Showing all newswire headlines

The Novell-backed Moonlight project released the final Moonlight 2, an open source Linux/Unix clone of Microsoft's Silverlight framework that offers improved media streaming. Novell and Microsoft also announced that they will continue their Moonlight collaboration and extend Microsoft's patent covenant to Moonlight distributors other than Novell.

You've made your beautiful custom holiday cards with GIMP, and now you're ready to print them. What's the best way? Your own inkjet printer at home, or farm the work out to someone else?

Thailand-based NorhTec announced a device touted as "the world's most energy-efficient desktop computer," offered for only $99 with the Linux version. Built into a standard-sized keyboard, the "Gecko Surfboard" runs on a 1GHz x86 SoC (system on chip), operates fanlessly, and uses just five Watts, the company says.

Canonical has revealed plans to bring social networking integration and GNOME panel improvements in the next major version of Ubuntu. Notification area icons will be replaced by a new application indicator system. The panel will also feature a new Me Menu for setting messaging status.

The new version of Moonlight is out, and with it, an expanded patent covenant enabling any Linux user to run Novell's open source Silverlight implementation.

The VideoLAN project, developers of the open source VLC multimedia player, is urgently seeking developers to work on the Mac OS X port. According to a posting on the VLX forums "there are now effectively zero active developers for MacOS" which has already led to the 64 bit releases of VLC for the Apple operating being put on hold. The original appeal in May 2009 for developers seems to have had no response.

PostfixAdmin provides a way to manage your virtual accounts, multiple domains, using a web based interface. Once it is set up it is very easy to use. This install process is not easy to do as there are many commands and a lot of configuration that must be done without mistakes.

In April Ubuntu Lucid Lynx will be released. We look at what can be expected. In April the Ubuntu developers will release Lucid Lynx, the next version of the popular Linux operating system. Also known as Ubuntu 10.04, Lucid Lynx will be the third long term support (LTS) release from Ubuntu and is likely to have a strong focus on stability and security and will be geared at appealing to enterprise users and hardware makers. Ubuntu releases new versions every six months with LTS releases supported for five years on servers and three years on desktops.

Earlier this week, the latest round of BusyBox GPL lawsuits were announced by the SFLC. The current offenders are Best Buy, JVC, Samsung, Westinghouse and 10 others. It seems that every few months, there are a new round of violations or lawsuits announced, so it behooves every company that distributes software or products containing software to ensure they aren't ever on the list. We announced our Open Source Fulfillment Center service earlier this week that helps companies ensure they comply with the GPL. Jason Perlow of ZDnet gave a pretty good explanation of the challenges in complying with the GPL. Dana Blankenhorn, his colleague, talks about why those explanations are not an excuse. I want to focus on some concrete steps companies can take to avoid being the next defendants.

[Thought this was interesting considering recent events. - Scott]

WebIssues is one of the rare bug-tracking programs that combines the ease of use of a desktop application and the scalability of a web application…

Announced today the release of GnoMenu2.2, the new version comes with new features and improvements , the big improvement is that GnoMenu now use 60% less Memory.

Reading the recent discussions about GNOME's position in the GNU Project, I'm reminded of Utah Phillip's comment that "a long memory is the most radical notion in history." The way that the discussion has been reported in the media, you would hardly guess that the discussion is the latest round in an ongoing and disquieting dispute -- largely because the origins of the dispute were never widely reported. The current discussion began on the GNOME Foundation mailing list, when Richard Stallman, president and founder of the Free Software Foundation, suggested that Planet GNOME, (http://planet.gnome.org/) the conglomeration of GNOME developers' blogs, should exclude all references to proprietary software.

What partition setup should you use when dual-booting Windows and Linux? Should you have a separate partition for /home? Why do some people put /boot into its own partition? These are the questions that have plagued mankind since the dawn of time (or thereabouts). This guide aims to answer some of those questions and demonstrate some partition schemes that may save you some space, hassle, or data loss down the line.

In line with Red Hat’s 25% revenue growth this year, partners have seen a massive increase in demand for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and associated professional services. Skilling up with Red Hat certifications is the quickest way to meet those demands.

Once again, Microsoft have lifted from outside sources for their own product without paying heed to license restrictions. However, this time they have taken from proprietary code.

Continuing in this series of slide show backgrounds, in this article I will explain the process of creating a set of desktop backgrounds that will transition like a slide-show in XFCE. Note that I am using XFCE version 4.6.0 in this tutorial. Other versions may be able to use this tip, but the screen shots may look different. See corresponding howtos for GNOME, and KDE3 also.

About nine months ago we released MonoDevelop 2.0 and Mono 2.4. Today we are releasing the much anticipated upgrades to both. Mono 2.6 and MonoDevelop 2.2. The Mono team and contributors worked on this release like we have never worked before. Thanks to everyone that reported bugs, filed feature requests, contributed code and helped newcomers with Mono.

Google has been in talks with at least one hardware manufacturer about a Google-branded Chrome OS netbook, according to internet rumor. And it only stands to reason. We now have the Googlephone. Why not the Googlenetbook? Citing multiple unnamed sources, TechCrunch says that the Mountain View Chocolate Factory has sent an RFP, or "request for proposal," to the mystery manufacturer and that the two have actually discussed building a Google-branded Chrome OS device.

I have read a rather sad story today. Apparently the Best Buy Geeks squad refused to service the machine of someone who had purchased an $80 extended warranty for its netbook just because he had installed Ubuntu Linux. This story not only shows how best Best Buy's Geeks squad is far from having anything even close to the technical knowledge of a geek, but also raises 2 other questions: are extended warranties worth it, and are Linux consumers correctly protected in the US? Let's dig into these 2 rather important questions.

In a morning press call on December 17th, 2009 Mark Shuttleworth announced that he was stepping down as head of Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu. In his place, Jane Silber, the current Chief Operating Officer who has been with Canonical since 2004 will take over as CEO.