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Mandriva

Developers Fork Mandriva Linux, Creating Mageia 206

Posted by Soulskill from the onward-and-upward dept.
Anssi55 writes "As most of the Mandriva employees working on the Linux distribution were laid off due to the liquidation of Edge-IT (a subsidiary of Mandriva SA) and trust in the company has diminished, the development community (including the core developers) has decided to fork the project. The new Linux distribution, named Mageia, will be managed by a not-for-profit organization that will be set up in the coming days. There are already many people that have decided to follow the fork, but the people behind it are still welcoming any help offered in the various tasks related to establishing the new distribution."
Mandriva

Submission + - Developers fork Mandriva Linux, creating Mageia (mageia.org) 1

Submitted by Anssi55
Anssi55 writes: As most of the Mandriva employees working on the Linux distribution were laid off due to the liquidation of Edge-IT (a subsidiary of Mandriva SA) and the trust in the company has diminished, the development community (including the core developers) has decided to fork the project. The new Linux distribution, named Mageia, will be managed by a not-for-profit organization that will be set up in the coming days. There are already many people that have decided to follow the fork, but the people behind it are still welcoming any help offered in the various tasks related to establishing the new distribution.
Mandriva

Submission + - Mandriva fire most of the distribution team

Submitted by eric_herm
eric_herm writes: Following the news of Edge-it liquidation, Mandriva subsidiary, most paid distributions developpers have
announced to the community on forum and mailling list they were leaving, culminating today with the departure of Anne Laure Nicolas, head of engineering.
The whole community is waiting on a positive announce on 17 september, but the perspective look quite bleak for the free software distribution, and while there was some announce about a possible russian investor, users on the forum express their concern with the inevitable loss of quality that will occurs following the layoff. This already bad news affect the company, already weakened by the scandal in Korea about Metanav, who sued everybody for using GPL.
Mandriva

Submission + - Mandriva fighting against fate (olivier-mejean.fr)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: The vice president of Mandriva NPO wrote an interesting blogpost about the difficulties Mandriva is facing to guarantee its future. The head of the company and the employees seems to be figthing : http://olivier-mejean.fr/WordPress/?p=87

"These last days, the projects have emerged and tensions were very high among employees of Mandriva.

The ghost of a foundation is back on center stage with Wallix (with apparently participation of François Bancilhon and Stanislas Bois in a way that I do not know yet), but if this project was presented to Mandriva, nothing has been done towards the community and again, Arnaud Laprévote did not want to say anything. However, this project seemed very badly put together, including that little should be done regarding social part and business part does not show any modification. Employees reactions have been very mixed (it is a euphemism ).

IEurope also came back to the front of the stage, offering to surrender nearly one and half million euros, but before declaration of insolvency (thus cutting off the foot for a possible takeover) with support rather unexpected of Occam Capital! But again, my little finger told me that the employees were quite reluctant to accept this solution that does not seem to maintain at least the medium term interests of the group’s employees adequately, and the philosophy of Mandriva Linux."

Confidences I have had, these projects did not inspire much confidence.
Microsoft

Microsoft Pushes Windows To Battle Linux In Africa 248

Posted by timothy from the roll-the-windows-down-if-it-gets-hot dept.
ThousandStars writes "According to the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft has been making a concerted effort to promote Windows in Africa, pushing Windows over Linux in very poor countries that haven't been locked into a single operating system. From the article: 'To that end, it has established a presence in 13 countries, donated Windows for thousands of school computers, and funded programs for entrepreneurs and the young. It also has used aggressive business tactics, some aimed at its biggest threat in the region: Linux ...'"
Mandriva

Submission + - Mandriva has no plan to sign agreement with MS

Submitted by
boklm
boklm writes: "François Bancilhon, Mandriva's CEO announced on his blog today that Mandriva had no plan to sign any patent deal with Microsoft. He says that "we [Mandriva] believe that the best way to deal with interoperability is open standards, such as ODF", that "we are, to say the least, not great fans of software patents and of the current patent system" and that "there has been absolutely no hard evidence from any of the FUD propagators that Linux and open source applications are in breach of any patents"."
Announcements

Submission + - SDF Public Access UNIX System Celebrates 20 Years (lonestar.org)

Submitted by
Stephen Jones
Stephen Jones writes: "The SDF Public Access UNIX System Celebrates 20 Years!
http://sdf.lonestar.org/

It was on June 16th, 1987 that the SDF-1 received its first caller at
300bps. This little Apple ][e BBS of the late 80s turned into a Public
Access UNIX System with the demise of "killer.dallas.tx.us" during the
"Operation Sundevil" raids. Since then it has grown to become the oldest
and largest continually operating PUBNIX on the planet."
Unix

Submission + - SDF Public Access Unix System Turns 20 (lonestar.org)

Submitted by Eileen
Eileen writes: Remember those days when you could get a free Unix shell account and learn all about the command line? You still can at the Super Dimension Fortress (SDF). SDF is celebrating its 20th birthday on June 16.

