Fans of FOSS already know that Linux is one of the best technologies out there for business servers, but it's always nice to see that point of view validated by good, hard data.
Thanks to a recent survey by the Linux Foundation, that's just what we got last week. A new report from the group found, in fact, that large businesses have very big plans for our favorite operating system.
Not only will they be buying more Linux servers than Windows servers in the coming years -- they'll also be using Linux for an increasing number of mission-critical tasks in their organizations, the report found. And a full 36 percent are even using Linux on the desktop!
Any of that sound surprising? Not really -- but that doesn't mean Linux bloggers couldn't find plenty to argue about.
Many reviewers have generously suggested that the filmmakers are letting the audience decide, that in real life there are no heroes or villains. But so little evidence is offered, and that which is is so clearly labelled ‘possibly fictitious (therefore not libellous)’, any conclusions that might be drawn are so ludicrously pointless as to negate the entire process. That’s not to say that the film is not engaging, the script not well-written and the performances not compelling. But like the website it portrays, after spending two enjoyable hours on this film you get the sneaking suspicion that your time might have been better spent on something else.
What bothers me though is when there are elements of snobbery involved. One of the most pointless debates I’ve seen come up from time to time in all the while I’ve had an interest in Linux is its name. I have absolute respect for GNU, for the work it did in establishing the foundations on which the Linux kernel was built, and for its vision in pushing a free open source operating system when most of the market was heading in the opposite direction. I also appreciate that the proper name for Linux, if you go by the book, is GNU/Linux. Sadly, I can’t recall a point where I’ve called it that in my life.
Hector Martin aka marcan42 has just posted to his blog the launch of AsbestOS, a way to run Linux on your jailbroken PS3 without OtherOS. Martin has been working on AsbestOS for over a month.
Wake up people! GNU/Linux has arrived:
* many millions of desktop users around the globe, particularly EU, BR, RU, IN, and CN * OEMs shipping GNU/Linux widely * you can buy PCs with GNU/Linux new or used
The London Stock Exchange has said its new Linux-based system is delivering world record networking speed, with 126 microsecond trading times.
Torvalds to receive one of the world’s most prestigious awards for contributions to computer technologies and their social impact
Wallpaper Clocks have always been of great fascination for me. Unlike many other desktop eyecandy that we have discussed before, Wallpaper Clocks are quite unique and will work almost like your ordinary wallpaper in terms of memory usage. If Ubuntu 10.10 customization tips are not good enough you, try wallpaper clocks. A big surprise is assured.
Vim's undo trees are the best thing since sliced bread, but the interface for browsing through the tree is not pleasant. The Emacs undo-tree library has a way to visualize the tree and move through it with your keyboard, which solves this problem.
As someone that loves music, listens constantly and is always adding to my collection by purchasing and then ripping CDs, a decent tag editor is an essential tool. I’ve been using Linux for the past seven years or so and the only drawback that I was constantly faced with was the lack of a great audio tag editor - basically a Linux based equivalent to mp3tag. After trying every Linux tagger I could get my hands on (Ex Falso, EasyTag, Pinkytagger, Jaikoz, Picard, etc. etc.) I finally settled on running mp3tag under Wine. Whilst it works, it’s still a compromise because it cannot handle case sensitivity, cannot rename folders and filenames and path lengths are limited to Windows file system restrictions. In addition, there were a number of functional enhancements and additions I wanted to see in mp3tag, but didn’t seem like they’d see the light of day.
Because of its being light on resources, I prefer to use Exaile over amarok. The tray icon(top-right corner) works great in making it easily accessible on all workspaces with no need to mark the window "always on visible workspace". Yet, I always wished for a smaller version of the player, as powerful as exaile, but smaller. This is what Exaile's mini-mode aims to do. It bundles the whole full screen music player into a 1-2cm display.
Having used Nautilus (the default file manager in Ubuntu) for several years, I have really no complaints about it. It does its jobs well and you can also install scripts and actions to increase its functionality. However, after installing Nautilus Elementary, I am surprised by the simplicity and the enhancements that it adds to the file manager, which makes Nautilus even more user-friendly and useful. If you haven’t install Nautilus Elementary yet, you got to give it a try.
