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Open-source culture. What does this bring to mind? For some, it represents freedom: freedom to speak, freedom to share, and freedom to change. Yet, to others, the words sound a death-knell. To them, anything open-source is dangerous. Sherman Alexie, a novelist, was quoted in an interview: “With the open-source culture on the Internet, the idea of ownership — of artistic ownership — goes away… it terrifies me.” I must respectfully disagree.

FreeBSD 7.3-release has a two-year support life with the option to upgrade to the FreeBSD 8.x branch at any time. More than one -release branch going at the same time? More than one -stable branch, plus a -current branch in constant development? FreeBSD has a whole lot of flexibility depending on what you want out of the system, what your comfort level is with bleeding-edge software, how often you want to update your software, and of course what your hardware and tasks require.

Creating patches is usually handwork; fixing one specific issue at a time. Once in a while though, there is janitorial work to be done or some infrastructure to change. Then, a larger number of issues have to be taken care of simultaneously, yet all of them are following the same basic pattern, e.g. a replacement. Such tasks are often addressed at the source-code level using scripts in sed, perl, and the like. This article examines the usage of Coccinelle, a tool targeted at exactly those kinds of repetitive patching jobs. Because Coccinelle understands C syntax, though, it can handle those jobs much more easily.

I used to review linux, some of you may remember either knolinux or new2linux websites. Every once and a while a former reader would email and ask, "what happened?" How do you explain certain things in life? It wasn't health, family, ideological changes, or anything even close to resembling something dramatic. I simply took a new job...at Microsoft. No, I am not a programmer, so it wasn't even remotely related to operating systems, office, or anything that makes them money. It was mobile search, so in fact the pieces I worked on actually cost them several hundreds of millions of dollars. I digress. Since I left them after my 18 months of pain, shame and learning how lame it really is to not be a programmer, I have been working ever since on getting back into my engineering discipline and my love for linux. No, I wasn't forced to stop using Linux, I simply made a decision to try to understand my company's products, as I had spent nearly a decade of trying to make sense of what came out of Redmond. I only take from my time there a learning of how not to manage products, how not to spend money going after lost causes simply to try and beat others, and that free soda just doesn't make up for the slow and steady pull of life from the lack of color in the offices.

Almost simultaneously with the first series 1.8 X Server, the developers have also updated Mesa3D and various drivers. Four new stable kernels offer bug fixes and minor improvements. The X Server isn't the only component for which a new version has recently been released, as many other components that impact the graphics support in Linux distributions have also been updated in the past two weeks.

The amount of software that is available for Linux is truly mind-boggling with tens of thousands of applications available to download, including an impressive arsenal of open source games. However, it is fair to say that the amount of commercial games released for Linux continues to be in short supply in comparison with the number of titles released under Windows.

Ubuntu Linux is gearing up for the debut of its latest release with Ubuntu 10.04, codenamed "the Lucid Lynx" and scheduled for general availability at the end of the month. It's a release that offers multiple new features on the desktop and a new look to Ubuntu Linux.

The O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) has posted sessions and keynotes for its annual conference. Scheduled for July 19-23, at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, OSCON features keynotes including Google's Chris DiBona, Facebook's David Recordon, Canonical's Simon Wardley, and the GNOME Foundation's Stormy Peters.

On April 1, Sony released firmware update 3.21 for the PS3, an update that disabled the Install Other OS function on the older, bulkier PS3s. Sony's official reason: "Security Concerns." Now, nearly a week later, consumers are reporting that the update has led to a variety of bugs, including slowed internet connections, controller compatibility issues, and resolution issues when using HDMI. And that's if the update installs at all, as there have been reports that the download cycle hits an endless loop and never fully completes.

The Linux system call interface permits user-space applications to invoke functionality in the kernel, but what about invoking user-space applications from the kernel? Explore the usermode-helper API, and learn how to invoke user-space applications and manipulate their output.

From time to time, Dell does a poor job articulating its Ubuntu Linux strategy. But sources close to Dell and Canonical continue to insist the relationship remains healthy and “stronger than ever.” Here’s an update on Dell’s Ubuntu strategy — which includes a dramatic Dell-Ubuntu PC push in China.

Just who is driving a wedge between IBM and the FOSS community then? Here's a clue: it's a big wedge and it's blue.

A few years ago I wrote on OSNews several articles (1,2) about workstations. After three years I had to stop, because there were no workstations left on the market, they became legacy and were not sold any more. Now with the rise of mobile devices with touchscreen and wireless network connectivity virtually everywhere, the question becomes valid, what will happen with the desktop computers, are they still needed, or will they follow the workstations on their way to computer museums?

Google's open source Android mobile operating system (OS) has continued to grow and gain US market share over other popular mobile operating systems in recent months. According to a February 2010 Mobile Subscriber Market Share report from US market research firm comScore, Google's smarpthone OS has grown more than 5 percentage points since November of 2009 alone – far more than any of its competitors. The positive trend means that Android now holds an overall US market share of 9%. The comScore report surveyed current mobile subscribers age 13 and older to find out what device manufacturer and platform they were using.

Ex-Linux User & Developer editor, Simon Brew, tries to get interested in the iPad, and wonders if it’s about time freedom took a hold on the mainstream eReader market…

Back when Ubuntu Karmic was released, I translated a script which helps new user set up a few things most people do when they first install Ubuntu. Today I updated the script for Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx and also added a few more tweaks so it makes the transition to Ubuntu 10.04 easier and less time consuming.

Although Ubuntu Lucid Lynx has not yet been released, Canonical chief Mark Shuttleworth has already named its successor: Maverick Meerkat

PostgreSQL is a great database server, but when your dataset is rather large, migrating a server by using pg_dump can be a rather long process. In this tutorial we will discuss a way to migrate a entire server with as little downtime as possible. To achieve this, we will be using the PostgreSQL built in features for PITR (Point in time recovery).

GNOME 2.30 was originally intended to coincide with GNOME 3.0 -- a massive cleanup and rethinking of the popular desktop. However, GNOME 3.0 is delayed for at least another release, which leaves GNOME 2.30 as most likely the last version in a series stretching back almost a decade. You will find signs of what is coming, including 3.0 previews, but, for the most part, like its predecessors, GNOME 2.30 is a collection of generally unrelated improvements. Unlike recent KDE releases, a specific direction is hard to see, unless it is an emphasis on improved usability and, to a lesser extent, application inter-connectivity as part of the cleanup for the big release.

In the United States, Monster.com reveals 4,981 job listings for Linux (at the time I am writing this article), with 1,722 new postings placed this week. Removing more vague "Linux" jobs postings and explicitly finding "Linux server" roles, I find that currently there are 2,068 job listings with 722 posted this week. Although software development remains one of the main roles for Linux experienced technical staff, there is an increase in the number of Engineering specific roles. These numbers have been nearly consistent over the past year.