MoxFulder writes "Henri Richard, AMD's VP of sales, has promised to deliver open-source drivers for ATI graphics cards (recently acquired by AMD) at the recent Red Hat Summit. A series of good news for proponents of open-source device drivers. In the last year, Intel, the leading provider of integrated graphics cards, has opened their drivers as well. But ATI and NVidia, the only two players in the market for high-performance discrete graphics cards, have so far released only closed-source drivers for their cards. This has created numerous compatibility, stability, and ethical problems for users of Linux and other open source OSes, and prompted projects like Nouveau to try and reverse-engineer NVidia drivers. Hopefully AMD's decision will put pressure on NVidia to release open-source drivers as well!"

eldavojohn writes "ONLamp.com is running an interesting article about rethinking how the community distributes Linux and the open source applications that often come with Linux. The author isn't arguing that Linux needs to become a full blown web OS over night but instead, asking if the community should be considering 'Software as a Service' and what he means by that is perhaps many of the open source applications that run on Linux should be available through a browser. The reasons for this are obvious, the code is open so anyone could host it, it would be platform independent so anyone could use it and it might attract more users to the Linux environment. The obvious note here is that many of the enterprise software makers are switching to Software as a Service, shouldn't the open source community investigate the possibility of a Web OS?"

yuna49 writes "News from last week, but still worth noting: Mark Shuttleworth told eWeek in a May 3rd interview that Dell will not include open-source software such as Wine with the PCs it plans to bundle with Ubuntu Linux. Says Shuttleworth: 'I do not want to position Ubuntu and Linux as a cheap alternative to Windows ... While Linux is an alternative to Windows, it is not cheap Windows. Linux has its own strengths, and users should want it because of those strengths and not because it's a cheap copy of Windows ... Often we see proprietary software companies just completely fail to understand not only the motivations of the Linux community, but also the processes. It's very practical, there's a way to get things done, and it's different. The VMware guys have really engaged with us completely and worked to the agenda set by the Linux community, which is not an ideological agenda but a practical one.' Does that mean Wine won't even be listed in the package manager?"

Sits writes "Chris Blizzard blogged from the Red Hat summit that an ATI marketing spokesman said, from the stage, that ATI knows it has a problem with open source and is committed to fixing it. Does this mean ATI will finally resolve alleged agpgart misappropriation, and fast track the release of open source 2D drivers on its latest cards while releasing specifications for its mid-range cards? Or is ATI only concerned with fixes to its binary driver to maintain feature parity with competitors?"

pete314 writes "Red Hat announced this week at their San Diego Red Hat Summit that they are planning to compete with Microsoft on the desktop by building an 'online desktop' that will integrate local data with online services. Red Hat CTO Brian Stevens argued that: 'To user the desktop metaphor is dead. We don't believe that recreating a Windows paradigm in an open source model will do anything to advance the productivity in the life of users.'"

AlexGr writes to recommend an account of a meeting a couple of months back of representatives from more than 100 software companies discussing the state of open source software. The outcome is outlined in a 16-page report, 2007 Open Source Think Tank: The Future of Commercial Open Source (PDF). Among the surprising conclusions: participants noted a growing similarity in methods between open source and proprietary software development. They predicted some kind of convergence, where the best of both approaches gets adopted in each camp.

Placid writes "The BBC has up an article detailing the 'Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded' project which was announced by Matt Zimmerman, Ubuntu's CTO, on the Ubuntu developers mailing list. Zimmerman stated that 'These devices place new demands on open-source software and require innovative graphical interfaces, improved power management and better responsiveness.' According to the article, Intel will have their finger in the pie too, as they've recently announced a prototype device running Ubuntu. Part of the project's goal is to maximise the power saving abilities of a planned low-energy chip codenamed Silverthorn. The chip will be just one-seventh the size of normal chips, and consume only 10% of the power of existing processor. What does this mean for projects such as OpenMoko? Healthy competition, or the beginning of the end?"

techie writes "MadPenguin.org is highlighting the lack of competition between open and closed source applications. The author writes, 'Is there really the level of competition in the open source world that we see in the closed source world? This is something that has been stuck in my mind lately as I have been told so many times by closed source developers that by opening the code you are creating your own competition. Today, I'm here to explore this theory and hopefully prove why it's false.'"

lazyeye writes "Keyboard Magazine has an in-depth article about the state of music production on Linux. While it does introduce Linux to the average musician, the article does get into some of the available music applications and music-oriented Linux distributions out there. From the opening paragraph 'You might think there's no way a free operating system written by volunteers could compete when it comes to music production. But in the past couple of years, all the tools you need to make music have arrived on Linux.'"

untouchableForce writes "Dell has announced that it will join forces with Microsoft and Novell to "make it easier for the Windows operating system and the [...] Linux [operating] system to work together." This is not overly surprising given Dell's good relationship with Microsoft, and since they already sell SUSE Linux on some of their servers, but it is likely to put a stop to the OSS community's celebration of them distributing Ubuntu. The debate over partnership between Microsoft and Novell has been drawn out since the deal was signed and for some this will add additional fuel to the fire but shouldn't the OSS community be reading this as an acceptance of Company's acknowledgment of Linux?"

