Showing all newswire headlines

The launch of Google’s Chrome has created a frenzy of online activity (just Google it and it will return in excess of fifty one million results), including mine. and already the world and his wife has been busy publicising tips, tricks and hacks. There is absolutely no doubt that Google is very serious about its new baby. They hired no less than four Firefox developers—Ben Goodger, Pam Greene, Darin Fisher and Brian Ryner. Enough said. It wasn’t dreamed up on the spur of the moment as another speculative product of the Summer of Code. Can the same be said of Knol? What is it, how does it work and more importantly, does it conform with the principles of free software and is it a serious challenger to Wikipedia? Find out why Gary Richmond thinks Google's knol is a stinker and not the remotest threat to Wikipedia by reading the full article at Freesoftware Magazine.

Do any of you use Linux as your primary operating system? I have been dual-booting Linux and Windows for about five years now, though it’s a rare thing, indeed, for me to use the latter for anything. I know whatever you decide to use is entirely up to you, unless you are stuck using someone else’s computer.

Both One Laptop Per Child and Intel are now moving into million-unit sales numbers for their respective 4P Computers, the XO laptop and the Classmate PC. Last week, the Economic Times reported that OLPC is looking to sell 1 million XO laptops in India for $300 each. But this would not be to the Indian government, which alternates between calling the XO "pedagogically suspect" and attempting its own "$10 laptop". OLPC is looking to India's wealthily elite to fund educational empowerment through an Indian Give Many + Give One Get One:

As I listen to all this talk of lack of trust in the banking system, of inflated values ungrounded in any reality, of “opacity”, and of “contaminated” financial instruments, I realise I have heard all this before. In the world of software, as in the world of finance, there is contamination by overvalued, ungrounded offerings that have led to systemic mistrust, sapped the ability of the computer industry to create real value, and led it to squander vast amounts of time and money on the pursuit of the illusory, insubstantial wealth that is known as “intellectual property”.

Bluefish is a GUI-based text and code editor that runs on "most (maybe all?) POSIX compatible operating systems including Linux, FreeBSD, Ma cOS X, OpenBSD, and Solaris." It has an impressive feature list, and is both lightweight and speedy. It is not currently under heavy development primarily because it is a mature program that already does exactly what it is supposed to do with no fuss or complaint.

It did what it was designed to do...Lindependence 2008, that is. Not only was it to bring Linux to new users, it was to incite others to copy the effort. It worked. This time, it's the city of Portland Oregon that is hosting Lindependence. Will they convert the whole city? Geek please. What they will do however is prove that our instincts were right...LIndependence wasn't a one trick pony. And the two guys that are making the Portland Penguin Parade happen? Are they as diametrically opposed politically and socially as Larry and Ken? Let's take a look.

Open Source is emerging for the first time as a central theme at the CeBIT 2009 conference. Linux Magazine, together with the conference organizers and the Linux Foundation, is now encouraging Open Source projects to bid for free booths at the conference. CeBIT 2009, the largest global IT trade show opens March 3-8 in Hannover, Germany. For the first time Open Source becomes a central theme. Without these projects free software would be unthinkable, therefore not only will industries take part, but free projects will have the opportunity to share their work with the larger public. Linux Magazine, together with the conference organizer Deutsche Messe AG, is therefore seeking out projects that wish to present their work publicly at CeBIT Open Source.

Dmitry Yemanov did a session about Firebirds future, he included several slides about the almost-beta Firebird 2.5, an Alpha build is currently available via Firebirds website.

As some of you know, Linux is what my computers run on, and Simply Mepis is the particular distribution. I have been using Simply Mepis for a number of years, and would not go backwards into a Windows environment for anything. There is no need to, really, as all my computing needs are met in Linux: safe, secure, virus free, and easy to use. For more on Linux, you can read my post Linux - Is It For You?

Open-Xchange Inc. today announced the availability of Open-Xchange Server Edition, the successor to Open-Xchange Server 5. Open-Xchange software includes email, calendar, contacts, tasks and document sharing to provide organizations with all the tools needed to facilitate effective teamwork and document sharing anywhere, anytime, with any device.

"Where does all my money go?" If you want to know the exact answer to that question, you need HomeBank, a personal finance manager that can help you keep track of your income and expenses with consummate ease. HomeBank started its life in 1995 on the Amiga platform, so it has had plenty of time to mature and become a first-rate application. Today, you can find HomeBank in the software repositories of many mainstream Linux distributions, including Fedora, Mandriva, openSUSE, and Ubuntu. While HomeBank may be less well-known than alternatives such as GnuCash, KMyMoney, or Grisbi, it is the preferred personal finance manager of several lightweight distros such as Puppy Linux and SliTaz due to its small size and simplicity.

Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, says technologies such as Linux and open-source software can help enterprises cut costs during tough economic times. Zemlin says users should look to open source and Linux, systems management tools, and virtualization technology to keep budgets in line. In lean times, look for technologies such as Linux and open source to do well. The current financial crisis may just be one of those times.

Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is a Linux kernel virtualization infrastructure. KVM is a full virtualization solution for Linux on x86 hardware containing virtualization extensions Intel VT (vmx) or AMD-V (svm). It consists of a loadable kernel module, kvm.ko, that provides the core virtualization infrastructure and a processor specific module, kvm-intel.ko or kvm-amd.ko. KVM also requires a modified QEMU although work is underway to get the required changes upstream.

"Geen Stijl" is a highly controversial weblog in The Netherlands with a right-wing affiliation. Recently "Geen Stijl" published an entry on Linux, saying that "Linux is a kind of communist Open Source Operating System and Hugo Chaves, dictator of Venezuela, understands this". Later on it states that "Everyone who uses Linux supports terrorism, atomic weapons, high oil prices and the destruction of the earth".

Unless you have fully embraced the virtualization movement, you probably have more than one machine in your home or office, particularly if you run more than one operating system, and you probably have more than one keyboard and mouse on you desk. If you would like to regain some desk space without having to purchase a KVM switch, x2x may be the solution. Simply put, x2x takes advantage of the X Window System's ability to run a display over a TCP/IP network. In this case, you are not running a display as much as you are taking charge of another display's mouse and keyboard.

Open source adoption is growing rapidly, but adopters in U.S. are lagging behind European enthusiasm, according to software provider OpenLogic. OpenLogic announced Tuesday it has discovered more than 300,000 open source package and project installations in use around the world through its Open Source Census. OpenLogic initiated the global survey last December.

Are you ready for virtualization? How do you know? Are you just being sold a bag of goods without having a good idea of why you need to make this move?

In this ENP classic, learn how to colorize and test your Bash prompt, run your own local timeserver, deliver customized MOTDs that change, and create elegant ASCII art. Carla Schroder shows you how to do all these things the easy way.

Some folks think the US Financial Crisis will lead more businesses to embrace low-cost open source solutions. However, The VAR Guy disagrees. Here's why.

Brian Proffitt, who joined the Linux Foundation as Community Manager in July, has announced a LinuxCon technical conference for his organization this coming year in Portland, Oregon. The Linux Foundation targets the conference at Kernel developers, end users and all of the Linux Community.