Three Linux apps have proven very useful to me. I use Shutter, Gnome Screenshot and mtPaint Snapshot almost daily in documenting Linux Picks selections and feature articles about using computers.
Opera Software recently said that its next major browser release, Opera 11, wil include support for extensions, and the Norwegian company called on browser makers to create a unified standard for add-ons. Showing that it's willing to lead by example, Opera Software today announced it has joined the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), an alliance of mobile operators tasked with developing a common mobile application platform.
Recently there has been a transition from physical products being the most critical aspect of many company’s businesses to data being the key driver. This transformation started some time ago and has steadily progressed over time. While one can argue over the subtleties of whether a company actually makes a physical product or not, it is fairly clear that to almost all companies data has become if not the key to their success, then very close to it.
After being in development as a closed-source game for more than eight years, this past summer the 0 A.D. game was open-sourced by Wildfire Games. A month later, the first alpha release of this real-time strategy came emerged. Now three months after being one of the newest open-source games for Linux / Windows / Mac OS X, a second alpha release is available for testing with many advancements.
The developers of Alien Arena have posted a progress update over at ModDB about the next release of the open-source first-person shooter. Videos of a new map and ODE-based ragdoll physics are featured, and it is mentioned that they’re planning to release Alien Arena 2011 later this fall.
Wildfire Games has announced the second alpha release of open-source ‘ancient warfare’ RTS game 0 A.D.
Improvements over the first alpha released late August include: -
* New in-game GUI * ‘Fog of war’ * New Unit-following camera mode * Improved pathfinder performance * Various gameplay additions including health bars, population limits and basic formations * New maps * New art including remodelled Celtic buildings
If you are new to Linux you may never have tried any desktop environments beyond Gnome and KDE. If you have been in the Linux world for awhile odds are you are aware of the fact that several other desktop environments exists.
In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Return of the KDE Commit-Digest! Route Guidance mode (with automatic route recalculation based on position) in Marble. A basic UDev backend added in Solid. KFormula "Formula" shape becomes compatible with OpenOffice.org.
To make our philosophy successful, we need to find a good mixture of business and openness.
In my daily maintenance routine I tend to throw an emerge -uav world against the sabayon trees and see what packages can be bumped. I also check http://www.gentoo-portage.com to see what is new. In this routine 90% off all things I bump for Entropy it is done manually writing each emerge -av command by hand. Since I trust Gentoo developers for doing a good job within their own little expertise and interest, I kinda trust each package bump makes sense. If it is either some revision bump because there was some LD flags to respect, a fix for –as-needed or simple another minor thing I just bump them. Even though on the binary end this would not make any difference for the user experience I just do it.
Back in April, we began talking about the development road toward the availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 when we delivered the first beta of the platform, with noteworthy improvements spanning performance enhancements to new security features to expanded virtualization capabilities. With the introduction of the first beta, we began working with our customers, partners and the community to test and further develop the release into an ambitious and robust operating platform. Since then, we have continued the momentum of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 development with the delivery of a second beta in June with additional updates and technologies. We also recently announced an agreement to certify Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 under Common Criteria at Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) 4+ in August.
The Red Hat Academy at AASTMT allows the university to train undergraduate or postgraduate engineering students on Red Hat Enterprise Linux courses, and offer certification up to the Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) level on successful completion. The Red Hat Academy will support the web-based course curriculum that prepares students with hands-on, performance-based learning and testing. Courses will be immediately available to AASTMT's 5,500 students through its facilities in Cairo and Alexandria, including the College of Computing and Information Technology (CCIT) and the Academy Company for Communications and Information Technology (ACCIT).
Red Hat’s search for new digs has taken the Raleigh company to the other end of the Triangle. The American Tobacco Campus, including the Durham Bulls Athletic Park, hosted the company for an event on Monday. Greg Behr, a spokesman for American Tobacco, said Red Hat officials were in Durham to discuss possibly leasing space.
Bahrain-based Gulf Business Machines (GBM), the region’s leading IT solutions and service provider, has earned Red Hat premier business partner status in the GCC region.
