Operating Systems

All-in-One Source for Linux Distro Reviews 13

An anonymous reader writes "If you enjoy reading Linux distribution reviews, head over to DistroReviews.com - a new one-stop Linux distribution review site. DistroReviews.com is a collection of the latest Linux distro reviews from around the web. Original reviews can also be submitted."
SuSE

Novell To Open Source SUSE 316

jambarama writes "Newsforge reports Novell will be open sourcing SUSE professional under the name OpenSUSE. Is Novell following in the footsteps of Red Hat Inc., with its Fedora Core Linux distribution, or continuing its own open source policy as it has in the past as with YAST?" Note that it looks like the opensuse.org site is not yet up.
Operating Systems

SymphonyOS Alpha 4 Released 28

Whafro writes "Symphony OS Alpha 4 has been released. While an alpha release might not seem like news, this will be the first release that will function sufficiently to be used as a primary OS. As users are anxiously awaiting the ISOs to make their way to the mirrors, Ryan, Jason, and company are now setting their sights on Beta 1. SymphonyOS is a Linux distribution currently based on Knoppix that is a distinct turn away from the norm in terms of OS user interface design."
X

Using Enlightenment 17's Epeg API (Part Deux) 29

jjrff writes "The Enlightenment project has turned up some really cool bits lately. here is a nifty article about using their Epeg bits to easily deal with thumbnailing. Note that they also have a great deal of sample code for things like canvasing and even dealing with network delivery."
Announcements

LSB Project Seeks Input at Annual Meeting 17

nickstoughton writes "The Linux Standard Base (LSB) project is holding its annual plenary meeting next week, Aug 8, in San Francisco, to coincide with LWE. The meeting is open to all, and the workgroup is seeking feedback on the next direction to take now that LSB 3.0 is out. But ... you must sign-up in advance since the meeting is to be held in IBM's San Francisco offices, and building securuty needs to know names for badges. At very least, this should be an opportunity to grill the developers of the standard as to why it is the way it is, what's happening with the ISO verion of the LSB, etc. If you are planning on going to Linux World Expo in San Franciso, this is worth adding to your itinerary!" Note that the room only holds 55 people, though!
Operating Systems

Windows Interoperability in A Linux Distro 355

Magenta writes "There is a review of the Desktop OS Version 3 Business Edition from Xandros. This operating system is meant to allow users to easily move from Windows XP to Linux without the problems that can arise. Xandros not only can use Window's file system but it is able to run a great number of Windows programs using its CrossOver Office tool from CodeWeavers. This is one of the most accessible distros to come along in awhile and it marks a big step forward in the progress on Linux on the desktop."
Handhelds

Handheld Gaming / Media-player Gadget Runs Linux 238

An anonymous reader writes "LinuxDevices has profiled a new portable game- and media-player based on embedded Linux. The GPX2-F100 features dual ARM9 processors, USB 2.0, a 3.5-inch color LCD, and support for both native and emulated games. A Linux SDK (software development kit) will be available when the device ships. Hmmm... I wonder how hard it'll be to get GPE and OPIE running on it?"
Security

Assess System Security with a Linux LiveCD 14

An anonymous reader writes "Want to assess security vulnerabilities on your Linux system without lengthy installation and configuration efforts? This article introduce four packages -- Auditor, Whoppix, Knoppix-STD, and PHLAK -- that bring you that ability through the magic of LiveCD. These four LiveCD offerings specialize in nailing down vulnerabilities."
GNOME

GNOME 2.12 Previewed 437

An anonymous reader writes "Davyd Madeley has completed his Prerelease Tour of GNOME 2.12. Scheduled for release on September 7th, 2005, GNOME 2.12 has picked up a new theme, some features popularised by Apple's System 7, some new multimedia tools and plenty of bug-fixes."
The Courts

Novell Asks Court to Separate SCOsource Money 203

clusterix writes "Groklaw has posted Novell's answer to SCO's slander of title complaint. In it, Novell produces many counter claims. The most eye-catching is the claim for the revenue from the SCOsource licenses bought by Microsoft and Sun and others. Novell states that they must be SVRX licenses which entitles them to 95% of revenue in royalties. They further request a trust to be constructed to hold the revenue until the case is decided. It is hard to see how the judge could deny such a request to protect the money which will likely bankrupt SCO."
Graphics

A Look at the State of ATI Linux Drivers 43

Linux PaPa writes "LinuxHardware.org has just posted a great new review on the current state of ATI drivers under Linux. The review is specifically a look at the Connect3D's Radeon X800 and it exposes many of ATI's current problems in their latest drivers. While the drivers seem to have plenty of speed to them now, some stuff still just doesn't work."
Linux

