Software

CSS for the LDP? 506

Posted by Cliff from the extreme-presentation-makeover dept.
Saqib Ali asks: "Over at The Linux Documentation Project there is a lengthy discussion going on about whether to use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to improve the presentation of the documents. I support the use of CSS to improve the image/formatting of the document, and improve readability. I understand that content is more important than the presentation, but it can't hurt to improve both. There are others who think we should not get involved the presentation layer, and mainly concentrate on the content. Since, most Slashdot readers are Linux users, and might have visited the LDP once or twice, I would like to poll them on what they think about implementing and using nice CSS for the documents on the Linux Document Project website. I've written a CSS for this purpose that is available here, and some sample documents available in this weblog. Any thoughts? Any pros and cons on using CSS to improve presentation?"
Books

Cobind Desktop Reviewed, With Interview 151

Posted by timothy from the low-barriers-to-entry dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Cobind Desktop takes a remarkable turn from other Linux distributions by being one of the first to include Mozilla Firefox 0.8 and Mozilla Thunderbird in their first release. Though Cobind Desktop only uses XFce and not the more popular KDE, its entire design is based on a clutter-free workspace. Flexbeta.net took the time to write up a review and conduct an interview with David Watson, Co-Founder and President of Cobind Desktop. He mentions how the entire design concept of Cobind Desktop is based on a book called the Paradox of Choice, by Barry Schwartz, who is a professor at Swarthmore. David Watson believes that this concept can be applied to software design, and produce more usable products as a result." (We mentioned Schwartz's book earlier today.)
Red Hat Software

Fedora Core 2 Test 2 Released 264

Posted by simoniker from the e2e4 dept.
Kalak writes "Fedora Core 2 Test 2, part of the project's goal to 'work with the Linux community to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from open source software', has just been released - this test release 'is specifically designed for SELinux testing, as well as testing the 2.6 kernel, GNOME 2.5, and KDE 3.2.1.' Get a copy from one of the mirrors or grab a copy via BitTorrent. You probably want the binary only Torrent."
GUI

Novell Desktop To Standardize On Qt [updated] 615

Posted by Hemos from the making-it-better-and-faster dept.
Balinares writes "NewsForge reports that Novell has settled for Qt as its Linux desktop development environment, casting more light on their strategy to unify KDE and GNOME. This ought to be interesting. The prospect of using Mono to code against Qt makes me drool in advance. Maybe programming will suck no longer!" Update: 03/30 00:01 GMT by T : Sounds like that story doesn't quite hold water; Nat Friedman writes in this Slashdot comment that "We have not decided that we are standardizing on Qt for the desktop. ... We support development with a variety of toolkits, and our internal development is done using the right tool for the right problem. This includes Qt, Gtk, VCL, XUL and others, depending on the application."
GNOME

GNOME 2.6 Reviewed 169

Posted by Hemos from the review-it dept.
Kethinov writes "I just read this article reviewing GNOME 2.6 via the 2.5 development version. Many screenshots, plus extensive discussion on the new direction Nautilus is taking among other things. Worth a read. (A mirror would be nice ;)" Sorry - I duped this. Mea culpa.
Linux Business

IBM's Linux Upgrade Roadmap 281

Posted by michael from the cheat-sheet dept.
petrus4 writes "IBM have put together a nine-part series on upgrading from various incarnations of Windows (NT in particular) to Linux. Although it's mainly aimed at corporate customers, it's a good read, and could help the Linux advocacy effort in general."
IBM

IBM Invests $50M in Novell, May Ship SUSE Linux 321

Posted by CowboyNeal from the big-deals dept.
dave writes "Novell announced that it has finalized a $50 million investment from IBM, and that IBM can now begin shipping SUSE Linux on all IBM server platforms. Historically, IBM has been a 'Red Hat shop,' and one has to wonder if this is a harbinger of things to come."
Operating Systems

In-Depth Look At LinuxBIOS 284

Posted by timothy from the quickly-quickly dept.
DrSkwid writes "With PhoenixBIOS reading your email because of such inordinate boot up times for Windows and other OSs, it was remarked in #plan9 about our 5s boot times using LinuxBIOS. My friend f2f pasted an article from Linux Journal which looks at the basic structure of LinuxBIOS, the origins of LinuxBIOS and how it evolved to its current state. It also covers the platforms supported and the lessons they have learned about trying to marry a GPL project to some of the lowest-level, most heavily guarded secrets that vendors possess."
Caldera

SCO Seeks Licenses Down Under 278

Posted by timothy from the whatcha-eatin'-under-there dept.
WildCode writes "SCO is now targeting Aussies in its continuing Linux licence saga. According to the story, one Aussie organization has already signed up for the licence. The ACCC has no comment at this time but this certainly puts a twist on things as the ACCC were waiting for the results of the lawsuits in the U.S. before making any judgement. Personally I think its time for the ACCC to say to SCO 'wait for the U.S outcomes before taking action here.'" An anonymous reader points to another story at internetnews.com.
GNOME

KDE And Gnome Together At Last? 466

Posted by timothy from the all-in-the-same-gang dept.
HangingChad writes "eWeek is reporting about Novell's plan to combine elements of both into a unified desktop. Apparently the work has already started. Chris Schlager, vice president of research and development for SUSE, thinks the differences between KDE and Gnome developers have been overstated. Apparently he's not a regular /. reader."
Books

