Showing all newswire headlines

In the last edition of TLWIR, I discussed Toyota’s recent embrace of the GNU/Linux operating system. In this week’s edition, I will expand on this theme of organizations embracing the concepts of openness and freedom.

Here is a list of all PPAs for different Firefox and Thunderbird Channels which you can add to your sources list and always have up to date packages. PPA instructions for Stable, Beta and Aurora channels will upgrade your existing Firefox/Thunderbird installation while instructions for Nightly channel will install a new daily build trunk version side by side to your existing Firefox/Thunderbird installation.

Novell, now owned by Attachmate, is marching forward with its BrainShare conference. But this won’t be any ordinary BrainShare. Instead, topics involving three Attachmate divisions — NetIQ, Novell and SUSE — are on the agenda. Can one conference serve so many different masters -- including Linux partners? Here's some insight.

Roku announced three new versions of its Linux-based, Netflix-ready streaming IP media player, all running on less than two Watts and adding support for casual gaming. The Roku 2 HD ($60) supports 720p playback; the Roku 2 XD($80) moves up to 1080p; and the Roku 2 XS ($100) adds USB and Ethernet ports, as well as a motion-control remote and Angry Birds. Roku runs embedded Linux.

SUSE Linux, now owned by Attachmate, is preparing a cloud strategy. That’s good news for partners that have remained loyal to SUSE amid the transition from Novell to Attachmate. And it's a safe bet SUSE will describe the strategy during Novell Brainshare. Here's the update.

In this months column, openSUSE community manager Jos Poortvliet ponders the future of free software…

Microsoft isn't exactly dumping Windows for Linux, but it has become one of the busiest contributors to the Linux kernel. Microsoft's attempt to get Hyper-V drivers into the Linux kernel has taken longer than expected, having begun in July 2009, so Microsoft is apparently trying to speed up the process.

It is truly exciting to get an in depth experience and discover new projects.BrowserID though going beyond a project is poised to be the game changer in how you sign-into websites. Mozilla calls it the BrowserID and is a brand new way of signing up for website services.

How standards proliferate...

Nothing is immortal. Time passed by and I got tired of both Ubuntu and Kubuntu. I got quite disappointed by changed introduced in version 11.04. That was a time to change.

From the 'Circle This' files: There was a time when all I need to know about Linus Torvalds or the current state of kernel development, could be found on the Linux Kernel Mailing List. This week, Linus Torvalds posted a note on Google +, advising the kernel community that Linux 3.0 would be delayed to deal with a late breaking patch. While Linus delaying or commenting on a kernel release is nothing new, the Google + bit is. To be honest, I had been avoiding Google + since it had been announced as, yet another time sinkhole that I didn't want to get dragged into. But now, if Linus is posting valuable information on Google +, information that directly affects my use and continued coverage of Linux, can I keep my head buried in the mud?

Although some file archivers offer us the option of split the files, this can be easily accomplished with two commands: split and cat. Splitting a file with split

split just needs the size of the parts that we want to create, and the file that we want to split, e.g.:

split -b 1024 file_to_split.bin

If this file is 6 kibibytes long, it will create 6 files of 1 kibibyte each, named xaa, xab, xac, xad, xaeand xaf.

Prey is an open source application that will help you track and find your device, let it be your Ubuntu powered laptop or Android smartphone, if it ever gets stolen. Ofcourse the person who stole the device will have to boot and connect it to the internet somehow for Prey to work.

The newly independent SUSE Linux unit unveiled the first leg of its cloud platform today: SUSE Studio Version 1.2. The development platform, which has been on the market for two years, helps SUSE Linux customers build, update and manage applications. Version 1.2 allows customers to better build, update and manage applications across physical, virtual and cloud environments including public clouds as well as x86 and System Z mainframe systems.

A UK-based developer who finally scraped together enough money for a MacBook Air managed to hack Google's Chromium OS onto it a short time later, according to a blog post published on Tuesday. Chromium's startup time is slower than OS X and the need for BIOS emulation bogs the entire thing down, but the author managed to force the OS and the hardware to put aside most of their differences. For science.

Thomas Gleixner has released the first test version of a real-time (RT) Linux kernel based on a current release candidate of Linux kernel version 3.0; having been slightly delayed, version 3.0 is due to be released any day now. With version 3.0-rc7-rt0, the developers have taken the biggest step towards a modern basis for the RT kernel, a kernel that is chiefly maintained by Gleixner and several other developers – the current stable kernel with real-time capabilities is still based on the Linux 2.6.33 series, which Greg Kroah-Hartman has continued to maintain specifically for the RT developers.

With margins so thin you need a microscope to see them, Nokia's financial results for the second quarter of 2011 are due tomorrow, and the company has already warned investors of very bad news coming. Yesterday, it issued a peek into just how tough things have got in 2011. Nokia said its smartphone profit margins were down to 6.2 per cent in Q1 2011, with margins of 16.4 per cent on basic phones.…

Online file storage is a pressing issue these days for users on any platform. To make things easier for Linux users among you, we have already published an article featuring top Dropbox alternatives for Linux few weeks ago. Based on the feedback we got from our readers, we have decided to feature a few more of those which were not included in the original list. So here they are, 5 more Dropbox alternatives for Linux recommended by you.

After a couple of months of development, Oracle proudly announced last evening, July 19th, a major update to its popular and powerful VirtualBox virtualization software, VirtualBox 4.1.0, which brings lots of new features and many improvements.

Sakai is an open source, web-based, Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE) that is primarily focused on higher education, and has been adopted by hundreds of institutions. It supports the activities of students, teachers, and researchers. Sakai also provides an administrative interface. Sakai is flexible, and can be configured for a variety of specialized audiences.

This article by explains concepts that you may need during first-time Sakai deployments. Within this article, you'll find an overview of the third-party frameworks on which Sakai is built and information about how to manage and monitor Java.