Review of Consumer-Friendly Linux Distro 267

miketronics writes "Linspire Five-O is a full-featured Linux operating system which is intended for desktop use, mainly as an alternative to Windows XP. XYZComputing has a review of the latest version. The company, which was formerly known as Lindows, has gotten a lot of press for including their OS with pre-bundled computers." From the article: "Once the installation is over with Five-O is ready to go. The first time the OS is used Linspire's tutorial program will activate. This is one of most accessible tutorials on any Linux distro and it should be a great help to new users. Though it does not go into extreme depth, it does give the user enough understanding of the OS to get started. Even if you are a Linux pro it will probably be helpful to check out the CNR section, as this system is unique to Linspire. The fact that the developers have the tutorial voice-narrated shows Linspire's commitment to user support -- this feature makes the otherwise boring tutorial watchable."
Linux

New Linux Kernel Development Process 207

An anonymous reader writes "Releasing the 2.6.13-rc4 Linux Kernel, Linus Torvalds announced an improved development process to try and minimize the number of bugs in the kernel. The general idea is simple: changes will only be allowed for two weeks after the release of a stable kernel. All the rest of the time between releases will be spent on fixing bugs. This should improve upon last year's development module, which allows for active development in the 2.6 stable kernel."
Handhelds

Tapwave Closes its Doors 208

ewhac writes "Tapwave, makers of the universally acclaimed Zodiac mobile gaming device/media player/PalmOS PDA formally announced on their Web site that, 'the Zodiac business was discontinued and service and support are no longer available as of July 25th 2005.' The Zodiac was a PalmOS 5.2 device with gaming and media features, including ATI graphics and Yamaha sound acceleration, proportional joystick, two SD slots, Bluetooth, 200MHz ARM CPU (Freescale i.MX1), and up to 128M of RAM. At the most recent Palm developer conference, Tapwave employees were showing Zodiacs running their own port of Linux 2.6.10, with ports of SDL, Python, PyGame, mpg123, and primitive power management. It is unknown what will become of this work."
Microsoft

Microsoft Warms Up to Linux 298

prostoalex writes "InfoWorld reports that despite warming to the OS, Microsoft won't be releasing its own distribution of Linux any time soon. From the article: "Hilf acknowledged that Microsoft's commitment to Windows does not preclude the company from continuing a strategy he has led in his 19 months at the software vendor: To see how Microsoft's proprietary technologies can better interoperate with Linux and a host of other open-source software. In fact, that is exactly what will be the focus of a discussion the long-time open-source proponent will lead at this year's upcoming Linuxworld Conference & Expo next month in San Francisco. In a session entitled, 'Managing Linux in a Mixed Environment ... at Microsoft?' Hilf, who polished his open-source evangelism skills working on Linux deployments at IBM Corp., will talk about how he and the team at the Linux/Open Source lab run open source technologies in "the most Microsoft-centric IT environment on the planet." "
Unix

Leo Laporte On UNIX As the Future 368

TractorJector writes "In a well-written interview with Mad Penguin, techmeister Leo Laporte (formerly of G4/TechTV fame) discusses his vision of the future of proprietary and open platforms: 'I think there's a lot of hope for Linux, although I don't think that Linux is the answer. I think that UNIX is the answer, in some form or fashion. It might be BSD, it might be Linux, it might be some third thing. But UNIX is such a well understood and smart to handle the issues that an operating system has to handle that it ultimately will prevail.'"
Linux

This Year's Ottawa Linux Symposium Covered 51

cdlu writes "This year's Ottawa Linux Symposium was well-attended and hosted numerous very interesting discussions. There's extensive coverage at NewsForge: (comprehensive day 1, day 2, day 3, and day 4, Linux Weekly News (subscription): A challenge for developers, Linux and trusted computing, and Xen and UML, and O'Reilly network: First day and Wrap up."
Linux

Disney, DreamWorks, Pixar Go Linux 279

robinsrowe writes "Most of the major studios use Linux -- such as DreamWorks with more than 1,500 Linux desktops and 3,500 Linux servers. The MovieEditor Conference is an all-day event on computer-based filmmaking in downtown Los Angeles on August 3rd. Studio technology chiefs and other experts discuss ongoing work using Linux in feature animation and visual effects. Presented in collaboration with LinuxMovies.org."
GNOME

Interview with a Gnome artist, William Szilveszter 20

Pascal Klein writes "William Szilveszter, a Gnome desktop artist has recently released an extensive suite of goodies for our Gnome desktops, including a GTK theme, Firefox and Thunderbird themes, an extensive icon set and 2 media player skins, as well as a high in demand wallpaper. His Graphic Suite, on Gnome-Look.org has become the most highly rated contribution to the Gnome-Look.org community in just under 5 days, and has scored over 4900 downloads to date.

Wombat has interviewed him in light of his recent release... You can find the interview here."
KDE

Preview of KDE 3.5 402

tr_x_data writes "There is a quite interesting KDE 3.5 preview with screenshots on JLP's Blog. I thought there wouldn't be so much improvement to KDE 3.4 since everyone is working on porting KDE4 to QT4, but obviously there are quite a few changes. Look forward to "Storage Media Notification", "Adblock" for Konqueror, new Tooltips, better Workspace-Pager, and so on. Read for yourself."

Slashdot Top Deals