Making hardware vendors love open source, Jan 31, 2008

Reverse-engineering open source drivers for hardware devices will only reduce the pressure on manufacturers to provide such drivers, Dirk Hohndel told an audience at the Australian national Linux conference today.

An unfamiliar brand name sits atop the Amazon.com bestseller list for notebook computers. This hourly-updated popularity contest has recently been dominated by Taiwan’s Asus rather than Silicon Valley’s Apple. Five of the top 10 at one point this week were Asus machines, compared with three Apples, one Toshiba and one Hewlett-Packard unit.

Contrary to what you may have heard, free and open source software (FOSS) is not anti-business. But neither is it pro-business.

Oracle's push into the Linux space is gaining momentum with the company even taking the trouble to fly someone down from Singapore to present a talk today at the Australian national Linux conference.

Should free and open source software projects set a release schedule that adheres to the old geek adage: release when it's ready? Or should time-based releases become the norm?

A new Linux filesystem gets rid of the 256-petabyte limit, and adds a checksum feature for the journal. But developers want you to know that it's not yet ready for production systems.

Computerworld is featuring a story on initiatives in the Philippines to ensure that every public school has at least one computer. While the program has now expanded to provide most schools with a small lab, a server, and Internet access, the most notable feature of the program is the use of Linux on all of the machines.

Striking a balance between mindsets might be a factor on which the success of Free software is hinged. Put simply, a struggle against so-called 'pragmatism' may have been one of the greatest barriers to wider adoption of Free software.

In a speech before the World Economic Forum in Switzerland this week, mega-billionaire Bill Gates is calling for a “creative capitalism” in which businesses build and target products for poorer nations.

The BBC and Linux - when you see the two words juxtaposed together, one tends to be surprised. Simply because all the recent coverage of the Beeb has been about the iPlayer fiasco - how the biggest public broadcaster came out with a player that could cater to just one platform.

More users opt for free service rather than paying for vendor support, but as open source catches up in the region, this may change

What do you see as the biggest danger to open-source software today? On the one hand, there's still a locus of resistance. Microsoft still maintains strongly the view that its business model, which depends upon concealing source code from users, is a viable and important and indeed necessary model. And so as long as a company that sells a billion dollars a week in software is in that sense fundamentally still trying to [fight] the free way of doing things, Microsoft remains a very dangerous party.

You see it all the time, a "product" that has a tiny percentage of the desktop market, and yet it's popularity is so evident. I'm not going to get into my thoughts on the future of Linux on the desktop, or what the percentage gains versus Apple looks like. What I'm interested in discussing, is why are people so crazy about Linux?

In August 2003, a little more than three months after the SCO Group had filed a lawsuit against IBM, seeking damages for alleged breach of contract, I had an email exchange with Blake Stowell, who was then the public relations manager of the former company.

Linux is getting more mainstream exposure than just appearing in inexpensive computers. It's now being offered by two of the world's largest PC manufacturers, Dell and Lenovo, and is making its way into tiny--not to mention trendy--inexpensive laptops

Virgin Galactic on Wednesday unveiled designs for SpaceShipTwo and the WhiteKnightTwo, two vehicles that are designed to usher in private spaceflight. The technology behind the system will have an open architecture “like Linux,” said officials.

Hearing the terms "free software" or "open source," you might imagine that they referred to a single school of thought. Even "free and open source software" (FOSS) suggests only two different outlooks: Free software, which values political and philosophical freedom, and open source, whose main interest is enhanced software quality.

With Linux on the desktop going from a slow crawl to verging on an explosion, many have toiled with the question: How do we make this happen faster? A well-known Austin-based Linux Advocate thinks he has the answer.

In a nutshell, the year 2038 problem, as it is also known, is that most Unix-like operating systems represent time as the number of seconds since January 1, 1970. On 32-bit systems, that second count is a signed 32-bit integer. What that, in turn, means -- unfortunately for us all -- is that the latest time that can be represented is 03:14:07 UTC on Tuesday, January 19, 2038.

... when I found myself in Ho Chi Min City (formerly Saigon), Vietnam, in December last year, it didn't take me long to remember that I had a friend there too. Nguyen Quang Truong, the founder of Hacao Linux and the director of a company of the same name

I was eating breakfast in my favorite restaurant today and I noticed a sign up on the wall that said: "Free Range Eggs, $4.00 per dozen"

Want to find open source tools? Linux distros have long had the tradition that software is bundled into easily-installed packages. Yet, finding packages can be less than intuitively obvious and even then they may not appear to be available for your flavour of choice. Here’s how to get the most out of Linux packages.

Every few days, it seems, another "Office Killer" is turning up in the market to challenge Microsoft by offering productivity applications for free. Some are cross-platform. Many are Web-based. All offer the promise of delivering Microsoft-level functionality for nothing, or next to nothing.

