Showing all newswire headlines

When I wrote the first version of this article six years ago, I called it "Why Free Software usability tends to suck". The best open source applications and operating systems are more usable now than they were then. But this is largely from slow incremental improvements, and low-level competition between projects and distributors. Major problems with the design process itself remain largely unfixed. Many of these problems are with volunteer software in general, not Free Software in particular. Hobbyist proprietary programs are often hard to use for many of the same reasons. But the easiest way of getting volunteers to contribute to a program is to make it open source. And while thousands of people are now employed in developing Free Software, most of its developers are volunteers. So it's in Free Software that we see volunteer software's usability problems most often.

What started as wondering how to contribute to my 5 year old sonâ??s pre-school lead to the discovery of some absolutely terrific open source software that really aids the educational process. Hereâ??s why even in this Microsoft world Linux is the best platform for early childhood education.

Movial, the company that inspires rich, intuitive Internet experiences, today announced it has joined LiMo Foundation, the global consortium of mobile leaders delivering an open handset platform for the whole mobile industry. As part of its commitment to the Linux mobile community, Movial has also unveiled it is open sourcing an innovative technology, Browser D-Bus Bridge, that enables Web developers and designers, operators and device manufacturers for the first time ever, to easily create extremely capable User Interfaces (UI) that transform Web widgets into seamless user driven mobile applications providing new, value-added and differentiated services and superior user experiences.

Nvidia has released new proprietary GeForce drivers; Version 173.14.12 of the drivers for x86-32 and x96-64 now support the GeForce 8600 GS while fixing bugs in OpenGL, SDL support and the configuration tool. 2D performance problems with the newer GeForce graphics cards, discussed in many forums and blogs are not addressed with this update. Some applications which use Cairo or newer QT versions can feel like they are running on a several year old PC, even when it is actually on a quick system. This is especially apparent when rendering complex web pages with Firefox 3 or using Compiz and KDE 4.

Following up on their recently announced partnership, Grid Dynamics and GridGain teamed up to develop the largest publicly known grid scalability test for Amazon EC2. The results published by Grid Dynamics on 08-04-2008 demonstrate linear scalability up to 512 nodes on Monte Carlo simulation problem when GridGain and Amazon EC2 are used together. This test paves the way for the companies to run large-scale parallel computations "on the cloud" to achieve dramatic price/performance improvements over in-house grids. Monte Carlo simulation problem was chosen for its wide use in the financial applications. The test utilized full open source software stack, including GridGain, Linux operating system, Sun's Open MQ JMS messaging and Sun's Java 5 VM.

ACCESS CO., LTD., a global provider of advanced software technologies to the mobile and beyond-PC markets, today announced it is extending the functionality of ACCESS Linux Platform with the addition of NetFront(TM) Browser Widgets for mobile handsets and consumer electronics, and support for Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs). With these new capabilities, businesses can quickly implement a wide range of widget services and deploy products in a new category of Internet-savvy mobile devices, based on ACCESS Linux Platform.

Ah, August. It's the beginning of the end of summer, and the time when we must all start shaking the sand out of our ears once more. The real world wants us back! Activity on the Linux blogs was understandably light last week, with some of the most notable discussions focusing on the release of KDE 4.1 (generating a fair buzz on Slashdot) and -- somewhat more curiously -- the state of Lindependence 2008, which brought forth a lively Microsoft vs. The World debate on LXer. We may revisit the Lindependence topic another day -- it's just too good to pass up -- but for this week, we here at LinuxInsider felt it our duty to help those who are fed up with Redmond to find their way to Linux. This is August -- a month of transition and new beginnings, after all -- so what better time for geeks who have been lost on the dark side to come over to the Light that is Linux? Read on, then, for a starter kit, of sorts, that will show the way to Linuxy salvation ...

Open source software is a viable option for small and medium-sized (SME) businesses because of its flexibility and scalability. This is according to Synaq MD, Yossi Hasson. Hasson says that it is time for open source software to lose its “geek” image and be deployed more widely in the SME sector. “It’s extremely effective in the workplace,” says Hasson, citing his own company which is a 15-person organisation that runs almost everything on open source software. The only exception is the company’s accounting system.

dnstop is a great tool when maintaining a DNS server. Log file can give out required information but dnstop is just like top command for monitoring dns traffic. It is a small tool to listen on device or to parse the file savefile and collect and print statistics on the local network's DNS traffic. You can see information about all DNS clients, DNS queries and much more with this tool.

