Debian

Debian Removes Binary-only Firmware From Kernel 121

Posted by timothy from the and-they're-stickin'-to-it dept.
mbanck writes "The Debian Linux kernel maintainer has announced that he will remove firmware from GPL'd drivers which obviously lack source code in its preferred form (i.e. something more appropriate than a hexdump inside a char[]), in accordance with the release manager's decision. The alternatives are user-space loading of the firmware via hotplug's request_firmware() API or making the vendors aware of the issue. How do the other distributions handle this?"
Linux Business

Linus Torvalds: Backporting Is A Good Thing 232

Posted by timothy from the martha-agrees dept.
darthcamaro writes "Looks like we don't need to speculate on what Linus' opinion is on backporting. Internetnews.com is running a story this morning that includes Linus' comments on the issue which was a /. topic yesterday. When asked by e-mail to comment for internetnews.com, Torvalds wrote: 'I think it makes sense from a company standpoint to basically "cherry-pick" stuff from the development version that they feel is important to their customers. And in that sense I think the back-porting is actually a very good thing.'"
Wireless Networking

Montreal Parking Meters Run Linux 506

Posted by michael from the working-for-the-man dept.
jbecherv writes "According to LinuxDevices.com, new-fangled Montreal parking meters run embedded Linux (Google Cache). The City of Montreal is planning to roll out 500 to 800 wireless, solar-powered parking payment stations based on embedded Linux. There is even a device profile (Google Cache) that show some details about the meters... These meters run kernel 2.4.19 on a 206MHz StrongARM SA-1110. Each system has 64MB of RAM, boots from a CF device, and is networked wirelessly via GPRS."
Linux Business

Linux Spreads its Wings 234

Posted by CmdrTaco from the like-a-beautiful-butterfly dept.
securitas writes "Businessweek's 'Linux Spreads its Wings' Special Report discusses the growing use of Linux in a wide range of products that include mobile phones, cars, telecom gear and consumer electronics; Linux in China; an analysis of the SCO litigation; a look at how Novell's Linux strategy may bring the struggling, former technology high-flyer back from the dead, as well as other articles and interviews related to the growth and spread of Linux as a viable platform for both enterprise and consumer technology."
Linux

LinSpire LPhoto and LSongs: bring on the lawsuits! 481

Posted by CmdrTaco from the not-much-loriginatility dept.
Sir Joltalot writes "Over at OSNews they're covering the newly-renamed LinSpire's LSongs and LPhoto apps. Take a look at those screenshots, and you'll notice a striking resemblence to Apple's iTunes and iPhoto. Take a look at this flash presentation and you'll see that LPhoto and iPhoto are almost exactly alike. They look like nifty apps, to be sure, but how long will they last? I would have thought LinSpire might have learned from the whole Lindows name fiasco..."
Caldera

OSRM Declares Linux Free of Copyright Violations 347

Posted by timothy from the but-they-don't-get-to-end-the-whole-circus dept.
tmu writes "According to a recent press release, the Linux 2.4 and 2.6 kernels are free of any code that violate copyrights. OSRM, the new startup formed by Daniel Egger and including groklaw founder Pamela Jones, completed a 6-month review of all code in both kernels. They must be pretty confident of the results, because they're offering product liability insurance to both developers and users."
GNU is Not Unix

Linuxfest Northwest 2004 Wrap-up 81

Posted by timothy from the that-was-then-this-is-the-new-then dept.
prostoalex writes "Linuxfest Northwest 2004 took place in Bellingham, WA this past Saturday, as announced on Slashdot before. Check out the ever-expanding photo album and what people are saying in their blogs. I also have an extensive and highly subjective write-up on my site, but I can only vouch for the events I've been to myself. Compare that to Linuxfest 2000 coverage to see how things have changed."
Operating Systems

Linux's Achilles Heel Apparently Revealed 1469

Posted by simoniker from the or-not dept.
ahab_2001 writes "In Information Week's latest 'Langa Letter', Fred Langa points to something that he calls Linux's 'Achilles' heel': 'New Linux distros still fail a task that Windows 95 -- yes, 95! -- easily handles, namely working with mainstream sound cards.' After lamenting his difficulties in getting a particular sound card to work with nine Linux distros, he concludes that his experience 'empirically shows that, despite its many good points, Linux still has some huge, gaping holes--holes that Windows plugged almost a decade ago.' (Oddball note: Information Week prefaced the e-mail alert pointing to this article by saying 'Occasionally, we have news or analysis of such importance that it warrants a special alert to you.' Hmm...)"
Linux Business

2.4, The Kernel and Forking 384

Posted by Hemos from the not-as-such-but-fun-discussions dept.
darthcamaro writes "We all assume that the kernel is the kernel that is maintained by kernel.org and that Linux won't fork the way UNIX did..right? There's a great story at internetnews.com about the SuSe CTO taking issue with Red Hat backporting features of the 2.6 Kernel into its own version of the 2.4 kernel. "I think it's a mistake, I think it's a big mistake," he said. "It's a big mistake because of one reason, this work is not going to be supported by the open source community because it's not interesting anymore because everyone else is working on 2.6." My read on this is a thinly veiled attack on Red Hat for 'forking' the kernel. The article also give a bit of background on SuSe's recent decision to GPL their setup tool YAST, which they hope other distros will adopt too."
Linux

