predict the future is a dangerous game. Having good starting data can help considerably in that regard, though, and that's what makes this report interesting. It's title is Linux Adoption in a Global Recession, and it marshalls some impressive data to predict that Linux will be a significant gainer, while others are punished by the current global meltdown.

The Symbian Foundation has laid out a version release schedule, and a development timetable that calls for five iterations to be in production at a time. The version of Symbian currently shipping requires a separate graphical layer, S60, but with "Symbian^2" those layers are combined in the first open-source version of the OS, which should be hardened for launch at the end of 2009.

SourceForge should be familiar to most Open Source users: for many years the Internet platform has given thousands of software projects a virtual home, including the use of the Subversion and CVS source code management (SCM) systems.

Could the eighth edition of Microsoft Internet Explorer really be the last of its breed? That's the rumor, anyway. The prospect has some in the FOSS community excited and eager to bid the browser a fond good riddance, though others see it as just another ploy to get trust busters off Redmond's back.

The Linux Foundation has taken over hosting and content for the linux.com domain from SourceForge Inc with the aim of producing a dynamic web 2.0 site that is high on collaboration and utility. Potential ideas touted so far include a Linux AppStore, Digg-like news aggregation and location-based support.

You want to offer wireless Internet to your customers, or share your connection with neighbors? You don't have to spend several hundreds to set up a simple-- or advanced--Wi-Fi hotspot. Eric Geier shows us how to share a wi-fi connection safely, easily, and cheaply.

Up to now the automotive branch has not been famous for its engagement in Linux and Open Source. Now the chairman of the new open source alliance Genivi is talking about motives and plans.

This guide explains how you can install WebVZ on a Debian Lenny OpenVZ host. WebVZ is a light web-based control panel for OpenVZ. It has its own web server (Webrick) and database engine (SQLITE 3).

Even though a trixbox system is a phone system, it is still a basic computer system like any other. One of the problems that we face is that extensions and VoIP service providers typically come into the system over the open Internet; this means that certain aspects of our system are wide open to the outside world. During the week that this article was written, several new scripts came out that allowed people to scan machines over the Internet, find systems that are running Asterisk, get the list of available extensions, and then hack the passwords. Because of issues like this, it is more imperative than ever that you understand how to properly secure your trixbox server from the outside world. In this article we will focus on how to secure the trixbox server.

If you have just upgraded to or installed Hardy or Intrepid or Jaunty and you have some sound somewhere, but not everywhere for everything, this is a fast way to get all the missing stuff you need and give you some tools to figure out what is going on. If you hear the startup sound but nothing else, or if some applications work and others don’t, this is for you. If you have no sound at all, there is a link at the end of this post for more extensive troubleshooting help but you should try this first anyway as it may solve your problem and will not make matters worse.Make sure that your system is fully updated.

Late last month we looked at the Intel X25-E Extreme SSD on Linux. We ran this high-performance solid-state drive within a System76 Serval Notebook and compared its performance to a Seagate Momentus 7200.2 SATA HDD. During that testing we were just using the default EXT3 file-system, but now we have taken the Intel X25-E SSD for another spin as we looked at its performance when using the ReiserFS, JFS, XFS, EXT3, and EXT4 file-systems.

As with the last Firefox 3.1 beta, there's improvements to the private browsing mode, the performance has increased, pages render faster, pages with JavaScript code run much faster, with the new Tracemonkey engine. Use of operating system sounds. 93/100 on the Acid 3 test. "Add Tab" button, Many extensions for Firefox 3.0 are already compatible with Firefox 3.1 beta 3.

Yesterday, the new dynamic tiling window manager i3 was released. Focus is on clean, readable and well documented code, a decent Xinerama implementation and various other improvements.

Fact is, OpenOffice is good enough for the vast majority of businesses seeking a productivity suite. The bigger problem facing OpenOffice involves bloggers who grew up deploying and troubleshooting Microsoft Office.

Almost back to trying to get back on a normal sleep schedule :)

Mozilla Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 has been released. This milestone is a public preview release intended for developer testing and community feedback. This milestone includes improvements to private browsing mode, and better performance and stability with a new Tracemonkey engine.

A windfall for corporate Linux Users? What gives?

Linux doesn't have much in the way of advertising. While Apple's wonderful "I'm a Mac" TV ad campaign is famous, and Microsoft's Bill Gates/Jerry Seinfeld ads are infamous, Linux really doesn't have anything. Now, the Linux Foundation is trying to change that with it's "We're Linux" Video Contest. The winning designer will get a free trip to Tokyo, Japan to participate in the Linux Foundation Japan Linux Symposium in October 2009. The Linux Foundation doesn't have the money for a major or even minor for that matter, television advertising campaign. But, at the very least, the winning ad will get some news and online exposure for both the winner and Linux.

Recently Red Hat has decided to go on the offensive with their patent strategy. With this patent Red Hat is attempting to patent “Method and apparatus to deliver messages between applications”. To me this smacks of the way Microsoft deals with patents. They patent “ideas” or “the framework of an idea” in case someone happens to get the same idea or a similar idea. This “offensive patent” strategy is very much in line with the Microsoft way of business. Of course Red Hat does have a different twist. What they have promised is these “offensive patents” will not be enforced against open source development.

LXer Feature: 15-Mar-2009

I figured I would start the Roundup this week with a good play on words with Michael Tiemann's, From the End of the Beginning to the Beginning of the End. Caitlyn Martin gives us a review the very different results in testing the performance of different Linux distributions. Mozilla starts to contemplate a future without Google and Derek Knowlton shows us The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of the The EeePC and Aspire One. Oh and by the way Happy 15th Birthday, Linux!