Monthly Archive:: June 2008

The first laptops to make use of the SpursEngine, a multimedia co-processor derived from the Cell chip that powers the PlayStation 3, will go on sale in Japan in July. Toshiba will launch its Qosmio G50 and F40 machines with the chip, which contains four of the "Synergistic Processing Elements" from the Cell Broadband Engine processor. The Cell chip used in the PlayStation 3 has eight of the SPE cores plus a Power PC main processor. The SPE cores perform the heavy number-crunching that makes the console's graphics so stunning. The SpursEngine SE1000 will work in much the same way in the laptops. The operating system will run on an Intel Core 2 Duo chip and the SpursEngine will be called on to handle processor-intensive tasks, such as processing of high-definition video. This arrangement means the laptop should be capable of some tricks that haven't been seen on machines until now.

Installing software on Linux. In the world of online minefields, this is the big one. Back in the day, you installed software on Linux by compiling it manually. Time-consuming, but assuming you had a decent knowledge of gcc, make, and maintaining library files, this could actually work. Later one came the package management systems that were supposed to make installing software on Linux a breeze: rpm, dpkg, and so on, and so forth. Since human beings have the innate tendency to assume that everyone else is wrong and only they are right, we are now stuck with 3453495 different Linux package managers. Denis Washington, a Fedora developer, is taking steps to resolve this issue.

HP has announced that they will open source the AdvFS under the second version of the GPL. AdvFS is a mid-90's file system that is used by the Tru64 UNIX operating system. The Wikipedia page on AdvFS provides the necessary background information and feature set of the AdvFS file system.

Alistair Crooks, president of the NetBSD Foundation, announced recently that it "has changed its recommended license to be a 2 clause BSD license". This makes NetBSD more easily available to a number of organisations and individuals who may have been put off by the advertising or endorsement clauses.

I've seen superlative after superlative concerning the release of Firefox 3.0, and in all honesty, it is making my stomach ache. Yes, Firefox 3.0 is a great release. It has a slicker interface (the UI on Vista looks quite pretty) and the use of native widgets in Linux is a very, very welcome addition. On top of that, it actually delivers what I was craving for the most from my favourite Windows web browser: much improved performance. But does Firefox 3.0 change the web, or alter the way we use the intertubes?

openSUSE 11.0 is one of the most anticipated Linux distribution releases of recent times. The openSUSE team released version 11.0 yesterday, and it comes with the latest KDE4, GNOME, kernel, all the usual latest and greatest. In addition, it carries a few new Compiz Fusion plugins, improved package management (still a weak spot for openSUSE), and a brand new front-end to the installer. Reviews are starting to trickle in, and they are almost exclusively positive.

The battle between the OpenDocument Format and Microsoft's Open Office XML was long, and here and there rather nasty, but it appears as if we finally have a winner. The company behind OOXML already conceded by announcing it would implement support for ODF in Office 2007 SP2, but now it has also said it quite literally: ODF has won.

Back in May 2006, Sun announced during the JavaOne conference it would release Java as open source, licensed as GPL software. While it was released as GPL, it still contained about 5 percent proprietary, non-free code - the Java trap, as the FSF calls it. The FSF called to dismantle this trap, and now the IcedTea project has reached an important milestone.

While Linus Torvalds is the main figurehead for the Linux kernel, there are of course countless other individuals contributing to the Linux kernel - some more than others. A contributor of key importance is Andrew Morton, maintainer of the -mm tree. Since changes in how Morton handles things are on the horizon, LWN.net sent Morton a few questions.

A new major release of Novell's community-supported distro openSUSE 11 is now available and can be downloaded from the mirrors. Linux Format has a hands-on look at the new installer, SLAB menu and Compiz Fusion, and weighs up whether the distro can fight competition from Ubuntu and Fedora. Is this the start of a new era for SUSE?

Application virtualization veteran Citrix, who last year purchased Xensource, today announced their intention to deliver XenDesktop, based on their thin client technology, for the iPhone. While similar applications exist in the form of VNSea, Citrix is a major player in virtualization and this certainly bodes well for those who want to connect to remote devices via their iPhone. Citrix demo'ed their wifi-only application at the Citrix Application Delivery Conference in Australia this week.

BetaNews reports that popular news aggregator Reddit has gone open source. The Reddit source code is available now and is written largely in Python.

Michael Crider at Freesoftware Magazine has written a fine, detailed howto on using Mail Merge in OpenOffice, full of useful tips and screenshots. This is one of the better OpenOffice.org tutorials.

In this instalment of Automation for the people, automation expert Paul Duvall explains how you can use open source tools to automate the generation of Unified Modelling Language (UML) diagrams, build figures, entity-relationship diagrams (ERDs), and even user documentation.