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Linux in U.S. Schools: Why the Resistance?
11 hours, 49 minutes ago
I hear the statement above almost everyday. What makes the statement so ridiculous is that it is completely inaccurate 99 percent of the time. Normally I would dismiss this as the loss of the person or the business that has opted to limit their horizons with their platform decisions, but when I hear this coming from schools...I find myself shaking my head in complete disbelief. -
First $100 laptop runs Linux
15 hours, 49 minutes ago
In October, Shenzhen China-based HiVision will ship a MIPs-based Linux mini-notebook for $98. The company is currently offering a similar machine for $120, according to a video blog report from the Internationale Funkausstellunga (IFA) consumer electronics show in Berlin this week. -
First Linux on Everest
19 hours, 49 minutes ago
Linux thin client specialist Igel has created a Linux operating system image for a rugged panel PC designed for vehicle-mounted and industrial applications. The Igel-5310 LX Premium Image works with Glacier's Everest PC (pictured), available with a 600 MHz Celeron or 1.4GHz Pentium M processor. -
Dell ships Ubuntu- and Atom-based netbook
23 hours, 49 minutes ago
Dell announced its first netbook, a $350 Intel Atom-based model loaded with Ubuntu Linux 8.04. The Inspiron Mini 9 offers a 1.6GHz Atom N270, up to 1GB SDRAM, an 8.9-inch, 1024 X 600 display, three USB ports, Ethernet, and a 4GB solid-state drive. -
Where do community managers fit?
1 day ago
Our good friend Joe Brockmeier, community manager for openSUSE, has just started blogging for ZDnet. In one of his inaugural posts, he ruminates over where a community manager belongs in corporate structure: engineering or marketing? His post was in response to Stormy Peters, who thinks the support team is a good place. As a fellow community manager, these posts are a fantastic opportunity for me to talk about a subject that’s near and dear to me: me. -
Red Hat Bets on Startup to Shake Up Virtualization
1 day ago
Linux vendor Red Hat is upping the ante in the virtualization market today with the $107 million dollar cash acquisition of privately held virtualization vendor Qumranet. -
What's Coming in Ubuntu 8.10?
1 day, 1 hour ago
The next Ubuntu release is already around the corner. Only two more months, and the next tidal wave of brown 2 paragraph reviews will be upon us. PolishLinux decided that they'd be ahead of the pack, by taking a look at what Ubuntu 8.10 looks like right now, and what new features it brings. Of course, many of these features come from upstream, and will find their way into other distributions as well - or are already there. -
Kick Linux To The Curb?
1 day, 2 hours ago
Recently I found myself presented with the possibility of switching to Apple's OS X. Keeping in mind that I already have a Mac in our home in the form of my wife's computer, the idea of me using it did get me thinking. What would it take for me to completely abandon Linux and return to the world of closed source operating systems? -
Open Source Software: Your Company's Legal Risks
1 day, 2 hours ago
Open source software is a convenient way for developers to build solutions. However, if your company plans to distribute that software, a recent ruling makes it clear that failing to follow the open source license could put you in jeopardy of a copyright claim, according to Michael P. Bennett and Katherine K. Ivers of the Wildman Harrold law firm. -
My first Linux laptop is the Asus EeePC netbook
1 day, 3 hours ago
My first Linux laptop is the ASUS EeePC. This is a sweet machine in many ways. It boots up very quickly. All its functions are accessed through icons so you need know nothing. All its software is pre-installed so you need to do nothing. -
Ubuntu Linux Netbooks: What Dell Can Learn From ZaReason
1 day, 3 hours ago
Dell Mini 9 Netbook Runs Ubuntu LinuxDell’s new sub-notebook, the Inspiron Mini 9 Netbook, is the latest vote of confidence for Ubuntu Linux in the desktop and mobile markets. I’m genuinely impressed with Dell’s commitment to Ubuntu. But Dell can learn two key lessons from ZaReason, a small PC maker that specializes in Ubuntu systems. -
Sorting Perl Lists And Removing Duplicates On Linux Or Unix
1 day, 4 hours ago
This may be the first time I've run a series of posts where the topic was different every step of the way. That's a good thing, because I get just as bored as anyone else reading about the same thing over and over ;) So, following in the footsteps of our posts on Number Pools And Guaranteed Combinations Within Fixed Lists and Perl List Permutations, we'll move straight ahead to the next logical step, which is almost an entirely different subject altogether. I will however, reiterate (repeat again... sorry, one of my idiosyncrasies ;) our Objective in this whole exercise (Skip to the next paragraph if you feel I've done this sentence to death ;) : Given a Number Pool of "x through y," create the maximum possible Fixed List Length variations of our Fixed List that contain some variation of our Guaranteed Combination, without any duplication (i.e. 1, 2, 3 is equal to 2, 3, 1 and would only count as one match), and return the results. -
