Linux and Unix Forum

Every now and then [URL="http://www.theregister.co.uk"]The Register[/URL] publishes a really funny news piece, and the one entitled 'Confused BBC tech chief' is a perfect example. According to the report, in an interview with UK based web design magazine [URL="http://www.netmag.co.uk/"].net[/URL], the Director of Future Media and Technology at the BBC, one Ashley …

According to the latest [URL="http://www.idctracker.org"]IDC Quarterly Server Tracker report[/URL] the growth of Linux as far as the US x86 server market is concerned has started to slow. In fact, it is has done more than just slow, when compared to Windows-based server growth it has slipped backwards. In 2005 Windows …

If the Asian networking out of the box specialists [URL="http://www.norhtec.com/"]NorhTec[/URL] are to be believed the answer is very low indeed: how does $85 (£41) sound? Remarkably that is how much the new NorhTec MicroClient JrSX is set to cost, making it what must be the lowest priced Linux powered thin …

For anyone outside the UK, news about the [URL="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/"]BBC iPlayer[/URL] is hardly going to be earth shattering I agree. Indeed, for most people inside the UK and who are not part of the Beta trial there is no access to the [URL="http://www.bbc.co.uk"]BBC TV[/URL] content via streaming video across an IP …

[URL="http://www.redhat.com"]Red Hat[/URL] has opened a dedicated online resource for its partners around the globe, giving them access to the product, program, pricing and training information on both Red Hat and JBoss solutions and services from one single location which is localized in the Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean …

Some devices set the world on fire, just ask Apple for details. Others, do not. The UMPC seems to be falling into the luke warm gadget category at the moment, and despite the best efforts of the usual suspects sales of the Ultra Mobile PC remain disappointing. Maybe because nobody …

[URL="http://www.ibm.com"]IBM[/URL] has announced that it is joining the [URL="http://www.openoffice.org/"]OpenOffice.org[/URL] development community, with an initial involvement concerning code contributions it has been developing as part of its Lotus Notes product. The code includes accessibility enhancements, and IBM is expected to make ongoing contributions to the feature richness and code quality of …

Simon Willcocks is a man on a mission, albeit an unusual one that no doubt many developers will recognise as being something of a geek driven dream. The mission in question to deliver native RISC OS desktop applications under Linux. This dream is fast becoming a reality, however, with the …

A new forensic computer from a UK based company promises to make the task of gathering evidence at the scene of a crime much easier. The dual booting Windows XP and Suse Linux [URL="http://www.dataduplication.co.uk/details/trecorder.html"]TreCorder portable forensic lab [/URL] is built into a rugged portable chassis and can simultaneously copy up …

According to a report at [URL="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/07/dell_linux_ubuntu_red_hat_but_where/"]The Register[/URL] it would appear that Dell is making life difficult for UK customers who want to buy a Dell PC running Linux. Being a snooping journalist myself, I went to have a look for myself and indeed it is a lot harder to buy …

The latest version, V4.0 RC3, of [URL="http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/"]Damn Small Linux[/URL] was released today and it is really very small indeed. Described as a 50Mb mini-desktop oriented Linux OS, DSL is actually small enough to fit and boot from a business card CD as a live Linux distribution. Originally developed as something …

According to a [URL="http://www.computerworld.com.sg/ShowPage.aspx?pagetype=2&articleid=6269&pubid=3&tab=Home&issueid=117"]Computerworld Singapore report[/URL] quoting newly published research, 2012 will be the year of the Linux mobile phone, with some 31 percent of all smart phones, or 331 million devices, running Linux. The prediction is based largely upon the fact that Linux has a much faster growth rate …

IBM has announced what it is calling the [URL="http://www.ibm.com/linux"]Big Green Linux[/URL] initiative in order to spark further interest in getting Linux firmly integrated into the enterprise, this time by going on the cost reduction and energy consumption attack. This follows up from the Project Big Green commitment announced by IBM …

In what could prove to be of major importance to the future of motherboard and component data transfer rates, the Photonics Technology Lab at Intel has announced a silicon laser modulator that can encode data at 40Gb/sec. According to [URL="http://blogs.intel.com/research/2007/07/40g_modulator.html"]Dr. Ansheng Liu[/URL], Principal Engineer with the Intel Corporate Technology Group …

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project has finally moved from being vapourware and over-hyped smoke and mirrors hardware prototyping to being on the verge of a proper production line at long last. It has only taken five years for the Negreponte/MIT low-cost laptop to move from global computing for …

