Posted by Matt on Wednesday, Apr 19, 2006, 10:10 pm 10 comments
Another turbulent period of change is facing organisations over the next two years. Desktop roll-outs are one of the biggest and costliest headaches for any enterprise, and the prospect of another version of Windows is daunting.
It is a time for all IT departments to assess where they are going, and this fact has not escaped...
At the Brainshare Novell user conference in Salt Lake City last month the company flagged the summer launch of version 10 of its SuSE Linux Enterprise operating system for servers and desktops. The company is positioning its Linux offering as a less complex alternative to the Vista release of Windows.
Jack Messman, chief executive and president of Novell, said, "Microsoft's Vista is going to require a big migration and more end-user training, and it makes sense that corporations will look at desktop Linux as an alternative now."
Posted by Matt on Tuesday, Apr 18, 2006, 6:57 am 2 comments
PEOPLE often complain about ATI Linux support. Nvidia rocks with driver support for the OS, and we know that Nvidia has just released a driver supporting the new kernel.
ATI is ready with its own answer, supporting XFree86 4.1, XFree86 4.2, XFree86 4.3 and X.Org 6.8. There is even a 64-bit driver and all of these drivers and XFree86 and the driver itself are version 8.24.8.
The driver supports all the modern graphic cards including X1900, X1800 cards and the older ones too. The big thing is that ATI now supports Avivo, even under Linux, and we do know that many of this community plays with video files than with games.
The Linux driver even has a GUI and you can download it here.
Posted by George WB on Tuesday, Feb 7, 2006, 12:02 am 0 comments
Progression Desktop allows you to transfer files and settings from Windows desktops to Linux desktops in an automated fashion. Desktop "personalities" and data are quickly moved across operating systems and applications to ensure a seamless transition to Linux.
Migration from Windows to Linux has always been one of those tasks that we've all been able to perform from one extent to another, but it hasn't been simple has it? Sure, it can be done, but can it be done easily? A review of Versora Progression Desktop tries to shed some light...
Posted by George WB on Monday, Feb 6, 2006, 11:53 pm 2 comments
What's new in this release:
- Directory change notifications can use inotify now.
- Hardware breakpoints in the Wine debugger.
- Beginnings of support for tape APIs.
- A bunch of improvements to the IDL compiler.
- Better scheme for mapping My Documents etc. to Unix directories.
- Lots of bug fixes.
Posted by Matt on Monday, Feb 6, 2006, 10:39 pm 0 comments
Adobe Systems' Photoshop has been voted the most important application to port to Linux, according to the initial results of a survey carried out by software company Novell.
The online public survey, running since mid-January, asks people which Microsoft Windows-only applications they want to use on Linux. Scott Norris, the editor of CoolSolutions, the Novell community Web site running the survey, said last week that 10,000 submissions had already been received.
So far, the most-requested applications have primarily been tools for design, Web publishing and multimedia. Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Macromedia Studio, AutoDesk's AutoCAD and Apple Computer's iTunes head the list.
Norris said these results indicate that Linux on the desktop has matured; in the past, there was primarily demand for basic applications such as word processing, e-mail clients and Web browsers.
"As people's needs in those arenas (basic applications) were filled, they wanted media players for their music," Norris said. "An interest in graphic design and manipulation became more apparent. Pretty soon, people not only considered the possibility of Linux as a multimedia platform, but, as we can see, they are now demanding it."
Though Norris said the need for a decent e-mail client on Linux has been "filled rather nicely," with applications such as Thunderbird, KMail and Evolution, a study published by the Open Source Development Labs in November last year found that the lack of a powerful e-mail application could hinder the adoption of Linux on the desktop.
Posted by George WB on Monday, Feb 6, 2006, 9:41 am 0 comments
I think a lot of people may find that the GPLv3 "anti-DRM" measures aren't all that wonderful after all. Because digital signatures and cryptography aren't just "bad DRM". They very much are "good security" too.
In this article, yet again, the GPL3/Linus subtleties are reviewed.
Linux Torvalds will be keeping the kernel source license under GPL2. Original post by Linux Torvalds and a bit of his position on the DRM system can be found here.
