Showing all newswire headlines

Believe it or not, there is still this illusion that Linux and open-source software is written by counter-culture, C++ programming cultists living in their parent basements or huddled together in Cambridge, Mass. group-houses. Please. That is so twenty-years ago. Today, as the Linux Foundation reveals in its latest analysis, Linux Kernel Development: How Fast it is Going, Who is Doing It, What They are Doing, and Who is Sponsoring It (PDF Link), it’s big business that’s making Linux in 2010.

Time is a precious commodity, especially if you're a system administrator. No other job pulls people in so many directions at once. Users interrupt you constantly with requests, preventing you from getting anything done. Your managers want you to get long-term projects done but flood you with requests for quick-fixes that prevent you from ever getting to those long-term projects. But the pressure is on you to produce and it only increases with time. What do you do? The answer is time management.

Oracle claimed that it acquired the Hudson trademark with its purchase of Sun Microsystems. But a well-placed former Sun Microsystems employee has contacted The Reg to say that Sun took an "explicit decision" not to apply for a trademark on the name Hudson. A search of the US Patent and Trademark Office's website throws up 623 trademarks for Hudson for many things, but not for the project Oracle owns.

Motorola Inc. announced it will split into two companies on Jan. 4, separating the "Motorola Mobility" division that makes Android smartphones from the "Motorola Solutions" division responsible for enterprise handhelds running Windows Mobile. The separation will benefit stockholders, customers, and employees alike, the company claims.

Here at MakeTechEasier, we’ve covered Linux desktop issues of all kinds, and we’ve examined desktop environments both well known (Gnome and KDE) as well as somewhat obscure (Window Maker, LXDE). For some reasons, we’ve never taken a close look at the very popular XFCE desktop environment. It’s nearly as feature-rich as Gnome, but with a smaller footprint. As it’s been a big name in the Linux desktop world for quite a few years now, it seems we’re long overdue to check out this polished and useful collection of software.

We are proud to announce today, December 2nd, that the first Alpha version of the upcoming Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) operating system is now available for download. As usual, we've grabbed a copy of it in order to keep you up-to-date with the latest changes in the Ubuntu 11.04 development.

If you've used a computer anytime in the last 30 years, chances are good you've misplaced a file once or twice. If GNOME developers have their way, however, such frustrations will become a thing of the past, thanks to the Zeitgeist project. Here's a look at this radically new approach to file management and where it might end up in the future.

This is my long time coming, (updated) Install, Setup, and Configuration guide for SABnzbd+ on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx). This guide should also be easily adaptable for Ubuntu derived distributions (distros) like Linux Mint 9 (Isadora), Linux Mint 10 (Julia) and somewhat close for Debian and Debian based distros like Debian Squeeze, aptosid, and Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE).

Take a stroll through an AT&T store this holiday season and you can't help but notice that it's deja view all over again. Apple is making the same mistake with the iPhone that it made with the PC. Android phones come in all shapes, sizes, price points. Off in that lonely corner is the iPhone in two models: the latest iPhone 4 and the older iPhone 3GS. That's it.

Scapy is a flexible tool for both capturing and generating network traffic, and performing whatever type of analysis you want. In Part 2 Paul Ferrill goes deeper into designing custom tests with just a few lines of code.

Seriously, dudes, I actually want to live La Vida Canonical. I am your perfect customer, ready and willing to spend my money. I'm a huge supporter of Canonical's work to promote the consumer Linux desktop. Trust me. But you've got to make it worthwhile, and you've got to make it easy.

A few weeks ago, I blogged about how widespread sexual harassment at open source conferences is and suggested that open source conference organizers should adopt an official policy taking a stand against all forms of harassment at their conferences. Easy, right?

The Wine development release 1.3.8 is now available. The source is available now, Binary packages are in the process of being built, and will appear soon at their respective download locations.

This is an annual report published by The Linux Foundation that measures the the rate of Linux kernel development, who is doing it (developer names) and who is sponsoring it (company names). It has become an annual check on the state of the world's largest open source project and collaborative development effort.

The same Italian Region that last week signed an official partnership with Microsoft will issue a law about Open Source this week. Thoughs and suggestion on how to do damage control are very welcome

This is why I love Linux. If you don't like one application, choose from the alternatives, simple as that. GNOME Do is an incredible launcher application for Ubuntu. But since GNOME Do is basically a Mono application, many might refrain from using it. But don't worry, Synapse and Kupfer are equally good or even better GNOME Do alternatives. Learn more.

Rovio Mobile has been pretty considerate for the Android lovers and has released their Angry Birds game for free on the Android market. Many people love it but quite a few are annoyed by it because Rovio chose to monetize it by in-game advertisements, and that too placed at awkward places which can hinder the gameplay. So far all the queries about this or pleas to have a paid app have been skirted around by Rovio. But this will soon be history.

Lighttpd is a secure, fast, standards-compliant web server designed for speed-critical environments. This tutorial shows how you can install Lighttpd on an Ubuntu 10.10 server with PHP5 support (through FastCGI) and MySQL support.

It's long been a topic of what parts of X.Org should be killed with fire. There's plenty of dated and obscure X.Org and Mesa drivers around for hardware that hasn't even been manufactured in years and are rarely used. At XDS Toulose and on other occasions it's been decided not to do a massive purge of all these legacy graphics drivers for Linux. Old hardware support by the X Server has once again been brought up, but this time it's about monitors.

For the CentOS developers and users, Christmas Day may bring more than the usual presents under the tree. If past experience holds, it should take the CentOS development and QA teams about 45 days from the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 to get CentOS 6 ready for release... which puts the projected release date on December 25.