Showing all newswire headlines

Many people have embraced Google's Gmail service due to its slick interface and ample storage -- but like any application, Gmail leaves a few things to be desired. To trick Gmail out to your specifications, take a look at Lifehacker's Better Gmail, a Firefox extension that brings all sorts of extra goodness to Gmail.

How many developers run for the post of leader of the Debian GNU/Linux project and cite as part of their platform a desire to make Debian sexy again? None that I know of - except Sam Hocevar who won the recent election for leader of the project.

Google and MySQL are close to finalizing a deal that could find the open-source database vendor incorporating powerful features created by the search giant into future versions of the popular database. Google is widely believed to be the largest MySQL user in the world, with hundreds or even thousands of MySQL servers running in data centers around the world.

In 1991, Richard Stallman's great project, the GNU operating system, was made whole when Linus Torvalds developed the kernel, Linux, that it had lacked. The next year, there was a marriage. Today, GNU/Linux is arguably the most popular server operating system, and the GPL is the dominant license for revealed source code software.

The EMC E-Lab, together with Oracle engineering, has tested and qualified Oracle Enterprise Linux on core EMC platforms and software products to help ensure ease of deployment and use. EMC Corporation and Oracle today announced several key areas of joint support as part of the Oracle Unbreakable Linux program.

why couldn’t a billion dollar company provide support for previous versions of Windows? so that users would be forced to use Vista?! and oh not everyone would be able to do so since you would need at least 1GB of ram and a graphics card that supports directx 10 to run it!

Sam Hocevar recently became the next Debian Project Leader (DPL), defeating seven other candidates while running on a platform that emphasized ways to improve how project members interact. Hocevar's election comes at a time when Debian may be losing mindshare among both users and developers to Ubuntu, and looking for ways to improve its efficiencies and to mend internal divisions. Recently, Linux.com discussed these challenges with Hocevar via email in his first interview since his election.

As women gain visibility in the blogosphere, they are targets of sexual harassment and threats. Men are harassed too, and lack of civility is an abiding problem on the Web. But women, who make up about half the online community, are singled out in more starkly sexually threatening terms - a trend that was first evident in chat rooms in the early 1990s and is now moving to the blogosphere, said experts and bloggers.

[Not Linux related, but probably of interest after Carla's recent articles — Sander]

Yeah, Wiimotes aren't the only motion-sensing game controllers that can be hacked for fruitless new uses. Take the new SIXAXIS Linux integration project, which, so far as we can tell, is an incredibly effective means for maneuvering small, custom robots in need of a good 3D controller for manipulating, um, a small flat plane.

Xbindkeys is a program that allows you to launch shell commands with your keyboard or your mouse under X Window. It links commands to keys or mouse buttons, using its configuration file. It does not depend on the window manager and can capture all keyboard keys.

The Australian federal government backed IPv6 for e-Business project has yielded an Ubuntu-based IPv6 router that is now being trialed in business. The device is a modified Ubuntu Linux distribution with the aim of allowing straightforward, inexpensive IPv6 connectivity, without complex site-by-site deployments on an open standards server.

One problem open source advocates seldom acknowledge is the disrespect many people have toward what’s held in common. You see it in the world with "street spammers" nailing ads to trees in public parks. You see it online, in the attitude spammers take when caught. The question is, how does the commons enforce its ethics on the unethical?

Governments are beginning to realize that perhaps the Internet really has changed everything, at least for them, and that standards represent one of the elements they are going to have to deal with as they begin to grapple with what to do about their new responsibilities.

Microsoft addicted many of the first billion users to its proprietary platform using the ruse of encouraging software piracy in developing nations. Now the software giant intends to hook the next billion users by providing a cheap hit of $3 software. These are the claims of a longstanding open source advocate, who has started a campaign urging third world governments to reject Microsoft's offer of cheap software.

According to a recently uncovered filing in the long-running SCO v. IBM case, SCO tried to have Groklaw—along with a handful of people associated with the open-source movement silenced back in 2004. SCO suggested that all parties involved in the litigation be subject to a stipulated gag order. The company then stretched the definition of "involved parties" to include SCO, Columbia Law professor Eben Moglen, OSS advocate Eric Raymond, and Linus Torvalds.

A project that aims to deliver low-priced laptops with string pulleys to the world's poorest children may have a new market: U.S. schools. The nonprofit "One Laptop per Child" project said on Thursday it might sell versions of its kid-friendly laptops in the United States, reversing its previous position of only distributing them to the poorest nations.

Welcome to the 200th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! That's right, the idea to publish a weekly summary of events in the world of Linux distributions and other open source operating systems started in June 2003 and, 200 issues later, we are still going strong! This week belongs to Mandriva Linux and its recently released version 2007.1 - we'll bring you a full review, comment on the release process, share our upgrade experiences, and link to a technical specification proposal for Mandriva Linux 2008. In other news: PCLinuxOS opens for business after a disastrous bandwidth outage, Linspire announces release dates of Freespire 2.0 and Linspire 6.0, Terra Soft release Yellow Dog Linux 5.0.1 for free download, and the developers of VMKnoppix announce a 64-bit edition of KNOPPIX 5.1.1. Finally, a comment on translating the new Top Ten Distributions page and an update on tracking distribution usage through browser strings. Happy reading!

Normally, I see "Unleashed" books with titles Like Fedora Core 6 Unleashed or OpenSUSE 10.2 Unleashed, not something like Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Administration Unleashed. An "administration" Unleashed book? Very interesting...and written by a single (and very highly qualified) author to boot. A peek at the Intro assured me that this book was written as much for Linux administration in general as for RHEL 5 administration. Fox said her focus was to help admins who oversee from one to a thousand systems, so I started to think "big".

It's out love for Ubuntu that I'm being so harsh in this review. Look where we're at -- 7.04, a number of significant releases since 4.10 Warty three years ago -- and it still can't manage the display resolution properly, for example.

LXer Feature: 29-Apr-2007

A weekly recap of the big stories concerning Linux and Open Source.