Groklaw Tries Their Own Linux Usability Study 611

Posted by michael from the many-have-tried-few-succeeded dept.
inode_buddha writes "There's a new project taking shape at Groklaw. Calling it Grok-docs, it aims to do what many of us have long whined about - a large-scale linux usability study. Evidently, PJ had some frustrations with linux, and is asking for suggestions. So far, it seems to be following a Wiki-style setup. Everybody is welcome, especially those with little or no linux experience. I hope the distros and vendors are watching this one!"
Linux

Paid Linux Support For Individual Users? 19

Posted by Cliff from the everyone-needs-a-little-help dept.
Frustrated and Disappointed asks: "I have been using Linux for a decade, but sometimes I just don't know how to solve a problem. What's more, I don't have the time (or interest) to teach myself enough about some obscure subject to debug it myself. Are there companies or freelancers out there willing to provide paid support for individuals on a problem-by-problem basis? I don't need yearly maintenance or weekly support, just a couple times a year. This time around, for example, I can't get a desktop box to play sound. The HOWTOs are years out of date, there are no man pages, the mailing lists are silent, and the #debian channels were nothing but insults. While I don't mind doing some of my own problem solving -- I'm a very technical person -- I have a job and other responsibilities, and I'm not interested in hacking sound drivers to begin with. I don't have the option of installing a whole new distro just to qualify for a vendor's support plan."
Linux

Conectiva Linux 9 Review 124

Posted by michael from the linux-down-under dept.
JigSaw writes "Here's an english review of a popular Linux distro in the Latin American countries: Conectiva Linux 9. Jason Prince investigates its installation, the desktop usage, the package manager (synaptic) and some of the problems he met on the way."
Linux

Linux Advocacy in Ethiopia: A Traveller's Journal 146

Posted by michael from the i-met-a-traveler-from-an-antique-land dept.
Jutta Horstmann writes "At the Horn of Africa, little is known about Open Source. To change this, Jan Muehlig and Jutta Horstmann (relevantive AG, authors of last year's Linux Usability Report) set out to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Read their traveller's journal and get more information on Linux and Open Source in Ethiopia at relevantive.de/ethiopia." Their travel report is the most interesting section.
Linux Business

The Future of Tax Software on Linux? 58

Posted by Cliff from the getting-ready-for-next-year dept.
mengel asks: "So this last week, I repeated my annual ritual of trashing my scratch partition, making a FAT filesystem on it, booting Microsoft Windows(tm), and installing tax software to do my taxes. I had hoped, with the advent of Xandros, and of Linspire (formerly Lindows), that one of these increasingly important commercial companies would have talked someone like Intuit, or the Tax Cut guys, into developing this years tax software against Wine, so that it would also run on Linux under Wine as well as on MSWindows. So what has to happen before the companies who write Tax Cut and TurboTax will do versions that least run under Wine, much less native Linux versions? What can we do to help make that happen?"
Biotech

VigyaanCD: Bio/Chemical Modeling Workbench on PC 11

Posted by michael from the scientist's-toolchest dept.
PKA writes "Announcing the release of VigyaanCD (homepage, mirror1, mirror2). Vigyaan, a Knoppix customization, is an electronic workbench for computational biology and computational chemistry. The user can choose from more than 20 science applications. In addition to bioinformatics software, it provides GROMACS, TINKER for biomolecular modeling and Ghemical, MPQC, PSI3 for quantum chemistry calculations. VigyaanCD is a live Linux CD containing all the software required to boot the PC into workbench environment and is suitable both for beginners (12 demos and tutorials) and experts. Learning computational biology/chemistry has never been easier, so grab the free ISO image from several mirrors around the world and put your PC to work."
Caldera

Insuring Linux, Thanks to SCO 228

Posted by michael from the security-through-lawsuits dept.
jtheory writes "There's an interesting article on Salon.com (free daypass available, ads, etc.) about the counter-reaction to SCO's attacks on Linux, and how SCO may actually be one of the best things to happen to Linux lately, because their attacks have turned a lot of attention to the possible Achilles' heel in the code contribution process. Includes some good detail on OSRM, a company offering insurance against lawsuits like SCO's, who notably hired Bruce Perens and PJ of Groklaw fame, and is doing their own extremely thorough analysis of the code and any possibility of improperly included code. The founder of OSRM also wrote a story called Why the Linux Community Needs Open Source Insurance on LinuxWorld." We've mentioned risk insurance before.
Linux Business

Friedman on Linux Desktop Expectations 347

Posted by CmdrTaco from the they-can-only-go-up dept.
An anonymous reader writes "SearchEnterpriseLinux.com is featuring an interview with Novell/Ximian's Nat Friedman on the increasing interest about the Linux desktop. Quote from the interview - "A day doesn't go by when I don't talk to a Fortune 1000 customer from the financial services market, automotives or others that are not looking at dipping their feet into the Linux desktop." And by the way, both Nat Friedman and Miguel de Icaza's April 12th blog entry have a picture of Miguel and Nat dancing with David Vaskevitch, CTO of Microsoft. Now that's something you don't get to see everyday!"

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