GBM already shares a longstanding relationship with Red Hat, the world's leading provider of open source solutions, and offers its full range of products and services. The enhanced partnership will allow a fresh focus on developing complex, high-end open source solutions for customers in the region.
A couple of weeks ago at the weekly meeting of the Fedora Design Team Mo brought an idea floating for a while inside the community: a Fedora RPG, which got a good part of the team hooked. The "game" is supposed to take the form of a badge or banner available for inclusion in web pages and being played by contributing to Fedora: creating tickets, submitting patches, building packages, helping people...
"Debian 6.0 "squeeze" will be the first GNU/Linux distribution release ever to offer comprehensive support for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) based neuroimaging research. It comes with up-to-date software for structural image analysis (e.g. ants), diffusion imaging and tractography (e.g. mrtrix), stimulus delivery (e.g. psychopy), MRI sequence development (e.g. odin), as well as a number of versatile data processing and analysis suites (e.g. nipype). Moreover, this release will have built-in support for all major neuroimaging data formats."
It will be 6 years since the first Ubuntu released in the October 20th.
Kuhn later admitted that the headline he had used was something of an exaggeration. "I agree my title was a bit of an exaggeration. I'd change it, but I am not sure that would clarify things, and probably would look strange," he said.
"Based on feedback, I did add a note at the bottom of the post making it clear that this reading of these events is my opinion, not fact," he wrote in a response to readers' comments on the Linux Weekly News website which had linked to his article.
From KDE's Plasma Netbook to EasyPeasy, every Linux desktop for netbooks that I’ve seen are designed with the same assumptions. Each assumes that, because of the smaller screen, the desktop must be simpler than a workstation's, and will be used mainly for light computing in general and social networking in particular.
Released at the same time as the Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick) general version, the latest version of Ubuntu Netbook Edition does not question these assumptions. This conventionality may be questionable to many: workstation versions of GNOME, KDE, and Xfce work perfectly well on the smaller screens of netbooks for anyone with regular vision, and netbooks -- especially the latest generation, with their extra memory -- are capable of more than light computing. In addition, though, Ubuntu Netbook also has some design quirks that can make it less than ideal.
This sums up my reasons for writing the original post. There are very few genuine flaws I can point to in Mint; it’s just that in the areas where Mint and Ubuntu differ, I mostly prefer Ubuntu. So I’m going back to Ubuntu, not because Mint is bad (it isn’t) but because Ubuntu suits me better.
Last week I reviewed Kubuntu 10.10 and Ubuntu 10.10 over on Desktop Linux Reviews. This week I wanted to look at Xubuntu 10.10. I decided to do a quick look rather than a full-blown DLR review because less has changed in Xubuntu than in the other two distro releases.
If you aren’t familiar with Xubuntu, it’s essentially a combination of Ubuntu and the Xfce desktop environment. Xubuntu is designed to provide a lighter-weight desktop experience than GNOME (Ubuntu’s default desktop). Xfce is set up to conserve system resources while still providing a great range of desktop functionality. Xubuntu is a good to Ubuntu alternative for older hardware or underpowered hardware.
HP announced a faster, 1GHz Palm Pre 2, as well as a major WebOS 2.0 update that features "true multitasking," improved "Synergy" sync, and a "Just Type" feature that enables text entry before an app fully opens. The Pre 2 debuts on Friday in France on SFR, and will appear on Verizon Wireless in "the coming months," says HP.
LiMo Foundation has joined the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC) to encourage the development of mobile applications to run on the mobile Linux operating system.
The hope will be to match the application developer communities which have grown up around Google’s Android platform and Apple’s app store.
All future releases of the LiMo mobile Linux platform will support the WAC runtime, which will allow developers to distribute their applications across multiple WAC compliant stores.
This isn't the first customizable phone we've laid our eyes on, and we've always been a fan of the concept -- even if the execution sometimes leaves a lot to be desired. Apparently there's a small startup residing in Germany called Synapse that will sell you a custom Android 2.2 handset, complete with 4-inch multitouch touchscreen, with prices starting around €434 ($600).