Amazon to sell laptops from foundation
1 day, 5 hours ago
Low-cost laptops from the One Laptop Per Child Foundation of Cambridge will go on sale at Amazon.com this holiday season, making the $200 computers available for the first time through a retail store. -
BasKet - opensource note pad for openSUSE
1 day, 5 hours ago
BasKet Note Pads is a free opensource notepad/scrible pad software for Linux. BasKet can be used as a manual clipboard. This means that you can drop files of all kinds inside. They can be grouped in different tabs. BasKet is very simple to use and easy to differentiate between notes by setting tags, priorities and flags. -
Beta Debian 5.0 Live Version Available
1 day, 6 hours ago
Debian 5, Lenny, is getting closer to delivery and as part of that, the Debian Live Team has released the first official version of Debian Live. - More News
Linux.com : Linux
Linux Foundation to host End User Collaboration Summit
The Linux Foundation plans to hold an End User Collaboration Summit in New York City in October. The press release we received introducing the event said, "It's by invitation, but registration is free, in keeping with the idea of opening it to 'real' end users."
Book review: Ubuntu for Non-Geeks
Ubuntu has experienced its share of success, but it's still relatively unknown amongst non-technical people. Many aren't aware that an open source operating system actually exists, and those who are lack the education required to move comfortably from Microsoft Windows to a Linux-based desktop. Ubuntu for Non-Geeks: A Pain-Free, Project-Based, Get-Things-Done Guidebook, by Rickford Grant, introduces non-Linux users to the world of Linux and shows them how to be productive in a complete Linux environment.
Finnix: Compact Linux distribution for system administrators
Finnix is a live CD distribution designed to assist system administrators in such tasks as system recovery and network monitoring. Based on Debian testing and Linux kernel 2.6, Finnix helps with filesystem and partition manipulation as well as with data recovery, installation of other operating systems, and boot record repair.
A video tour of openSUSE 11 (with KDE 4 desktop)
SUSE has been around almost since the dawn of consumer-level desktop Linux, and openSUSE 11 upholds the SUSE reputation for having not just a wide range of available applications, but also excellent documentation and a fine user-to-user support community. For this video we chose the KDE 4.x desktop option. KDE 3.5x and GNOME are also available as defaults in openSUSE.
Ulteo Application System is innovative, easy, and a little buggy
Ulteo Application System is a GNU/Linux distribution based on Kubuntu and designed to work with the Ulteo Online Desktop service to provide you with an automatic offsite backup and file synchronization between live CD instances. It attempts to require as little user configuration and maintenance as possible, and provides several unique features that set it apart from being "just another distribution."
Scheduling jobs based on filesystem activity with incron
There are numerous documents, tutorials and guides detailing the workings and usage of cron, the de facto tool for scheduling jobs on Linux. While traditional cron jobs are executed at set times, inotify cron, or incron, is a cron clone that watches the filesystem for specified changes and executes the relevant commands. You can set incron to monitor a particular file or directory for changes and schedule jobs for when those changes occur.
Foresight Linux: Two out of three's not bad
According to its past and present marketing, Foresight Linux has three claims to fame: Its user-friendliness, its use of the Conary package management system, and its role as a showcase for the latest in GNOME. In practice, its latest 2.0.4 version is not more user-friendly than any other GNOME-based distribution -- if anything, it is slightly less so because of its limited software selection and package management -- but its other claims are enough to make Foresight one of the more distinctive modern distributions.
NimbleX 2008 is speedy but flawed
NimbleX, a Slackware-based distribution, advertises itself as "the new wave of Linux." However, what is appealing in NimbleX -- its speed and small footprint and the resulting selection of alternative software choices -- will likely strike veteran GNU/Linux users as being very old school. By contrast, its limitations -- too little attention to such aspects as the installer, packaging, and security -- seem all too modern, being reminiscent of other distros intent on commercialization or emulating Windows, even though NimbleX is a community distribution and largely a labor of love for Romanian developer Bogdan Radulescu.
gOS 3 Gadgets (beta) targets Linux beginners and Google Gadgets lovers
I first heard of gOS when it was chosen to power the $199 Wal-Mart gPC. The third iteration of the OS, gOS 3.0 "Gadgets" Beta, was released last week. It's a great Web-focused desktop, but it doesn't offer much to experienced or current Ubuntu users.