Posted by Matt on Thursday, Jan 19, 2006, 6:23 pm 0 comments
For a document shorter than a lawyer's note to the milkman, the GPL has had profound effects on the industry. Now's your chance to influence the first revision in 15 years - use it or lose it
No government has approved it, it doesn't have a mighty corporation behind it, and it doesn't want your money — yet it's changed the world. A simple statement of rights and obligations, the General Public License sets out with astonishing brevity and unmatched clarity one particular concept of community fairness. Among those who agree: take freely what you want, do with it what you wish, give freely to those who ask.
For those who see software as property, where duplication without payment is equivalent to theft, this is close to blasphemy. Others agree with free software but not the perceived inflexibility of the GPL approach — and it is uncompromising in its requirements for those who adopt it. Certainly, the GPL has never set out to be compulsory. It's just an option, albeit one with consequences, and plenty of people have decided it's not for them.
Yet for a document that merely sets out one way of working within the existing legal framework, the GPL has been exceptionally influential. Even those who prefer a different open licence agree that the GPL has been instrumental in creating an environment where open source software is seen as intellectually and commercially viable.
Posted by Matt on Thursday, Aug 4, 2005, 2:45 pm 0 comments
Serious security bugs in key parts of the latest Linux code have been fixed, but some small glitches have been introduced, according to a recent scan.
In December, Coverity looked at version 2.6.9 of the Linux kernel, the heart of the open-source operating system, and found six critical defects in the core file system and networking code. In July, the code analysis company scanned the latest version of the Linux kernel, version 2.6.12, and found no such programming errors, Coverity CEO Seth Hallem said.
However, 1,008 defects were discovered in other parts of version 2.6.12. These coding problems, which could indicate security flaws, rest mainly in drivers, Hallem said. That's a slight increase compared with the earlier analysis, when 985 total defects were found, according to San Francisco-based Coverity.
Posted by Matt on Wednesday, Apr 27, 2005, 4:08 pm 0 comments
Red Hat To Be The First Enterprise Linux Operating System To Support Tamil
Red Hat, the leading provider of open source solutions to the enterprise today launched Red Hat Enterprise Linux v.4 - Tamil at a press conference. This latest release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux will enable the Government to speak to its citizens in their own language. Apart from localization support, this version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux puts Linux ahead of all other proprietary UNIX systems in features & functionality. Its security, performance and manageability make it the perfect choice for any kind of deployment – be it enterprises, academic institutions, federal departments or the telecommunications industry. Red Hat also demonstrated Red Hat Enterprise Linux in Tamil at the conference.
Red Hat is leading Linux and open source solutions into the mainstream by making high-quality,, low-cost technology accessible. Javed Tapia, Director Red Hat India, prior to the launch quoted that, “Red Hat continues to believe that choice is invaluable to the customer. The launch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux supporting local languages will be a major development in bridging the digital divide in the country and provide a cost-effective alternative to proprietary platforms.”
The Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 4 - Tamil includes productivity applications such as office suite with a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool as well as a Web browser and an e-mail client. With the availability of these applications users can share digitized text in Tamil across platforms. The installation guide will also be in Tamil.
Posted by on Tuesday, Apr 12, 2005, 6:28 am 2 comments
Adobe Systems will restore Linux support for its PDF-viewing software with a version 7 release this week, CNET News.com has learned.
In March, Adobe made a prerelease version of Reader for Linux available for download so that citizens in the Netherlands could meet their tax-filing deadlines. Now the final version of the 7.0 update is ready, Adobe confirmed on Monday.
The graphics software powerhouse said it plans to announce version 7 for Linux and make it available on its Web site on Tuesday. (Version 7.0 for Microsoft Windows shipped in November 2004.) Adobe Reader lets people read and print documents stored in PDF, or Portable Document Format, and the new version also enables people to fill out forms electronically.
Posted by Matt Lindstrom on Saturday, Apr 9, 2005, 8:36 pm 0 comments
Opinion: A recent report concludes few midsize enterprises have an interest in Linux. Large Unix consolidators and smaller, cash-strapped companies are another story.
A research report landed on my desk this week, the conclusions of which will be controversial to a few readers. But for the rest of us the report independently confirms what we already knew or suspected. It also tends to confirm what Microsoft has been saying, slaps down some zealots and reminds us that media hype can't always be trusted.
Here's the lead from the press release that arrived attached to the report:
"Most mid-sized enterprises are simply not interested in Linux, according to a recent study by Info-Tech Research Group. ... A tiny 10 percent of mid-sized enterprises plan to evaluate Linux within the next three years and only a portion of these will actually adopt it."
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