Showing all newswire headlines

For its central source code management KDE last year migrated from the venerable "Concurrent Versioning System" (CVS) to the newer, more powerful Subversion (SVN) software. [....] Now the next big change is happening: KDE is leaving the aging "autotool" build chain behind. [....] KDE 4 will feature a completely different build system: CMake.

In typical KDE fashion the current move to CMake was not a "decision by committee". Instead, the old rule "who codes, decides" made itself felt once again. Let's look back at the history of this change.

A small Sri Lankan firm of open-source developers says it's time to bring a fresh set of concepts and standards to the notion of an application server.

The X10 protocol is a fairly primitive tool for transmitting data over power lines that allows you to turn things on and off remotely. In this article, Peter Seebach shows how to extend the software capabilities, setup a dynamic web interface and how to use cron for scheduling tasks. All this can be done easily with off-the-shelf hardware and a couple of hundred lines of simple code.

Do you like Ubuntu? Do you like KDE? Would you like to have them both in one distribution, but with more than Kubuntu can give you? If that's you, then SimplyMEPIS 6.2 is your operating system.

SAN FRANCISCO — Altium Ltd. Thursday (June 29) announced the release of a new Tasking VX-toolset for the Nios II family of embedded processors from programmable logic supplier Altera Corp.

An in depth article on how to secure your Linux web server. Who says that security is ever "easy"? It's a must-have for anybody running a web server - even if it's at home.

According tothis slashdot story:'"Remember how the VA was pinning the theft of 26.5 million veterans' personal records on a hard working-but-renegade employee whose laptop was stolen? Surprise! It turns out that the employee had written permission to bring the sensitive data home. Fortunately, the laptop has been recovered. It is still unclear how the laptop was recovered, or if any of the veterans' personal data was leaked."' The best quote I heard on this was that databases are becoming like plutonium, very concentrated and potentially very powerful.

An IBM-led group of 10 data storage vendors initiated an open-source project on the Eclipse Foundation community Web site June 28 to build a new API for developing software that manages storage devices and the networks in which they reside.

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- He's bent the ear of world leaders on social causes. He's a Nobel Peace Prize nominee. He's a rock star. But could the lead singer of U2 also become a front man for a grass-roots campaign seeking to change how the music industry does business? The Free Software Foundation hopes so.

Today we're going to configure our Internet router/gateway to give priority to Asterisk traffic. This how-to is for admins who have nice sturdy Linux-based Internet gateways. If you're using a commercial router with its own operating system, like Cisco, you'll have to learn the traffic-shaping incantations peculiar to it.

Theodore Ts'o offered an insightful summary of issues affecting future development on theext3 filesystem, "it is clear that many people feel they have a stake in the future development plans of the ext2/ext3 filesystem, as it [is] one of the most popular and commonly used filesystems, particular amongst the kernel development community. For this reason, the stakes are higher than it would be for other filesystems." He listed the three main concerns for future development as stability, compatibility confusion, and code complexity, "unfortunately, these various concerns were sometimes mixed together in the discussion two months ago, and so it was hard to make progress. Linus's concern seems to have been primarily the first point, with perhaps a minor consideration of the 3rd. Others dwelled very heavily on the second point."

Red Hat's acquisition of JBoss is now worth about $35 million less than it was when first announced on April 10.

You probably already know that a firewall is an essential component in your network border security. But you may not know that a Linux-based iptables firewall is especially robust and configurable. Today we'll set up system administration using Webmin, and in our next installment we'll create a good stout Internet-connection sharing firewall.

From the newsletter: Our monthly roadshow for state and local government agencies and academic institutions continues in July. Both events will be a free, half-day seminar on Enterprise Linux solutions, featuring engineers from Red Hat, IBM, and customers. IT management and staff from all area state and local government agencies and academic institutions are invited. Seating for each event is limited to 40 registrants. Lunch will be served.

Some two weeks ago, the GNOME Journal reported about end users, and all in all it it a nice article. But I think Vincent Untz didn’t even consider some things, so I wanted to comment a bit.

The City of Munich's LiMux project center is rejecting charges by the Senate administration of Berlin that the migration to free software has gotten stuck before it ever got going. As Project director Peter Hofmann told heise online, "Open Source software at the workplace is a reality in Munich." At the end of May, his department presented the future basis client to the public at in information day. At present, the pilot phase is focusing on a software suite. The approximately 100 pilot users include Mayor Christian Ude and his deputy Christine Strobl. Hofmann added that "most users" in the city's administration use individual Open Source programs to surf the net, write e-mails, or edit graphics, for example, "on the Microsoft Windows operating system, which remains dominant."

The impending release of Windows Vista with its fancy Aero Glass special effects, along with the hasty addition of the similar XGL and Compiz technologies to the latest SUSE Linux release, makes me think that programmers have a warped idea of what desktop computing is about.

[Silly rabbit! Tricks are for kids! - dcparris]

Open source database vendor MySQL AB is looking to retain its independence, according to its CEO, despite a recent turbulent period that showed the precariousness of its single-product strategy.

I've been a happy MythTV user for a long time -- you can check out my review of version 0.19 -- but lately I've been feeling that something is missing. MythTV is great for watching and recording TV, but I watch TV less than four hours per week. On the other hand, I love music, and MythTV offers no easy way to listen to music from various sources, such as audio CDs and Web-based and FM radio stations. After fiddling with custom solutions based on MPD and MPlayer, I decided to look for an alternative -- which led me to Freevo.

Japanese mobile firm Willcom is developing a Linux-based modular smartphone for sale in Japan starting in August.