"Fragmentation," as I suggest above, is simply a derogatory term for "choice," something not only valued but expected in most product categories. It's a well-known fact that one-size-fits-all rarely fits anyone well; multiple competing choices, by contrast, offer consumers a way to get something that's as close to what they want as possible.
Of course, specific choices don't tend to survive if nobody wants them--that, too, is part of a competitive marketplace. If there isn't demand for them, individual choices will disappear.
Now, Android phones are not as different as Jobs made out--most of the differences, rather, are fairly superficial. But why would it ever be a problem that there are numerous Android phones available? There's clearly a small segment of consumers who like Apple's restrictive "walled garden" approach, but I can't imagine any kind of majority will ever prefer the iPhone's one-size-fits-all model in the mobile world any more than they have the Mac on the desktop.
It's a similar situation when it comes to Linux. Yes, there are many competing distributions, but again, that can only be a good thing for users because it means they can get what they want. I'll agree it might be something of a marketing and branding challenge for Linux, but it's certainly not a problem for users.
Ubuntu uTouch multitouch support was one the most striking inclusion into the just released Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat. We had demo videos showcasing Ubuntu's new found multitouch capabilities before. But following is the best I have seen so far. Watch this beautiful Ubuntu 10.10 multitouch demo in an unknown Dell tablet.
And even "traditional" Linux interfaces are getting into the mix. Last Thursday, Canonical's Gerry Carr was pretty excited about the new multi-touch gesture library the Unity team has developed for Ubuntu Netbook Edition. There's a nice one-minute video on Carr's blog entry that highlights these early features of Unity.
Of course, this is just one Linux distro--and a smaller flavor of that distro to boot, so is that enough to get excited about?
The pragmatist in me says not really, since Linux interface developers experiment with cool new stuff all of the time.
A holiday tradition? Making things out of gingerbread, and Google is doing its part to keep that practice alive according to a report stating Android 3.0 Gingerbread is set to hit some tablets this December.
Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and LinkedIn have taken off. They are now among the top sites visited among the entire World Wide Web. As you might have guessed, the open source community has some involvement in the social networking space.
There was a time when open source software was almost inseparable from the image of altruistic, community-loving developers, coding away in command line interfaces in a darkened room. But those days are long gone. Sleek open source applications have made their way into the enterprise and sometimes give the proprietary giants a run for their money. In this feature, three local organisations share their open source stories.
For any enterprise, the decision to depend on an open source project is a serious commitment of resources. You don’t want to get halfway down the road and find you have taken a wrong turn. I did that on the way to lunch and it took a $14 cab ride to find my way back. For a scaled enterprise, the loss can be millions.
In the architecture we propose, applications are part of the web. Directories and stores can provide ratings, reviews, approval processes, and proof-of-purchase services, but applications can also be self-published by developers.
Firefox 3.6.11 and Firefox 3.5.14 are now available as free downloads for Windows, Mac, and Linux from http://firefox.com. As always, we recommend that users keep up to date with the latest stability and support versions of Firefox, and encourage all our users to upgrade to the very latest version, Firefox 3.6.11.
Free whitepaper – Trying to keep smartphones off your network?
Mozilla has released a prototype for what it calls an "open web app ecosystem," a browser-agnostic answer to Google's upcoming Chrome Web App Store.
The open source outfit proposes a store that works with any "modern" desktop or mobile browser, offering both free and for-pay apps based on standard web technologies.
Cloud storage, virtual machines and web hosting should soon be available to US government agencies via the Government Services Agency's recently opened apps.gov site.
The US government's cloud service, officially launched last month, allowed federal agencies to buy cloud computing services direct from the GSA.
All social media apps, which included Wordpress, Yammer, Bing and Google Analytics, were free.
As mentioned in the 3.3.0 RC1 release notes, this development milestone of OpenOffice.org incorporates several fixes and other features. Among the improvements to be found with OpenOffice.org 3.3 include an improved extension manager, spreadsheet improvements, initial integration with the Renaissance Project, printing restructuring, and improved Calc spreadsheet performance.
OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 Release Candidate 1 is now available on the download website.
