Showing all newswire headlines

After several years of development, SymphonyOS this month released SymphonyOne 2008.1, the first stable version of its distribution. When SymphonyOS first emerged three years ago, it offered a Linux desktop experience unlike any ever seen before by structuring the computer desktop to function more like a real-life desk instead of just another system folder. Featuring the Mezzo desktop environment, Symphony simplifies the desktop concept for users. This release brings a new level of stability to the design, making it a viable alternative to KDE, GNOME, or Fluxbox.

Ever since my exploration of the various PCLinuxOS spins, I've been impressed with the project. Now that I'm having so much relative success with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, it's unlikely that I will be running PCLinuxOS on my Gateway Solo 1450 laptop, but a) you never know and b) I'm looking for a good system to install for others, and PCLinuxOS is a top contender in that department.

Sony Ericsson is planning to offer developers the opportunity to embed Flash Lite applications inside J2ME midlets, in the hope that two mobile phone application platforms will prove better than one. Flash Lite has proved popular for highly-graphical mobile phone applications, and is supported on quite a range of handsets. J2ME is more widely supported and flexible, but suffers from compatibility issues and isn't very graphic artist friendly.

Last month we had looked at the Gigabyte AirCruiser N300 GN-WI30N-RH 802.11n WiFi adapter. The wireless adapter uses the Ralink RT2860 chipset, which doesn't have a Linux driver in the kernel, but we were able to easily get this 802.11n wireless adapter working with Ubuntu when using ndiswrapper and the Windows driver. Today we have our hands on the Gigabyte AirCruiser N300 Dual GN-WI06N-RH, which is a PCI Express Mini-Card with dual-band 802.11a/b/gn support. How well does this Atheros-based WiFi card work on Linux? We'll tell you in this review.

The OpenBSD project is ready to announce the new release, OpenBSD 4.3, that will be officially available on May 1st (the only way to get it earlier is ordering the CD package). As usual there are a lot of improvements and new tools and features, and it sounds amazing that they keep delivering these results with a six month release cycle.

There are two kinds of Linux people in the world, those that will help people fix their Windows spyware problems, and those that will not. I land squarely in the former camp, and I think that it's important for us all to consider doing the same.

The interest in the Ubuntu Server is directly related to the interest in the Ubuntu Desktop. How does this impact the deployment and use of the Ubuntu Server?

This tip shows how to add logging to your PHP script and how to add configuration so you have basic, configurable logging. The PHP script requires two PEAR packages, Log and Config. To use the code in shown in this tip, you'll need to PEAR installed along with PHP and you'll need to install both the Log and the Config PEAR packages.

With vncthumbnailviewer you can see many VNC desktops at once and jump in to control any of them with a double click. vncthumbnailviewer acts like many VNC clients, so it can help you monitor many VNC servers. vncthumbnailviewer was created for monitoring desktops in a computer lab environment. It uses the TightVNC Java code, and is thus fairly stable and glitch-free. There are no vncthumbnailviewer packages for Ubuntu, openSUSE, or Fedora. vncthumbnailviewer is written in Java, so you need a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) installed in order to run it. For this article I used version 1.4.1 of vncthumbnailviewer with IcedTea Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0-b21) 64-bit as my Java runtime.

VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator of power efficient x86 processor platforms, today announced the launch of a beta version of the VIA Linux Portal as part of an initiative designed to extend collaboration with the Open Source community. The VIA Linux Portal will initially offer graphics drivers for the VIA CN896 digital media IGP chipset for the new Ubuntu 8.04 LTS distribution. Documentation and source code for these drivers will be released over the coming weeks, with official forums and bug tracking scheduled for implementation later this year. The VIA Linux Portal will also adhere to a regular release schedule that is aligned with kernel changes and the release of major Linux distributions.

Botnet fighters have another tool in their arsenal, thanks to Microsoft. The software vendor is giving law enforcers access to a special tool that keeps tabs on botnets, using data compiled from the 450 million computer users who have installed the Malicious Software Removal tool that ships with Windows.

The JyDT plug-in enables Eclipse to work as a Jython/CPython IDE. In this tutorial learn how to configure the JyDT and a brief description of it. Learn to use the PyDev perspective and explorer, compile and run code, use the debugger, do unit testing, refactor, manage Python projects, and use the editor and IDE.

In this installment of our co-published Fedora Interviews, Jeremy Katz, David Cantrell, and Chris Lumens talk about the improvements to Anaconda in Fedora 9.

On April 4, CERT put out a scary advisory about the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC). This advisory raises some interesting issues on when such advisories are appropriate, what programmers must do to write secure code, and whether compilers should perform optimizations which could open up security holes in poorly-written code.

KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine), Linux's own baked-in virtualization program, has been gaining popularity. Now, Qumranet, the company behind KVM, is releasing a commercial virtual desktop called Solid ICE based on KVM technology. Solid ICE is designed to run multiple virtual desktops in a KVM on servers. While the servers need to be running Linux 2.6.20 or higher, Solid ICE can be used to deploy Windows or Linux desktops on either thin clients or repurposed PCs. The servers must run on x86 processors that support virtualization extensions. These include Intel's VT (Virtualization Technology a.k.a. Vanderpool) and AMD's AMD-V (a.k.a. Pacifica) technologies.

A year and a half ago, the excellent Linux music player Amarok added extensive support for Magnatune. The programmer, Nikolaj Hald Nielsen, did this on his own initiative, simply because he thought it'd be a neat thing for his favorite music player to have, and because he liked Magnatune's business philosophy.

Ah, how the mighty have fallen. In what must have been gross oversight, Red Hat is pitching proprietary software on its website under the banner of "No vendor lock-in." The way Red Hat and IBM make it appear, simply running one's software on an open platform like Linux magically removes the proprietary lock-in of the application.

As Juror No. 7, schoolteacher Vince Dunn sat a foot or so away from Hans Reiser, the Linux programmer whom Dunn and 11 other panelists convicted of first-degree murder on Monday. In an interview Tuesday with Wired.com, the 61-year-old fifth-grade teacher recounted his six months of jury duty, some of which required sitting next to the 44-year-old defendant's immediate right during his 11 days on the witness stand. Hans Reiser is escorted from the courtroom following a Tuesday court appearance setting his sentencing date. "I was looking at his eyes," the Oakland man said in a telephone interview. "He was faking it."

The most obvious change from last year was that there weren't any repeated presentations and each time slot was original yielding more presentations than last year. Another big change is that two of the presentation rooms (Haskel 108 and 103) had a video camera in them with live streaming and archiving of the content. ustream.tv was responsible for the streaming and archiving and some folks from the BTC did all of the camera work.

Formula One motor racing is no longer about famous car marques, its about precise science and using technology to shave another fraction of a second off a lap time, and Linux is playing a pivotal role in helping the race teams achieve this. As a technical sport motor racing demands of its participants a close understanding of the technologies that can help them. F1 motor racing is probably second only to the aerospace industry in the application of aerodynamic simulation and wind tunnel technology. It is a testament to the rapid advance of Linux in high performance computing that most teams in Formula 1 have been using Linux systems in their aerodynamic and engine workshops for a number of years.