Full press release text:
The SDF Public Access UNIX System Celebrates 20 Years!
http://sdf.lonestar.org


It was on June 16th, 1987 that the SDF-1 received its first caller at 300bps. This little Apple ][e BBS of the late 80s turned into a Public Access UNIX System with the demise of "killer.dallas.tx.us" during the "Operation Sundevil" raids. Since then it has grown to become the oldest and largest continually operating PUBNIX on the planet.

Over the years SDF has been a home to 2+ million people from all over the world and has been supported by donations and membership dues. SDFers pride themselves on the fact that theirs is one of the last bastions of "the real INTERNET", out of the reach and scope of the commercialism and advertising of the DOT COM entities. It is a proponent of SMTP greylisting as opposed to content filtering and offers that as an option to its members.

While access to basic services are free to everyone, lifetime membership can be obtained for a mere onetime donation of $36. And it is the members who decide which programs and features are available. The members communicate via a web free, google inaccessible, text bulletin board ('bboard') as well as an interactive chat ('com') where users battle each other in the integrated netris matches. The interface of these programs harks back to the days when TOPS-20 CMD J-SYS ruled the ARPANET.

SDF has also become home to well known hackers such as Bill Gosper, Tom Ellard (Severed Heads), Geoff Goodfellow, Carolyn Meinel and Ezra Buchla, son of the father of the Synthesizer. From this pool of talent you might expect more than just computing, and you'd be correct. An annual music compilation is published featuring original music ranging from electronic noise to improvised piano sonatinas. Gosper's puzzles which he has cut at his favorite laser shop are frequently given away as membership perks or through fundraising raffles.

There are always classes being taught on SDF as well, where instructors and students enjoy free access to the latest teaching and programming tools. Instructors manage their own classes in such a way as not to be encumbered by their own school's outdated utilities or computer security restrictions, which can hamper the learning process.

And where else would you expect to be able to locally dialup at 1200bps from just about anywhere in the USA and Canada with a Commodore 64 and get a login prompt? SDF! As well as direct login, SDF offers PPP and PPPoE via analogue dialup (1200bps — 56kbps), ISDN and DSL. Members also have access to the SDF VPN (Virtual Private Network) and Dynamic Domain Name Service.

One of the many interesting and esoteric aspects of life on the SDF-1 is GOPHER. All users have access to their own GOPHER space and a number of them continue to find it a useful way to share text and data. And if you don't want to relive that past, SDF's 'motd.org' project offers a collaboration amongst members to share source and security tweaks for the latest wikis, web forums, photo galleries and blogs.

SDF runs NetBSD on a cluster of 12 DEC alphas with 3 BGP'ed T1s linking it to the INTERNET. It is an annual supporter of the NetBSD foundation and the Computer History Museum (CA). One of its original incarnations, an AT&T 3B2/500, is displayed annually at the Vintage Computer Festival.
Intel

How Classsmate PC Stacks Up Against OLPC 284

Posted by Zonk from the cheap-laptops-go-toe-to-toe dept.
lisah writes "While the One Laptop Per Child project pulled itself together and shipped its first Beta machines, Intel was busy developing its own version, the Classmate PC. Inevitable comparisons will be made between the two (especially since OLPC's chairman Nicholas Negroponte called Intel's move "predatory"), so Linux.com's Tina Gasperson and her kids took a Classmate PC for a test run to see how it does in the real world. The upshot? Good battery life, easy to use, and great with ketchup. 'The Classmate is so adorably cozy it make you want to snuggle up on a comfy couch or lean back on some pillows on the floor while you surf. Good thing wireless is built right in. Too bad the typical Linux foibles apply. The first snag was having to log in as root to check the system configuration because the Classmate wouldn't log on to the network. Something tells me most elementary and high school teachers with nothing but Windows experience aren't going to get that.'" Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.

Why Vista Release Date Really Slipped 562

Posted by samzenpus from the better-excuses dept.
anzev writes "A team manager for Windows for 5 years has decided to write a blog-essay about what caused Windows Vista project to miss the due date. Philip tells us in the blog, that Windows developers are writing an average of 5000 lines of code (which is *only* 1200 lines less than the national average of 6200 lines of code per year). He addresses issues like the Vista code being too complicated, the processes the developers have to follow too complex and a lot more. All in all it gives a nice insight into why Vista will be late, from a different perspective. Oh, and Slashdot gets mentioned too ;-)."
User Journal

Journal Journal: something funny

Journal by BokLM

just to remember for later when I have more time for that :
google:// inurl:"ViewerFrame?Mode="
google:// inurl:view/view.shtml
User Journal

Journal Journal: let's use this as a blog. isn't what's it's made for ?

Journal by BokLM

So I'll use this slashdot journal as a personnal blogs. I hope not too much people will read it. Looking at the number of comments on previous post, I think no one is reading it :) I don't write enought about what I do in my other blog, but when I know some people will be reading, I don't want to write too much :)

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