Archive
This is the third in my series of reviews for Debian-based commercial distros that might be appropriate for SOHO use. The first article covered my exploration of Lindows, the second one focused on Libranet, and this article covers a recently released distro called
MEPIS.
They say that "diversity is the key of survival and evolution in any domain. In software world though, variations are so big that they have started to prevent cooperation between software users and developers." Diversity is the key of survival and evolution in any domain. Because of variation, individuals from same species will react differently in the same environment, some surviving and becoming stronger, others disappearing. In software world though, variations are so big that they have started to prevent cooperation between software users and developers.
This is the second in my series of reviews for debian-based commercial distros that might be appropriate for SOHO use. The
first article covered my exploration of Lindows, and this one is focused on Libranet. Before I get started with
Libranet I want to clarify a couple of points.
I work in a genetics research laboratory at an academic institution. Recently, a colleague of mine was having a lot of trouble with his Windows 2000 workstation. I took a look at it and determined that the ethernet card built onto the motherboard had failed, and so bought a new ethernet card to plug into an available PCI slot.
"
Code Reading: An Open Source Perspective", by
Diomidis Spinellis, is a new kind of book. It's a foray into a domain normally left untouched by Computer Science texts and exemplifies yet another positive contribution from the Open Source movement. Simply put,
Code Reading is a detailed discussion of the techniques required to read and maintain both good and bad code. As an interesting twist, the author draws on projects from the Open Source world to provide examples, both good and bad.
It seems to me that a lot of attention lately in the commercial Linux development area has concentrated on either large enterprise customers, or wooing the home user who can barely turn a computer on. Even distros claiming to offer the perfect solution for both ends of the spectrum don't quite seem to fit what I am looking for.
As someone who is always looking to maximize performance and efficiency from my computers, I was delighted to have stumbled upon a program named Distcc a while back. According to their website distcc is a "fast, free distributed c/c++ compiler."
When I was presented with the opportunity to review The Kompany's
dbRadar product, I jumped at the chance. I seem to be on a continual quest for good database tools.
As previously
reported on OSNews,
Visopsys is a kernel and operating system for PC compatible computers. It has been in development since late 1997. The kernel is small, fast, and open source. Check inside for more info and a screenshot.
Today we are very happy to publish a very interesting Q&A with major
freedesktop.org members: the founder Havoc Pennington (also of Debian, Gnome and Red Hat fame), Waldo Bastian (of SuSE & KDE fame), Keith Packard and Jim Gettys (of X/XFree86/fontconfig/w3c fame) and David Zeuthen, a new member who's taking over the ambitious HAL project. In the article, we discuss about general freedesktop.org goals, status and issues, the role of KDE/Qt in the road to interoperability with Gnome/GTK+, HAL (with new screenshots), the new X Server aiming to replace XFree86 and we even have an exclusive preliminary screenshot of a version of Mac OS X's Exposé window management feature for this new X Server! This is one article not to be missed if you are into Unix/Linux desktop!
I recognize that Open Source folks are passionate. I understand and I applaud the dedication and fierce loyalty. But for the love of all that is warm and fuzzy, could you please give it a rest? Just for a little while? There is something else that really needs some attention: proper documentation.
I had been keeping a watchful eye on the developments in the Apple world ever since Steve Jobs’ revamped company revealed the first fruity iMacs in the mid-90s. Mac OS 8 and 9 never really appealed to me, and Windows ran all my games and software, so I never thought about making a switch any time soon. Then one day I met Unix for the first time in my life.
Recently, I have been working on several large SQL projects, so when I was given the opportunity to write a review for theKompany.com's
Data Architect software (especially now that its little brother Rekall has being
open sourced), I knew exactly which wretched projects to test it against; mine.
I recently picked up a copy of
SuSE 9.0 Professional. I have never used or been familiar with a SuSE product before as I've only used Mandrake, Red Hat, and a bit of Debian. After using Red Hat for a while I decided to evaluate SuSE and I am now sorry for not having tried it sooner.
There's been a bunch of news recently about Microsoft's continuing anti-trust problems. There were arguments in Massachusetts' appeal of the consent decree between MS and the Department of Justice. Also, three days of hearings occurred this week in the European Union's investigation of MS conduct in Europe. Nothing definitive happened, but there are some intriguing bits and pieces that surfaced.
I am waiting for
Longhorn. Thus, I was very interested in the new 4051 build. Here are my findings.
We've all heard the age old argument second only to the vi vs. emacs religious wars:
FreeBSD Vs Linux. As a long time linux user, I decided that is was time I spent some time on the other side of the fence to see if it was any greener. Oh, and by the way, vi rules.
I'm always looking at different and new Linux distribution's now and then, trying to finally find one that is good enough to overthrow windows on my PC. But all the distributions seem to have a weakness, Mandrake is rpm based, Debian makes it hard to set some things up and Gentoo requires a lot of work and time compiling. And so I decided to try out
Libranet.
Commercial software companies across the industry have an often well-deserved reputation for poor customer service. Unfortunately, companies that sell Open Source Software are well on the way to establishing a reputation for being even worse than commercial firms. I believe I know why. The reason has its' roots in the origin of the free software movement, and in the cultural bias of the geek world. Here is my take on the subject, for whatever it might be worth.
I have installed Fedora Core 1 (Yarrow) to see what has changed between it and Red Hat Linux 9 and to get a feel for this new and powerful Linux operating system. For some people, the name Fedora will not be a familiar name, for others (Red Hat Linux or OS enthusiasts), Fedora could (In some ways) be considered to be the 'new' Red Hat Linux 9.x or 10 release, the not so long awaited sequel to Red Hat Linux 9, which came out in late March 2003. However, Fedora Core 1 is not Red Hat Linux 10 (as I try to explain below), and to quote from the front page of the
Fedora Project website:
