Monthly Archive:: March 2006

Novell Evolution 2.6 Released for OS X

  Submitted by pecisk Novell and Ximian 39 Comments
The lastest stable version of Novell's Evolution is now also available for Mac OS X users. "I am pleased to announce the release of Evolution-2.6 Binary release for Mac OS X. The release works on versions 10.3 and 10.4 of the Mac OS. This release also contains the exchange plugin which was not ported during the 2.4 cycle. This release is feature compatible with the GNOME-2.14 release." Downloads.
Read More

Linspire 5.1 Italian Beta Program Opened

  Submitted by Dave Getrag Linspire 19 Comments
Normally only paid members get to beta test future Linspire releases, but the Italian branch of Linspire has opened the Italian beta program for Linspire 5.1 for everyone. Now, the catch obviously is that, well, everything's Italian, but with some guesswork and a dictionary you'll get there. Italian has a good one-to-one correspondence between vowels/consonants and sounds, so pronunciation shouldn't be too hard.
Read More

Bristol Switches 5500 Desktops From MS Office to ODF

  Submitted by Andy Updegrove Office 45 Comments
"Microsoft has lost a head-to-head competition with OpenDocument Format supporting software, with the decision of the Bristol, England City Council to convert its 5500 desktops from Office to Sun's ODF compliant StarOffice office suite. The City, after extensive study, concluded that it would save 60% of total costs of ownership over a five year period by making the switch. And, as an assist to cities, it has made the documentation of its analysis and other materials available at the Open Source Academy Website in the UK."
Read More

Secure Programming in GNU/Linux Systems: Part I

  Submitted by Sri Singh General Development 5 Comments
"This article is a first in series that deals with secure programming and related issues. Before we begin though, let's first define secure programming. A 'secure program' is an application that sits on a security boundary, taking input from a source that does not have the same access rights as the program. Such programs include application programs used as viewers of remote data, web applications (including CGI scripts), network servers, and setuid/setgid programs."
Read More

No Decision on Microsoft Antitrust Fines for ‘Weeks’

Legal 57 Comments
The European Commission said on Thursday it will need to spend a number of weeks analysing the information that Microsoft has presented in its hearing before making a final decision on whether the company will be fined for not complying with a 2004 antitrust ruling. The hearing, which is taking place on Thu and Fri, gives Microsoft an opportunity to argue why it believes it has complied with the ruling.
Read More

iPhone Unlikely; History of Apple Coverage; Universal Final Cut

  Submitted by DigitalDame Apple 8 Comments
Contrary to published reports, two independent sources speaking on condition of anonymity recently disclosed to Think Secret that Apple's cell phone ambitions have been put on hold as the company has encountered 'significant technological hurdles' in developing the product. Elsewhere, PC Mag looks back at the past 24 years of their Apple coverage, all because of Apple's 30th birthday coming Saturday. Furthermore, Apple announced Thursday that it had begun shipping Final Cut Studio 5.1, the first version of its video production suite to ship as a Universal Binary.
Read More

Fundraiser for FreeBSD Security Development

  Submitted by Joel Dahl FreeBSD 44 Comments
FreeBSD's Security officer Colin Percival seeks sponsorship. This has happened before with other FreeBSD contributors. "I'm hoping to raise $15000 Canadian (about US$13000) to pay me to work full-time on FreeBSD for 16 weeks over the summer. This will allow me to devote more time to my role as FreeBSD Security Officer, perform a complete overhaul of FreeBSD Update, and make some significant improvements to Portsnap."
Read More

Brief History of Microsoft FUD; What’s Eating Microsoft?

  Submitted by Linuxfanboy Microsoft 82 Comments
"This time it's patents that will ensure the downfall of GNU/Linux and with it, the entire world of open source. But before hanging up your certified geek propeller-hat and retraining as a dental hygienist, you might want to consider the following brief history of Microsoft's use of fear, uncertainty, and doubt as a weapon against GNU/Linux." Hopelessly pro-everything-that-is-Linux, but an interesting overview of Microsoft's approach to Linux over the years nonetheless. Elsewhere, the Guardian looks at the challanges Microsoft is currently facing.
Read More

uCLinux: a Brief Overview

  Submitted by Puru Govind Linux 1 Comment
"The advantage of embedded Linux is that it's a royalty-free, open source, compact solution that provides a strong foundation for an ever-growing base of applications to run on. Linux is a fully functional operating system, with support for a variety of file-handling protocols, network protocols, devices - a very important requirement in embedded systems because of the need to 'compute anywhere, anytime'. It is modular in nature and is easy to slim down by removing utility programs, tools, and other system services that are not needed in an embedded environment."
Read More

Solve Application Problems with Tracing

  Submitted by anonymous Unix 3 Comments
"Peer into the behavior of an application with truss. When an application doesn't work as expected, you typically look at application and system logs as a first recourse. But when logs don't help, UNIX provides a powerful set of tools that you can use to trace the application while it runs. Armed with these traces and a bit of knowledge about UNIX, you can easily solve your application problems."
Read More

HP: Too Many Open Source Licences

  Submitted by george Open Source 40 Comments
Martin Fink, Hewlett Packard's Linux vice-president, yesterday slammed the open source community's complex licensing schemes, suggesting that there are too many open source licences for developers to manage properly. Closing a presentation at the Linux World Conference and Expo in Sydney yesterday, Fink said, "If there's one thing that you take home from my speech today it is: do not make more open source licences."
Read More

KOffice 1.5-RC1 Released

  Submitted by anonymous KDE 5 Comments
The KOffice team is proud to announce the release candidate of KOffice 1.5. Read the full announcement, the changelog, and download the release. In this release, the OASIS OpenDocument support is improved even more, especially in KChart. Krita has gotten faster and more stable and KFormula has a new maintainer who has really come up to speed quickly. Across the board all applications have been improved and polished. Or so they say, in any case.
Read More

Kaffe 1.1.7 released

  Submitted by djinn Java 12 Comments
A new version of Kaffe has been released. Kaffe is a clean room implementation of the Java virtual machine, plus the associated class libraries needed to provide a Java runtime environment. The Kaffe virtual machine is free software, licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Some benchmarks are available too.
Read More