# 2009-02-24 20% of PCs run GNU/Linux – Goal is 50% within 5 years
It may be a little-known fact, but that was actually the moniker given to versions 2.6.23-rc4 through 2.6.23-rc6 of the Linux kernel, which is perhaps just as notable for its zany naming conventions as it is for its powerful software.
Given Zemlin's unique perspective as someone at the heart of the open source community, I was keen to hear his views on why he thought Linux was becoming so successful in the embedded sector. His analysis was interesting:
The Best Email Client for LinuxLinux actually has a number of email clients available, but we still have to give the "best" medal to the feature-filled, extensible Thunderbird.
Softpedia announced yesterday, December 28th, the immediate availability for download of a new Ubuntu Remix, this time featuring the next-gen, super-fast, simplistic Razor-qt desktop environment.
GNOME 3.3.3 is now available as the latest update in what will ultimately become GNOME 3.4 next March.
The “year in review” pieces that proliferate old and new media alike around this time of year get tedious pretty fast. But because I’ve yet to see a good compilation of the major developments — and there were plenty of them — that affected desktop Linux in 2011, I couldn’t think of any better topic for my last post of the month. That may make me a hypocrite, but if you can forgive a personal flaw, keep reading for a look at how the Linux world has evolved in the last 365 days or so.
The latest version of a locally developed operating system made the country proud early this month when the Linux-based software made a good impression among enthusiasts of the open source community.
Google has just added a new flag in its Chromium 18 builds that extends the browser's hardware acceleration feature.
GNU/Linux distros Chakra and Pinguy feature in the Top 25 fastest growing projects compiled by SourceForge.So find out who else features in the list...
As we say goodbye to a momentous 2011, it’s time to reflect on some of the big happenings in the FOSS world. Apart from Android’s rise, Torvalds’s rant, and a tasty ice cream sandwich treat, the year also saw some big changes taking place for popular Linux distributions. While many of the changes ranged from annoyingly buggy to downright unusable, a few pleasant minty surprises did manage to cleanse the Linuxiens’ palettes.
Picking the top ten Linux distributions is fraught with problems. There’s very little hard data to go on and the nature of open source means that most users are getting copies of their favourite Linux release from a variety of sources – from official download channels to third-party sites or even from friends.
The Austrumi team released a new version of their operating system recently, on the 30th of September, 2011.
You are welcome to choose between several flavours: Calculate Directory Server (CDS) if you need a server option; Calculate Linux Desktop featuring a KDE (CLD), GNOME (CLDG) or XFCE (CLDX) desktop; Calculate Media Center (CMC) if a media center is what you want; or, if you would rather prefer a scratch distribution, either Calculate Linux Scratch (CLS) or Calculate Scratch Server (CSS).
Tech stocks have taken a beating in 2011, but in my opinion the market has it all wrong. The PowerShares Index (QQQ) has been trending sideways all year in the face of increased revenues and profits. Many tech stocks have been beating estimates and projecting growth into 2012. The QQQ has barely returned 1% for 2011, and 2012 isn't looking any better. Using LEAPS, you can beat the market and get returns ranging from 10% to 20%.
Founded in 1993, the company has become a leading provider of support and related services for the Linux open-source operating system, which companies often use to build cloud computing-based data centers. That's where users store data and apps that they access via the Internet, or the "cloud."
The latest Ubuntu is slick and sublime, and while it gets a lot right, there's still some essential tweaks you can do to make the most of your new install.
I know we’ve spoke about a mobile/epub version of Full Circle before, but I have good news! Our latest team member, Jens, is working on an epub edition of FCM which I previewed on our Facebook and Google+ pages. It’s looking good so far, and I hope to have more to show you on that next week some time.
In the mean time, think of Full Circle Magazine Lite as a quick beta test edition of FCM to read on tablets and mobile phones. The first edition (FCM#56) is available through Google Currents, and app that you can download either from the Android Market*, or the Apple App Store.
