Monthly Archive:: March 2009

OpenSUSE’s Kiwi-LTSP: Easy Thin Client Server

Guest post by Nik Tripp 2009-03-02 SuSE, openSUSE 39 Comments

IT solutions companies have been generating lots of buzz regarding thin clients basically since the early 1990s, but have yet to really penetrate into many suitable environments. These relatively cheap computer appliances carry broad promises like energy efficiency, space efficiency, and centralized maintenance and data storage. These claims could sound like the computer industry equivalent of snake oil. Kiwi-LTSP, a combination of KIWI imaging technology and Linux Terminal Server Project, is one open source solution for thin client servers.

Intel Outsources Atom Production to TSMC

Thom Holwerda 2009-03-02 Intel 10 Comments

The Atom processor, the only bright spot on Intel's balance sheet, will soon no longer be manufactured by Intel itself (CNet has more). Intel has signed an agreement with the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), outsourcing the production of the successful chip to Taiwan. While it's not the first time Intel outsources production of its silicon, it is still an unusual move for the company to outsource the production of such a major chip.

Psion Counterclaims Intel Over Netbook Trademark

Thom Holwerda 2009-03-02 Legal 16 Comments

Two weeks ago we reported that Canadian company Psion had started an all-out legal offensive to protect its Netbook trademark, a trademark the company gained through its line of portable "Netbook" device, discontinued a few years ago. Dell had already thrown itself into the fight, followed not long after by Intel. Now, Psion has filed a countersuit against Intel.

‘Debian 5.0 Continues Strong Linux Tradition’

Thom Holwerda 2009-03-02 Debian 14 Comments

eWeek has reviewed Debian 5.0, and concludes: "Version 5 of the Debian GNU/Linux open-source operating system offers the same top management tools and processor support that previous versions of the Linux operating system have. There also are a host of updates to open-source components, and the Linux distribution is still a great fit for servers and a solid desktop choice. However, the top reason for upgrading from version 4 may be the relatively short three-year security fix window, less than the coverage time offered with Ubuntu and Red Hat Enterprise Linux-derived CentOS."

IDC: Large OEMs Won’t Make Use of OLPC Offering

Thom Holwerda 2009-03-02 Hardware 10 Comments

Earlier this month, OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte open sourced the hardware for the OLPC device, inviting manufacturers to use the technology developed for the device in their own laptops, and of course to build OLPCs themselves. Negroponte also believes the OLPC project can help make netbooks better. ZDNet talked to IDC, and they don't think large OEMs will make use of OLPC's offering.

Defense Company Releases L/GPL Critical Component Framework

Submitted by gh 2009-03-02 General Development 2 Comments

Thales, an aerospace, defense and security company (68000 employees), releases MyCCM High Integrity, a software component framework targeting mission- and safety-critical distributed real time embedded software. It integrates components written in C, and generates code for handling inter-component communication, threads (priorities, periods), locks, and mode-based reconfiguration. In addition to the software components, MyCCM-HI takes as input a model of the application in a so-called Component-Oriented Architecture Language. Open licensing policy is seen as a mean to improve industry standards.

Safari, Qemu, and Zombies

Thom Holwerda 2009-03-01 OS News 14 Comments

Yet another week has passed, so it's time for another week in review - the 8th instalment already. This week was marked by the realisation that Qemu and DOSBox on mobile phones are cool, that Apple is working hard on Safari 4, and that Microsoft appears to be more concerned about Linux than about Apple. And, of course, Haiku got Flash. This week's My Take is about zombies.

Submitted by kaiwai 2009-03-01 Hardware 127 Comments

Long-time OSNews reader Kaiwai has written down his experiences with his Acer Aspire One, Linux, and Windows. He concludes: "After a hectic few weeks trying to get Linux to work, I am back to square one again - a netbook running Windows XP SP3 as it was provided by Acer when I purchased it. I gave three different distributions a chance to prove themselves. I expected all three distributions to wipe the floor with Windows XP - after all, these are the latest and greatest distributions the Linux world have to offer. There has been at least 7 years since the release of Windows XP for Linux to catch up to Windows XP and from my experience with Linux on this said device - it has failed to step up to the plate when it was needed."

Guest post by Rahul 2009-03-01 Linux 2 Comments

Linux Magazine has put up a video of Ted Tso, one of the primary developers of Ext4 and current CTO of Linux Foundation, on the current state of Ext4, the current plan of Fedora to have it as the default filesystem for Fedora 11, how it compares to Btrfs, and other insights.Ted says that Ext4 is close to production-ready being built on the mature and stable Ext3 codebase and being an evolutionary step that brings in additional performance and scalability. Btrfs is a completely new filesytem developed from scratch with a number of new features like filesystem level snapshots that Ext4 could not accommodate. Ext4 is well on its way to becoming the next standard filesystem for Linux while allowing Btrfs to innovate more and mature over time.