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Here is the tutorial and tips needed for running Ruby on Rails on Firebird. Migrations doesn’t work yet with Ruby on Rails and Firebird but you can use Flamerobin to create the database tables by hand

The ATI FireGL graphics cards have been a staple of the workstation graphics scene for about a decade, but last year AMD made the decision to end the FireGL series and create the FirePro 3D series in its place. The FirePro 3D series is now made up of graphics cards ranging in price from under $100 USD and built using their RV730 GPU to their highest-end models costing well over $1,000 and using the RV770XT graphics processor. The ATI RV770XT is what is used by the consumer-grade Radeon HD 4870, which was greeted by same-day Linux support and other firsts for their Linux Catalyst driver like OverDrive, RandR 1.2 support, and CrossFire. The support for the new FirePro graphics cards is also first-rate under Linux with their Catalyst driver, but how is their performance? In this article we are examining the ATI FirePro V8700 1GB workstation graphics card under Linux.

The Linux release candidate 2 kits for Firebird 2.1.2 have been released for field testing. Feedback to the firebird-devel list please; bug-reports to the Tracker.

In the first part of this series of articles I stated some things about designers and their apple computers, I said that these machines are overpriced and overhyped. This made some people think this articles were about Linux vs Apple. I got a lot of comments from people who seem to like apple:-) and a lot of arguments, some probably valuable. The truth is this is not about Linux vs Apple, it's about Linux being cool. Linux is cool, cooler than windows and cheaper than apple. How cool apple really is? I don't have a clue, I don't know too much about fruit.

This short guide shows two methods of recording all your installed .deb packages in a text file that you can then use on another computer to install the same packages there. This is useful if you want to install the same set of packages on more than one computer.

From another conversation I had on an AMIA.org members only list that I wrote: Years from now I hope that people will laugh at these debates [Free/Open Source vs Proprietary EMR software] in the same way that today we think the alchemists where misguided. I hope that laugh will happen in just a few years, and not 20. Do you remember the Steve Martin 'Medieval Barber' skits in which he does blood letting on customers then starts talking into the camera, lays out the discovery of the scientific method then grins into the camera and says 'naaaah!' and continues doing dreadful things? That's what seems to be going on here a kind of 'Medieval Barber' type thing that is occurring with many people in thinking about Health IT. That this proprietary vs. Free/Open Source is even debated just seems so odd to me.

The good news is the deployment of open source is growing. The bad news is that policies managing those projects are an afterthought. Those are the results of an informal survey of developers at the Software Development West Software Development Conference this week.

FOSS is all about giving power and control to individuals. It embraces all of the important freedoms-- the freedom to create, share, invent, collaborate, learn, and change, all without penalties or artificial barriers.

The whole FAT licensing saga between Microsoft and TomTom just got a whole lot more complicated. Microsoft sued TomTom because the satnav maker had not licensed FAT from Microsoft, even though several others have. This left TomTom in a difficult position: not license it, and face legal penalties - license it, and violate the GPL. The second part, however, is up for debate now: the terms under which Microsoft licenses FAT may not violate the GPL at all. Near-instant update: On Slashdot, Bruce Perens and Jeremy Allison have explained that the FAT terms are still a GPL violation. Allison accidentally emailed the journalist who wrote this story with the wrong information.

Man, is this week a-killin' me. Enjoy the photos and funnies.

The Ubuntu Server Edition revolution is starting but it doesn’t involve traditional on-premise servers. A few hours ago I mentioned Turnkey Linux was putting Ubuntu Server software appliances in the cloud. But WorksWithU overlooked another major story: RightScale — a well-known cloud computing company — today announced “full support” for Ubuntu as part of the RightScale Cloud Management platform. It’s big news. Here’s why.

Unreal Tournament 3 was released back on the 17th of November in 2007. Nearly a year and a half later, we still have no UT3 Linux client -- nor do we know the reason(s) behind this massive delay. Ryan Gordon, the widely-known Linux game developer that was contracted by Epic Games to port UT3 over to Linux and Mac OS X, has provided a brief update on the matter.

Microsoft organised a competition "to get competitive LAMP engineers to increase the volume of technical information around PHP/IIS and application compatibility." The result? A total of 71 applications out of the targeted 75 were ported onto IIS, of which 47 were newly ported to IIS. But isn't that weakening LAMP by boosting the Windows stack? So why are open source coders taking part in this kind of thing?

Kodak has released a free scanner application for Linux called ScanTWAIN that promises "production quality scanning." The software is released under the GNU General Public Licence (GPL) version 2 and comes with a complete GUI that supports all of the options of its Windows counterpart. Support is included for duplex scanning with automatic feeding of multiple pages through an Automatic Document Feeder (ADF).

The Open Source Initiative (OSI), one of the principal advocacy organisations on open source software, has unanimously approved the European Union Public Licence (EUPL) version 1.1 as an open source licence, on 4 March. "This is very good news", commented Karel De Vriendt, head of the European Commission's e-Government program (Idabc) that is responsible for the development and maintenance of the open source licence. "OSI's decision certifies that the EUPL is 100 percent compliant with their definition of open source. This will help to convince European public administrations which are developing software for their e-Government systems, that the EUPL is a true open source licence." Version 1.1 of the EUPL was published by the European Commission on 9 January. The licence is available in all official languages of the European Union, and all these 22 linguistic versions have identical value. This means that developers who want to use the licence can pick whichever language version they prefer.

For those of you whom use GNU/Linux, you might know of a little program called Cinelerra. Cinelerra is free software, licensed on the GNU General Public License. Some of you may have seen this video on YouTube… If not, you should watch it, and then continue reading on. Here is the video I’ll be working with…

A well-regarded security consultant has shown just how easy it can be to take illicit control of Mac OS X. Security consultant Dino Dai Zovi has given a demonstration to the SOURCE security, business and technology conference in Boston in which he broke into a Mac and took photos with its iSight camera. Dai Zovi explained that Mac OS X's heap memory is poorly protected, and that it is relatively easy to find the location of various libraries.

Ubuntu is converging quickly with cloud services. A prime example: Turnkey Linux is launching 12 Ubuntu Server Edition software appliances that users can deploy in various cloud services. The news comes only a few weeks after Canonical said Ubuntu 9.10 will leap into Amazon.com’s cloud. Here's the scoop.

Why is FREE! the world's best-selling noun, verb, adjective and adverb, yet so hard to credit as a foundation for business in the Internet Age? And what will happen when business folk finally grok the abundant opportunities that FREE! provides? Dictionary.com lists 49 meanings for the word free. Here in the World of Linux, there are two main ones: 1) the presence of liberty, 2) the absence of price. Or, as Richard M. Stallman drew the distinction, free-as-in-freedom and free-as-in-beer. Both kinds contributed enormously to the development not only of free and open source code, but to the Internet — the place where most of that code was written and on which most of it runs.

Where do you want to learn today? Think again. Ah yes, there's that all too familiar sound of tightening budgets and the tossing aside of those things perceived as non-essential. Training's death knell reverberates in my head like the sound of an ill-tuned vesper bell. Your dilemma is that you need to learn Linux but you have no money to buy training — what do you do — wait indefinitely for money to return to the coffers, download Linux and fumble through it on your own? Or, do you take the initiative and find some inexpensive or free learning resources?