Showing all newswire headlines

The votes are in and it looks like we're moving. Plus, the answer to the treasure hunt from last week. There are still several hours left to go on the poll (which may be closed at the time of publishing) as I write this post, but (unless something insane happens) it looks as though our desire to remove ourselves from blogspot agrees with the opinion of about 77 percent of the folks who took the time to vote.

There's no way around it: the longer you run a Windows installation, the slower and less responsive it gets. On my year-old dual-boot laptop, I wait longer and longer for Windows to boot, and longer and longer for programs to do what I ask. Meanwhile, my Ubuntu Linux installation, on exactly the same hardware, installed almost as long ago, is as snappy as the day I set it up—faster, in fact, as I've tweaked it and geeked it.

Linux Kernel developer Alan Cox has announced that he will be departing Red Hat for Intel. In an e-mail to the editors he explained that this move allows him to spend more time with his family and work even closer on the low level stuff that he really likes. Alan has been working on the Linux kernel since the early days in 1991 and has been contracted and employed by red Hat for ten years.

If you should ever need to clean up your computer, use this clean up utility for very low price (for free)..

[Sorry but I just had to share this one, almost spewed coffee all over my computer.. - Scott]

While commercial Linux distributor Red Hat has not grown enough to justify the ridiculous valuations that Wall Street put on the company when it went public a decade ago, the company is more or less on track to break $1bn in sales in the next couple years. In the third quarter of fiscal 2009 ended November 30, which had the global economic meltdown smack dab in the middle of it, Red Hat reported software subscription sales of $135.5m, up 17 per cent, with training and services sales of $29.9m, up 52.1 per cent. Overall sales rose by 22.1 per cent to $165.3m, and despite larger operating costs compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2008, net income rose by 18.7 per cent to $25.1m.

OK, it's not the regular full blown gnome desktop, but with only 2gigs to work with, it's a solution that works. Like many people, i have tried to get a "real" install of Ubuntu on my 2G Surf, but found myself reinstalling the default Xandros OS because of limited space on the SSD. The following tutorial will enable you to have an honest to goodness Ubuntu install that will do all the basic tasks you need.

Microsoft just can't quit you, Windows XP. The final shipment date of Microsoft's aged, yet distinctively non-Vista operating system has been extended yet again. System builders can now obtain Windows XP until May 30, 2009. Windows XP was originally scheduled for OEM extinction on January 31, 2009. That deadline was given once, twice, three times the delay to mid-2010, provided the Windows XP licenses were for netbooks and low-cost PCs that can't handle Windows Vista - or perhaps more importantly, can and do support Linux.

Lately I have been reading a lot of articles on the current happenings of Sun Microsystems. For years now, I have always had a soft spot for Sun Microsystems and despite all the struggles that they have been through, deep down I can feel that their end is approaching. If not the end, at least a complete remodel of their company will be taking place to cater to their recent investments in technology.

Even as some VARs begin to embrace open source applications they must now deal with a new challenge and opportunity: Open source's continued shift toward software as a service and cloud computing. The latest example involves a company called JumpBox working with Amazon.com. Here's the scoop from The VAR Guy.

OpenVAS is now out with its 2.0 release, which still shows some of its Nessus roots but isn't focused on keeping up with what's happening on the main Nessus effort. The Nessus fork is now carving out its own niche and moving out of the shadow of its creation.

Linux Mint says its "purpose is to produce an elegant, up to date and comfortable GNU/Linux desktop distribution." With hundreds of Linux distributions vying for our attention, what sets Linux Mint apart? Paul Ferrill learns that it does indeed have some worthy features not commonly found in other distributions.

The Linux Foundation is sponsoring an official contest for an inspirational Linux commercial. The winner will get fame and fortune and a trip to the Linux Symposium in Tokyo.

In a move designed to bolster VoIP quality, an open source telephony platform reportedly is now supporting a Web-based development group’s low-delay audio codec. Officials at FreeSWITCH say their platform supports Xiph.Org’s so-called “Constrained Energy Lapped Transform,” or “CELT” codec, a technology used for low-delay speech and audio communication.

Linux Magazine contributor Neil J. Gunther (October, 2007 "Stretch!" article among others) has recently been honored with the prestigious A. A. Michelson Award at the Computer Measurement Group (CMG) Conference in Las Vegas.

Matt (friend of the blog) Asay tells Oracle today to expand its open source strategy, but I want to ask the opposite question, namely whether Oracle hasn’t got the best strategy for fighting open source. The answer depends on whether you blame its weak earnings for the quarter on a strong dollar and the general malaise or think its failure to make many new sales hint at declining market share.

Bloggers with a Linux bent took a break from last week's bashing of a misinformed teacher to focus on the holidays -- and to ponder aloud yet again whether next year will be the year of Linux's long-awaited mainstream breakthrough. Hint: Don't hold your breath.

By now, you might have noticed that I'm a big fan of Puppy Linux. It is the distro I'm running on my workhorse ASUS Eee PC 701 4G netbook, and it helps me to stay productive not only in airports, cafés, and hotel rooms but also at home. But if you are still undecided whether you should give Puppy Linux a try, here are five reasons why this little gem deserves a closer look.

A next-generation package manager called Nix provides a simple distribution-independent method for deploying a binary or source package on different flavours of Linux, including Ubuntu, Debian, SUSE, Fedora, and Red Hat. Even better, Nix does not interfere with existing package managers. Unlike existing package managers, Nix allows different versions of software to live side by side, and permits sane rollbacks of software upgrades. Nix is a useful system administration tool for heterogeneous environments and developers who write software supported on different libraries, compilers, or interpreters.

Sugar Labs, a member of the Software Freedom Conservancy, is joining the GNOME Foundation as part of the GNOME Advisory Board. Sugar Labs creates software for young children used on platforms like the One Laptop Per Child's XO. Sugar is based on the GNOME platform and relies on technologies like GTK+ and Telepathy.

The end of the year is a self-indulgent time, when those who write about technology stop making lists of the best, worst, and most mind-numbingly mediocre applications they find and pause to make lists about tech trends in the upcoming year. Assessing the past is easy: it has been an interesting year for open source software. Predictions that come to pass, unless suitably vague, just fall into the "lucky guess" category. The one prediction I am sure of for 2009: Open source software will hold its own when it comes to growth and adoption.