Showing all newswire headlines

The issue of binary kernel blobs cropped up on the gNewSense Mailing list recently. The discussion I saw was friendly enough, but the real benefit for me was that I got to see just why kernel blobs are so, well... contentious.

Enterprise customers want open-source solutions to continue to work together over update cycles. Enterprise customers are using open-source software more and more, but issues of interoperability are still a stumbling block to widespread adoption, say customers and open-source software vendors.

It's going to happen. Some time in 2008, SCO will finally stop thrashing on the floor and die. Will it be Novell draining it dry of its last financial resources in the U.S. District Court in Utah? Or, will it be the bankruptcy court in Delaware divvying up the last bits and pieces of the once-proud Unix company?

Intel said on Thursday it will drop out of the One Laptop Per Child project and resign from the board after the project's board demanded the chipmaker stop supporting other efforts in emerging markets.

We’re all swamped with information: emails, documents, pictures and the hundreds of websites we visit every week. There are two ways to deal with the data overload: Get organised and file everything in its right pace. Or you can use GNOME Do, a desktop launcher for Ubuntu in the style of Launchy for Windows and Katapult for KDE, which acts as your humble servant and finds exactly what you’re looking for when you’re looking for it. Sounds too good to be true? GNOME Do is still in the early stages of development but is already showing signs of becoming a desktop essential.

We've just been notified that gOS 2.0 will be released next week at the 2008 Consumer Electronic Show. This Linux distribution started making news two months ago as the conceptual Google Operating System and shipping on a sub-$200 (USD) Everex PC. This distribution is very easy to use and features integration with popular Web 2.0 services such as YouTube, Google Calendar, and Google Maps. This next gOS release, codenamed "Rocket", adds a few features and more Google love. Accompanying this release will also be a gOS Software Developer Kit.

The proliferation of high-performance scalable servers has added a new level of complexity to networking and system performance. In this article, learn how to optimize your multi-node, high-performance Linux® system as it uses system board gigabit Ethernet adapters from 1 to 4 nodes. Take a look at problematic networking scalability situations and get tips on how to avoid the pitfalls.

Terracotta makes a Java clustering solution that it calls "drop-in" technology. Terracotta is unique, says Amit Pandey, chief executive officer, because it makes a way to offload temporary but important information that has traditionally been stored in expensive databases. In an effort to increase interest in the product, about a year ago Terracotta decided to open its source code and start giving the product away. According to Pandey, since Terracotta's entrance into the community, "we've seen only goodness."

So, E-Lead will apparently be showing off a new UMPC that looks (not-so-) surprisingly like the Eee PC that everyone has fallen in love with. The main differences are the lack of flash memory, a different distro of Linux, and some sort of weird input interface.

That was fast. Only two months ago, Good OS, a startup Linux distributor, exploded on the scene with gOS 1.0, an Ubuntu-based desktop Linux with dedicated links to Google applications. Now, the company has announced that it will release the next version, gOS 2.0, Rocket, at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas on Jan. 7.

Whether you're a hobbyist or seasoned professional, you'll want to grab a copy of Carla Schroder's newest book, the Linux Networking Cookbook.

DeviceVM, a San Jose-based company developing rapid-start computing technologies, today announced the availability of its Splashtop(TM) platform on four new ASUS motherboards. Originally released on the P5E3 Deluxe, Splashtop is now available on the P5E3 Premium as well as the mainstream M3N-HT Deluxe/Mempipe, the M3N-HT Deluxe/HDMI, and the M3N-H/HDMI motherboards.

It's not often I find myself at a loss for words when I read something, but this is one of those times. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it isn't really necessary for me to add any words to the following news, other than to characterize them with a Latin phrase lawyers use: Res ipse loquitor, which translates as "the thing speaks for itself."

You might have missed the news just before the holidays that Microsoft has become slightly more open with respect to its networking protocols. Late last year, they announced a way for third parties to license their core file sharing protocols through an independent organization called the Protocol Freedom Information Foundation.

LinuxQuestions.org is proud to announce that voting for the 2007 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards is now open. The Members Choice Awards allow the Linux community to select their favorite products in a variety of categories. Awards will be given out in 27 categories this year, including Server Distribution of the Year, Desktop Distribution of the Year, Browser of the Year, Office Suite of the Year, Desktop Environment of the Year and Database of the Year. The polls will close on February 21st. This is the seventh annual LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards. Last years winners include Ubuntu, Firefox, KDE, OpenOffice.org and MySQL.

In the photography world, a prominent proprietary file format is Kodak's Photo CD (.PCD). Once the premiere format for film scanning, it is now a difficult to work around relic. Recently I set out to resurrect some old PCD images on a Linux system -- a challenge that serves as an object lesson in the importance of open standards in any kind of digital archive.

As Products Editor and Newsletter Editor here at Linux Journal, I come across many computer books. Despite our era of 'get it on the 'Net' age and perverse industry consolidation, I am continually astounded by the variety and quality of books, on both real and virtual paper, to which we now have access. What follows is a (somewhat) comprehensive summary of publishers of Linux open-source computer books in the English language.

The Eclipse Foundation with its Swordfish project is developing an open source SOA framework intended for applications ranging from enterprise environments to embedded systems. Based on technology from German logistics company Deutsche Post, Swordfish features an SOA runtime platform that leverages three popular projects: Service Component Architecture (SCA), Java Business Integration (JBI), and Open Services Gateway initiative (OSGi).

Last week we made a music CD from a live digital recording the easy and simple way. Today we're going to fix volume levels and do graceful fades and transitions using Audacity and normalize. Give yourself a lot of disk space, make copies of your original sound files before you start, and remember that Audacity has Undo and Redo commands, so don't stress out over making mistakes.

Microsoft is working on a project that would essentially bring the functionality of the Emacs text editor to .Net. Microsoft software architect Don Box on Dec. 29 posted a blog entry stating that his colleague, Douglas Purdy, was hiring people to work on a new extensible text editor. Box's post pointed to a Purdy blog post from Dec. 26, where Purdy said: "We are looking for developers/testers to build a tool that I will roughly describe as 'Emacs.Net.'"