A video tour of gOS Gadgets 3 (beta)
gOS is an interesting Ubuntu GNU/Linux offshoot. We've reviewed it and interviewed gOS founder Daniel Liu. Now, in this video, you can see the distro in action before you decide whether it is something you want to download and play with for yourself. Remember that this video was made with a beta version of gOS Gadgets 3, so some features don't work correctly that will almost certainly be just fine in the final version. That caveat given, here's the video.
Pardus 2008: A touch of refinement
Pardus is a GNU/Linux distribution funded and developed by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey. Pardus has its own unique installer, package manager, configuration wizard, and control panel. This originality, and the developers' attention to detail, make Pardus worth a look.
A conversation with gOS founder David Liu (video)
Why did David and his group decide the world needed yet another GNU/Linux distribution? And how are they making money? This second question is important because David says, yes, gOS (pronounced gee-oh-ess) is profitable -- and not from selling service and support contracts, either. For the full scoop, watch the video.
Linspire is going away
Linspire, the distribution originally launched as Lindows, is no more, says Xandros CEO Andreas Typaldos.
Linux Foundation launches killer development tool
Ask any independent software vendor what he hates most about developing for Linux and he'll tell you that it's having to develop for SUSE and for Red Hat and for Ubuntu and ... you get the idea. The Linux Foundation has just released a beta of a new program, Linux Application Checker (AppChecker), that's going to make ISVs and other programmers start to love developing for Linux.
Gentoo 2008.0: Return to greatness?
When the long-awaited Gentoo 2008.0 release finally hit mirrors last month, the two largest groups of users found themselves out of luck: x86 users discovered that their live CD wouldn't copy the kernel during install, and the AMD64 image wouldn't fit onto a standard CD-ROM. This was not a great start for a distribution whose comeback may rest upon this release. Updated ISOs were released two days later, though, and those work well for getting a quick Gentoo install ready to customize.
Fedora on a stick
Fedora 9 now lets you create a bootable Linux distribution on a flash drive with persistence. In other words, you can not only boot any PC that will accept USB drive booting into Linux, you can even boot into your own personal desktop. Now, that can be useful.
Linux-libre project meets rocky reception
This year has already seen the second release of gNewSense, the completely free distribution endorsed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), and the announcement that Ubuntu will have a free software option as part of its installation program. Now, if Alexandre Oliva, a Red Hat employee best-known as a board member of the Free Software Foundation Latin America (FSFLA), has his way, building a 100% free distribution will become easier thanks to his linux-libre project. Unfortunately, the path to freedom, he's finding, is often blocked by politics and a preference for convenience over ideals.
Ultamatix may be a worthy successor to Automatix for new Ubuntu and Debian users
Some Ubuntu fans out there may remember Automatix, a tool for Ubuntu that allowed easy access to many popular non-free applications and commonly-used audio and video codecs. It debuted a few years ago, and got negative reviews from Ubuntu developers and experienced users due to the risk of breaking dependencies, but it offered an easy solution for beginners who weren't familiar with the way deb packages worked. Automatix was discontinued in March, when its developers moved on to other projects. Now Ultamatix hopes to continue where Automatix left off.
FSF works with Los Alamos Computers to provide free computers
Finding hardware that works with GNU/Linux is hard enough. But if you also want a completely free system -- one that requires no proprietary drivers or firmware to run -- then the task is almost impossible. While resources like OpenPrinting and the SANE database for scanners offer guides to simple functionality, advice on free systems is almost non-existent. To fill this gap, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) has been developing its own hardware list, and, as the next logical step, has been working with Los Alamos Computers (LAC) to develop a line of free (as in speech) computers pre-installed with GNU/Linux.
Silber runs Canonical while Shuttleworth runs around (video)
Mark Shuttleworth is one of our favorite open source celebrities. He does great things for the community, he's affable, and he promotes not only Ubuntu but GNU/Linux and FOSS in general. And it seems that he's always on the go -- from this conference to that conference to this meeting to that one, anywhere from California to Korea to Spain. While Canonical's CEO tours the world, Chief Operating Officer Jane Silber makes sure the company runs smoothly, that all the servers stay up, and that releases stay on schedule. She's hiring, too, so you may want to watch this video extra carefully; it's entirely possible that Jane Silber could be your boss one day....
