was amazed by the numbers. For all but one uniform subset of tests, XFS was the clear winner. I even tried synchronous mounts and encrypted volumes as little “what if?” exercises, and XFS still came out on top. The parameter that cost XFS a total victory was the CFQ elevator on a slower system; ext3 won most of those cases.
In addition to the being able to break the window into hexagonal and rectangular shapes, using my triangular tessellation code found in the extra-animations plugin, Compiz can now break up the window into triangular shapes.
The effect is used currently in the explode and leaf spread effects. I also added hexagonal tesselation to the leafspread effect.
I have to admit I went into this thinking it was going to take a lot to win me over. I am a devout Enlightenment fan and it would take absolute brilliance to pull me, kicking and screaming, from E17. gOS Space nearly does this. Nearly. While gOS is amazingly stable (for such an effects-centric operating system), it will not be able to update to the latest version of Ubuntu. Space is based on 7.10 and has the distribution upgrade disabled. Instead, the next revision of Space will be based on 8.04.
The installation of Untangle is straightforward, and can be done in less than one hour on general purpose hardware or a virtual machine. Untangle also provides the option to purchase pre-installed servers for use as an appliance. An Untangle gateway has relatively low hardware requirements, with up to 300 users being able to be serviced by one processor at 1.6 GHz, 2 GB of RAM, and only 40 GB of hard drive space.
My choices of Distro were based on what are commonly known as the big Boys, the distros which seem to appear on most magazine covers, and distro watch to 10 the most often, I do find both Fedora and Opensuse lacking in that final quality to make them good desktop distros, and when running fedora seemed clunky some times, i couldn’t put my finger on what, even with its new themes, it still seemed to be the granddaddy of the pack.
From boot up to shut down, the Aspire one was a pleasure to use. Boot up took just 12 seconds due to the Linpus Linux Lite OS it runs. That compares to 30 to 40 seconds on other mini-notebooks I’ve tested running Microsoft Windows XP.
Anyway, just in case anyone was wondering, we are still arguing over which software is better, and I don’t think we will ever stop, even if it is clear open source software has several advantages. What kind of advantages? Many: portability, enhancement, minimization, security, and dedication.
Modularity, and the re-use it allows, have since become two of the hallmarks of open source software. Indeed, the idea of modularity has proved so successful, that it has been applied at the next level up, in the creation of distributions.
The Ubuntu Eee project has just announced they will be selling SD cards pre-loaded with the latest version of Eee Ubuntu. This SD card can then be inserted into the Eee PC and you can run Eee Ubuntu right off of it. This is a great idea, but it would be even better if the cards were sold in stores along with the Eee PC.
In the week or so I have had Dragon running, it has never faltered – no bugs in the software, no crashes or freezes – so Myah OS scores highly in terms of system stability.
Draco GNU/Linux is a unique Linux distribution based on Slackware but with a package management system created by NetBSD. It is currently developed by Norwegian Ole Andre Rodlie with a main aim of creating a lightweight and simple desktop operating system.
When it comes to binary drivers, the ATI and NVIDIA drivers are both packaged and found within Ubuntu’s package repository. On the ATI side there is Catalyst 8.6 and on the NVIDIA side there are four different drivers — this is because NVIDIA and ATI/AMD take different approaches to supporting their older hardware.
GIMP is an amazing image editing software that allows people with limitless imagination create extraordinary images out of ordinary photos. To let you see what I mean, I have here a collection of some of the most beautiful and sometimes funny GIMPed images. I hope you’ll enjoy this one as much as I do.
n the following article we would like to address some common misconceptions about KDE 4 as we see it. As we firmly believe in KDE 4 and the future of the Free Desktop, we expected the heated discussions about KDE4 and especially the 4.0 release to go away - and we were wrong about that.
The KDE e.V. and GNOME Foundation today announced that they will hold their yearly conferences, Akademy and GUADEC in 2009 in Gran Canaria. The conferences will be separate events, but co-located and hosted by the same organizers, the Cabildo of Gran Canaria and its Secretary of Tourism, Technological Innovation and Foreign Trade.
