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Linux

Submission + - OPIE back from the dead after two years (sourceforge.net)

Submitted by
TuxMobil
TuxMobil writes: "The Open Palmtop Integrated Environment (OPIE) is not dead anymore. Since more than two years a fresh update is available finally. OPIE aims at making an universal graphical framework for most (embedded) distributions available. As reference platforms, HP's iPAQ and Sharp's Zaurus PDAs are directly supported. OPIE also moved from handhelds.org to SourceForge."
Oracle

Submission + - Can Firebird gain against MySQL? (marcocantu.com)

Submitted by mAriuZ
mAriuZ writes: MySQL is now really an Oracle product, price included. Which is a big chance for all other "really free" database servers, like Firebird and PostgreSQL.

MySQL is now really an Oracle product, price included. In fact the company announced cutting the lower-level license and support plans, basically raising the minimum price 4 times at 2,000 USD per server. Not cheap for a database most people think it is free, while it is free only for open source projects (OK, the story is more complex but I blogged and debated this already a few times, don't want to get back to it: In short, if you write and distribute a vertical client/server Delphi application against this database it is likely that you or your customers will have to pay for the MySQL license).

Not only this announce is bad because of the extra money many MySQL users will have to pay, but also because it shows a clear signal Oracle wants to kill the cheap competition... and you never know what's next. Perception is important, and the effect of this move is quite bad. By the way, they also removed the transactional engine from the free "community" offering for open source projects [well, seems I was misled on this by an article I read]. I just migrated my Delphi open source accounting package (the Italian GO) to it, will probably have to revert back...

Read for example the long blog post " The Decline of MySQL ". I know my longtime friend Zack Urlocker (and MySQL product manager) will disagree, but I guess things are not looking at the best in the long run, while in the short run the company is likely to raise some money.

Now, this could be a very good opportunity for all of the other open source database servers (and also some of paid ones!), particularly the most popular ones like Firebird and PostgreSQL. I'm particularly fond of Firebird (the InterBase offspring) and use it in many projects and did a lot of consulting to Delphi developers using it. Can this be the rise of Firebird? MySQL with its huge popularity has certainly obscured it, so it could be a good time to act.

Which means promoting Firebird more and making sure it works at best with one of the environments that has pushed it a lot, that is, Delphi. If Delphi now has an official Firebird driver for dbExpress, that is not enough and more could be done in terms of interoperability, cross-breeding, and cross-promotion. Owning InterBase, I can understand Embarcadero is quiet on this, but at times it seems to me that the Firebird community forgets how many Delphi developers use their database and like it a lot!
Google

Submission + - Samsung Galaxy S Finally Gets Froyo Update (eweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Samsung UK has begun the rollout of the Android 2.2 (Froyo) mobile operating system to its flagship handset, the Galaxy S.

Samsung UK made the announcement via its official Twitter feed. “Froyo starts rolling out today; everyone will have it by the end of Nov. To prepare, get the latest version of Kies.” it said.

Kies is Samsung’s proprietary upgrading solution which is needed to update the handset’s software.

Feed Ars Technica: Linux beyond X: Shuttleworth contemplates Wayland (arstechnica.com)

From feed by feedfeeder

Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth wrote a blog post this week contemplating the possibility of making Ubuntu's new Unity shell work on the Wayland display system, with the aim of eventually shipping Wayland as Ubuntu's standard display manager. A transition of such enormous scope isn't going to happen in the near future, but it certainly can't hurt to start thinking about it now.

The X Window System (X11) is a cornerstone of graphical Linux computing. It is a display server that is responsible for showing graphics on the screen and mediating user input. The ubiquitous X.org implementation of the X Window System is included in all mainstream desktop Linux distributions. The problem with this venerable component of the Linux technology stack is that it was created in the 80s and hasn't been able to shed the superfluous accoutrements of yesteryear computing.

Read the comments on this post



Linux

Submission + - OpenOffice Forked As LibreOffice (digitizor.com)

Submitted by dkd903
dkd903 writes: Today the OpenOffice community made a big decision to break away from Oracle and have formed The Document Foundation. This means that the previous OpenOffice community will now be known as “The Document Foundation” and the software suite will be known as LibreOffice, for now. They have also invited Oracle to become a partner of the foundation and to donate the OpenOffice brand.
AMD

Submission + - AMD One-Ups Intel With Cheap Desktop Chips (computerworld.com)

Submitted by CWmike
CWmike writes: Advanced Micro Devices on Tuesday announced inexpensive desktop microprocessors with up to six cores to put pricing pressure on rival Intel. AMD's new chips include the fastest AMD Phenom II X6 1075T six-core processor, which is priced 'under $250' for 1,000 units, AMD said. AMD also introduced a range of dual-core and quad-core Athlon II and Phenom II desktop microprocessors priced between $76 and $185. By comparison, Intel's cheapest six-core processor is the Core i7-970 processor, which is priced at $885 per 1,000 units, according to a price list on Intel's website.
Programming

