Data Storage

Mandriva Joins the Netbook Market With the GDium 122

Posted by timothy from the price-is-all dept.
AdamWill writes "Lately it's hard to avoid the buzz about netbooks — the small, cheap laptop systems that were popularized by the Asus Eee PC. Mandriva is providing the innovative operating system for the upcoming GDium netbook system, produced by Emtec. The first GDium will be a netbook with a 10", 1024x600 resolution display and a battery life of four hours, weighing in at 1.1kg. The innovative G-Key system stores the Mandriva operating system and all the user data on a USB key — nothing is permanently stored inside the GDium. You can use your own desktop and data by plugging the G-Key into any GDium."
Software

BOINC Now Available For GPU/CUDA 20

Posted by Soulskill from the good-excuse-for-a-new-video-card dept.
GDI Lord writes "BOINC, open-source software for volunteer computing and grid computing, has posted news that GPU computing has arrived! The GPUGRID.net project from the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park uses CUDA-capable NVIDIA chips to create an infrastructure for biomolecular simulations. (Currently available for Linux64; other platforms to follow soon. To participate, follow the instructions on the web site.) I think this is great news, as GPUs have shown amazing potential for parallel computing."
Bug

RHN Bind Update Brings Down RHEL Named 312

Posted by kdawson from the remind-me-of-your-name-again dept.
alexs writes "Red Hat's response to update bind through RHN, patching the DNS hole, made a fatal error which will revert all name servers to caching only servers. This meant that anyone running their own DNS service promptly lost all of their DNS records for which they were acting as primary or secondary name servers. Expect quite a few services provided by servers running RHEL to, errr, die until their system administrators can restore their named.conf. Instead of installing etc/named.conf to etc/named.rpmnew, Red Hat moved the current etc/named.conf to etc/named.conf.rpmsave and replaced etc/named.conf with the default caching only configuration. The fix is easy enough, but this is a schoolboy error which I am surprised Red Hat made. Unfortunately we were hit and our servers went down overnight while RHN dropped its bomb and I am frankly surprised there has not been more of an uproar about this."
Security

Linux's Security Through Obscurity 215

Posted by CmdrTaco from the we-all-do-it-sometimes dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The age-old full disclosure debate has been raging again, this time in no other place than at the foundations of the open-source flagship GNU/Linux operating system: within the Linux kernel itself. It beggars belief, but even Linux creator, Linus Torvalds, has advocated against the sort of openness on which Linux has thrived, arguing that security fixes to the kernel should be obscured in changelogs, saying 'If it's not a very public security issue already, I don't want a simple "git log + grep" to help find it.' Unfortunately, it's not kernel exploit writers who need to grep the changelog in order to find kernel vulnerabilities. On the contrary, it's downstream distributors who rely on changelog information in order to decide when to patch the kernels of their distributions, in order to keep their users safe."
Operating Systems

Linus on Kernel Version Numbering 416

Posted by CmdrTaco from the you're-using-slashdot-T_2_5_0_212 dept.
walshy007 writes "In a recent thread it was asked what it would take for an 'unstable' 2.7 development tree to be created, to which Linus replied: 'Nothing. I'm not going back to the old model. The new model is so much better that it's not even worth entertaining as a theory to go back. That said, I _am_ considering changing just the numbering. Not to go back to the old model, but because a constantly increasing minor number leads to big numbers. I'm not all that thrilled with "26" as a number: it's hard to remember. I think the time-based releases (ie the "2 weeks of merge window until -rc1, followed by roughly two months of stabilization") has been so successful that I'd prefer to skip the version numbering model too. We don't do releases based on "features" any more, so why should we do version _numbering_ based on "features"?'"
Cellphones

First North American OpenMoko/FreeRunners Arrive 180

Posted by timothy from the reminds-one-of-sony-mylo dept.
holdenkarau writes "The North American OpenMoko FreeRunners are starting to arrive. It would appear that the OpenMoko still has problems with some 3G networks, including AT&T. Although, in my own personal completely unscientific test, 2 out of 3 AT&T SIM cards worked. Check out the unboxing of a complete FreeRunner (along with debug board) and my experience getting the FreeRunner up and running. Or a direct link to the pictures for those of you bored with text. If you feel brave enough to take the plunge, you can buy your own FreeRunner from the OpenMoko store."
Linux

