Showing all newswire headlines

Linspire Inc. was going to announce the release of Freespire 1.0 -- its free, Debian-based desktop Linux operating system that combines open-source software with legally-licensed proprietary drivers, codecs, and applications -- next week at LinuxWorld in San Francisco. Instead, this new desktop Linux distribution has emerged early.

Four penguins died along with all the exotic fish being transported by truck to the zoo in Galveston, Texas. The truck overturned on US Highway 59 near Marshall Tuesday. One penguin died in the crash. Three others were hit by passing motorists. [Sorry folks, I couldn't resist posting this. Wonder if any were related to TUX or Adele.] Don K.

For almost 100 years a group of women called the Sisters of Mercy have been instilling a spirit of excellence into Baltimore's biggest hospital, appropriately named Mercy. Right from the start, the Sisters have made it their goal to push the medical institution beyond the ordinary by creating teaching affiliations, feeding the hungry, building state-of-the-art emergency services, and launching a neighborhood health center for the inner-city poor. In today's world, all that excellence requires a solid technology infrastructure -- and one open source management package to manage a variety of systems.

EnterpriseDB, which has built an Oracle-compatible edition of PostgreSQL, will offer support to Sun's Solaris customers

Apple provides source for XNU (Intel, from 10.4.7. up, under APSL), iCal Server (under Apache Licence), rereleases Bonjour and Launchd under Apache Licence, opens Mac OS Forge for supporting WebKit and other FOSS projects focused on OS X.

The Hard PartsI hate hardware. Sometimes I hate Linux too, but more often I just hate the hardware. Boxes, wires, connectors, keyboards, mice, the works. Some days I just want all of it to disappear.

This is a nice list of some of the best educational and promotional videos on Free Software/Open Source and Free Culture, from The Corruptibles to the Lawrence Lessigs speech. The list may expand.

You've probably heard of full disclosure, the security philosophy that calls for making public all details of vulnerabilities. It has been the subject of debates among researchers, vendors, and security firms. But the story that grabbed most of the headlines at the Black Hat Briefings in Las Vegas last week was based on a different type of disclosure. For lack of a better name, I'll call it faux disclosure. Here's why.

Desktop migration specialist Versora on Aug. 8 released an updated version (v2.0) of its Progression Desktop Windows to Linux desktop migration software, a tool that helps users to transfer files and settings from their Windows system to a Linux system.

[And you can see our interview with Versora - dcparris]

"As an open, nonproprietary operating system, Linux provides flexibility, freedom of choice and a cost advantage that makes it compelling as a viable alternative to Windows Mobile, Symbian and other proprietary offerings," said analyst Stacey Quandt.

With the release of the 2.6.18-rc3-mm1 kernel, Andrew Morton [interview] included a brief note stating, "fwiw, I recently took a position with Google." He then linked to aLinux Today article which details the reasons behind his recent move. The article begins, "Andrew Morton has started working for a new company, but his day job as the Linux 2.6 kernel maintainer will remain exactly the same." In the article, Andrew discusses one of the reasons Google was a good fit, "in my position as kernel maintainer I feel that I should not be employed by a company which has a direct interest in the kernel.org kernel because this would put me in a position of making decisions which are commercially significant to my employer's competitors. As Google maintains their own kernel variant for internal use, their interests are largely decoupled from what happens in the kernel.org kernel."

Texas Instruments (TI) has published an 18-minute videocast about programming its DaVinci RISC/DSP chips using Green Hills Software's (GHS) "Multi" IDE (integrated development environment). Used with a hardware JTAG probe, Multi permits simultaneous OS-aware debugging of Linux and DSP BIOS executives running on the DaVinci chips, GHS says.

This article discusses the shared libraries concept in both Windows and Linux, and offers a walk-through through various data structures to explain how dynamic linking is done in these operating systems. The paper will be useful for developers interested in the security implications and the relative speed of dynamic linking, and assumes some prior cursory knowledge with dynamic linking.

[This should be interesting. - dcparris]

U.N. official urges governments to"seriously consider" the OpenDocument Format; applauds Microsoft's move to create ODF plug-in.

[Sunil] Abraham explained: "Most governments in this region are older than the software vendors that they are talking to, and they will almost certainly outlive the software vendors and developers. For government [document] archives, it is thus critical that [they] use open formats."

[I couldn't find a mention of any software implementing ODF except OpenOffice.org, in spite of efforts by KDE, Abiword, IBM and others. The article seems to be pulling some of the same stunts as Steven Titch. It includes commentary by the BSA in opposition to ODF and support of MS. -- grouch]

As many of you know, we utilize Oregon State University's Open Source Lab for our hosting and support. They do a fantastic job of taking care of us here, as well as a number of other great projects including phpBB, Drupal, Gentoo, mozdev, the Mozilla Foundation/Corporation, and many others. The OSL is kicking off their 2006 Rackathon today to raise money in support of their efforts to provide great hosting support to the Open Source community.

While MySQL has garnered most of the attention with respect to open source database solutions, there are plenty of other options, such as PostgreSQL. This week I take a look at PostgreSQL and explain how you can utilize it as the backend for .NET applications.

Telnet is a popular way to access a remote system, unfortunately, it is incredibly insecure.

Santa Clara-based Foundery Networks has filed a "Son of Rambus" law suit alleging that French telecommunications giant Alcatel engaged in exactly the same sort of "submarine patent" trap-setting that the FTC slammed Rambus for last week.

Levanta on Tuesday released the Intrepid M 4.2 Linux management appliance, which can virtualize entire Linux configurations in minutes through a unique kernel plug-in technology.

The Franconia region around Nuremberg, Germany, hopes to establish Europe's first "Linux Valley" with the launch of a new business campus focused on open source innovation. Linux Business Campus Nuremberg e.V. (LBCN) has opened the doors of its new Innovation Center in the Maxtorhof office center north of the city's historic center, the association said Wednesday. The group is targeting young companies interested in developing new Linux-based or open source-based software applications. Companies locating in the new complex will pay no rent for the first three months, and an "attractive" rent after this period. The offices have air-conditioned rooms for server farms.