Showing all newswire headlines

German software vendor SoftMaker has released SoftMaker Office 2006 for Linux and FreeBSD, an office suite for computers running Linux or FreeBSD that reads and writes all Microsoft Word and Excel files.

[Not to fear - there's still OpenOffice.org and KOffice. They're truly free. - dcparris]

Here, we take a look at a wide variety of interesting Linux-powered gadgets that don't fit into the other categories of this guide -- everything from web-enabled digital cameras, to automobile telematics systems, to IBM's Linux wrist watch, to . . .

I recently reported on my good results with migrating an old server from RH7 to Debian Sarge, beginning with the network-install CD. Responding to my comments that an install of a Sarge desktop on my old Thinkpad left me less than impressed, several readers admonished me for not installing Etch.

[Yep, I'm pretty sold on Debian Etch myself. - dcparris]

LINUX PROGRAMMER Hans Reiser, who is facing a charge that he murdered his estranged wife, is flogging his open sauce outfit Namesys to pay his legal bills.

BURBANK – 12/22/06 – Media production software developer Linux Media Arts Inc. (LMA) has formed a partnership with the Government of Manitoba, Canada, to open a new Open Source product research and development center in Winnipeg that will assist California-based global media companies wanting to penetrate Canadian and international markets.

Access's open-source "application framework" for Linux devices, released under the Mozilla Public License (MPL), is now available for download. The Hiker Application Framework -- a set of libraries and utilities for GTK+ application installation, management, security, and inter-communication -- aims to enable the commercialization of applications targeting mobile Linux devices.

Hoping to do for internet photo searches what Yahoo did for text searches, Swedish company Polar Rose AB has announced a web browser plug-in that allows users to find photographic facial matches through any search engine.

[Posted for your reading pleasure - looks interesting! - dcparris]

Can a game company make a profit producing commercial offerings for Linux? Two cross-platform offerings that run on Linux are hoping to show that it can be done.

After lots of feedback, bug fixing and testing of the beta live CD announced 3 weeks ago, The Fedora Project is pleased to announce the first official Fedora live CD. This live CD is based on packages from the Fedora Core 6 (codenamed "Zod") and Fedora Extras package collections and is such 100% free software.

Rich Internet Applications is the new buzz-phrase for Web 2.0, and a key component of the substance behind Web 2.0 is Adobe Flash. Take a break and have some fun with learning how to create Rich Internet Applications, integrate Adobe Flash movies into your applications and generate Flash movies dynamically with the Ming library.

If you have been using MySQL for a while, you have a knowledge investment that may discourage you from exploring other databases. This short guide shows how common tasks in MySQL are accomplished in PostgreSQL. It also highlights some unique features of each database.

I'm an extremely visual learner. If you introduce yourself to me, chances are that I'll forget your name after a few minutes. If I see your name in print, it's locked in my brain for all time (ok, I'm exaggerating, but not by much). Codin' for the Web (like, Singin' in the Rain) is a very visual book. Peachpit Press seems to specialize in producing their texts using high quality paper, fonts, colors, and images. Even without reading the content, it's just a pleasure to look at the pages. However, without good content, the "eye candy" effect doesn't mean much.

What does an anti-slavery pamphlet, a graph of French losses during Napoleon's invasion of Russia, and a PowerPoint slide presentation have in common? The answer, according to Edward Tufte's latest collection of essays, Beautiful Evidence , is that all of them combine words and graphics to convey information -- although not with the same success. This is a subject with which readers of Tufte's previous books will be already familiar, and some of the essays in the book have been available online in slightly different forms for several years. Yet, for all this familiarity, in Beautiful Evidence, Tufte still manages to offer readers a combination of practical advice and theory in a style that manages to be both leisurely and challenging at the same time.

Open-source software in schools will be the driving force for Gordon Brown’s proposed ‘Knowledge Economy’, it was claimed today. The claim comes from Bluefountain, after massive cross-party backbench support for a change in government policy for IT in education. Nearly one in five backbenchers from all parties questioned the exclusion of open-source software from UK schools.

I recently read a story that asked, "Has the Desktop Linux Bubble Burst?" Burst!? No, I don't think so. Actually, it still isn't even half as big as it will be when it's full.

For the ninth year in a row, the editors at LWN.net have put together a timeline highlighting the most important events of the last twelve months.

Bug stamp-out list for December 22, 2006

The development of vital computer systems to be used and maintained for decades in aerospace and automobile construction is preconditioned on development tools the specifications of which elude most classical software products. Therefore a consortium of companies centered on the aircraft manufacturer Airbus has decided to make sure -- by launching a project dubbed TOPCASED (Toolkit in Open source for Critical Applications & Systems Development) -- that it gets its hands on such tools.

We are pleased to announce that the third Beta release of Trustix Secure Linux 3.0.5 is now available. Thanks to many reports and suggestions, this release contains some critical fixes and improvements in the installer and other software.

VectorLinux, a lightweight, fast Linux distribution for the x86 platform, just released its new version 5.8 this week. This user-friendly distribution makes the average computer user's life easy by supplying office software, Web browsing, photo editing, and archiving on top of a fast, clean Xfce window manager.