Showing all newswire headlines

An independent report from investment banking firm SG Cowen & Co says Linux is beginning to bump into constraints that will cause growth to slow and limit its inroads into the Microsoft Windows installed base. The report, authored by SG Cowan managing director and group head of technology research, Drew Brosseau, goes on to paint a cautious picture for investors considering taking a plunge into leading Linux providers Red Hat and Novel. That's remarkable in part because SG Cowan discloses in the report that it holds "1 per cent or more of the common equity securities" of Red Hat.

Ohio LinuxFest registration is now open. Speaker registration has been extended to August 15, 2005. It promises to be the biggest Ohio Linux event ever!

In the U.K., we have a vibrant and growing LUG movement, active both in bringing new people to open source through advocacy and in providing the ad-hoc support that all Linux users need. Until recently, though, there was no community-focused event for the U.K. open source community.

This is a mini Linux distribution for the Linksys wrt54g. In about 20 seconds, you can install a small set of Linux tools to your access point's ramdisk. The distribution is geared towards those who are curious about casually exploring the internal workings of this device. The installation is strictly to the ram disk of the box. No permanent changes are made. If you mess something up, power-cycle the box

Last Tuesday was the Indonesia Go Open Source (IGOS) Open House, held in the lobby of the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT) building on Jl. Thamrin. For the first time, there is a specific event focusing on open source solutions, which allows the general public to see how much Linux has entered the Indonesian IT marketplace. And like current business trends, a lot of applications were focused on the Small and Medium Business (SMB) market.

Welcome to this year's 29th issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The developers of Mandriva Linux have released the first beta of the upcoming Mandriva Linux 2006, the much anticipated new version, which is expected to incorporate some of the best features of Conectiva and Lycoris into Mandriva Linux. Likewise, the Debian developers continued with massive updates in their unstable branch - inevitably breaking things on occasion, but still marching firmly towards introducing new updates and features into the next release, code name 'etch'. Also in this issue: Onebase Linux, as our featured distribution of the week, and a quick tip about restoring an overwritten partition table. Happy reading!

Greg Wallace, the co-founder and chief marketing officer at Emu Software, chaired the panel on embedded Linux at last month's C3 Expo in New York. He says that Linux is the top choice among embedded developers, and, in contrast to the PC market where Wintel dominates, there are a large number of embedded system chip vendors, and a lot of competition and innovation in this space. We asked Wallace about his panel's discussion.

I've never really done any form of review ofSlackware Linux and I'm not really sure why. Maybe it's because it might come across as bias since I consider it one of the most attractive distributions available today. Maybe it's because I've called it home for so many years. Who knows. I will say that I recently changed my mind about it and this is my story.

This is commercial site but the product just looks so cool

The picotux 100 is the world's smallest Linux computer, only slightly larger (35mm×19mm×19mm) than an RJ45 connector. Inside, there is an ARM7 CPU at 55 MHz running uClinux kernel 2.4.27 and Busybox 1.0. Two communication interfaces are provided, 10/100 Mbit half/full duplex Ethernet and a serial port with up to 230.400 baud. Five additional lines can be used for either general input/output or serial handshaking.

The OSDL, in my opinion, is the proper place for a Linux and Open Source Business Benefits repository. Filling the pages with excellent material, and keeping the material fresh, seems to require an OSDL Marketing Working Group. The task of this Working Group would be to find, and if it doesn't exist, create, the best Linux/Open Source case studies, application briefs, business cases. and ROI studies, and polish and categorize them according to the competitive advantages of Linux and Open Source.

Novell seems likely to increase its presence and that of open-source software in the school market after concluding a nationwide agreement with the Ministry of Education last week. The 18-month agreement gives schools access to Novell Open Enterprise Server, Suse Linux server and desktop operating systems and other Novell applications such as ZENworks, Groupwise and Border Manager.

Everyone claims they're going to get better, everyone claims they're going to more scalable, they all have their code names and the things they're going to show up with that are going to be wonderful in the future. And I shrug my shoulders and say OK, I'm waiting. That's all very interesting. I don't let it distract me. I'm focused on solving customer problems and delivering the best possible technology to grow IBM's business.

Should you or your business consider open source? Bernard Golden thinks so. He's the author of the recent book Succeeding With Open Source, published by Addison-Wesley. The book is a how-to guide for organizations who want to move away from high-cost commercial software.

Old, but new to this site, a bit of early history on a project to build an open source warning system. The interesting part, however, is the discovery that monitoring systems of the raw data are already in operation for differing purposes. Moreover, in at least one case the director of such a site wanted to disseminate such warnings. Furthermore, the core problem is not technological, but political will. One case is cited where the knowledge of the impending wave's arrival was known but the warning not given, because of the potential harm to the tourist industry! So here Open Source plays the role of shaming those in charge to do the "Right Thing". An odd role for technology. [Read the lower quarter for this discussion.]

Since this is the first column in this series, I'm going to start with a little justification. After all, when you are doing something that looks more like fun than work, there always seems to be some "splainin' to do". So, let me explain. Linux as a computing platform has come a long, long way since it appeared way back in 1991, so much so that it is now ready to replace that other rather common desktop OS we see on PCs everywhere. (Shhh . . . don't mention the name!) In the server room, Linux has been king for some time. Now, Linux is ready for the desktop and the business applications that the average office worker depends on — word processors, spreadsheets, Web browsers, electronic organizers, email packages, and so on. If you're still following my logic, then winning the business desktop is already a done deal — it's just going to take a little while. That means it's time for Linux to look to the final frontier, which takes me back to the justification for this series.

Unfortunately for the purveyors of FUD, the SCO suit has not exactly opened the flood gates of litigation. First, SCO's action against Daimler-Chrysler was dismissed outright. Second, the AutoZone suit, while still pending, has been delayed until SCO's primary suit can be litigated.

I'm not convinced that the Linux community can pull it together enough to get behind one truly dominant distro. Part of the problem is that the anarchic and altruistic nature of the open-source movement keeps it from sacrificing features and quality in order to carpet-bomb the market with a product that works just well enough for mass adoption.

Mozilla's SpeadFirefox.com community marketing site became an unwitting spam platform after it was hit by "unknown remote attackers," the site's managers said. According to an e-mail sent from the SpreadFirefox.com site to users today, the attack was discovered only on Tuesday. The exploit did not affect any other Mozilla sites or software and was limited only to the SpreadFirefox.com site according to the email.

CO has moved to limit the fall-out from a recently unsealed memo, in which incoming Caldera boss Darl McBride was told that the company had no copyright claims on the Linux kernel. The memo said an audit had looked for, but failed to find a "smoking gun". A week later Caldera renamed itself The SCO Group, and three months later hired lawyer David Boies to lead a legal campaign based on its IP claims.

Mozilla Foundation releases Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.5 Mozilla Thunderbird is a free, cross-platform email and news client developed by the Mozilla Foundation. The project strategy is modeled after Mozilla Firefox, a project aimed at creating a smaller and faster web browser. Just as Firefox aims to redefine the web browser, Thunderbird is a refinement of the mail and news interface. Users often use them both together.