Is Blu-Ray dead in the European water? Independent pan-European research by GfK has today revealed that Blu-Ray may not be winning the high definition race after all, despite much brouhaha. In fact, according to the report on the state of the standalone high definition player market in Europe, HD DVD …

Over the past few years, 3-D rendering in window managers has become a new trend in the desktop environment. OS X was the first to make fancy visual effects prominent in the way users interact with the windows in their desktop. Windows Vista has also jumped on the bandwagon with …

Bj looks a lot like an evil AIBO, with its black finish and blue glowing eyes. So what, you might say, who cares about yet another robot dog? The concept simply never caught on as far as the consumer was concerned, which is probably why the usually retail smart Sony …

Hot on the heels of JavaFX, taking on the likes of Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe Flash, Sun looks set to formally unveil its plans for Project Indiana this week and attack the Linux developer heartlands. Solaris has long been known as the really secure Unix variant that sucks when it …

It has always been something of a running joke here in England, where you have to buy a license from the government in order to watch TV (I kid you not, it helps fund the good old BBC), that blind people get a 50 percent reduction on the annual £135 …

IBM has just announced the arrival of [URL="http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/deepcomputing/bluegene.html"]Blue Gene/P[/URL], the newest and fastest supercomputer around. How fast? Well Blue Gene/P just about triples the performance of Blue Gene/L, which currently holds the official title of the world’s fastest computer. The IBM System Blue Gene/P Solution is designed to operate continuously …

A member of Skype staff posting in the Linux support forum there seems to have taken a course in customer relations from <insert your least favourite company here> if his responses to criticism of the lack of real world development of the Linux version of Skype, compared to Windows development, …

The PlayStation 3 is, without doubt, a multi-talented piece of kit: state of the art games console, Blu-Ray player, media centre and more. Much more, in fact, because from the 1st June you will be able to add Linux Enterprise Server to the functionality list. That is the date from …

[URL="http://www.sapphiretech.com"]Sapphire Technology[/URL] has announced a new addition to the HD 2400 and HD 2600 graphics accelerator families scheduled for a July release, the completely passively cooled HD 2600 XT Ultimate Edition. As fans of the Sapphire Ultimate Edition family will already be aware, these are renowned for not only being …

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has said that the open source movement needs to “play by the same rules” as the rest of the business and claims “what’s fair is fair.” Which is pretty rich given the high profile cases involving dodgy business practice and Microsoft during the last few years. …

A [URL="http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/11/1220219&from=rss"]posting[/URL] on Slashdot today speaks of an [URL="http://www.eweek.com/article2/0%2C1895%2C2125848%2C00.asp"]interview[/URL] with Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth which occurred last week. In it, he states that Dell computers preloaded with Ubuntu will not include WINE, an open-source Windows emulator for the Linux platform. Mr. Shuttleworth stated that he does not want Ubuntu to …

[URL="http://www.hitachi.com"]Hitachi Global Storage Technologies[/URL] has announced the world’s highest-capacity, highest-performing notebook hard drive and it will feature in Dell and Alienware systems. The 2.5”, 200Gb, 7200rpm, Travelstar 7K200 brings twice the capacity of its predecessor as well as a 22 percent performance hike. Using Hitachi’s third-generation perpendicular magnetic recording technology, …

[FONT=&quot]It seems that everyone and their uncle are doing a Linux deal at the moment, and the latest to hop into the same commercial bed are IBM and Red Hat. Today the companies have announced an initiative to encourage the dramatic growth of Red Hat Enterprise Linux on IBM System …

This week, developers for the Ubuntu operating system are meeting in Seville, Spain to begin work on a new version of the distribution, Mobile Ubuntu. Designed to work with Intel's recently-announced low-power processor and chipset architecture, Ubuntu plans to allow developers creating mobile software the ability to create software utilizing …

As DaniWeb [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry1319.html"]reported[/URL] back in February, the trouble with asking what your customers want is that they have a habit of letting you know in no uncertain terms. When Dell did that at their IdeaStorm site, the masses yelled ‘what we want is Linux pre-installed’ and the Michael Dell yelled …

As Red Hat's modifications to the Linux kernel to improve real-time scheduling near completion, their director of emerging technologies, Tim Burke, has been pushing for its use in the business world. At a recent Wall Street conference, Burke made his case for real-time Linux's abilities to fulfill investors' needs for …

IBM has today announced the availability of an [URL="http://ibm.com/systems/p/Linux/systempave.html"]open beta version[/URL] of its virtual Linux environment to enable x86 Linux applications to run without modification on POWER processor-based IBM System p servers. Designed to reduce power, cooling and space by consolidating x86 Linux workloads on System p servers, it will …