Two months after the first beta arrived, the OpenOffice.org developers have issued the first release candidate (RC1) of OpenOffice.org 3.3.0, the next release of the Oracle owned open source office suite. According to the OpenOffice.org Wiki, the RC1 development version will be followed by a second release candidate and a quality assurance (QA) build prior to the final product release. Dates for the RC2, QA and Final version have yet to be confirmed.
That practice is one that RMS' himself began calling "barely legitimate" in the early 2000s. RMS specifically and carefully coined his own term for it: selling exceptions to the GPL. This practice is a form of proprietary relicensing that never permits the seller to create their own proprietary fork of the code and always releases all improvements done by the sole proprietary licensee itself to the general public. If this practice is barely legitimate, it stands to reason that anything that goes even just a little bit further crosses the line into illegitimacy.
The Gnash project is the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its funding has dried up. I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with AVM2 flash files.
Do you want to help us write the next version of the first textbook that teaches open source participation?
A notice of filing an amicus brief from the EFF reminded me that I had also meant to blog about Vernor v Autodesk, another crucial case that has received far too little mass-media press attention.
Drug companies say the millions of dollars they pay physicians for speaking and consulting justly compensates them for the laudable work of educating their colleagues.
But a series of lawsuits brought by former employees of those companies allege the money often was used for illegal purposes — financially rewarding doctors for prescribing their brand-name medications.
A vulnerability in the library loader of the GNU C library can be exploited to obtain root privileges under Linux and other systems. Attackers could exploit the hole, for instance, to gain full control of a system by escalating their privileges after breaking into a web server with restricted access rights. Various distributors are already working on updates.
Over and over again, the peaceful protests against the G8/G20 summit were met with over-reaction and unmerited violence by the authorities. I assume the well paid security forces were operating on the theory that the best defense is a strong offense.
If you smash opposition mercilessly beneath your jackboots, perhaps protesters can be frightened away.
If Republicans control the House of Representatives after the November elections, writes Jonathan Chait of The New Republic, they will impeach Barack Hussein Obama, as many on the right call our president.
Law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, citing lapses in compliance with surveillance orders, are pushing to overhaul a federal law that requires phone and broadband carriers to ensure that their networks can be wiretapped, federal officials say.
If you use Facebook but don't want your personal information leaked all over the Web, you had better make sure you don't use any of Facebook's most popular apps. According to an investigation by the Wall Street Journal, "tens of millions" of apps on Facebook transmit varying amounts of identifying information to their own personal ad servers, even in cases when users' profiles were set to completely private.
On the most benign level, many Facebook apps gather a user's Facebook ID if that user installs the app on his or her profile. The ID itself doesn't necessarily give anyone access to a user's protected profile, though if the person in question has a public profile, then all of that information could be (and undoubtedly is being) scraped.
The Electric Frontier Foundation has announced four winners of their EFF Pioneer Awards for 2010. I am a winner this year.
When I heard the news, I got goosebumps. Previous winners of the EFF Pioneer Awards include Tim Berners-Lee, Linus and Richard Stallman. This is a day I'll remember. I never ever thought this was something that would happen. I feel the acknowledgment for me and our body of work here on Groklaw, and it feels very good. Thank you, EFF.
Such protection is complicated, and requires an infrastructure and agreements that often prevent use across systems. It also has precious little effect in deterring piracy. DRM may actually push potential buyers into pirates' arms because out of a desire for simplicity and portability rather than out of an unwillingness to pay.
These are mainly rights managed. Rights managed images are essentially designed for a specific and time limited usage, and they’re more controlled and controllable than RF images.
Most days the news surrounding torrent sites, the scene and piracy is dominated by lawsuits, busts and other negative stories. But every now and then there is a ray of light that brightens the day. Today we bring you the story of a filmmaker who didn’t complain when he saw that his film was being pirated. Instead he helped a scene release group to improve the ripped copy of his DVD.
But why would the average person not pirate eBooks? Like Cory Doctorow says, it’s not going to become any harder to type in ‘Toy Story 3 bittorrent’ in the future – and ‘Twilight ePub’ is even easier to type, and much faster to download to boot.
Dan Bull - Death of ACTA