Monthly Archive:: July 2008

Linux creator Linus Torvalds has released version 2.6.26 of the Linux kernel after a lengthy three-month development stretch since the 2.6.25 release involving nine release candidates. In announcing the release on the Linux Kernel Mailing List, Torvalds said the 87 days since 2.6.25 makes 2.6.26 a longer-than-usual release cycle. Torvalds said the changes from release candidate (RC) 9 are small, with the bulk (80 percent) being documentation updates.

A lot of manufacturers have notebook computers that they consider ruggedized in some form or another, but it's not always clear just how much they can take. Panasonic gave Geek.com access to their testing facilities in order to see some of what their notebooks go through. Some tests include temperature shock, drop testing (from various angles), a 360-degree shower with pressurized water, and more. In addition to describing parts of the test process they got some video of a Toughbook 30 standing up to a few drops and a lot of water.

Bart Trojanowski has given an in-depth 2-hour Git tutorial titled "Git the basics" for the Ottawa Group of Ruby Enthusiasts and this is the screencast of that presentation.

So you thought Linux was the key to the Eee PC's success? Not so, according to ASUS. "The bulk of the requests and requirements we see in the marketplace are for the model with Windows rather than Linux," says Henry Lee, Acer's senior product manager. "It's a give and take between simplicity of usage for the masses versus full customisation. The Linux version is really only to use exactly what is provided, and someone in the know can easily remove what's been installed. But consumers are accustomed to the Windows environment, and the Windows version will be a stronger player eventually." Editor's Note: More broadly, this piece examines whether the popularity of the Eee and its Linux-bearing cousins will be sustained, or if they will ultimately get beaten out in the netbook space by Windows-based versions. What do you think?

At last week's Guadec meeting, Kristian Rietveld delivered the GTK+ "state of the union" report. GTK+ is the multi-platform toolkit behind a number of popular applications and, perhaps most well known, the Gnome Desktop environment for Linux. Read the full report here.

Are you still using a web browser to access your favourite online applications? Why not do things the easy way, and make those applications part of your desktop with Prism. Scott Nesbitt at Freesoftware Magazine tells you what Prism can do to boost you experience of the web on your desktop -and more importantly, how to do it. Read the full story at FSM. Editor's Note: This story looks at Prism from the point of view of a Gnome user on Linux, but Prism can be used on Mac OS and Windows as well. Check out the Prism project page for information on other platforms.

For many, their first experience with Fedora leaves them in awe of the incredible artwork. This is an important part of Fedora's reputation, so if you're a fan of Fedora art, you should definitely check out what the art team has come up with.

"Recently a blog post entitled 'Why Desktop Linux is its own worst enemy' has come across my feed-radar a few times. It's yet another in the long line of 'Linux ain't ready yet' jeremiads and it doesn't really say anything new yet it got on my nerves. Why?" Ryan Cartwright at Freesoftware Magazine is on fine form with this wonderfully splenetic broadside. Read the full tirade at FSM.

Perhaps the weirdest creature to come out of the iPhone 2.0/3G launch paraphernalia is the iPhone Configuration Web Utility. It is a Rails app, downloaded and installed on your local machine. It literally starts a server on port 3000, as a service using WEBrick on Windows and as a launchd job using Mongrel on Mac.

The ability to run both console and graphical programs securely on a remote system using SSH brings you a great deal of freedom. When the communications link to that remote system has high latency, however, running interactive programs such as a text editor on the remote machine can become a real test of your patience. The bcvi project lets you edit files on a remote system using gvim (or another editor) on your local desktop machine to avoid the latency.

A few weeks ago, the OpenSUSE Project announced the release of OpenSUSE 11.0, the "community" edition of SUSE Linux, Novell's commercial Linux distribution. Here it's taken for a test drive.

Neil McAllister raises questions regarding Web development skills in an era of constant innovation. Sure, low barriers to entry give underdog technologies ample opportunity to thrive without the backing of name-brand vendors. But doesn't this fragmentation of the Web development market put undue pressure on developers to specialize? The result is a crisis, McAllister concludes, one in which maintaining a marketable skill set and hiring for a particular Web project gets more difficult as the state of the art changes on an almost daily basis.

Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring Alpha 2 was released today, 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.

Computerworld interviews Stephen C. Johnson, the brains behind YACC Yet Another Compiler Compiler: The compiler was developed some 35 years ago and is still going strong today through various incarnations. Asked what he is proudest of in terms of YACC's development and use, Johnson said: "I think computing is a service profession. I am happiest when the programs that I have written (YACC, Lint, the Portable C Compiler) are useful to others. In this regard, the contribution YACC made to the spread of Unix and C is what I'm proudest of." And would he do anything differently? "I'd try harder to find a notation other than $1, $2, $$, etc. While simple and intuitive, the notation is a source of errors as grammars evolve."