The Linux mascot, Tux, is about to introduce himself to the masses—by driving really, really fast. [URL="http://tux500.com"]Tux500.com[/URL], a Linux marketing site, is working to raise $350,000 to take primary sponsorship of Stephan Gregoire's car in the Indianapolis 500 race on May 27. So far, only about $6000 has been raised, …

As Intel and AMD continue to war for control of the desktop microprocessor market, a recent announcement made by HP shows that a third company, VIA, is still a contender. HP has chosen VIA microprocessors for new Compaq thin-client PCs for sale in China. They're cheaper and more energy efficient …

While announcing the name of Ubuntu's next release for October, 2007, Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth spoke of a new version of the Ubuntu distribution to be released alongside Gutsy Gibbon. This release, he says, will not include any firmware, drivers, applications, and even sounds and imagery which are not completely …

Last Tuesday, Palm announced that they're developing a new operating system. Not surprising, especially since the current one that they've got needs a revamp. The huge news here is that this new operating system is going to use the Linux kernel as the base of the operating system, freeing them …

Open source means that it's not possible to pirate the software, right? Well, somehow OpenBSD developers have found out exactly how you can do that, by copying sections of some Linux wireless drivers (released under the GPL of course) and then releasing them under OpenBSD's less-restrictive license, allowing proprietary use. …

Wireless networking has, in my rather sadly predictable geeky opinion, made computing not only a whole lot more accessible but sexy as well. In fact, I might even go so far as to say that the social Internet service explosion would not have happened, or certainly not happened as quickly, …

Red Hat's been the king of Linux for a while -- but as of lately, it's been quite some time since they released an update to their enterprise edition of their distribution, RHEL. 2 years in fact. Now, Red Hat has finally released a new version of RHEL: REHL 5. …

The MHW2040AC Parallel 2.5-inch mobile hard disk drive has a capacity of just 40 GB, a rotational speed of 4,200 rpm and an 8Mb buffer size, so why is [URL="http://www.fujitsu.com/global/"]Fujitsu [/URL]making such a fuss about it? Perhaps it has something to do with the temperature tolerance, this thing will comfortable …

The trouble with asking your customers what they want is sometimes they tell you and it is not what you were expecting to hear. Case in point, [URL="http://www.dell.com"]Dell[/URL] requesting just such feedback 10 days ago and being inundated with thousands of customers and, one assumes more importantly, potential customers yelling …

According to Linux.com, A few librarians working at the The Georgia Public Library have now created a new Linux-based system for content management and organization for large-scale library operations. Evergreen, the name of the system was written in a mixture of languages, including C, Perl, and Javascript, and is open …

Just as the games console which has the honor of being at once both one of the most innovative entertainment devices to arrive in our homes and the most stupidly named, the Nintendo Wii, arrives on the market so a lawsuit starts that attacks the very heart of that innovation: …

I have always been fascinated by the fact that, in most areas of technology, physical size is constantly shrinking. The one exception being LCD displays, of course, which seem to get bigger every year. So I was excited by two pieces of news to cross my desk this week, the …

About five years ago the BBC carried a news story about a chap in Australia who had taken advantage of a new law which meant that patent applications only needed to innovation rather than invention. He registered a patent application for something known as a ‘circular transportation facilitation device’ or …

Although it sounds too good to be true, Toshiba Europe has released details of what it claims to be the first rewritable printer in the world. Yes, you read that right, a printer that can print onto the same piece of paper as many as 500 times. In what may …

Although it sounds like some kind of fantasy computing game, and in a way that sums it up pretty nicely, a 40 core supercomputer for your desktop will be a reality from January 2007 thanks to [URL="http://www.tyanpsc.com"]TyanPSC[/URL]. The next generation personal supercomputer from Tyan Computer Corporation was launched today, with …

It looks like NVIDIA really means business, announcing it intends to attack the Intel integrated graphics processor market with an ICP of its own. Now that is some target, given that Intel is pretty much the heavyweight champ when it comes graphic chip manufacturing and sales by the numbers. No …

Dell has today announced the addition of its ninth-generation PowerEdge servers, the first to be powered by Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors. Not only is this good from the performance perspective but also when it comes to bang for your buck in the enterprise, with up to 40 percent enhanced performance …

Well, yes, if you believe the Sony hype then the [URL="http://www.dynamism.com/g1/main.shtml#"]Vaio VGN-G1LAP[/URL] at just 1.98 pounds is indeed the world’s lightest lappy. The carbon fiber body helps considerably, meaning that despite the low weight you still get the benefit of a 12.1” 1024 x 768 screen rather than the only …