Next month, Cirgon will announce and ship a Fedora Linux-based media server that supports 1080i HD resolution. The Encore offers 320GB, 500GB, and 750GB hard drive options, and controls management and playback of music, photos, and video for use with an HD-based home theater system.
As the Ubuntu developers failed to deliver a Live CD with this alpha version (it will be available in Alpha 3), we’ve tested one of the current daily Live builds. Here is the screenshot tour of this second alpha version of Ubuntu 8.10…
I was really surprised when it automatically downloaded a driver for my wireless card, without the need of me to look for it. Now I have to admit that Ubuntu is the No.1 Linux distro for desktop user.
Overall I would say Mint 5 is more a case of evolution than revolution, there are of course improvements here which are welcome but it feels more a case of fine tuning things than adding big new features. The distro already does so much that it’s hard to see what new features are really needed, though I’m sure the developers have plans. It should also be noted that this is based on Ubuntu 8.04 which is an LTS release and itself could be considered quite conservative on the feature front, it’s about stability and consolidation which makes sense.
Catching them young is a popular slogan and one that yields dividends too, no matter whether one applies it to the adoption of software or the learning of a language. And with a small window seemingly open for Australia’s FOSS community to push for the use of free and open source software in schools, the question arises - how does one go about making the first inroads?
Besides these additions, Freewins plugin from our one and only C-F dev/journalist SmSpillaz has improved leaps and bounds, keep up the great work. Freewins plugin allows you to rotate any window in any direction (yes including in 3D).
One thing I hate above almost anything else is when a vendor tells you what you can and can’t do with your software. That drives me bonkers. Sure, they wrote it and it’s theirs to do with as they wish, but once they sell/give it to me, it’s mine to do with as I see fit - within the confines of the software itself. Unceremoniously switching me off or making me pay more, forcing me to upgrade, stopping me from using the software, or making me bow to other ludicrous demands is just blatant power mongering and extortion. If they want me to do something, they had better have a really good reason why I should do it, and it had better not be “just because we want more money.”
So what brought on this little bout of ranting and bitterness? Well, several things really, but the biggest is the ever infamous software kill switch. It’s been around for years, but really didn’t start coming into its own until Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) came onto the scene. Since then, proprietary vendors have looked at Microsoft’s success with the Software Kill Switch and realized the money making potential of it. They also have seen the power it can give them and it’s become an intoxicating drug to them.
While iPhones are still making headlines, the mobile industry has already started talking about introducing the next-generation mobile consumer experience: the Linux mobile operating system!
Azingo Inc, a California headquartered IT company, on Friday announced the launch of an open and globally consistent software platform based on mobile Linux system for use by the whole industry.
Mandriva announced last night the second alpha release of Mandriva 2009, which brings KDE4 (default desktop), GNOME 2.23.4, and support for the newest NVIDIA and ATI/AMD video cards.
There must be a catch, right? Not really: If you’re looking for a realistic, fully functional Linux desktop experience, Wubi comes awfully close. While you will see a slight performance penalty running Ubuntu on a Windows file system rather than on a native Linux partition, keeping your Windows disk defragmented will keep the difference to a minimum.
One of Google’s Summer of Code projects this year is to bring hardware-based video acceleration to Linux with Gallium3D. The advantage of this design is that the implementation is designed to be universal to any driver using Gallium3D, which for now is largely just the Nouveau driver and an experimental Intel version.
The combination of Solaris and MySQL–particularly the carrier-grade extensions of MySQL–allow Sun to protect a market that Linux players want to take over.
A host of other vendors, most notably Dell, plan to release Linux-powered UMPCs this summer. Sources close to Dell confirm that its will be releasing two “Dell E” systems that will use Ubuntu 8.04. The first Atom-powered model is aimed at the growing UMPC market with a price point around $300.
One of the most controversial high-tech projects in Chinese history took a respectable step forward this month, with the commercial release of an actual shipping PC based on the Loongson 2F processor.
Windows XP Home will be available on more expensive Aspire One models, but this one uses the free Linux operating system with a selection of useful programs installed. We liked the ability to start both Firefox and Openoffice Writer from the front screen, and the email and instant messaging programs can cleverly connect to several services.