Linux 2.6.26 Out 288

Posted by CmdrTaco from the kernel-about-town dept.
diegocgteleline.es writes "After three months, Linux 2.6.26 has been released. It adds support for read-only bind mounts, x86 PAT (Page Attribute Tables), PCI Express ASPM (Active State Power Management), ports of KVM to IA64, S390 and PPC, other KVM improvements including basic paravirtualization support, preliminary support of the future 802.11s wireless mesh standard, much improved webcam support thanks to a driver for UVC devices, a built-in memory tester, a kernel debugger, BDI statistics and parameters exposure in /sys/class/bdi, a new /proc/PID/mountinfo file for more accurate information about mounts, per-process securebits, device white-list for containers users, support for the OLPC, some new drivers and many small improvements. Here is the full list of changes."
GNOME

Shuttleworth Sees Possibility For a QT-based GNOME 296

Posted by CmdrTaco from the left-some-neurons-in-space dept.
An anonymous reader writes "derStandard.at has an extensive interview with Ubuntu-founder Mark Shuttleworth, in which he seems to be pushing for a switch to QT in the GNOME-project: 'I think it would be perfectly possible to deliver the values of GNOME on top of QT.' He goes on to talk about Apple as an 'innovation leader' and problems with Hardy Heron."
Operating Systems

Should the Linux Desktop Be "Pure?" 665

Posted by kdawson from the debatable-points dept.
jammag writes "According to Matt Hartley, many Linux desktop users don't like to admit that there's scads of closed source code commonly used with the Linux desktop. Hartley points to examples like proprietary drivers, the popularity of Skype among Linux users (in preference to the open source Ekiga), and the use of Wine. He concludes that, hey, if the code works, use it — a stance that won't sit well with purists. But his article raises the question: is it better to embrace some closed source fixes, and so create a larger user base, or to remain pure, and keep Linux for the specialists?"
Mandriva

Mandriva Linux 2009 Alpha 2 Released 156

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the still-needs-some-ironing dept.
AdamWill writes "The Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring Alpha 2, marking the first public pre-release of the upcoming Mandriva Linux 2009. This alpha introduces several significant changes, most obviously the inclusion of KDE 4 — 4.1 beta 2, specifically — as the default version of KDE, and the latest development version of GNOME, 2.23.4. The kernel has also been updated to release 2.6.26rc7. Another feature of interest to many users will be the addition of orphan package tracking (and optional automatic removal) to the urpmi package manager. Of course, many applications have been updated (although the default version of Mozilla Firefox is still currently 2.0.x), and most of the distribution has been rebuilt with a new GCC version, 4.3. Mandriva warns that this is a true alpha, likely to contain many bugs related to the new version of KDE. Please install it only in a test environment, and especially do not use it as an upgrade from any earlier Mandriva Linux release."
Graphics

Hardware-Based Video Acceleration Coming To Linux 143

Posted by kdawson from the buh-bye-frame-skipping dept.
sammydee writes "Phoronix reports that GPU based video decoding acceleration will be implemented in Gallium3d sometime this year. Drivers currently using Gallium3d include the open source nouveau driver for NVIDIA cards and experimental Intel GMA drivers. This is definitely good news for anybody who has ever tried to play high-definition 1080p content on any CPU older than about a year."
Security

Package Managers As Achilles Heel 263

Posted by timothy from the dip-your-computer-in-the-styx dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers from the University of Arizona have released a study that takes a look at the security of ten popular package managers. They were able to show all ten were vulnerable to attacks from a mirror or man-in-the-middle that allow an attacker to (along with other things) crash the system or obtain root access. Furthermore, the researchers created a fictitious administrator and company name and were able to lease a server and get it listed as an official mirror for all the distributions they tried (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, CentOS, and OpenSUSE). This raised the question: What keeps you up at night, the thought of attacks on your package manager or previously discussed and patched vulnerability in DNS?" justin samuel (one of the Arizona researchers) also points out a synopsis on CERT's blog.
GNOME