Recently I have been pondering whether to buy the eee pc 1000 for university work. Being a massive Ubuntu fan the first thought that came into my mind was can I install Ubuntu on it. The answer is yes, however there are a few issues. But do not worry, some good people have come together to create eeeBuntu. This is a modified version of Ubuntu, more suited for the eee pc.

The number of machines shipped with Linux preloaded on them has multiplied a whopping 28 times since Microsoft launched its Vista operating system in January 2007. Sounds impressive, but Linux was starting from a rather small base in traditional sales channels: of all PCs sold in the UK last January through indirect channels, a feeble 0.1 per cent had Linux preloaded, according to numbers given to us by market research firm Context. The Linux share of this route to market has edged up ever since the Vista launch. Then it broke the two per cent barrier in May after the latest release of Ubuntu, the strain of Linux most capable of kicking Microsoft in the shins.

The darcs revision control system has all but lost out to git within the past few months. A rather large part of the reason is a rushed and very poorly worded release announcement, following a rather long (I'm told 4 years; I haven't been aware of it that long, which itself is perhaps ominous) post-1.0 silence from the darcs developers. The truth of the matter is only now becoming clear.

A couple of days ago, I read this on Matthew Garrette’s blog, where he tells us about a vendor’s BIOS trying to figure out the OS type/version and setting things around on deciding the OS it is running. The call in question was _OSI(“Linux”). He goes on to say that the action the firmware takes, on finding out if the OS is linux, was probably inaccurate and it was good that linux kernel DOES NOT identify itself as “Linux” and returns false for the _OSI(“Linux”) and instead returns true when probed for Windows. That got me thinking, the first thought being that isn’t this a BIG flaw in the kernel. But “Never make judgements straightaway”, I have learnt in the past. So, thought about reading it a bit more. After some googling around, I came to know the sound reasoning behind the decision.

In reading through Microsoft's annual report, I am struck by how far the company has come in appreciating the threat that open source brings to Redmond. I'm also shocked by just how ill-informed the company continues to be with regard to open source as a business strategy. Steve Ballmer has revealed this before in his quips about "Open source won't pay our bills," but here Microsoft has managed to enshrine its ignorance in a public document.

The leader of the Free Software movement, Richard Stallman, is calling New Zealand’s copyright laws unjust and plans to use an upcoming tour of the country to rouse opposition to them. Stallman, the founder of the GNU project and of the Free Software Foundation, says New Zealand’s copyright laws place restrictions on distributing certain free software packages. Specifically, these enable users to “escape from digital handcuffs (also known as Digital Restrictions Management or DRM)”, he says. “New Zealand’s law does not go as far as the DMCA in the US, but it is unjust nonetheless,” he says.

I've been struggling with various mail clients to deal with my huge IMAP mailbox which contains about 200k messages. I did't want to split it into more than one. It's not my job but an e-mail client's job; see what GMail does! Although Opera Mail does a great job on dealing with such a big IMAP mailbox, it lacks a couple critical features which make me have a difficulty in organizing my messages. I have missed Evolution virtual folders especially. Before I give up again and stick to Opera Mail, I decided to give a try to various IMAP-to-Maildir synchronization tools: isync and OfflineIMAP.

Users of Compiz, a window manager that provides pretty visual effects, know that a lot of those effects are just for fun. Things like drawing fire on the screen or folding up windows like a paper airplane to close them look cool but have little real value. Personally, I am most concerned with the Compiz plugins that add functionality to my desktop. There are plenty of those too. I am going to outline some of my favorites and most useful.

LXer Feature: 03-Aug-2008

This week we have Linus Torvalds on Linux Distributions, A Quick Look at OpenOffice.org Writer 3.0, It's not a clone, but it can run Mac OS X, Insanely Securing Your Unix or Linux Systems and several articles on KDE 4.1.

The 10th annual LinuxWorld Conference & Expo and its partner Next Generation Data Center Conference kick off today at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, where the open-source operating system will be the center of attention for enterprise users, vendors and IT enthusiasts.

I tested quite a few versions of Puppy Linux in recent days on my 1999-era Compaq Armada 7770dmt. The bad news is that version 3.01 wouldn't configure X properly. Any attempts to do so and then start X crashed the box. The other bad news is that while Puppy 4.00 loads fine and runs fine, for some reason the load time for Abiword went from 8 to 10 seconds in previous Puppy builds to 30 seconds. That's quite a rollback. On a more positive note, start times for Seamonkey were about the same.