John Siracusa writes a brief article at Ars Technica pointing out an exchange between Andrew Morton, a lead developer of the Linux kernel, and a ZFS developer. Morton accused ZFS of being a "rampant layering violation." Siracusa states that this attitude of refusing to think holistically ("across layers") is responsible for all of the current failings of Linux — desktop adoption, user-friendliness, consumer software, and gaming. ZFS is effective because it crosses the lines set by conventional wisdom. Siracusa ultimately believes that the ability to achieve such a break is more likely to emerge within an authoritative, top-down organization than from a grass-roots, fractious community such as Linux.

apokryphos writes "openSUSE have announced that the results from the openSUSE survey (PDF) are now online. The survey was live for almost 3 months and more than 27,000 users participated, making it one of the largest Linux distribution surveys ever."

An anonymous reader writes "Robert Love who was the Chief Architect of Novell's Linux Desktop has resigned today. Robert is a prominent Linux kernel hacker, author and journalist in the Linux community. His blog doesn't specify why he resigned, but after colleague and friend Jeremy Allison's departure from Novell in protest of the Microsoft-Novell deal, this might be the latest fallout from it."

Fahrvergnuugen writes "Wired is running a story about how an ex-lover of the missing wife of accused spouse killer Hans Reiser has confessed to killing eight people unrelated to the case. While Reiser will still stand trial for the murder, this development will undoubtedly complicate things."

Abhikhurana writes "I work for a company which designs a variety of video surveillance devices (such as MPEG4 video servers). Traditionally, these products have been based on proprietary OSs such as Nucleus and VxWorks. Now, we are redesigning a few of our products and I am trying to convince my company to go down the Linux route. Understandably, our management is quite skeptical about that and so I was asked by our CTO to recommend a few RTOSs which have mature networking stacks and which work well on ARM platform. I know that there are many embedded Linux based distributions out there. There are commercial ones such as Montavista, LynuxWorks, free ones such as uclinux, muLinux and some Linux like distros such as Ecos. What is the most stable and best community supported embedded Linux distribution out there?"

El Lobo writes "The Mono open-source project will create a Linux version of Silverlight by the end of year, said Miguel de Icaza, a Novell vice president and head of Mono. Asked about plans for Linux, Microsoft executives have been non-committal, saying that it will depend on demand. But de Icaza, who is attending Mix, was able to commit without hesitating."

Zachary Peterson writes "Ext3cow, an open-source versioning file system based on ext3, has been released for the 2.6 Linux kernel. Ext3cow allows users to view their file system as it appeared at any point in time through a natural, time-shifting interface. This is can be very useful for revision control, intrusion detection, preventing data loss, and meeting the requirements of data retention legislation. See the link for kernel patches and details."

kotj.mf writes "Cnet is reporting that Dell will shortly announce a partnership with Canonical to offer Ubuntu pre-loaded on certain consumer-oriented desktops and notebooks. The announcement comes after a groundswell of support for pre-installed Linux on Dell's IdeaStorm site. 'The company is starting its business by trying to appeal to users of desktop computers. From there, Canonical Chief Executive Mark Shuttleworth has said, the company plans to head to the server market, where the real Linux bread and butter can be found. [Dell spokesman Kent] Cook wouldn't comment on whether Dell plans to offer Ubuntu on its servers as well.'."

An anonymous reader passes on word of court documents filed by IBM on Friday. The documents contain a copy of a letter, dated 2004, from SCO to IBM's lawyers stating that they tried to keep Linus Torvalds from making disparaging public statements about SCO, speculating erroneously that IBM was the principal funder of OSDL, where Torvalds worked at the time. Quoting: "The company also tried to silence Eben Moglen, the Columbia University professor who, until this month, was a director of the Free Software Foundation, and Eric Raymond, a controversial open-source advocate, saying they claimed to be IBM consultants."

mrneutron2004 writes "A French physician and ardent Linux supporter is the one man you can all thank for adding support for 352 webcams in Linux. The Open Source OS world may still be a bit of a mess when competing with the ease of Windows, but efforts like this make you wonder. One man with drive, tenacity, and no funding does what no one else can do. And none of the major Linux distributions back this guy's efforts, even the big players dipping into the corporate world's coffers."