Showing all newswire headlines

The Arduino is a small programmable device that can hold a small program and perform tasks such as reading temperature sensors, turning on or off switches, and can even serve as the ‘brain’ for a robot. I have used the Arduino (actually freeduino) for projects related to HVAC and hydroponics automation.

(Sacramento, CA, USA: November 18, 2010) The Linux Professional Institute (LPI), the world's premier Linux certification organization, announced a new affiliate for their program: LPI-Greece (http://www.lpi.org.gr). LPI-Greece will be managed by the Greek Linux User Group - GREEKLUG (http://www.greeklug.gr). GREEKLUG is a non profit organization founded in 2009 and provides Linux and Free Software/Open Source Software support, volunteer services and IT consulting in Greece.

Phoronix recently published an article regarding a ~200 lines Linux Kernel patch that improves responsiveness under system strain. Well, Lennart Poettering, a RedHat developer replied to Linus Torvalds on a maling list with an alternative to this patch that does the same thing yet all you have to do is run 2 commands and paste 4 lines in your ~/.bashrc file.

Linux Mint's version 10 release advances its position as an Ubuntu-variant well worth considering when choosing a full-featured desktop Linux OS.

An Oracle official detailed on Tuesday the submissions of upcoming Java releases to the formal specification process, including versions 7 and 8 of Java's standard edition. The technologies under consideration have been formulated as JSR (Java Specification Requests) for consideration by the Java Community Process, Mark Reinhold, chief architect of Oracle's Java platform group, said in a blog post. "These JSRs have been a long time coming. They're now -- ?nally -- on the JCP  ballot for approval; results should be available in two weeks."

Bodhi is a minimalistic, Linux distro that uses the Enlightenment desktop. Bodhi comes as a 350~meg download.

A document management system enables individuals and businesses to manage documents, making it easy to locate a previous document version. This is important from a record control perspective, and to ensure that compliance standards are met within a user-friendly environment.

We all know that Google is huge and there are more than enough examples of people crying the end is nigh regarding the seemingly insurmountable rise of the one-time search engine. But are they really that big? Do they have that much of a hold over us and should we be worried? Read the article at Free Software Magazine.

What is SPICE? It stands for "Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environments". What does that mean exactly? SPICE is a remote display protocol designed specifically for use with the Linux kernel's built in virtualization hypervisor KVM. SPICE is similar to terminal services but rather than multiple users sharing a single, remote physical machine, SPICE allows you to graphically connect to and use a local or a remote KVM virtual machine. I got SPICE going on a Fedora 14 host machine with a Fedora 14 KVM virtual machine. I made a 13 minute video showing SPICE in action with common apps and multimedia.

Often you may not necessarily know what kind of hardware you have—you may have a no-name box from a smaller company or a used machine. This month, I present the tools you can use to find out what you have installed.

With Debian 6.0 "Squeeze" set to be released in the coming months, we have decided to run a set of benchmarks looking at the performance of Debian 6.0 across different sub-systems relative to the performance of Debian 5.0 "Lenny" and Debian 4.0 "Etch" to see how this new release may stack up.

As open source adoption has ramped up in recent years--especially at businesses and organizations--Black Duck Software has steadily been extending its role in the growth, largely through a series of acquisitions. The acquisitions have transformed it from the open source auditing entity that it originally primarily functioned as into a player in the open source deployment, management and development space, and more. With its latest acquisition of the assets of SpikeSource, it is continuing that trend--all focused on open source.

The London Stock Exchange has hired 81 open source software staff for the development of the delayed Linux-based system being implemented on its cash markets. The developers on the new system will work in a C++ environment, on which the new Millennium Exchange Linux matching engine will operate. Some development is also being conducted "externally", the LSE said, referring to staff at the platform's original base in Sri Lanka. The LSE is replacing a Microsoft .Net environment.

Few days ago red Hat Enterprise 6 was released, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 includes hundreds of technical feature enhancements and additions that offer customers a significant technology leap over marketplace alternatives. In this post find a screenshots tour of this new release

Guarding your private network from the perils of the Internet is no easy task. The basics are pretty much the same from a defensive standpoint no matter how you slice it. Firewalls of one type or another protect an internal network by using two separate Ethernet connections with a software proxy filtering the traffic between the two ports. Linux serves as a great platform for this role with tools like netfilter/iptables.

Baracus includes remote boot, provisioning and power management as well as the ability to image, clone and backup systems. With Baracus, Novell is aiming to provide expanded remote boot capabilities beyond what is currently available in open source by way of the Etherboot project and its related technologies.

I’ve been trying to zip together what I know about free online collaborative projects (like free software) and commercial free culture projects (like the just-released “Sintel” from the Blender Foundation or “Sita Sings the Blues” from Nina Paley). It’s easy to get lost in the logistics of such a production. One of the questions I’m bound to be asked is “How do I know I’m going to get paid?” Artists have a strong fear against being “exploited”, though they’re often less clear on exactly what that means. A little bit of examination, though, shows this may be a strength of the “Creator Endorsed” free culture approach to marketing a work — it makes fair payment a matter of personal financial interest to the publisher, as I hope to explain here. Read the article at Free Software Magazine.

Find out what I like and dislike about the android system after a critical review on the Samsung Galaxy 3. And at the end there's a list of my favorite apps. ;-)

This tutorial shows how you can set up a Linux Mint 10 (Julia) desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge. Linux Mint 10 is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu 10.10 that has lots of packages in its repositories (like multimedia codecs, Adobe Flash, Adobe Reader, Skype, Google Earth, etc.) that are relatively hard to install on other distributions; it therefore provides a user-friendly desktop experience even for Linux newbies.

ine has come a long way in the last few years, making it fairly simple to install many popular Windows games on Linux. Cedega and PlayOnLinux have made it even easier by providing GUI assistance and management of your games. One game series, however, has proven to be consistently difficult to get working, and that’s The Sims. With its copy protection, hefty system requirements, and extensive dependencies, The Sims 3 is the most difficult of all. If you’ve been struggling to get this game up and running in Linux, look no further.