Release Team Proposes Gnome 3.0 Plans 306

Posted by timothy from the gnome-rocks-and-so-does-kde dept.
benuski writes "Today at GUADEC, the Gnome User and Developer European Conference, the gtk+ team announced their plans for gtk+ 3.0; immediately after, the Gnome release team announced their plans for Gnome 2.30 to be changed into Gnome 3.0. This would mean a release date a year and a half to a year in the future. Details are short at the moment, but the Gnome team seems to be following in KDE's footsteps, but hopefully will avoid the problems that plagued KDE 4.0's release."
Graphics

Linux Alternatives To Apple's Aperture 271

Posted by CmdrTaco from the linux-users-deserve-pretty-pictures-too dept.
somethingkindawierd writes "An experiment focusing on open source tools for Ubuntu Linux to compete with Aperture on the Mac. The author didn't think he would find a worthwhile open source solution, but to his surprise he found some formidable raw processing tools. A good read for any Linux fan or photographer looking for capable and inexpensive tools"
Operating Systems

Linux For Housewives. XP For Geeks. 511

Posted by CmdrTaco from the or-just-cheapskates dept.
Talinom writes "ZDNet has an article sure to raise the hackles of any self-respecting geek. They report that housewives buying small laptops like the Asus EE are causing Linux usage for that demographic to spike. A reporter for Tech-On states that 'Retailers and contract manufacturers in Taiwan say that novice PC users there, like students and housewives, tend to buy the Linux version of the Eee PC701, while geeks go for Windows XP.'"
Linux Business

Best Buy Is Selling Ubuntu 656

Posted by kdawson from the but-wait-you-also-get dept.
SirLurksAlot writes "It appears that Best Buy is now selling Ubuntu, both through its Web site and in its brick-and-mortar locations. Going by the release on the product page, Ubuntu has actually been available for the low, low price of $19.99 since May 6th of this year. It is being packaged as the 'Complete Edition.' While they don't specify on the site what version is being offered, a quick call to a local store revealed it to be Hardy Heron, the latest Long Term Support version. How did this development fly under the radar for over two months without anybody noticing?"
Operating Systems

Gentoo 2008.0 Released 164

Posted by Soulskill from the upgrades dept.
An anonymous reader notes that the Gentoo 2008.0 final release is available. From the announcement: "Code-named 'It's got what plants crave,' this release contains numerous new features including an updated installer, improved hardware support, a complete rework of profiles, and a move to Xfce instead of GNOME on the LiveCD. LiveDVDs are not available for x86 or amd64, although they may become available in the future. The 2008.0 release also includes updated versions of many packages already available in your ebuild tree."
KDE

Review of KOffice 2.0 Alpha 8 – On Windows 162

Posted by timothy from the didn't-see-that-coming-did-you dept.
4WebChimps writes "As featured previously on Slashdot, the KOffice project is working towards a cross-platform, open source office suite for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. The most recent release, KOffice 2.0 Alpha 8, achieved that goal by being the first release for all three operating systems simultaneously. Want to try KOffice on Windows? TechWorld has a review (with screenshots) of KOffice on Windows, including the installation process which is as simple as clicking a few buttons (the online installer does the rest). Hopefully it won't be long before KOffice sits alongside OpenOffice.org as a usable cross-platform open source productivity suite."
Handhelds

OpenMoko In Stores On July 4 212

Posted by timothy from the 20080704 dept.
ruphus13 writes "July 4 will be day when OpenMoko's Neo FreeRunner will be available to US consumers. Being Open Source, it is modifiable down to the core. From the article: 'The FreeRunner is based on a GNU/Linux, and it will initially ship with basic software to make calls, send and receive SMS, and manage contacts. But the company is encouraging users to write and install their own applications. Software updates will add features to the phone over time, and the company said an August update will enable location-based services.'"

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