Linux Archive

Review: Arch Linux – Easy, Simple and Clean

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-30 Linux 42 Comments

"The philosophy of Arch is simply simplicity. The user is in total control of the system. There are no flashy GUI installers - only a simple ncurses based installer that is easy to use and does its job well. No services ae started by default and their rc.conf is a thing of beauty - very simple to understand and maintain."

Why Do People Switch to Linux?

Submitted by LinuxFanBoy 2005-10-28 Linux 115 Comments

"During the last month, we conducted a survey of readers who use Linux. We asked them why they switched to Linux and received a plethora of answers. Surprisingly, anti-Microsoft sentiment had less to do with the choice than one might imagine. Linux stands on its own as a user preference."

Submitted by diegocg 2005-10-28 Linux 44 Comments

Linus has released kernel 2.6.14 after two months of development. There's a big amount of changes: new features like HostAP, FUSE, the linux port of the plan9's 9P protocol, netlink connector, relayfs, securityfs, centrino's wireless drivers, support for DCCP (currently a RFC draft, PPTP, full 4 page-table support for ppc64, numa-aware slab allocator, lock-free descriptor lookup and many other things. Read the comprehensible changelog or the full changelog.

SymphonyOS Beta1 PR1 Released

Submitted by zegenie 2005-10-27 Linux 26 Comments

SymphonyOS has reached beta stage-- well, sort of. They released the first preview release of the first beta (are they trying to beat this?). The stability of the Mezzo dektop environment and Orchestra rendering has been improved, various applications have been updated, and much more. Download here.

Submitted by anyweb 2005-10-27 Linux 5 Comments

"After using Smoothwall Express 2.0 for years and now testing out v3.0 alpha I can conclude that this product is shaping up to become even more fantastic than I ever thought it could be. It gives power to the end user, allows them to decide how to control their network and makes it easy to do so. The new GUI (web based interface) is much clearer, easier to read, and provides more information about what is going on."

Mockup 0.2.0 Alpha 1.1 Released

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-23 Linux 7 Comments

Mockup 0.2.0 Alpha 1.1 has been released. Again, this release is solely for developers and not for the faint of heart. A roadmap is available in the release announcement. A guide on installing this latest Mockup snapshot can be found here.

Where Linux 802.11x Support Needs Work

Eugenia Loli 2005-10-22 Linux 55 Comments

This is a comprehensive list of where Linux wireless support currently falls a bit short. This list of problems that should get fixed in Linux wireless grew out of Dan Williams' attempt to put a GUI on top of Linux wireless with NetworkManager.

UniPKG: Package Formats Unification

Submitted by iSteve 2005-10-22 Linux 15 Comments

UniPKG (universal Package manager) is a modular package manager. It contains support for .rpm, .deb and Slack's .tgz package format. In future, ArchLinux's package format is planned as well. It doesn't depend on any of the distribution's tools; it's completely self-sufficient.

LG3D LiveCD 2.3: Linux with Sun’s Looking Glass

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-21 Linux 40 Comments

"LG3D LiveCD is an interesting project incorporating Sun Microsystems' Project Looking Glass - a Java-based technology that attempts to bring a richer user experience to the desktop and applications via 3D windowing and visualisation capabilities. The newly released version 2.3 is considered to be the project's first stable release. Based on SLAX 'Popcorn', but enhanced with Firefox, Gaim, working NVIDIA graphics driver, and copy2ram support, the live CD boots directly into a great-looking 3D desktop with many interesting capabilities (see this document for hints to navigate the 3D workspace)."

Tech Firms To Tackle Linux Desktop Standards

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-18 Linux 135 Comments

Adobe, IBM, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Novell, RealNetworks and Red Hat are all backing the new Linux standards effort led by the Free Standards Group. The nonprofit organisation plans to marshal their resources to form standards for key components of Linux desktop software, including libraries, application runtime and install time. The group said Monday that it will encourage software developers to use its guidelines when building programs for Linux as part of its Linux Standard Base project.

OSDL To Push Linux for Mobiles

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-17 Linux 10 Comments

The Open Source Development Labs, an industry consortium devoted to improving Linux, plans to launch an initiative on Monday to bring the open source operating system to mobile phones. OSDL's Mobile Linux Initiative is intended to improve Linux for the small, but increasingly powerful, devices.

Mockup 0.2.0 Alpha 1 Released

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-16 Linux 45 Comments

Mockup 0.2.0 alpha1 has been released. Just like v0.1.0, this release is focused on the underlying foundation, "this means that it's useful only for developers and it's not easy to install."

Linux Calling: Are Cell Phones Ready?

Eugenia Loli 2005-10-14 Linux 42 Comments

The Open Source Development Labs, an industry consortium devoted to improving Linux, plans to launch an initiative Monday to bring the open-source operating system to mobile phones.

Review: The E680i Linux Smartphone

Eugenia Loli 2005-10-11 Linux 30 Comments

As smartphone prices decline, they have become more popular every day. Symbian, PalmOS, Windows Mobile and Linux seem to be the big names in this high-end market of phones, all showcasing PDA-like features, native toolkits and fast processors. Today we are looking at one of the most popular Linux smartphones (especially in Asia), the Motorola E680i, which was released around May 2005 and was graciously provided by Geeks.com for this article.

Ohio LinuxFest 2005: A Whole Lot of Linux in One Day

Submitted by SilentBob4 2005-10-11 Linux 2 Comments

"The third annual LinuxFest was held on Saturday, October 1 at the Greater Columbus Convention Center. It's the first time I attended this one day conference so I didn't know what to expect. Overall, I found it to be an interesting and generally well-planned affair with a good balance of informative presentations, relevant vendor displays, and some general Linux geek fun."

CLI Magic: CheckInstall

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-10 Linux 19 Comments

"The magic in CheckInstall is that it learns everything your new app or package will add to your system, and then creates a binary installable package geared to the package manager you use, whether that be Slackware, RPM, or Debian. Optionally, it will also install the newly created package. But whether you install then or later, when the time comes that you want to remove the package from your system, all you need to do is run the appropriate command for your package manager."

Linux on Desktop Is a Diverse Market – Really

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-05 Linux 25 Comments

Don't expect hegemony from a single Linux vendor on the desktop comparable with Microsoft's Office, as rival frameworks and implementations tackle different markets. That's according to Red Hat fellow Alan Cox, who said research indicates users are adopting KDE and Gnome to serve different scenarios. Evidence from different reports suggests KDE is more widely used in Europe and Gnome in the US.

Is Desktop Linux Stuck on Stupid?

Submitted by Magnum 2005-10-05 Linux 101 Comments

"So how's that look-like-Windows thing working for the Linux community? Is the wave of desktop adoption far ahead of where it was in 2001 and 2002 when this started? And, if not, why don't we stop doing it? Is it because we're stuck on stupid?"

Wind River Flows Into Mobile Linux Maelstrom

Andrew Youll 2005-10-05 Linux 1 Comment

Wind River today launched a version of its commercial embedded Linux distribution targeting mobile phones, set-top boxes, PVRs (personal video recorders), and other small-footprint consumer electronics devices. The company expects its Platform for Consumer Electronics, Linux Edition to be used in several mobile phone designs shipping before 2006.

Linus on Specifications

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-03 Linux 55 Comments

In a conversation that began as a request to include the SAS Transport Layer in the mainline Linux kernel, there was an interesting thread regarding specifications. Linux creator Linus Torvalds began the discussion saying, "a 'spec' is close to useless. I have _never_ seen a spec that was both big enough to be useful _and_ accurate. And I have seen _lots_ of total crap work that was based on specs. It's _the_ single worst way to write software, because it by definition means that the software was written to match theory, not reality."