Submission + - Authors: I'm making you a writing program. 5

Submitted by Azuaron
Azuaron writes: I'm making a web-based word processor program for authors (primarily fiction, both short story and novel length). I'm going to make chapter planning, story boarding, and character tracking easy, in addition to the standard word processing functions necessary for story writing. Slashdot authors: what would make your life easier while writing stories?
Google

Submission + - Google Backs Out of JavaOne (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "Citing concerns about Oracle's lawsuit against it, Google has backed out of the upcoming JavaOne conference. 'Oracle's recent lawsuit against Google and open source has made it impossible for us to freely share our thoughts about the future of Java and open source generally,' Google's Joshua Bloch said in a blog post. The move may signal eventually fragmentation for Java, with Google conceivably splintering off the Java-like language it uses for Android."
Software

Submission + - Multi-core, Threads and Message Passing (igvita.com) 1

Submitted by igrigorik
igrigorik writes: It's not a question of whether threads, events or message-passing is a better model — the hardware trends require that we use all of the above. If message passing is a choice today, then in all likelihood, it won't be in the future when we hit the diminishing returns of a shared memory model (too much communication). With that in mind, the more interesting question to explore is not which abstraction is "correct" or "more performant" (one can always craft an optimized workload), but rather how do we make all of these paradigms work together, in a context of a simple programming model? We need threads, we need events, and we need message passing — it is not a question of which is better.
AMD

Submission + - AMD poke fun at Nvidia heat issues (igniq.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Slapstick video made by AMD with an elite squat team trying to track down an unusually large heat source — featuring Nvidia Fermi GPU. ;)
Microsoft

Submission + - Future of Microsoft's IronRuby, IronPython unclear (techworld.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft’s open source IronRuby and IronPython projects are facing an uncertain future as the last of the full-time IronRuby developers departed the company last month. Developer Jimmy Schementi announced last week he had resigned from Microsoft and the other developer, Tomas Matousek, will also be only working on IronRuby part-time from now on. The developers cited a lack of commitment to IronRuby and dynamic language on .Net in general at Microsoft and both the IronRuby and IronPython mailing lists are getting hit with questions as to the longevity of both projects, particularly from people looking to deploy the software for business use. A concern for the developers is the source code hosting infrastructure for the Iron projects is still managed by Microsoft.

Submission + - What is best web framework for creating a website?

Submitted by l0ll1
l0ll1 writes: I wanted to build a website of which at least half of the content will be from the visitors input. I'll store data in a database, and mine it and display on the website along with other content. I'm looking for a best framework for it to build quickly, with less coding from my side. I was suggested Symfony and Ruby On Rails so far. I wanted to get input from huge Slashdot community also. Any suggestion is very much appreciated. Thanks.
Linux

Submission + - Lack of responsiveness on Linux desktop solved? (kernel.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A patch to apply to the 2.6.35 kernel source has been posted to the kernel bugzilla that appears to solve the long standing "Large I/O operations result in poor interactive performance and high iowait times" bug, also know as "Heavy Disk I/O harms desktop responsiveness" in Ubuntu. You will hit this bug if you have a slow disk and not much RAM. How many times have you seen your desktop grind to a halt when you start copying files around partitions or usb disks? Certainly Con Kolivas has suffered with it, that is why he decided to create a new scheduler. There has been some coverage on the patches in Phoronix, but why don't you try it for yourself and post the results to the bug thread?
Kudos to Wu Fengguang and KOSAKI Motohiro for the patches.

Submission + - Best Options For Buying a New Gaming PC?

Submitted by Jhyrryl
Jhyrryl writes: I'm not enough of a hardware geek to purchase individual components with which to build a homebrew machine, but I still want to pick-and-choose what will go in a new gaming rig. For someone like me, Dell was awesome, but with all the issues surrounding them these days I'm not sure where to to turn.
Software

Submission + - Neelie Kroes in staunch support of FOSS

Submitted by einar.petersen
einar.petersen writes: Neelie Kroes

Former European Commissioner for Competition (2004–2010) and currently, since 2010 European Commissioner for Digital Agenda, has released a video in staunch support of FOSS and a plead for the public to get further involved.

She is citing the use of FOSS in the public sector as a success and encourages further use.

Her video can be seen here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok100U4Fo3Y&feature=player_embedded

Danish story on the subject:

http://www.comon.dk/nyheder/Open-source-er-ikke-laengere-et-beskidt-ord-1.365505.html

Same story Google translated to english:

http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.comon.dk%2Fnyheder%2FOpen-source-er-ikke-laengere-et-beskidt-ord-1.365505.html&sl=da&tl=en

Does the slashdot crowd know of other public figures and success stories for FOSS / Open Source that should be publicized ?

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