Linux Book Recommendations, for 2004? 20

Posted by Cliff from the for-those-getting-started dept.
An anonymous reader asks: "LinuxDevices.com editor Henry Kingman has reviewed O'Reilly's new Pocket Linux Guide, a 191-page guide to Linux, asking whether a book that short can tell you what you need to know to get started working on a Linux system. Apparently this book cannot, to believe Kingman, who also dismisses O'Reilly's Linux in a Nutshell as 'dry.' Can anyone recommend a good book for smart but inexperienced Linux users, something that conveys a little of the magic of Linux without being too chatty, or too esoteric, or just too overwhelming?"
Programming

HA-OSCAR 1.0 Beta release - unleashing HA Beowulf 90

Posted by Hemos from the let-it-loose dept.
ImmO writes " The eXtreme Computing Research (XCR) group at Louisiana Tech University is pleased to announce the first public release of HA-OSCAR 1.0 beta. High Availability Open Source Cluster Application Resource (HA-OSCAR) is an open source project that aims toward non-stop services in the HPC environment through a combined power of High Availability and Performance Computing solutions. Our goal is to enhance a Beowulf cluster system for mission-critical applications and downtime-sensitive HPC infrastructures. To achieve high availability, component redundancy is adopted in HA-OSCAR cluster to eliminate single point of failures, especially at the head node. HA-OSCAR also incorporates a self-healing mechanism; failure detection & recovery, automatic failover and fail-back. The 1.0 beta release supports new high-availability capabilities for Linux Beowulf clusters based on OSCAR 3.0 It provides an installation wizard GUI and a web-based administration tool that allows a user to create and configure a multi-head Beowulf cluster. A default set of monitoring services are included to ensure that critical services, hardware components and important resources are always available at the control node. "
Sun Microsystems

Sun Wants to Make Linux 3D 545

Posted by Hemos from the frantically-building-a-future dept.
gruenz writes "Linux Planet writes in this article about a project inside Sun developing "an experimental 3D successor to Java Desktop that they believe will change the way we interact with computers." A demo is available from Sun. 'In the demonstration, Jonathan Schwartz, vice president of Sun's software group, increases the transparency of a window so that you can see through it, turns a window on its side so that it sits at the edge of a screen like a book on a book shelf, turns a window completely around and leaves a note on the back, and takes a database of CDs presented as physical CDs, that you flip through, reading the labels, just as you would with real CDs, until you locate the one you want.'" It's called Looking Glass, in case you've heard that name before.
Encryption

FreeS/WAN Continues As Openswan 68

Posted by timothy from the duckling-of-indeterminate-pulchritude dept.
leto writes "It seems some of the developers and volunteers of the (recently deceased) FreeS/WAN project have started a new company to develop and support the successor of the Linux IPsec code under the name of Openswan in a "Cygnus style" business model. They announced the new version at CeBIT which fully supports the new Linux 2.6 native IPsec stack. According to the Openswan website, it was started 'by a few of the developers who were growing frustrated with the politics surrounding the FreeS/WAN project.' There is a FAQ that explains how the various parts of IPsec on Linux work together. I guess that means US citizens can finally submit patches, and that distributions like RedHat/Fedora can now include it in their distribution. FreeS/WAN has always had the most features and most the most user-friendly configuration. It is good to see that will continue. And their mailing list finally seems to refuse spam too."
Linux Business

Novell Makes More Open Source Moves 351

Posted by timothy from the all-star-cast dept.
cbnet2004 writes "In what can be considered a win for Linux, Novell has announced NetWare will cease to exist as a standalone product by the end of the year. However, the CEO says: 'We are still committed to it and it is not going away. Our new Open Enterprise Server offering will have two components to it: SuSE Linux Enterprise Server and NetWare. NetWare is here for a long time to come.'" Read on for more bits from Novell's BrainShare conference, including a planned company-wide move to Linux.
PlayStation (Games)

PlayStation 2 Linux Kit Reduced To $99 41

Posted by simoniker from the penguin-slashing dept.
SyniK writes "After buying a PS2 Network Adapter 2 days ago and trying some unofficial media players, turns out I'll be getting a second adapter because the PlayStation 2 Linux kit is now $99 - half of its former price. The kits, which include an internal 40 GB hard drive, a Network Adapter, a monitor cable, a USB keyboard and Linux on 2 DVD-ROMs, are now 'slightly limited edition' as they will not be replenished in the future."
Linux Business

Device Hackers Do It With Linux 25

Posted by timothy from the rejected-bumper-sticker-ideas dept.
An anonymous reader writes "LinuxDevices.com has published the results of its annual Embedded Linux Market Survey probing developer preferences and industry trends. Over the last four years, the survey has become an important resource for industry analysts and decision makers. Among the revelations: the embedded Linux tools and OS provider market is wide open, with no single dominant vendor; developers care most about Cost/Freeness; ARM is overtaking x86 in embedded systems; developers prefer support fees to runtime license models; and, Linux dwarves all other embedded operating systems, projected for use in half of all embedded projects during the next two years."
The Courts

SCO Aims For The Feds 492

Posted by Hemos from the the-battle-continues dept.
MoFoQ writes "News.com reports that SCO is now targetting the Feds and their supercomputers (the Beowulf clusters, etc.). Looks like they bit off more than they can chew, even before winning a single case "

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