Intel GMA500 "Poulsbo" graphics have a better out-of-the-box experience under the forthcoming Ubuntu 12.04 LTS release thanks to improvements in the open-source field, but ultimately it's still an ugly mess.
One thing that GNU/Linux misses the most is marketing. We never get to know about the new and useful tools which are being added due to the lack of PR muscles. Recently Ubuntu made yet another incredible move which makes the application installation process of Windows look ancient. Ubuntu silently took its apps on-line by launching 'Ubuntu App Directory' (the name can be more attractive like Ubuntu App Shop).
I am not going to make Lubuntu my day-to-day distro, on this machine. However, I would highly recommend it, and will use it, on older machines. Lubuntu is also a good alternative to those who want an alternative to Ubuntu’s Unity desktop.
I wasn’t really planning on installing Xubuntu, but it was the only Live/Install edition with the Xfce desktop that would install on an external USB drive from a USB stick, and that supported the Broadcom Wireless driver required by my HP mini netbook. The Xfce desktop is an alternative for those with older computers with minimal memory and older graphic cards.
Enea said it would focus on operating systems solutions and has the building blocks to deploy an entire system solution featuring Linux, realtime operating systems and hardware environments. Also, Enea would continue to offer services such as training and product related consulting services through their consulting units in Phoenix, Bucharest and Beijing. After the divestment, Enea would have 400 employees in 9 countries.
Here's a quick look at running the LLVM/Clang compiler on the OMAP4460-based PandaBoard ES compared to the default GCC compiler.
For those of our readers that are looking to get into Android ROM development, but may not know where to start, there is a new tool created by XDA developer Lithid that will allow you to start some basic experimenting using the popular CyanogenMod ROM. The project, entitled CyanogenMod Compiler (CMC), allows users to tweak some simple settings such as wallpapers and language packs then compile ROM builds from the CM repository.
With the impending retail release of the Samsung-made Galaxy Nexus smartphone in some parts of the world, Google will be making Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) open source.
Chennai, the capital of south Indian state Tamil Nadu, is known as an electronic manufacturing hub with multinational corporations setting up Electronics/Hardware manufacturing plants in the region, especially in the Sriperumbudur electronics SEZ. The city is also home to many IT companies is fast becoming the support hub for Android, reports IBNLive.
As much as some of the Wintel “partners” would wish small cheap computers to go away, the netbook keeps going like the Energizer Bunnytm. Shipments are down quite a bit from a year ago with all the noise about smart thingies but the netbook is beloved because it is small, cheap, portable and comes with a keyboard.
Intel has just announced an Atom processor designed for netbooks. At 1.6gHz it can be fanless but at 1.8gHz it wants a fan. In spite of 32nm technology and lots of features to reduce idle power consumption the thing must still be a hog. It uses 3.5 to 10 W while ARMed CPUs are way less than 1W per core. These gadgets are dual-core/dual-threaded. I guess Intel expects heavier batteries will do the trick…
Dispel the five major myths surrounding Open Source Security and gain the tools necessary to make a truly informed decision for your IT organization
Facebook rivals and detractors have been springing up online for awhile now. It most significantly started with Diaspora, the anti-Facebook, open source social network that launched with the idea of segmenting how you share online. Anybeat (formerly Altly) has also tried to execute these ideas, as has Path and newcomer Unthink.
With the central and state governments recognising the importance of open source software, FOSS has become increasingly important in this geography. More and more people have joined the community, and the voice for the growth of open source software in India is gaining huge momentum. EFYTimes brings you top 10 happenings that helped in changing the face of open source movement in India.
The fourth international conference on Free and Open Source Software (FOSSK4) which concluded here on Thursday has proposed the application of free software in the development of monitoring, mitigation and adaptation strategies for climate change.
Copy Plain Text is a very useful add-on for Mozilla products, especially for Firefox, when you deal with lots of text copying from web pages on a daily basis.