Why is it that we can manage to sway countless hardware manufactures into looking our way yet those who work in other business circles continue to ignore Linux to the point of almost being laughable? Today, we will highlight these companies, just to remind them how their decisions are costing them money.

For the second time since October, a sub-$200 fully equipped Linux desktop PC is available for sale to U.S. consumers.

A team of engineering students at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich. is designing a digital stethoscope based on uClinux. The team, called "Rhythm Reloaded," released a project proposal on the open source device, which runs Freescale's Coldfire MCF5275 CPU.

A developer of Linux-based, IP-media applications formally launched its software for Texas Instruments's DaVinci media processor platform. DigiLink Software says its Digital Media Elements (DME) IP-media stack for set-top boxes (STBs) lets television viewers watch and record Internet TV (ITV), including Flash-based content like YouTube.

Shuttle turned a lot of heads with the announcement of its $199 Linux PC at the Consumer Electronics Show last week. Now Linspire is looking to tempt retail customers with its own version of the sub-$200 PC.

Data Robotics has started shipping a Linux-based companion device that network-enables its Drobo "storage robot" appliance. Additionally, the company announced a $2,000 bounty for a port of its "Dashboard" Drobo configuration application to Linux.

Under the banner of "Hana Linux" - literally "One" Linux - the two countries have agreed to work on a groundbreaking IT development project that might shatter the final Cold War boundary.

When Kim Hawtin, like many other young Australians, went to London in 2000 to work. he never knew that he would be introduced to one of the abiding interests of his life while there. Then in his late 20s, he had gone over to the mother country after graduation. While there he got involved with Consume.net, a group aiming to build up community wireless networks.

In August, Lenovo announced that Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 would be available on ThinkPads in the fourth quarter of 2007. Though that didn't happen, Lenovo finally released details Tuesday.

Author of and contributor to the Samba file server, Andrew Tridgell, talks to Computerworld about Samba and his upcoming Linux.conf.au talk

European Union regulators said Monday they were again investigating software giant Microsoft Corp. this time on suspicion of abusing its market dominance by squeezing out competing Internet browsers and software rivals dependent on Microsoft programs.

I remember when getting a decent PC would set you back at least a grand. Then it was $500. Now, it's $150!? That's the story that small vendor LinFX wants you to buy along with its PC with pre-installed Linux.

Until recently, Linux PCs were about as easy to find in stores as a vinyl record. Now, personal computers with the Linux operating system pre-installed are becoming more readily available, thanks to new models from upstarts and established PC makers -- and disappointment with Microsoft's new Windows Vista OS.

OLPC America plans to combat digital divide by distributing low-cost laptops to needy students in the U.S.

Nearly every year for the last decade I've heard some pundit or vendor proclaim from the rooftops: This is the year of the Linux desktop. Yet, year in and year out, the proclamations don't materialize.

When the OLPC (One Laptop per Child) was first proposed, much was made of how impossible it was that there could ever be a $100 computer. Well, the naysayers were right. It turned out to be a $200 computer. Now, former OLPC Chief Technology Officer Mary Lou Jepsen says she can make a $75 laptop.

Want to run Mac OS X, Linux and Windows on the same machine? Then you’ll want to listen to SWsoft. This virtualization company claims its Parallels Server will let you run all these and more.

PC vendor Lenovo has promised ThinkPads with pre-installed Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 for some time now. Lenovo will deliver the goods the week of Jan. 14.

At CES yesterday, Everex formally introduced its gOS 2.0 Linux-powered laptop, the CloudBook Ultra-Mobile PC. eWeek has published an up-to-date profile of the hotly-anticipated UMPC, which will go on sale for $400 at WalMart on January 25th.

Asus' Eee PC and Everex's CloudBook aren't the only ones pushing down the price of affordable, open-source PCs.

Apparently Asus and Everex aren't the only ones capable of shipping dirt cheap linux boxes these days. Shuttle is getting into the game with its new KPC box.

Linux might be free to download and install, and it might offer you freedoms that aren’t available from commercial software, but don’t let that fool you into thinking that everything about Linux is free. You might save money, but there are still hidden costs that need to be taken into account.

...for the most part, you can expect free software users to differ from proprietary in a number of fundamental ways.

Linux users unhappy with the GIMP image editor may want to take a look at Pixel, a cross platform image editing application, which more closely mirrors the behavior of Adobe Photoshop.

The One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC) and Microsoft are working together to develop a dual-boot system to put both Linux and Windows on laptops aimed at kids in developing countries, the head of OLPC said in an interview Tuesday.

Now a cadre of Canberra Linux Users group folks have crafted a simple Web site to compel Windows and closed-source software uses to switch to Linux/FOSS: Make The Move. It's a great idea, but as much as I hate to admit it, I think the delivery needs work.

Is it right that impoverished third-world children have more innovative technology than corporate users? Don’t answer yet. First, take a look at the slew of recent news articles, reviews and blog posts about the XO, that little green educational laptop developed by the nonprofit organization One Laptop Per Child.

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