Showing all newswire headlines

At the OSCON open source convention in Portland last week, Neuros CEO Joe Born explained how Linux-based embedded devices will bring open source to the set-top market and the consumer electronics space. He also demonstrated how to build applications for the Neuros OSD, his company's programmable DVR product.

What would your favorite small open source project do with a sudden influx of money? Imagine you donated $5000 to a project, where would the money go? Less scrupulous developers might spend the money on Mountain Dew and Twinkies, but more likely the money would just sit, doing nothing. Why? Because it takes time to spend money, and in the open source world time is in short supply.

Launchy and GNOME Do are both two launcher programs that are designed to let you quickly open applications and files and perform tasks you want done quickly, with just the tapping of a few keys. Previously, Launchy had been an open source solution, albeit for Windows only, and GNOME Do was the Linux solution. Launchy is now available for Linux too, so I thought I would do a brief side-by-side compare of the two programs.

Likewise Software has released a new, open-source version of its eponymous AD (Active Directory) program for integrating Linux, Unix and Mac systems into AD. Likewise Fall includes two main features. The most important, LWIS (Likewise Identity Services) enables you to use Active Directory Authentication for your Linux, Unix and Mac PCs. In addition, the program comes with the LAC Likewise Administrative Console. This enables administrators to manage AD users, computers and access rights from Linux.

Now that I've got your attention, don't worry too much: Blizzard Entertainment, the company behind the popular World of Warcraft online game, isn't trying to shut down open source software entirely. But in a recent legal filing (reported by the Virtually Blind weblog), they are asking a judge to take an unusual move: prohibiting a developer from releasing a particular bit of code as open source.

When you, Joe or Mary user, buy a computer at Best Buy or Computer Village or order a computer from Dell or Gateway, you get a computer with a system already installed. Do you think they had any trouble installing that system on that computer? Do you think that if Dell sells Mary a computer with Windows installed and they sell Joe a computer with Linux installed, that Dell had a differentially hard time installing one of those systems compared to the other? Think about it.

El Tunes is a GStreamer plugin that allows Linux users to play all music they have purchased from the iTunes Music Store. With El Tunes installed (Ubuntu .debs available), your GStreamer-based players (such as Rhythmbox, Totem the Movie Player, Banshee, etc.) can play DRM'ed music purchased from the Apple iTunes store. Apple is refusing to make an iTunes for Linux, and it seems they aren't content with their music being played on it, either.

"Why free software and Apple's iPhone don't mix" is the second article in our series describing the threats posed by Apple's iPhone to free software. Apple has imposed TiVo-like restrictions that prevent users from having freedom, and developers from writing free software. These restrictions argue for more developers to use the GPLv3 as their license of choice, in order to block the threat of Apple stripping freedoms away from free software. People aren't going to hear about these restrictions from the Apple marketing machine, and reviewers so far have bought into the hype and ignored their significance.

When you think about it, it's surprising how many programming tasks don't require the use of floating point numbers. If you're an embedded systems programmer, you'd probably get fired for using "double" in a C program. If you write PHP or JavaScript, quick, do they even support floating point? One language that doesn't support it is Bash, but let's not let that stop us.

KDE 4.1 is finally out today, as you probably already know, and it comes with a lot of innovations for the Linux desktop. KDE 4 is the next generation of the popular K Desktop Environment, which seeks to fulfill the need for a powerful yet easy-to-use desktop, for both personal and enterprise computing. The new version provides increased stability over the first KDE 4 version and more eye candy! So, if you don't want to download an openSUSE-based KDE 4.1 Live CD or to wait until a stable distribution is released with KDE 4.1.0 as the default desktop, we will teach you how to install it on your existing Ubuntu 8.04 or 8.04.1 LTS desktop.

Calculating subnets is an essential skill for network administrators, and even home users with small LANs will benefit from understanding how they work. This installment of Networking 101 offers some tips and practice exercises to get you started.

Classmate ain't the XO laptopThis morning, AP bring us news thatPortugal pledged 500,000 Classmate PC's for elementary school students, the largest order for Intel's4P Computing offering to date.Sadly, I think this is an epic error on the part of the Government of Portugal, for three reasons..

Not too long ago, Marc Fleury went public with his newest venture, an open source home automation "project" (not yet officially a company) called OpenRemote. Marc describes it as "an open community in the Home Automation or Domotics space", that "promote[s] open standards, open collaboration, and open implementations in the field."

It's small and silent, sports an array of ports on the back but only one tiny white LED on the front, and it can help you spend hours of time in front of your TV -- and it runs Linux. It's the Netflix Player from embedded device specialist Roku, and we got our hands on it for a review of the service and the hardware. Netflix began delivering on-demand video in January 2007, restricting viewers to watching content through Internet Explorer on Windows. The "Watch Instantly" option uses DRM-encumbered Windows Media Video to lock out all non-Windows Media Player plug-ins (including licensed media players such as Fluendo's WMV codecs). The in-browser player includes minimal playback controls, and the service is built-in to all existing Netflix accounts. Subscribers on plans that include a fixed number of discs per month are alloted a fixed number of hours through the Watch Instantly service; subscribers on unlimited disc plans can watch an unlimited number of Watch Instantly programs.

In an interview with ZDNet Asia, Oliver Bell, Microsoft Asia-Pacific's regional technology officer, said the company has been focusing on building developer tools for server side applications. He cited two examples of such tools. The first one called OpenXML PowerTools allows the OOXML documents to be created and modified without needing Microsoft Office installed. The other tool, OpenXML SDK, offers a kit to help developers create third-party applications that read and write OOXML documents.

Should managed service providers start adding Linux-type devices to their hardware as a service (HaaS) strategy? Before you answer, consider some key observations and Ubuntu trends at Canonical. Here's the scoop from MSPmentor.

The first beta for Mandriva Linux 2009, code named thornicrofti, is now available. There is information about the new release in various places:

As we approach next weekâ??s LinuxWorld Expo, The VAR Guy was reminded of an age-old problem: Many VARs don't know how to profit from open source. Here are eight options to solve that problem, reports The VAR Guy.

Yahoo, HP and Intel are collaborating on an ambitious research endeavor called"Cloud Computing Test Bed" -- designed to support cloud computing research and education at universities. Users will be able to develop and test software, data center management, and hardware associated with cloud computing on this large-scale grid.

Intel's low-cost laptop initiative is set to get a boost Wednesday from Portugal's government, which is pledging to provide elementary school students with 500,000 computers based on the chipmaker's Classmate PC design. The announcement brings Intel's rivalry with the One Laptop Per Child organization into the spotlight once again.