Showing all newswire headlines

After a long period as an area of specialist interest, Linux and open source have finally achieved a commercial presence, and the tipping point is now in sight. An alternative to Microsoft means contractors and employees face a new set of issues. The most obvious opportunity is a wider pool of potential roles using open source technologies, providing another avenue of employment for IT professionals.

The Xandros Desktop OS is known for their intuitive graphical environment that works right out of the box. Their polished desktop product is based on KDE. Your humble Dot editor had the privilege to talk to Rick Berenstein, Xandros Chairman and CTO and Ming Poon,Vice President for Software Development about Xandros and their products and the relationship between Xandros and the KDE project. Without further due ... enjoy the interview!

By switching to IBM from a Unix-based fare-pricing system, the company will over three years save 90% of the IT costs associated with its Galileo 360 eFares system, said Robert Wiseman, chief technology officer at Cendant TDS.

Open source developers are not students and hobbyists; three in four are employed, while a third believe open source expertise improves job opportunities. These survey conclusions have sparked deeper investigation of the movement and its impact on European e-government. The original survey took place under the IST project FLOSS. "At the time, there was little information on open source/free software," says coordinator Rishab Ghosh, from the Merit/Infonomics research institute in The Netherlands. A better picture emerged after two surveys of the field. "We got 2,800 responses from developers worldwide and 1,500 from user organisations, mostly in Europe." The resulting 2002 report has proved very popular, with 200,000 downloads and 80,000 links on the Google search engine.

Many of today's Windows applications will break on high-end Longhorn tomorrow, but why bother with Longhorn when you can run Windows apps better on Linux today? Now here's a thought: In all the debate over Longhorn versus Linux 2.6—or, as I like to pose it, vaporware vs. "Red Hat Fedora is running on my desktop right now"—has anyone ever considered that legacy Windows users might be better off running their applications on—drum roll, please—Linux?

I've been using Fedora Core 1 on my desktop since its release. This week, coinciding with the purchase of a brand new monitor, I decided to try an upgrade to Fedora Core 2 test 3. Here are a few of my thoughts.

Sunnyvale, CA-based StarNet Communications Corp has announced a free technical support service for Linux. Called StarNet Linux Support, the new service covers issues related to server and workstation Installation, Configuration and System Administration on Linux systems.

In this briefing, Linux experts examine the large scale adoption of Linux as the computing platform of choice in governments and large corporations, and how you can benefit by adopting Linux. You'll learn what IBM brings to Linux through middleware, hardware, services, and IBM's contributions to open source development. Briefings are held worldwide, upcoming events include: Costa Mesa, CA (May 11), Seattle, WA (May 18), San Francisco, CA (May 20).

Linux has only recently begun to regain credibility in the financial markets since its speculative debut. However, its licensing model, hefty competition, and lack of maturity still worry investors. Companies such as Red Hat, long past its 1999 speculative highs, are slowly gaining ground while other Linux companies, such as Linspire, are planning initial public offerings. Is Linux finally becoming a viable alternative to proprietary operating systems, or is this rise simply a byproduct of a mini-tech bubble (as Bill Gates so eloquently put it)?

More than 70 people who work on free and open source software in Africa gathered in Namibia between March 15 and 19 to teach, to learn, and to network. This meeting, called Africa Source, was the first event of its kind, bringing together developers from roughly 25 countries on the continent, as well as visitors from a dozen countries outside Africa.

A new report from Japan's Techno Systems Research Co says that BakBone led the market for Linux server backup products in 2003 with 79% of the market. BakBone develops data protection solutions for Linux that manage, access and protect business-critical data.

The creator behind GNU Radio discusses its future as a business and possible fallout from the FCC. Eric Blossom's ambitious goal for the GNU Radio project is to "get the software as close to the antenna as is feasible" and turn radio hardware problems into software problems. Check out Eric's article, "GNU Radio: Tools for Exploring the Radio Frequency Spectrum", in the current issue of Linux Journal. In this interview, we catch up with the latest developments for GNU Radio.

The GNOME Foundation is looking for a host city for GUADEC 2005. Yes, we haven't even had this years GUADEC in Norway and we're already looking to next year!

Red Hat napped long enough to miss the rise of the enthusiast-oriented desktop distributions: SUSE and Mandrake made real strides by including a ton of applications and making a lot of things that matter to desktop users work better "out of the box."

During a press conference Tuesday in London, Red Hat announced its long-term client strategy, and described how the Red Hat Desktop will help achieve the company's goals. Matthew Szulik, Red Hat chairman and CEO, explained that Red Hat's client strategy was forged from the need for choice in the technology industry to drive innovation and forward thinking.

Novell has launched a test release of an open-source project that recreates Microsoft's .Net programming framework on Linux and Unix. Novell inherited the Mono project through its acquisition of open-source software maker Ximian last year. The project, started in 2001 by programmer Miguel de Icaza, operates under the auspices of Ximian.

Computer Associates is looking to the open-source community for help in building its next wave of management software. The company will announce at its CA World user conference later this month a financial and development commitment to open source, said Mark Barrenechea, senior vice president of product development.