Consider this: Sim City Societies requires 512MB RAM for XP, and 1GB for Vista! Processor-wise, it needs 1.7 GHZ for XP and 2.4GHz for Vista! That’s a staggering difference, and can easily make the difference between someone being able to run a game on existing hardware, and needing something new.
But lately, I’m also starting to see the appeal of doing without a hyped-up platform like Unreal Tournament 2004 or Battlefield 1942. Fracturing the mod community has sparked creativity, particularly when it comes to open-source games based on free engines.
IBM has seen growth in demand for mainframe applications. “”We are not seeing much interest in Europe, but we are getting new customers in China and India for the z-series.” Douglas Nielson, a systems analyst at IBM, says Linux on the mainframe is quite mature. “Linux is a big driver for mainframe growth. 20% of new mainframe capacity is for Linux workloads.” He says many businesses already have the IFL processor to allow them to run Linux.
The Public Key Cryptography Standard #11 module was developed to operate in the Fedora Core 5 environment and to implement Linux Logon, signing and encrypting email (following the S/MIME standard) and Web site authentication (following the SSL/TLS standard), configured in Linux OS, Thunderbird and Firefox applications.
The Linux-based system uses a wiki engine to document rulesets, protocols and network infrastructure, leaving an audit trail that documents the reasons for specific changes, Cacares said.
With Intrepid Ibex, the next version of Ubuntu Linux, just a few months away the development team has released details of the most pressing issues for the 8.10 release. Among these are better 3G integration, tighter Firefox integration in KDE, and faster boot times.
It’s taken the confluence of several disparate but connected events to create the perfect breeding ground for desktop versions of Linux to finally flourish.
wattOS… the last frontier, the lightweight Ubuntu-based operating system is now here! Faster than anything else out there, wattOS is not just another Ubuntu clone, it is powered by the Openbox window manager, a standards compliant, fast, lightweight and extensible window manager.
n May we shared that Multi-Pointer X (or MPX for short) was entering the mainline X server. While it was merged to master that month, X Server 1.5 was already branched out and therefore it won’t appear in X.Org 7.4, but it will appear in X Server 1.6 (X.Org 7.5) until next year.
NYSE Euronext and its family of exchanges which include the NYSE, Euronext, Liffe, Alternext and NYSE Arca Options, operating in the US and Europe, now run on Red Hat Linux and look to Red Hat for support and services. Put it another way, over 4000 public companies and over $141 billion in daily stock transactions depend on Linux. The Chicago Mercantile exchange at last count traded 1.403 Billion contracts valued at $827 trillion annually.
Damn Small Linux (DSL) 4.4.3, the versatile mini desktop Linux distribution, was announced today by its maintainer, Robert Shingledecker. This new version introduces a handful of system modifications…
Archana Raghupathy of Chennai started LinuxChix-India in 2005. It is the Indian chapter of the global women techies’ network Linuxchix.org, and “tries to empower Indian women to use, develop and contribute to the world of free and open source software (FOSS).”
The Sydney Diocese of the Anglican Church has decided to cut the Microsoft umbilical cord by moving to open source, starting with Office which will be replaced in the next three years.
Google has made a habit of throwing its considerable weight behind a project and making it succeed. The company’s Android project, its effort at creating a Linux-based smartphone, is running into delays, while a similar effort by the LiMo Foundation already has produced handsets.
The YDL PowerStation targets a wide range of consumer and business needs. For instance, it can replace the now aging Apple PowerMac G5 product family. Terra Soft says all Linux code optimized for the former G4 and G5 systems will readily migrate to the PowerStation.
Ampro Computers announced two EPIC-format single-board computers (SBC) that ship with the company’s Ubuntu-flavored Linux distro. The Intel Core Duo-based ReadyBoard 830 will ship in August, while the ruggedized ReadyBoard 820 is shipping now, says Ampro.
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. Learn more
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. Learn more
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. Learn more
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. Learn more
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. Learn more
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy. Learn more
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Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.