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Linux in the newsRecommended Reading Stallman: Can we rescue OLPC from Windows?Richard Stallman joins the discussion on the future of the OLPC project. "Some enthusiasts of the GNU/Linux system are extremely disappointed by the prospect that the XO, if it is a success, will not be a platform for the system they love. Those who have supported the OLPC project with their effort or their money may well feel betrayed. However, those concerns are dwarfed by what is at stake here: whether the XO is an influence for freedom or an influence for subjection."
Linux and Formula One (ITPro)ITPro has run a lengthy study of how Formula 1 racing teams are using Linux to improve their performance. "The same system that can run on 2000 core processors with terabytes of memory can be tweaked and tested on the engineer's laptop. In a world where a fraction of a second makes all the difference the ability to tweak the parameters, adjust the algorithms, and push the equations to their limits, can be the difference between winning and losing. As in all high performance industries the motor racing teams have found a distinct advantage in working with open source, for the most practical of reasons, performance, cost and flexibility."
Trade Shows and Conferences Linux certification comes to Italy (Linux-Watch)Linux-Watch has a brief article on Linux training and certification in Italy. "The Linux Professional Institute (LPI) says its new LPI-Italia partner will begin hosting exams on May 10, at the upcoming "Open Mind Free Software Meeting" on May 10th in San Giorgio a Cremano, Naples."
Companies Bringing Microsoft to the table: Can MS become an open source contributor? (Zonker's openSUSE spotlight)Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier looks at the collaboration between Novell and Microsoft, on his openSUSE blog. "The announcement went out today that Novell and Microsoft are collaborating around the OpenPegasus project and other system management tools. Thanks to Novell, Microsoft is going to be contributing to several open source projects -- and making Linux easier to manage. Yes, you read that right. It will also make Windows easier to manage using Linux tools -- which is going to be a breath of fresh air for Linux admins tasked with managing Windows boxen as well."
Linux Adoption 10 ways to sell corporate on Linux (TechRepublic)TechRepublic suggests ten arguments for switching to Linux. "Your systems are all way overdue for an operating system upgrade, but your IT department is going over budget. You know you cant afford the latest version of Microsoft Windows or Office. The easiest path to reining in your costs would be to migrate over to the Linux operating system. Unfortunately, corporate headquarters isnt convinced that Linux is the way to go. How do you convince them otherwise? Simple. Use these 10 compelling points to persuade them that Linux is right for your organization."
Linux at Work Linux still top embedded OS (LinuxDevices)LinuxDevices reports that Linux is the most widely used operating system for embedded systems. "Linux was used by 18 percent of embedded engineers responding to a survey, making it tops overall among both free and commercial OSes. Additionally, open source operating systems such as eCos, BSD, FreeRTOS, and TinyOS were reportedly used collectively by another five percent of respondents."
Interviews KDE in Korea (KDE.News)KDE.News has an interview with Cho Sung Jae of the Korean KDE Users Group. "What does the Korean KDE Users Group do? The group's work, is mostly translation. Park, "segfault" Joon-Kyu has developed programs like KLDraw and galmuri. He also patched the Hangul encoding environment for Qt 3.x, so we thank him. :) And individually team members give information about KDE around to people."
Interview with Donald Knuth (InformIT)InformIT interviews Donald Knuth. "The success of open source code is perhaps the only thing in the computer field that hasn't surprised me during the past several decades. But it still hasn't reached its full potential; I believe that open-source programs will begin to be completely dominant as the economy moves more and more from products towards services, and as more and more volunteers arise to improve the code."
The open life of Second Life (LinuxWorld)LinuxWorld interviews Linden Labs VP Joe Miller about the company's experience with the open-sourcing of the Second Life client. "We didn't expect major developments, enhancements, new capability by the Open Source community until perhaps 10 months after the release of the codebase, simply because of the complexity. That was not the case. We started seeing significant contributions, patches, bug fixes proposed by the community within 5 months."
One Laptop Per Child Foundation No Longer a Disruptive Force, Bender Fears (Xconomy)Xconomy is running a lengthy interview with Walter Bender about where he plans to go from here. "I think the culture around free software is actually a powerful culture for learning, and one of my goals from the very beginning of the project was to try to instill in the education industry some of the culture and technology and morals of the open source movement. I think it would greatly enhance the learning and education industry and their ability to engage teachers and students. So many different things are tied up in this concept. Its both about freedom, and the freedom to be critical. Criticism of ideas is a powerful force in learning, and unleashing that is, I think, an important part of the OLPC mission."(By way of Ivan Krstić; also worth a read).
Resources From camera to website: Building an open source video streamer (Red Hat Magazine)Red Hat Magazine has an article on setting up video streaming using free software. It covers simple methods for acquiring the video data, converting it to a streaming format, and then streaming it on demand. "I am a soldier in the U.S. Army, currently deployed to Afghanistan. I wanted to be able to share videos with my family from away from home. I wished to maintain my privacy and have better control over my audience. Whether you wish to share videos for educational purposes, share screencasts for documenting software features, or simply entertain, this article will show you how to set up a streaming video website using open source software."
Reviews Pint-sized but versatile Linux server hits North America (BetaNews)BetaNews looks at a pint-sized, multi-functional Linux server small enough to hold in the palm of your hand. "OpenMicroServer runs a homegrown software distribution dubbed SSD (Sotokanda)/Linux, named after the area of Tokyo where the device was created."
Benchmarking Linux With the Phoronix Test Suite (LinuxPlanet)LinuxPlanet takes a look at the Phoronix Test Suite. "Knowing how to measure your own computer performance gives you mighty system and network tuning powers. It's also fun to run various benchmarks on commercial products because most of them forbid publishing any kind of benchmark results--but they can't stop you from talking to friends. We're going to take a look at the brand-new Phoronix Test Suite, which is so new the black tape and alligator clips are still visible. The Phoronix Test Suite is for testing hardware performance under Linux. It's still very young and incomplete, but it's worth getting acquainted with--it is based on the the scripts developed by the fine folks (mainly Michael Larabel, it seems) at Phoronix for hardware testing. Phoronix Test Suite is intended to be more than another benchmarking utility; it is an open, extensible platform for creating and customizing all kinds of Linux benchmarking."
Miscellaneous Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired)Wired reports that Hans Reiser, developer of the reiserfs and reiser4 filesystems, has been found guilty of first-degree murder.
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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