Showing all newswire headlines

This week we take a first look at Novell's openSUSE 11.1, the latest release from the ever popular distribution. In the news, the release of openSUSE 11.1 heralds the adoption of a freer license, Debian calls a vote on whether or not to include firmware in the upcoming Lenny release while Debian secretary quits over backlash from firmware vote, Gentoo begins releasing weekly snapshots of stage tarballs, the Asianux Consortium incorporates its fifth member and expands into Thailand, Mandriva sets up a Community Steering Committee and increases their number of channel partners, a new distro, Hackable: 1, aims to create a GNOME-based software stack for hackable devices while the Openmoko project releases an update to their software stack. Finally, included in their respective new sections are two interviews - one with Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier of openSUSE and the other with Johannes (Hanno) Böck of Gentoo Linux.

In which Rob Reilly's old heap dies for good; he replaces it with the laptop equivalent of an American muscle car, stuffs 64-bit Kubuntu on it, and goes joyriding. Is it a good trip? Does it perform to expectations? Come on in and find out.

"A long time ago, on a blog post not that far away… I once wrote an article on Xvid 1.1.3, and the speed boost one could get by enabling assembly-optimized code. Well, this is a case of my being hoisted by my own petard — however, I must admit that several things were against me. In short, Murphy’s Law struck again. But first, for those of you who don’t want to click through old blog posts, a (fair) bit of history." Mitch Meyran relates his trials and sufferings compiling Xvid. Read the full story at Freesoftware Magazine.

How to Install and Configure DHCP Server in Ubuntu Server. A DHCP Server assigns IP addresses to client computers. This is very often used in enterprise networks to reduce configuration efforts. All IP addresses of all computers are stored in a database that resides on a server machine.A DHCP server can provide configuration settings using two methods

Last week our annual Linux Graphics Survey ended. There were over 14,000 submissions this year to the eleven questions we asked pertaining to X.Org, Linux desktop usage, and graphics hardware. In this article are all of the results from this year's survey.

This tutorial shows how you can set up an OpenSUSE 11.1 desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge.

As promised, we will keep the tech jokes coming because it's the season to be jolly (falalalala lalalala). Our next set of jokes will surely tickle some of our geeky readers’ funny bones. Now get ready for some classic Linux/Unix Christmas humor:

Audio in linux, how to put it into words? How about: oss, alsa, pulseaudio, esound, arts, portaudio, jack, gstreamer, phonon. Did I miss any? Embarrassment of riches? Or just embarrassment? I will not rehash history any more than to say that between buggy/incomplete drivers for sound cards and the wonderful world of alsa I’ve never been able to understand how the hell audio works beyond getting output and, sporadically, input. I am the quintessential dumb user of linux audio, even though I have tried to figure it out.

How to Install Latest Wine in debian Etch. Wine makes it possible to run Windows programs alongside any Unix-like operating system, particularly Linux. At its heart, Wine is an implementation of the Windows Application Programing Interface (API) library, acting as a bridge between the Windows program and Linux. Think of Wine as a compatibility layer, when a Windows program tries to perform a function that Linux doesn’t normally understand, Wine will translate that program’s instruction into one supported by the system. For example, if a program asks the system to create a Windows pushbutton or text-edit field, Wine will convert that instruction into its Linux equivalent in the form of a command to the window manager using the standard X11 protocol.

Move over Hodgman and that hipster kid who briefly dated Drew Barrymore, because there's a new advertising campaign in town that hopes to take Linux into the mainstream. With commercials. It's true. The Linux Foundation saw those successful I'm a Mac commercials, and Jerry Seinfeld playing with Bill Gates, and they wanted in. So they're having a video contest that will try and showcase "just what Linux means to those who use it, and hopefully inspires many to try it."

LXer Feature: 21-Dec-2008

There were several articles about Netbooks this week. One article entitled "Small is beautiful" that talks about the joys of the Netbook, another of how now that Microsoft has dumped XP on the Netbook market, that it has of course taken the majority of the share of pre-installs. Isn't it nice to know that you can buy a little Netbook with XP installed on it without having to pay for the 'downgrade' (I mean upgrade) like you would have to if you did not want Vista to come pre-installed on a new desktop or laptop? I didn't think so either.

At this moment in time there seems to be a war going on. On one side there is the proprietary systems, iconified by windows. On the other side there is the open source systems, iconified by Linux. There is also a third group, the fence sitters, who alternate between the two camps. These are neither willing or able to choose one side and stick with it.

The beauty of Linux is in users ability to do large amount of customization to have a unique user expereince. So today we will look in to some tips for a “better” Linux experience. The term “better” here is relative, because what works for me might seem a distraction for some or plain annoying to others; some of this “tips” might appeal to beginners, while advanced users might find it too easy. Hopefully some of these tips will be helpful to some of you.

Opinion: Microsoft has long been worried about Linux competition in the server market, writes Preston Gralla. But now it's also taking Linux seriously as a desktop operating system, and it has designed Windows 7 to kill it.

Could your business be paying for a proprietary program when an open source alternative exists? Take a look at our guide as we count down the most popular open source products. Much of the software suggested in this round-up came from sourceforge.net, known colloquially as the open source "phone book". Alternatively, you might want to look at Wikipedia's Free Software Portal. If you need software, it's well worth a look.

It's been a while since we put out an seo metrics script. In many ways, this is the opposite of our last one.

SuSE was founded in Nuremberg, Germany in 1992 when the Linux kernel was still almost new. by Hubert Mantel, Burchard Steinbild, Roland Dyroff and Thomas Fehr, with the objective of distributing Slackware (based on the earlier SLS Linux from Soft Landing Systems), in sets of 40 floppies, translated into German, with the approval of Patrik Volderding, the guiding light and sole developer of Slackware. The SuSE organisation began life as Gesellschaft für Software-und Systementwicklung mbH, which later became Software und System Entwicklung (Software and System Development), from which sprang the friendly acronym SuSE. SuSE's own distinctive version of Linux came into being with the absorption of Florian LaRoche’s Jurix Linux and the development of the SuSE installer YaST in 1995, and but for a mild stutter after the collapse of the NASDAQ, has never looked back since.

An X Window manager is software that manages the windows that applications bring up. For example, when you start an application, there will be a window manager running in the background, responsible for the placement and appearance of windows.

Steven Edwards of the Bordeaux Technology Group released Bordeaux 1.6 today. Bordeaux 1.6 comes with added support for Google's Chrome Web Browser, Google Earth, Google Picasa, Trillian and Apple's Safari Web Browser. Additionally, Cellar support has improved; you can now ?delete and install into an existing Cellar. IE6 now installs java, shockwave and latest flash. T?here has also been many small bug fixes and tweaks on the backend to improve the speed and reliablity of all the supported applications.

7 ways that you can save money and be a hero at your company.