Showing all newswire headlines

The pace of software development — regardless of the licence — is pretty fast these days. The state of your systems need constant monitoring. New features, bug-fixes and (most important) security updates need to be properly managed. Here, in no particular order, are five ways that choosing a free operating system will make system maintenance a lot easier and simpler. In short they are ways that — when it comes to system updates — GNU/Linux beats Windows. Discover Ryan Cartwright's reasons why GNU/Linux beats seven bells out of Windows when it comes to updating by reading the full article at Freesoftware Magazine.

Mozilla Corp. late Thursday released the first public preview of its mobile browser, and the company took the unusual step of offering it in versions for desktop PCs and Macs to collect feedback. Code-named "Fennec" in a nod to the fennec fox, a small animal that lives in the Sahara Desert and is notable for its huge ears, the browser is built from the same Gecko code base that drives the also-under-construction Firefox 3.1, which just hit Beta 1 on Tuesday.

I’d like to clarify some facts about Firebird and Firebird Foundation. I think right now is a correct time to remind how all these things are organized, because some messages about "crisis, firebird's death, low finances" and so on being spreaded around. It seems that many people think that Firebird Foundations owns Firebird, makes development strategic/tactic decisions or something like this. This is not real, in fact the Firebird Foundation is an institution to collect donations and sponsors money and grant them to people, related with Firebird development. To understand exactly who is who we need to look at the current situation with Firebird.

Apple and Psystar have agreed to pursue a mediated settlement to their legal dispute over Psystar's Open Computers. The Mac Observer turned up a court filing from earlier this month in the Apple-Psystar case noting that the two parties have agreed to participate in the Alternative Dispute Resolution process. As you may recall, Apple sued Psystar earlier this year for copyright infringement after Psystar began selling low-cost Open Computers with Mac OS X preinstalled. Psystar then countersued Apple on antitrust grounds.

Our first ScreenShot review of PCLinuxOS 2009 Beta. My first thoughts is that WoW PCLinuxOS uses the apt-get Debian utility for its package management system as well as the Control Center from Mandrake. The best of 2 worlds! Also PCLinuxOS makes sure that Java and Flash is already integrated into the standard install so that the new Linux user will not be able to say I do not know what to do when they go to there sites and are not able to load web applications.

Here is my guide on using the latest stable release for Lazarus and latest free pascal compiler (2.2.2) on Ubuntu intrepid/hardy Also after that install firebird related components and seems to work very well (tested the db aware components)

This year's second-most anticipated cell phone, the T-Mobile G1, is significant not because it's elegant or stylish like the most anticipated phone, the iPhone 3G, but because of what's inside. It's the first phone with Android, an open source mobile operating system largely developed by Google that will ship with other phones in the future.

While not commonly mentioned at Phoronix, Alien Arena is an open-source sci-fi first-person shooter that has been around since 2004 and uses the CRX engine, which is a derivative of the Id's GPL source-code. Version 7.20 of Alien Arena 2008 was released this week and a few features had caught our attention. In addition to a number of game-play improvements, Alien Arena has received a number of improvements to its graphics renderer with GLSL program management, parallax mapping, new lighting, new shaders, and other work.

Linus Torvalds has integrated a large collection of patches prepared by (Ext) filesystem developer Theodore Ts'o (tytso) into the main development branch of Linux. It contains a patch for Ext4 which allows it to present itself as ext4 instead of ext4dev. This signals that with the next kernel version 2.6.28, the successor to ext3 will finally leave behind its "hot" development phase. The kernel developers integrated an early version of Ext4 in the main development branch of Linux 2.6.19 in order to jointly develop it to maturity there.

Google Chrome is an open-source web browser from Google, currently available only for the Windows platform. It aims to have a minimal and easy to use interface. Chrome uses the WebKit rendering engine, which was developed from KHTML, and it is used in various browsers like Konqueror on KDE4 or Safari (on Mac OS X).

As some of you know that I’ve taken up the development of the ultra-cool xwinwrap tool that allows you to use movies, screensavers etc as wallpapers for you linux desktops. Here is version 0.02 for you consumption that fixes a bug because of which the generated window was overlapping other windows.

You would think that it's a hard enough job taking on Microsoft's desktop dominance. Ubuntu's community lead Jono Bacon, however, may actually have an even more audacious goal in mind: completely change the economics of the music industry.

In case you were wondering, Microsoft thinks the battle of open source vs. proprietary software is basically over. "Today, but increasingly in the future, we are all going to be 'mixed source'," Microsoft's top intellectual property lawyer said in a lunchtime interview on Thursday. To bolster his claim, Horacio Gutierrez notes Microsoft is releasing plenty of stuff as open source, while open-source companies like Red Hat often license commercial software alongside their open-source products. "I actually think the war between proprietary and open source is a thing of the past," he said.

A week ago we shared that Linux Game Publishing, the company that has ported games to Linux such as Cold War and X2: The Threat, was bringing Jets 'n' Guns to Linux. Just a week later this 2D side-scrolling arcade game is now being distributed to LGP's closed testing community. We have our hands on the first beta of Jets 'n' Guns for Linux and in this article are a few screenshots.

Red Hat Exchange, the online marketplace launched by Red Hat in March 2007, is finally hitting its stride. More than an online Linux store, RHX offers a range of third-party software. Quarterly sales recently doubled, and big customer purchases have included MySQL and Zimbra deployments.Here's the scoop.

In a shocking revelation today, millions of Chrome fanboys across the web have realized that Google has not yet lost interest in their one month old browser.

Boy, I wish I'd been at Gartner's Symposium ITxpo in Orlando, Fla. this year. That way I could heard with my own ears, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer tell an audience of high-level business people that if they want to wait for Windows 7 to switch from XP, instead of going to Vista, "They certainly can."

OpenSolaris 2008.05 had given a new face to Solaris through a vastly improved desktop experience. While OpenSolaris 2008.05 was not perfect, it was quite pleasant and a very nice first step. Sun Microsystems is now preparing for the release of OpenSolaris 2008.11 to incorporate their latest set of changes. In this article we are looking at some of the latest advancements in this pre-release.

At least I'm not the only person being paid beans to manage myself and the 5 departments I performs all essential functions in ;) This Saturday's post is from a pretty interesting site dealing with all things Linux. It goes by the name of reallylinux.com. This piece, that I found on there, interested me because, especially in dubious economic times like we find ourselves in these days, I'm often amazed at the sheer amount of diversity and depth of experience employers seek to acquire for less-than-bottom dollar.

By now you have probably heard about these newfangled netbooks, products like the ASUS EeePC and Dell Inspiron Mini 9. I've suggested that the biggest growth potential for these devices would come from emerging markets. But after a closer look, I've seen some trends that most likely will cause greater demand in the U.S. and Europe as well.