Showing all newswire headlines

Whether you're a high school student or just starting out with your college coursework, the free software community has provided a wide range of solutions to make life easier. Browsing the package repository of my Linux distribution led me to applications for everything from gene sequencing to particle physics, but there are a few real gems I think any student could benefit from, including math and chemistry tools such as TiLP, wxMaxima, Kalzium, Gnome Chemistry Utils, and OpenOffice.org Math.

Palit recently sent their new Radeon HD4850 videocard our way, and while it lacks some of the improvements I saw in the GeForce 9600 GSO Sonic, I'll look at a newer firmware version than the Sapphire Radeon HD4850 BIOSLEVEL.com previously looked at.

This isn't necessarily Linux related. But some things are just too good to keep to yourself.

The Linux landscape is constantly changing and has a strong community of both developers and users. But where is Linux the most popular, and where are the different Linux distributions the most popular? To try to answer these questions, we have looked at data from Google with the highly useful Insights for Search, which gave us a number of interesting and often surprising results. Aside from just looking at Linux itself, we have included eight common Linux distributions in this survey: Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, Fedora, Debian, Red Hat, Mandriva, Slackware and Gentoo.

Sabre Holdings Corp., the $3 billion online network best known for Travelocity, has adopted Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as the corporate standard for its global ticketing and airline services businesses and will implement RHEL 5 in all future acquisitions. Robert Wiseman, Sabre's chief technology officer, said the Southlake, Texas-based company began using Red Hat and other open source software about 2004. Red Hat now runs mission-critical online systems that collectively process as many as 32,000 transactions per second from three data centers in Tulsa, Okla., and one in Texas, he said.

Microsoft is sending Novell another $100 million. Whether you love or hate the partnership, here are five ways Novell can put that money to good use, according to The VAR guy.

When I first used Mono, shortly after its first appearance in 2004, one of my most important requirements was to get connected to a MySQL back end. This was quickly achieved at the time with the ByteFX data connector. Following the basic Mono tutorial quickly had me up and running, with access to MySQL databases. Last week I needed to reopen and modernize my application and found that there have been several important changes in Mono between 2004 and 2008. First, I found some "then and now" differences with the installation of the data connector. Second, I needed to make some modifications to my programming.

Sun Microsystems recently released the JavaFX Preview SDK. I decided to revisit what is Sun's last, best hope to recapture both the desktop and the browser in the face of stiff competition. The big question with Java FX is why anyone would want to adopt it when they've already got Adobe Systems' Flex and Microsoft's Silverlight, which is doing rather well in presenting the Beijing Olympics.

A few weeks ago I wrote about Jott, a Web service that translates speech via cell phones to text lists, e-mail and reminders (each translated message is called a "jott." Jott has done something rare amongst online start-ups … it has exited beta and announced it is in production!

f you've ever worked with and manipulated MySQL databases, chances are you've used phpMyAdmin to manage your databases from a Web interface. But phpMyAdmin can be a little complex; if you want a lightweight alternative, try phpMinAdmin. It's easier to install than its more robust cousin and has an easy-to-navigate graphical user interface for most important MySQL functions. Many Web hosting solutions bundle phpMyAdmin to let users create databases for their blogging software or content management systems. If yours doesn't, you'll find installing phpMinAdmin far easier than installing phpMyAdmin. phpMinAdmin is a single PHP script that requires no configuration.

In this article I will show how to install and use two clients for the popular microblogging platform Twitter on an Ubuntu 8.04 desktop. The first one is Twitux, the second Twitter client is gtwitter. Both clients have similar features, so it is up to you which one you want to install.

A lot of effort in recent months has been expended toward something people are calling "data portability." Just about everywhere you look; you'll bump into people pontificating about it. In case you've been out of the loop (perhaps hiking in the Himalayas), you can run the term through your favorite search engine to pull back numerous articles and blog posts on the subject. You might even want to dip into the Twitter and FriendFeed streams to see the ebb and flow of the micro debate.

Technical exercise bellow is targeting testing Jboss-Seam 2.0.2 SP1 with NetBeans 6.1 (JDK 6.0) to deploy Brian Leonard's Sample to Jboss 4.2.3 on Solaris Nevada ( build 96) with xVM kernel.Hibernate has been selected as persistence provider. Oracle 10gR2 database instance has been installed on SNV93 DomU for performance evaluation.

It's been a pretty incredible year for open source on the desktop. Dell has started selling some of its PCs with Ubuntu pre-installed, which means that even non-technical users can acquire a low-cost, powerful open source system without needing to worry about installation and handling drivers and suchlike.

I’m not sure why it bothers me: I use the word “Free” when I’m talking about “Free Software”, and “Open” when I mean “Open source”. I’m very particular about my words, that way. But that’s just me. I don’t expect another religion to follow the rules of my own, or vice-versa. So why do I expect others to use words in the same way that I do? And why do I feel so cross about “Open standards”, which come with proprietary documentation, a hefty price tag, and an NDA?

Yahoo! and Intel have announced a plan to bring computer-style widgets to TV screens. The idea behind the Widget Channel is to take familiar software technologies to an emerging platform. The two companies have teamed up because Intel's Media Processor CE 3100 is a system-on-a-chip (SoC) designed for use in consumer electronics products including Internet-connected set-top boxes and digital TVs, while Yahoo! already has the software that actually runs widgets, including the software libraries that support them.

Microsoft Wednesday said it would spend up to another $100 million to purchase certificates it will distribute to users who can cash them in for support on their Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Servers. The investment, which will come on Nov. 1, is on top of the $240 million Microsoft agreed in 2006 to spend on certificates as part of a five-year business and technology deal with Novell that also included intellectual property rights protection.

I know there is a great debate taking place about which operating system is better. Jack Wallen, host of the Linux and Open Source blog, started a lengthy discussion asking the question: Why would you choose Windows over Linux? I thought that was kind of funny, because recently I have been asking myself the opposite question: Who would choose to switch to Linux?

[Is it still FUD if he actually believes what he is saying? ;-) - Scott]

This week, Microsoft renewed their union with Novell, to the tune of an additional 100 million dollars in commitment to buy more SUSE Linux support certificates that it can sell to its customers. Dang, Ballmer, for that kind of cash, you can get your vows renewed in Vegas, with the REAL Elvis. I’m not even going to mention what kind of a group package you can get at the Mustang Ranch.

[Don't let the less-than-scintillating headline fool you -- the rest of the story is as good as the lead -- sr]

Following my piece on a proposed model for enterprise applications maintenance, two fresh posts, one from Matt Aslett at 451.com and another from Leigh Cauldwell offer alternative ideas around how the present conundrum might be solved.