Sometimes you simply don't see all facets of an issue raised at trial. That was certainly the case for me when I read Oracle's letter (656 [PDF; Text]) supporting its motion in limine No. 1 to exclude non-final information from the USPTO reexaminations at trial. Non-final is non-final (meaning Oracle still has a right to appeal or challenge the rulings), and it would be unfair if such information were introduced at trial as evidence of invalidity.
One of controversies that re-emerged (if it in fact had ever actually sub-merged) in 2011, is the relevance of Richard Stallman (RMS), the Father of Free Software.
RMS was the key spark that ignited the fantastic world of FOSS that we enjoy today, he is the man behind the GPL and GNU. His contributions to the early days of Free and Open Source Software are well known and (hopefully) appreciated as well.
International IT experts have urged governments worldwide to promote the use of open source software as a cost-effective, customisable and robust technology option at a convention here.
Previously we reported on [en] the ‘Developing Latin America' competition (Desarrollando América Latina), or #DAL, a public hackathon that aims to create technological solutions to problems in education, security and public budget, in six countries in the region. Now it's time to report its results.
One of the striking features of some of the most successful startups over the last ten years – companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter – is that their infrastructure is based almost entirely around open source. Of course, that shouldn't really be surprising: open source allows people to get prototypes up and running for the price of a PC, which is great for trying out ideas with live code. And yet despite these zero-cost origins, open source software scales up to supercomputing levels - the perfect solution for startups that hope to grow.
While the Unix server business has lost much of its glamour in the face of assaults from Windows, Linux, and the cloud, there is still plenty of life -- and growth -- in the business, although for the foreseeable future that growth will be enjoyed only by IBM.
In all that time, shareholders reaped short-term gains. Insiders reaped huge windfalls. End users suffered one indignity after another. A better product was not produced until 2009 by which time the world had seen a better way to do IT: GNU/Linux on desktop and server and Android/Linux on mobile devices. M$ has climbed to the top of the “shareholder value” ladder only to find it’s not resting on anything. The monopoly is a house of cards now that OEMs are discovering they can cut M$ out of the stream of revenue. M$ is scrambling to put something forward in the mobile space buying Nokia (more or less) and pushing a laughable product consumers don’t buy and suing competitors to hold them back. In a year or two all this will bear fruit and M$ will be on a downward slide with no bottom.
If the last decade was all about open source, the next decade will be about open APIs. However, as with open source, APIs aren't necessarily a guarantee of billions in the bank. They're simply the ante for playing the technology game at scale. That scale will be determined by who gives developers the best access to data, and that access is a function of open APIs.
The Wall Street Journal ran a story yesterday (12/27/11) entitled “SEC Ups Its Game to Identify Rogue Firms.” “Rogue” is an interesting word with a range of definitions. When it is used as an adjective its meaning is: “a playfully mischievous person; scamp.” The trivialization of the most destructive elite frauds is one of the most common forms of what criminologists call “neutralization” of the moral content of wrong doing. Neutralization increases crime.The actual story makes it clear that the criminals that the SEC was identifying were not “rogues.” They were the CEOs of seemingly legitimate firms. The SEC is identifying “accounting control frauds” – the frauds that cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crime combined. The SEC is not identifying a few rotten apples, but roughly 100 hedge funds likely to have engaged in accounting fraud. The WSJ describes the SEC’s identification system:
Members of the Occupy movement are building a “Facebook for protesters” called The Global Square, Wired reported yesterday. Less than a traditional social network, it’s an international collaboration network. While a valiant effort, I see 3 big problems with the project’s concept that will limit its success and impact.
The Global Square is designed to allow Occupy Wall Street, local Occupy movements, and other protesters to coordinate and share knowledge across different content management systems. Some of the reasons for starting the project that its developers told Wired include:
1. Connecting and mobilizing protest movements 2. Creating an open-source alternative to Facebook and other corporate social networks 3. Protesters don’t trust Facebook to keep their data and messages private from authorities