Showing all newswire headlines

Let's pretend that we're OEMs. Original Equipment Manufacturers, the people who design and build the actual hardware which finds its way onto desks, into backpacks and under thumbs. We make it run a Microsoft operating system, because that's how we get to all the applications software, and we sell it as a better, cheaper (sometimes more stylish -- but mostly cheaper) way to run Microsoft. But next season is 2008. Suddenly, three things have happened...

This is the most critical step, converting a friend and not doing it right could damage your relationship with your friend, and if not it WILL damage Linux’s image. It will come off as an unfriendly, complicated, and archaic OS. Letting this happen is a disservice to Linux and it’s community and will impede it’s acceptance among others. Word of mouth could make or break any product, ask me I am a marketeer.

Apparently, the days when a computer science graduate student can invent some cool Web software and raise a few million dollars to build a company around it are not over. Brand new (less than a month old) North Andover, MA, startup Acquia announced yesterday that it’s raised $7 million to market software and services in support of the popular Web publishing system Drupal, invented by Dries Buytaert, a PhD candidate at the University of Ghent in Belgium.

One of the things that has been a strong point of Open Source Software (OSS) for years, even if it hasn't been held at the forefront of the battle, is the flexibility that OSS offers. This is something I think needs to be said more these days as our world becomes ever more dynamic, requiring software to be ever more flexible in order to keep up with our ever changing lives. One recent example of this flexibility at work is with the announcement that Linux isn't Y2K(38) compatible. As of right now this is a non-issue as 64 bit Linux will resolve this completely by the time it actually becomes an issue. However, it wasn't too long ago that simple natural software advancement was the cure for a problem.

I’m a very fussy user when it comes to my operating systems and I have managed to get by with Windows XP for a long time, but its days are numbered. Vista is looming and I refuse to install that rubbish, so I have chosen Kubuntu 7.10. Having declared myself a part of the KDE crowd in the long-running desktop environment flame war, allow me to describe how this fussy and long time Windows user upgraded from XP to Linux to avoid the impending doom of XP’s old age and the otherwise inevitability of Vista…

The creator of Linux sees his operating system project as an exemplar of the merits of the open-source development model. In an interview with APC Magazine, Linux kernel developer Linus Torvalds says, "Linux was instrumental in making the whole issue of Open Source move into the mainstream software development consciousness."

The Economist makes three technology predictions for 2008, two of which concern web surfing and the third of which concerns everyone, whether they surf the web or not. The Economist's third prediction is that the technology world will open up. What's most interesting about its analysis, however, is where it sees the biggest impact for open source (Linux) and why (Ubuntu):

I've told a million times by now, that I am a Linux person. I like the operating system, the tools, the applications, the works. I like the process. I like the community. I like the people. And all these positive feelings are not distribution-specific, or "KDE vs. Gnome" or "Is Amarok the best media player?" kind - its genuine people-to-people kind of a thing, and the love for the technology. Recently I got to read more and more stories about Linux in general (at least that what it was insinuated by the name of the article) where term "Linux" is quite replaced by Ubuntu.

Trolltech has recently announced that its graphic library Qt will be using Phonon, he new multimedia library created by the KDE developers. This is good news for Qt4 users allowing Qt to be better and simpler and it's a good sign of a great collaboration between Trolltech and the other Free software projects.

The title of this post occurred to me when I read the post Our Linux Dream. Somehow, even though people get the idea that specialized fields require some experience in that field before you can say anything intelligent about it, people hear the word “Linux” for the first time, Google it long enough to see Tux the penguin, and go “OK, I’m qualified now.” To go through that list of Linux-dream items one by one…

Mark Shuttleworth made news in 2002 when he fulfilled a lifelong ambition and became the first South African to travel into space, paying $20 million to be a civilian cosmonaut on an eight-day flight aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. In 2004, he founded Ubuntu Linux to bring the operating system to people around the world. He is also the founder of HBD Venture Capital and the nonprofit Shuttleworth Foundation.

For developers, the open source world of 2007 was all about updates and interesting new projects. From a new version of Eclipse to a new scheduler in Linux, developers around the world contributed their free time to make their lives and the lives of others collectively easier. But in hindsight, the significance of 2007 may well be that the GPL finally grew some teeth.

The Debian project is pleased to announce the second update of its stable distribution Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 (codename etch). This update mainly adds corrections for security problems to the stable release, along with a few adjustment to serious problems. Please note that this update does not constitute a new version of Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 but only updates some of the packages included. There is no need to throw away 4.0 CDs or DVDs but only to update against http://ftp.debian.org after an installation, in order to incorporate those late changes.

All those Mesirow and legal hours working on the SEC delisting did not pay off. SCO announces today that Nasdaq has sent them a letter. SCO will be delisted as of December 27. They found out on the 21st, it seems, but they tell us today. Here's the press release, where they once again describe themselves as "a leading provider of UNIX software technology and mobile services".

Since Puppy Linux uses local time, I had reset my test box's clock for the now-aborted Thin Puppy Torture Test II (we've had even more power outages lately, and I'm glad to stop where I did but keep writing about Puppy just the same). But now that I'm back in gOS, I needed to reset the clock to UTC. I'm perfectly capable of opening a terminal and using the command line to set the clock, but I can't believe that the casual, new-to-Linux user with gOS has no other way to set the time. No GUI, big problem.

Last week the RadeonHD v1.1 driver was released, which (among other changes) had introduced extended monitor detection, RS600 support, and preliminary support for the RV670-based ATI Radeon HD 3850 and Radeon HD 3870 graphics cards. This v1.1 driver release combined with a recent git commit for adding additional TMDSA/B electrical values has led to quite a pleasant experience already with these new midrange graphics cards that have been on the market for less than two months.

I continue to praise Geany, the GUI text editor in Puppy Linux. I'm not a programmer, but I use text editors just about every day. Especially for Web work, text editors are must-have tools for writers and editors. And for me, a text editor needs to do a few things -- and do them well.

I was startled and amused to walk into a local Office Depot and hear a sales person bashing Vista.

I've had Debian Etch with the Xfce desktop on the $15 Laptop for a couple of weeks. It took up a lot less space than Slackware 12 with Xfce (and NOT KDE), so I left Debian on the computer, a Compaq Armada 7770dmt with 64 MB of RAM. I had a trick to get the ALSA sound working in Damn Small Linux, but it wouldn't work in Debian. I don't have the soundcore module installed, and that's the next step in getting the sound working. I also found out that doing a Google Docs session in Debian on this box is ... frustrating. The screen moves way too slow. So I went in a different direction. I popped in the Damn Small Linux 4.0 CD (I know they're up to 4.2, but I haven't downloaded and burned the new ISO yet ... I plan to soon).

OpenEMR HQ, an Oklahoma based firm focused on supporting, consulting, and expanding the popularOpenEMR software system, has scheduled the first OpenEMR Public Training for January 18th 2008. The training, to be held in Tulsa, Oklahoma, will focus on installing, customizing, and administering an OpenEMR system on Linux and will be held from 8:00am to 12:00pm CST. Due to effects of the recent mid-west ice storms, the company is only accepting registrations for the training by telephone and can be reached at 918.919.4624 and will cost $350 USD per person with group discounts available. More information can be obtained by emailing training@openemrhq.com or calling the OpenEMR HQ offices at the number above.