Showing all newswire headlines

After dual-booting Ubuntu (at times 7.04 and 7.10) and Debian (first Etch, then Lenny, then a couple of Lennies for a couple of days) on the $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450), I've said goodbye to Ubuntu for the time being and decided to install the dependable Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 (the bigger of the two Wolvix distros) and keep Debian (still Lenny). After "losing" two Ubuntu 7.10 installs to unknown causes -- both times processes began slowing to a crawl -- I thought rolling back to Ubuntu 7.04 would give me something stable. But the boot process for 7.04 began stalling at something having to do with the CD drive (I turned off "quiet spash" in GRUB so I could see where it was dying). I'm thinking that either my laptop or Ubuntu itself must be somehow cursed.

It's a common belief that Samba shares cannot be accessed across subnets. But actually Samba can cross subnets. It's easy for Linux hosts, and a bit less easy for Windows clients. But fear not, for we shall guide you through safely past the traps and pitfalls.

Today I got to meet with some people from Everex. They showed me their two newest products: the Everex Cloudbook and the Everex Gbook. The Cloudbook - initially known as the CE260 when first announced last June - is a UMPC and it measures 9” in length and weighs only 2 pounds. The Gbook is a laptop that has a 1.5GHZ VIA C7-M processor. It’ll cost $399 and be available though Wal-Mart as well.

OpenVZ and Ubuntu Linux developers on Tuesday will release pre-built Ubuntu virtual machines, designed to allow system administrators to deploy a specialised Ubuntu system in about a minute. Advertisement OpenVZ is an open-source project sponsored by Parallels (known as SWsoft until last month), which forms the basis for the commercial virtualisation software Virtuozzo. Parallels also makes desktop virtualisation software for Mac OS X, among other products. Parallels and Canonical, Ubuntu's commercial sponsor, worked together on the virtualised templates, which are based on Ubuntu 7.10.

At last. I’m free of Microsoft Money, and therefore very close to being free of all my old proprietary applications. I’ve settled on KMyMoney as a capable free-as-in-freedom bookkeeping replacement. It doesn’t do everything that I was able to do in Money, but I can live with that while hoping some of my “wants” find their way in to later versions. What follows are random observations on my experience making the switch and how the two applications compare in some areas.

Chipmaker Broadcom and software developer Trolltech this week formed a partnership to create a multimedia voice over IP development platform based on Linux. The development platform is intended for original equipment manufacturers that want to build what the companies call "next-generation" IP phones. It combines Broadcom's VoIP technology and Trolltech's Qtopia Linux platform and user interface for mobile devices.

Wine allows users to run Windows programs natively under Linux without paying a dime. However, there's a tiny problem: programs running in Wine don't look so great. They don't even try to fit into your native GNOME or KDE color scheme or use your preferred fonts. You could use a Windows theme, but themes make Wine run extremely slowly. Luckily, with a little configuration editing, it's easy to make Wine applications look at lot more like the rest of the apps on your desktop.

Navica's Bernard Golden discusses how commercial open source is its own business model and unique in that it faces two "chasms" -- from Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm -- one involving broad adoption of the free versions of product, and the other involving converting a significant subset of adopters to paying customers.

Over at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, Korean technology firm iRiver has been exhibiting a prototype device known as the "iRiver GSM Phone". According to PC Magazine, the unit bears an uncanny resemblance to Apple's iPhone, is powered by the Linux operating system and features a 3", 480 x 272 pixel touchscreen, single button at the bottom of the device, support for multiple types of media (including Adobe's Flash), support for music subscriptions through Real's Rhapsody service, two megapixel camera and will likely incorporate four gigabytes of flash memory.

Many people claim that “Linux is about choice!”. That’s a neat phrase, but what does it mean? Does it mean that you should have the ability to twist and turn 400 different knobs on your Linux install? That’s what some think. Does it mean that you have the right to choose Linux, or choose your flavor of Linux, and then choose from the package sets within those flavors? That’s what I and many others think. There is a very distinct difference here too. Let’s look at it from a food point of view (one of my favorite points-of-view).

The news from Nicholas Negreponte that talks are progressing about a dual-boot OLPC laptop gets slapped down by Microsoft which denies any involvement.

Not a full day after news comes from Asus that they’ve got some larger screen EeePCs in works do pics of one show up online. jkkmobile hits us up with some pictures of this new model. No word on release date yet.The good news here is that the design of the screen is looking much nicer now, with an all white bezel replacing the somewhat cheap looking black speaker covers. The bad news? The resolution is still 800 x 480.

Your shiny new Linux system has it all -- except that one program you really needed it to install. You get online, you find the program's website, and click 'download'. Except there's not just a link to the program there. There are four, or five, or more links to the program. Each has a slightly different format, ending with .rpm, .deb, .tgz, or possibly even .ebuild. Some include x86 in the name, while others say ppc or amd64. What's the difference? What's actually included in these packages?

Amid the gigantic televisions and booming speakers at the Consumer Electronics Show, a tiny laptop computer stands out for its minimalist approach. The Asus Eee PC is about the size of a small hardback book, and weighs two pounds. Rather than storing data on a spinning hard drive, it uses the type of solid-state flash memory more common in portable music players. It comes with the Linux operating system preinstalled, and it sells for as little as $300. The trend is complicating matters for Microsoft Corp.

Apparently Asus and Everex aren't the only ones capable of shipping dirt cheap linux boxes these days. Shuttle is getting into the game with its new KPC box. Unfortunately, we're way short on specs, but we do know that it'll be coming in $199 pre-built and $99 barebones versions. At least it's a looker, here's hoping there's something decent under the hood. No word on release date. More pictures after the jump!

This tutorial shows how to set up a CentOS 4.6 based server that offers all services needed by ISPs and web hosters: Apache web server (SSL-capable), Postfix mail server with SMTP-AUTH and TLS, BIND DNS server, Proftpd FTP server, MySQL server, Dovecot POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc. This tutorial is written for the 32-bit version of CentOS 4.6, but should apply to the 64-bit version with very little modifications as well.

For years, discerning Windows users have relied on Tweak UI, a semi-official Microsoft program for system settings not available on the default desktop. Now, in the same tradition and with something of the same name, Ubuntu Tweak (UT) offers the same advantage to Ubuntu users. Currently at version 0.2.4, for now UT is limited to features for GNOME and focuses mainly on changing default desktop and system behavior and how GNOME interacts with your hardware, but this small feature set is more than enough for proof of concept.

Operating systems come with cultures as much as codebases. I was forcibly reminded of this fact over the holidays when several family members and neighbors press-ganged me into troubleshooting their Windows computers. Although none of us had any formal computer training, and I know almost nothing about Windows, I was able to solve problems that baffled the others -- not because of any technical brilliance, but because the free software culture in which I spend my days made me better able to cope.

Last year Google announced Android, its Java-based software stack for mobile devices. Initially the company released Android with an emulator for testing. Hackers, however, have quickly hacked the software to run on real-world devices. LinuxDevices list the first hardware platform to run Android as the Atmark-Techno’s Armadillo-500 development board back in November last year.

Anne Zelenka recently predicted that software businesses will move from the extreme 'closed' and 'open' licensing models toward the center, what she refers to as 'clopen', or hybrid closed and open licensing models. I think she's missing something.