Showing all newswire headlines

"Completely fair scheduling is [a] really good thing, but if you want the best performance for certain applications you need to tune up some things," explained Michal Piotrowski in his announcement for the fifth version of hisDeskOpt daemon. The daemon is a Python script that helps to automatically tune the I/O scheduler and the process scheduler to offer better performance for certain applications such as games or audio applications. The script supports the default CFS process scheduler and CFQ I/O scheduler, as well as the anticipatory I/O scheduler and the deadline I/O scheduler.

The coalition comprising the Free Software Foundation and environmental activist organizations has gathered around 1500 signatures for their open letter calling on their members and other social activists to reject the resource-intensive Windows Vista in favor of the Free Software GNU/Linux systems.

It’s old news now, but ISO has announced that OOXML failed to meet both of the criteria for success in the Five Month Ballot Period. Andy Updegrove and Pam Jones have the details. Congratulations to all who worked to secure this result in the goal of high quality, non-vendor dictated open standards. The story is not over, of course, as the Ballot Resolution Meeting in February will attempt to get agreement on fixes to OOXML to make it acceptable. A lot will happen between now and then. Nevertheless, this was a truly historic vote and result. But that was so yesterday. What about tomorrow?

Linux is not a free version of Windows. The two systems differ not only visually, in the graphical user interface the user sees, but also functionally, as is frequently discussed, and legally to boot, which is constantly emphasized by the Free software community. The differences between them are so fundamental that drawing a comparison between them is nearly impossible. There are so many moot points that they could make up a very long list. This part of my article concerns the architectures of Windows systems.

On the last months people have been complaining a lot about the lack of contrast and the all white issues on the oxygen style, I have said also lots of times that it is mostly a pallet issue. But the message is not getting out, so... I will do what i always do... Show pretty pictures.

What do engineers do when they observe a problem? They start a project to fix it. A Swiss standard expert who got annoyed by the "Open XML bug" of ISO procedures launched OpenISO.org. "Generally speaking, the only way in which the world has ever been changed for the better is by small groups of dedicated people who (mostly) didn't have much in terms of financial resources but who went forward anyway... Right now OpenISO.org seems to me to be the only promising long-term strategy."

South African computer technology distributor Sahara is offering notebooks with pre-installed Linux operating systems. The company added this open-source option to its product range earlier this year, but it is unclear how successful the move has been. Currently Sahara is the only major supplier of computers pre-loaded with Linux in South Africa.

The real question Linux advocates need to answer is this. Can you go Microsoft-free and still get your work done? Mike Kavis is trying to find out. Back in May he dumped his Windows desktop for Ubuntu and now he has launched a pilot program to take his employer in the same direction. This type of experiment is going on in lots of places. As I noted previously, I’m engaged in the same process. Step by step, application by application, I am weaning myself away from Microsoft. I’m not Microsoft-free yet but if I can do it, you can too. If Mike can do it, so can your enterprise. I want to be like Mike. Do you?

"Nuxified.org and Cluenet.org are preparing to hold a Free Software gaming tournament. Its purpose is to promote gaming in the Free Software world, on operating systems such as GNU/Linux, and *BSD and show that gaming is not limited to proprietary platforms such as Microsoft's Windows. We would like to do this in a collaborative and open way so this first announcement serves as a call to everyone who may be interested to join us and help us build this tournament."

MEPIS has released Beta3 of SimplyMEPIS 7.0, its full-featured Debian-based Linux, and Beta 2 of MEPIS AntiX (pronounced "Antics"), which is designed to run on very old 32-bit PC hardware. MEPIS 7, unlike Ubuntu-based MEPIS 6.5, is built on Debian 4.0. This beta boasts kernel version 2.6.22.5 which contains minor patches from the Kernel Development Team as its heart.

Microsoft has extended its controversial partnership with Novell to make the Silverlight cross-platform, cross-browser media player run on Linux desktops.

The Southern California Linux Expo is proud to announce the second annual Demonstrating Open-Source Health Care Solutions (DOHCS). The event will be held on February 8, 2008 in Los Angeles, California in conjunction with the Sixth Annual Southern California Linux Expo.

Gumstix today announced the consoleLCD-vx(TM) expansion board which, when combined with a 4.3" Samsung LCD panel, creates an industry leading computer for the OEM, educational and hobbyist markets. "Hook up the Samsung LCD screen, plug in a keyboard, connect to a network and the gumstix computer becomes a very small but fully functional, Linux computer," said W. Gordon Kruberg, CEO and President of Gumstix.

Glide Sync now supports Windows, Mac OS X and Linux PCs (with 32 and 64-bit processors) and is available today for download at http://www.glideos.com. Glide is a compatible information highway for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and most smartphone users. "Glide is effectively your online 'Easy' Pass," said TransMedia Chairman and CEO, Donald Leka. "Glide magically bypasses technical road blocks when sending or receiving files between various devices and operating systems."

"This is a formal announcement of Lguest64," Steven Rostedt said in an email posted to the Linux Kernel mailing list. He explained:"Most are aware of the little puppies (lguest32, or simply lguest, or in some circles"rustyvisor"). But this time the puppies ate a bit too much. No more lean and mean puppies, now we got big fat lazy ones. Running on the hardware that's too lazy to do full virtualization. Yes, lguest now runs on x86_64!"

In January 2007, two of us (professor Joel Adams and student Tim Brom) decided to build a personal, portable Beowulf cluster. Like a personal computer, the cost had to be low -- our budget was $2500 -- and its size had to be small enough to sit on a person's desk. Joel and Tim named their system Microwulf, which has broken the $100/GFLOP barrier for double precision, and is remarkably efficient by several measures. You may also want to take a look at the Value Cluster project for more information on $2500 clusters.

Attendees of the Ohio LinuxFest - or GNU/LinuxFest for GNU fans - received the following note from the organizers...

Back at the Red Hat Summit, Henri Richard said that AMD (and the former ATI) were going to come up with a plan to better support open source. Today we see the results of that promise and I have to say I’m incredibly impressed with the commitment that they have decided to make. OK, to the meat of the story. AMD is making the commitment to do two major things: To develop of a fully functional 2D and 3D driver that supports all of their newer radeon chipsets in full collaboration with the open source community and to release documentation that anyone can use to build and support drivers for their chips.

Give me one line...succinct and as short as possible with your first name and last initial. I want that line to say volumes. I need it to be about linux. Either why you like it, why you participate in it or a statement about Linux you consider important. Example follows. "I thought I was computer illiterate until I discovered Linux." - Ken S.

Adopt Python to manage UNIX systems while incorporating concepts of good program design. Python is an easy-to-learn, open source scripting language that lets system administrators do their job more quickly. It can also make tasks more fun. The examples in this article demonstrate different Python features that you can put to practical use. If you work through them, you'll be well on your way to understanding the power of Python.