Showing all newswire headlines

I would love to go through 2009 and never have to use the tag “legal” on an open source blog post. Wishes do come true. SCO has lost, to the tune of $2.54 million, plus interest. The era of obvious business method patenting may also be over, along with Microsoft’s patent threats, thanks to the decision In Re Bilski.

While I was writing last Friday's editor's note, "Linux Should Copy Amiga", I kept thinking what a different story it would have been if Amiga had been released under a Free Software license. I'm sure I'm not the only one with that thought. Then I ran across osCommerce is Dead: Long Live the NEW osCommerce Project. While the circumstances are different, this is also a story of a software project in trouble. But it has a different ending, because osCommerce is licensed under the GPL.

I'm wondering how many nails have to be pounded into SCO's coffin before people finally just take a stake and pound one through its heart. But one of the last nails has been driven in and sealed over: SCO's lost toNovell in a way that may be, gratefully, irreversible.

Despite the economic turmoil, Wyse Technology generated record sales in October. Apparently, thin clients running Novell SUSE Linux are in high demand. Here's the scoop, only from The VAR Guy.

"If you look at our original schedule we were supposed to release around Oct. 28 and here we are, four weeks later than what we expected," Paul Frields, Fedora's project leader, told InternetNews.com. The outage itself lasted about three weeks, he added, "and during that time, our infrastructure team nuked our infrastructure and rebuilt the entire thing."

SUSE Linux Enterprise now has more than 2,500 software certified applications and is recommended as a preferred platform for leading ISVs including Microsoft and SAP Novell today announced more than 2,500 software applications are now certified on the latest versions of SUSE(R) Linux Enterprise, with an average of 140 new applications being added each month. Based on publicly available information, SUSE Linux Enterprise 9 and 10 have the most certified software applications when compared to the latest releases of all other commercial Linux* distributions.

Although GNU/Linux has the reputation of being a more secure operating system than Microsoft Windows, you still need to secure the Linux desktop. This tutorial takes you through the steps of installing and configuring antivirus software, creating a backup-restore plan, and making practical use of a firewall.

Adobe Systems has issued a prerelease version of project Alchemy, a small tool that compiles C and C++ code for programs running on ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM2). The idea is to expand the capabilities of Web applications running on Adobe Flash Player 10 and Adobe AIR 1.5.

It's time for me to wear my special hat again. The Fedora developer community has announced the official release of Fedora 10, a new version of the popular open source Linux distribution. This release is a promising step forward for Fedora and it introduces some important new features and technologies that bring more robustness and usability to the desktop user experience. Fedora 10 is built on Linux kernel version 2.6.27, which was officially released in October. This version comes with improved compatibility for popular webcam devices and also includes the new Atheros ath9k wireless driver.

Silicon Graphics have always made great workstations. I’m not just talking about brutal 3D monsters that could apply video feeds as textures in real time (over a decade ago). The machines are responsive and balanced, and this makes them perfect for general desktop use. Annoyingly, too, as it means when I’m on the road and using my Macbook, I’m constantly frustrated by a gutless machine with a glitzy UI that gets in the way and slows things down. With IRIX officially dead, the Open Source community is the only place any sort of IRIX-related development is happening. The crew over at Nekochan have developed Nekoware, an entire distribution of Open Source apps ported to IRIX, tuned and optimised for MIPS.

Not everyone who uses Linux today has done so because of carefully reasoning that it is a better operating system than the others on offer. People enter the Linux fold due to different reasons and those who stay there go through several stages of growth. This article has nothing to do with the person who takes careful stock of things and the migrates over after weighing carefully the pros and cons. It deals with the others.

With all of the talk these days about the desktop Linux taking on Windows in the enterprise sector, have you ever considered that with some simple compromises, using Linux desktops running different thin clients can work very well within the confines of what most businesses need? The real trick is ensuring that application functionality and familiarity remain intact. I believe there is such a tool that will allow this to happen – indeed, it has worked well for many computing environments already. Enter Thinstation

[Matt on Datamation? What has the world come to? And with picture too! - Sander]

The Linux kernel uses several special capabilities of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) suite. These capabilities range from giving you shortcuts and simplifications to providing the compiler with hints for optimization. Discover some of these special GCC features and learn how to use them in the Linux kernel.

A tutorial for configuring you Fedora 10 Installation with all the basics a user might need. Learn how to configure extra Fedora repositories for video and audio codecs as long as Video card drivers. Instructions for Firefox, JAVA, Flash, KDE4 and many other applications.

TiddlyWiki excels at managing notes and text snippets, but can you tweak it for other uses? If you take a look at some applications based on TiddlyWiki, the answer appears to be a resounding yes. With TiddlyWiki derivatives, you can manage tasks, track projects, keep tabs on contacts, and organize book collections. Like the original TiddlyWiki, each derivative consists of a single HTML file which you have to download to your local hard disk. Open the downloaded file in a browser, and the TiddlyWiki-based tool is ready to go.

Fedora might not be getting a complete makeover or flashy new features in version 10, out today, but some welcome enhancements under-the-hood make this a worthwhile upgrade. If you've never given Fedora a try, now is a great time. The tenth revision slick and stable and it has a rock solid feel to it that, for our money, trumps even Ubuntu's latest release. Fedora 10 has many of the features we loved in Ubuntu - the latest version of GNOME and the new NetworkManager utility, for instance. As a bonus you also get the always excellent RPM package system, the new Empathy instant messenger framework, PackageKit and host of other Fedora-specific tools.

How to figure out if your local filesystem is the thing that's giving you heartburn today ;) Today we're going to take a look at some quick and easy ways to determine if you have a problem with your local filesystem on SUSE Linux (tested on 8.x and 9.x). Of course, we're assuming that you have some sort of an i/o wait issue and the users are blaming it on the local disk.

Increasingly we're seeing big business jump on the Linux bandwagon, as companies wake up to the money that can be made out of a community of developers working for free. Someone has to protect that community from being exploited, and if you're a Fedora contributor, that someone is Max Spevack. Linux Format magazine caught up with Max to ask him about the way the Fedora world is turning.

Although OpenOffice.org comes with a decent online help, it can only get you that far.

The Utah-based SCO Group has been cleared to appeal a court ruling that might lead to a revival of its dispute with IBM over copyright claims to the freely distributed Linux operating system. Utah Federal Judge Dale A. Kimball has signed a final judgment in a case involving Novell, in which he had awarded Novell $2.5 million for some of the revenues The SCO Group obtained in licensing the Unix computer operating system.