Showing all newswire headlines

In a continuing series of articles highlighting that GNU/Linux is a viable replacement operating system, today we're putting the newest release of the popular Ubuntu distribution through its paces.

Almost every laptop on sale today comes equipped with the Kensington security slot on the side or back, through which you can connect a theft-deterring locked steel cable. The system's down sides are (a) that a would-be thief can damage or destroy your equipment trying to yank the cable out, and (b) that you have to buy the cable separately. As an alternative, the free software utility Adeona won't preemptively deter theft, but it will help you track down your stolen equipment and better the chances of its recovery by police.

The Linux Plumbers Conference may have ended last Friday, but the discussions -- and one discussion in particular -- will be analyzed, deconstructed, and argued for quite a bit longer. Greg Kroah-Hartman's assertion is that Canonical doesn't contribute significantly to kernel development and the packages that make up the core of a Linux system. Canonical CTO Matt Zimmerman responded to this assertion. It seems at that point, much of the community, developers and users alike, took to examining their particular parts of the open source elephant.

Recently, a Blog of Helios item made waves in places outside the Linux spectrum, bringing floods of support and comments from those outside our community. Over and over, the same question was asked: "What can we do to help?" Sitting in for Helios, Tom King has written a small guide that suggests answers to that question.

There was no Gentoo 2007.1 release that made it out last year, and we now know for sure that there will be no Gentoo 2008.1 release this year. The Gentoo Release Engineering Team has canceled the Gentoo 2008.1 release that would have otherwise been expected in the next three months...

With new browsers, new standards and new technologies like HTML 5 and Firefox 4 on the horizon, Mozilla has a lot to be optimistic about.

It's been a hell of a time getting X.Org 7.4 out the door, but this afternoon Adam Jackson has released this long-delayed update to this X system. X.Org 7.4 is arriving after the release of X Server 1.5.1 earlier in the day. Yes, it's finally here! In this article we have information on the features that make up this release along with what it's taken to get X.Org 7.4 primed for release.

The first phone to implement Google's Open Source Android mobile platform— theeagerly-anticipated T-Mobile G1—made its maiden voyage today, launching to the expected fanfare and with the surprise appearance of Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin— on rollerblades.

Earlier this month, I had the luxury of inspecting a new Omatek Smartbook at the Ministry of Education in Ghana. The Smartbook is a low-cost laptop aimed at the education market, and one look at it and you know its an XO laptop derivative:

Virtualization vendors use VDI internally in their networks don't they? Maybe no one bothered to ask before. Find out for yourself.

I've been running Debian in one form or another, on one box or another, ever since Etch went stable in April 2007. I last ran Etch extensively both on my VIA converted thin client and on the $15 Laptop (Compaq Armada 7770dmt), but since then the VIA has been used to compare Ubuntu and Wolvix, and the Compaq has been running OpenBSD and Puppy. So it had been a long time since I had worked with Etch (as opposed to the newer, soon-to-be-stable Lenny I've been battling on my Gateway laptop). Debian Etch really is like a comfortable pair of old shoes.

IBM declared in a new corporate policy that it was establishing new IT standards and redefining its ties with the International Standards Organization (ISO). If developing countries want to develop their own standards, IBM is willing to support them. Ramifications are clear regarding the turbulent debate around acceptance of Microsoft's Open Office XML (OOXML) data format.

Elgg is an open source application for rolling out a social network. It installs like any Web-based software, but instead of a blog or a wiki, it gives you all the components of a social networking site -- your own MySpace! It's popular with educational institutes and used by several universities across the world, in addition to powering social networks of companies such as Swatch. The new Elgg 1.0, released last month, is modular in design, making it easier for developers to build social networks around the platform.

I know, I know…you’re wondering why this is in the open source blog. The reason is simple: I have used open source operating systems for a long, long time now. I have championed against Microsoft for over ten years. But when Techrepublic liked the idea of me writing some Vista content for them, I couldn’t say no. Of course this meant me actually using Vista. So I thought it would be interesting for the open source crowd to get my initial reaction to my explorations with Windows Vista. You know, see how (or if) it stands up to Linux. It was a hard pill to swallow for me. It might be a equally as hard for you. Let’s find out. Shall we?

A commenter on one of my articles recently asked: "Why is it that true believers feel the need to replace every last proprietary app?" He continued: "VMware, Skype, and Google Earth are best-of-breed and free-as-in-beer." Over the last year or two, such sentiments -- often rudely expressed -- have become increasingly common in the free and open source software (FOSS) community. But, when you think for a while, they miss the point. If free software is to achieve its goal of guaranteeing that users can control their computing, then a completely free operating system is a basic necessity. An almost completely free operating system is both short-sighted and not enough to give users the control of their own computers that is supposed to be FOSS's ultimate goal.

Though the financial services market in the US is in bailout mode this week - the CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) is hedging its bets -- with Linux.

After months of speculation and anticipation, T-Mobile and Google on Tuesday unveiled the G1, a new smartphone manufactured by HTC and the first commercially available handheld to run Google's Android mobile operating system. In the U.S., T-Mobile subscribers can immediately order the G1. The handset will be available in black, white and brown at select T-Mobile retail stores and online on Oct. 22.

One day you're chugging merrily along, and then you're staring at your Linux machine that won't boot -- a machine that just happens to contain everything of importance to you. While some degree of disaster is inevitable, it's how you cope with it that counts.

What Greg Kroah-Hartman said, what Canonical answered, what do users think about it, what does Joe Brockmeier think about it and what is the Linux Foundation\'s point of view... Linux ProMagazine editor Rikki Kite tells the whole story in her ROSE Blog.

For those who prefer to edit C, Bash, PHP or other source files using Nano instead of an advanced IDE like Emacs or Vim, enabling syntax highlighting is probably a must-have. To enable highlighting in Nano for various programming languages, you will first need to edit (or create if it doesn't exist) the file ~/.nanorc, where ~ is your home directory and put in it lines like this: