Media

LinuxWorld Editorial Machinations 498

Posted by Hemos from the as-the-worm-turns dept.
James Turner writes "The editors of LinuxWorld Magazine have been fighting a quiet war with the publishers (Sys-Con Media) for half a year, trying to get hack-journalist Maureen O'Gara purged from their site. Well, with O'Gara's recent vile attack on Pamela Jones (which I won't give any more free publicity by linking to), enough is finally enough. In my latest blog, I've basically told Sys-Con that it's either her or me. I suspect, given the amount of page views O'Gara's tripe brings to the Sys-Con sites, that they'll choose her." James isn't the only one either.
Software

Desktop Linux Usage Statistics 296

Posted by timothy from the change-is-in-the-air dept.
Ahkorishaan writes "Desktoplinux.com has put up their December 2004 survey results. Debian has fallen from their top rank as preferred Linux distro, and newcomers Thunderbird and Firefox have an impressive showing in their respective genres."
Microsoft

Meet Microsoft's Linux Lab Head Bill Hilf 191

Posted by timothy from the eye-on-the-competition dept.
morcego writes "Yahoo News has a very interesting interview with Bill Hilf, Microsoft's director of Microsoft's platform technology strategy group, who in turn works for Martin Taylor, Microsoft's general manager of platform strategy and Linux point man. From the interview: '"I am a non-Microsoft guy working at Microsoft," Hilf said.'"
Software

Inside the Open Source Lab 105

Posted by timothy from the their-only-begotten-oc48s dept.
FreeFooOpenFighter writes "KernelTrap has an interesting article about Oregon State University's Open Source Lab. They currently provide hosting for an impressive list of projects including, among many others, the Mozilla Foundation, Debian GNU/Linux, and Gentoo Linux. According to the informative article, they plan to continue to donate hosting with their two OC48s to FOSS projects meeting their criteria."
Communications

Qualcomm Adopts Linux for 3G Handsets 84

Posted by CowboyNeal from the it's-the-clue-phone dept.
quan74 writes "According to an article at MacNewsWorld, it seems Qualcomm is the latest to add Linux to its handheld devices. 'By introducing Linux on the MSM, Qualcomm supports manufacturer partners who wish to leverage existing Linux applications, third-party developers and application catalogs to reduce their software development costs and improve time-to-market.' What I found interesting is that Linux will be the first third-party operating system supported by Qualcomm."
Microsoft

Red Hat/Apache Slower Than Windows Server 2003? 628

Posted by Zonk from the who-doesn't-love-some-delicious-fud dept.
phantomfive writes "In a recent test by a company called Veritest, Windows 2003 web server performs up to 300% higher throughput than Red Hat Linux running with Apache. Veritest used webbench to do there testing. Since the test was commisioned by Microsoft, is this just more FUD from a company with a long history? Or are the results valid this time? The study can be found here."
Linux

Myth of Linux Hobby Coders Exposed 252

Posted by Zonk from the not-just-basement-rangers dept.
Eh-Wire writes "Stuart Cohen, CEO of the Open Source Development Labs, does a short piece on the myth of renegade hackers coding in their parent's basements to create the Linux OS. He suggests this hasn't been the case for many years and goes on to claim that of the top 25 core developers, more than 90% of them are fully employed with some of the largest technology companies in the world. Stuart goes on to explode the myth of renegade programmers by saying, 'Sure, it represents a new way to create software, but the actual process looks a lot like how enterprise software has been made for decades.' A short but interesting read."
Sun Microsystems

Associated Press Reviews OpenOffice 481

Posted by Zonk from the i-think-they-like-it dept.
blacklily8 writes "Peter Svensson of the Associated Press has reviewed OpenOffice and declared it a Microsoft Office killer: 'Microsoft Corp. killed off the competition for office software suites and became a de facto monopoly in the area, with what result? The competition is back and, this time, it's free!' Svensson thinks the better Word/WordPerfect file conversion, ability to save as PDF, and new BASE database component make the beta a better candidate for success than the previous versions--and when the kinks get worked out, step back!"
Portables (Games)

Kernel, Shell Boots on DS Linux 230

Posted by CowboyNeal from the pokemon-and-penguins dept.
mrseigen writes "According to dslinux.org, the Linux kernel successfully boots on the Nintendo DS along with a simple shell, sash. Input is done via the d-pad. How long until Netstumbler?" While maybe not the most practical platform, it's impressive on its technical merit.
Data Storage

Distributed Storage Systems for Linux? 52

Posted by Cliff from the spread-out-all-ova-tha-place dept.
elambrecht asks: "We've got a _lot_ of data we'd like to archive and make sure it is accessible via the web 24/7. We've been using a NetApp for this, but that solution is just waaaay to expensive to scale. We want to move to using a cluster of Linux boxes that redundantly store and serve up the data. What are the best packages out there for this? GFS? MogileFS?"
Wine

WineConf 2005 Sets Deadline for Wine 0.9 179

Posted by timothy from the windows-users-decant-of-your-sins dept.
IamTheRealMike writes "As WineConf 2005 took place last weekend, the Wine developers discussed the project's direction and future. A new deadline of September 30th for the 0.9 release was set by Alexandre Julliard -- the release promises to bring an end to the system of monthly snapshots and provide a new focus on ease of use and stability. A new GPLd application regression testing tool called CXTest was demoed, as was some of the great Direct3D work being done lately. Finally the CEO of Gupta gave a talk. Gupta have ported their 4GL RAD tools to Linux by working with Codeweavers (who sponsored the event), and their experiences were documented in a fascinating presentation. Overall: big thumbs up, but it's not obvious enough that there's enterprise-level support available for Wine. Check out the group photo and the new Wiki!"
Handhelds

Linux PDA Resurfaces in U.S. 164

Posted by timothy from the that-is-a-sweet-machine dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A high-end Linux-based Sharp Zaurus PDA thought to be discontinued in the US is actually available from two sources. The SL-6000L is available from stock from 10East, a seller of vertical market systems for the railroad industry which has established a direct manufacturing relationship with Sharp Japan, it says. The Wi-Fi equipped SL-6000L is also available in single quantities from SDG Systems, which, incidentally, is porting Linux to several PDAs that normally run Windows, including the super-rugged TDS Recon."
Debian

Sarge is Now Frozen 380

Posted by timothy from the chill-yo dept.
JoeBuck writes "Steve Langasek has announced that Debian Sarge is now frozen. He produced a schedule that would lead to a Debian release at the end of May, though I would expect it to slip somewhat. I'm glad that the long wait for a Debian release will soon be over."
Operating Systems

Free Alternatives to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0? 113

Posted by Cliff from the more-crimson-caps dept.
looper_man writes "I'm a hardware design engineer, and our tools have been migrating to Linux over the last years. I've been running Red Hat Linux 9.0 on our compute servers for a while now without a problem. The latest release of one of our CAD tools requires Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0, and will *not* run with RH9.0. I'm not very happy with the (yearly!) licensing fees that Red Hat wants for RHEL3.0, so I'm looking for alternatives. I plan on running one real RHEL3.0 server (for any OS/tool issues if I need to verify that the problem is real), and the rest of the machines running a RHEL3.0 clone. I've seen CentOS, TaoLinux, WhiteBox, and a few others. I don't have the time to spare to test these out, so I was looking for recommendations from the Slashdot masses. I need something that's stable, easy to install/maintain, and closely tracks RHEL3.0. Any words of wisdom?"
Linux

The Linux Kernel Archives 154

Posted by CmdrTaco from the huey-lewis-takes-us-back-in-time dept.
Jeremy Andrews writes "KernelTrap offers an interesting look at the history behind the Linux Kernel Archives, home of the Linux kernel. They start from the beginning in 1997, when kernel.org ran on a generic "white box PC" using a shared T1, to the present where it runs on multiple quad Opterons each with 24 gigabytes of RAM, 10 terabytes of disk space, and a gigabit link to the internet. Much of the article is based on an interview with Peter Anvin, also including quotes from Linus Torvalds, Paul Vixie of Internet Systems Consortium, Inc who donates the bandwidth, and Matt Taggart of Hewlett-Packard who donated the hardware."
The Courts

The Register vs Groklaw: Who Gets It Right? 224

Posted by Hemos from the well-probably-both dept.
microbee writes "Over the past weeks Groklaw has been running a series of articles on new discoveries about SCO and Project Monterey. Surprisingly (to me, as I love both sites), The Register published another article to counter the argument of Groklaw's serials, claiming "it's difficult to envisage Groklaw's conjecture swaying a court case, but it provides SCO with valuable public relations ammunition."" There's also a rebuttal on groklaw as well.
Software

Canonical Plans a Version-Tracking Tool for Devs 90

Posted by timothy from the even-fresher-meat dept.
daria42 writes "Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, has started work on a new project which aims to make easier for Linux developers to find the latest open source software updates, no matter which distribution they are contributing to. The effort encompasses distributed bug tracking, revision control, language translations and more. Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth wants Ubuntu to take advantage of the software, saying: 'As the framework [for using code from across the community] sets, hopefully we are at the centre of it. Further down the pipeline we may need to differentiate on other grounds.'"
Debian

The Grumpy Groundhog - Ubuntu for Developers 56

Posted by timothy from the still-waiting-for-zippy-zebra dept.
**loki969** writes "Ubuntu is planing a "cutting edge"-distro, 'The Grumpy Groundhog', which will be aimed explicitly at developers. Here is a quote from their site: 'Upstream development in the open source world moves at a tremendous pace. Many developers like to keep up to date with specific upstream products, but the work involved in building from CVS every day is substantial. With The Grumpy Groundhog Project, Ubuntu provides those developers with a ready source of packages containing the latest upstream code. '"

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