New U.S. regulations went into effect July 6 that could change how vendors of devices with software-defined radios use open-source software. The new rules could impact manufacturers of mobile phones, Wi-Fi cards and other devices that use SDR technologies. SDR technologies are commonly used in today's mobile phones and Wi-Fi equipment. The U.S.
New service packs for operating systems usually offer modest performance and feature benefits. But sometimes a service pack upgrade comes along that really makes a difference, and SUSE Linux 10 SP1 is exactly that one.
"With its SP1 for SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop), Novell has given an already excellent business desktop a real kick in the pants," writes DesktopLinux.com columnist Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols in one of the first reviews of SLED 10 SP1.
Xandros is a distribution of Linux descended from Debian and built on the Debian framework. Unlike Debian though, Xandros is built more with a profiteering mindset, a philosophy that has slowly alienated it from the Linux community, more so lately after their announced affiliation with Microsoft. This is also due to their profit focused vs. the freedom focused development observed by most core Linux distributions. But that’s not to say that Xandros can’t still be a good distribution, even if it breaks with the traditions that made Linux what it is today.
Google has released a beta of its Google Desktop software for Linux.
Similar to the OS X and Windows versions, the application lets users search for text inside documents, email messages and their Gmail accounts. The software however doesn't offer the sidebar and gadgets that are available in the version for Windows and OS X.
"We focused most of our efforts on desktop search. Gadgets and sidebar are not supported, but will probably be added in the future," a Google spokesperson told vnunet.com.
The high priests of free software have congregated at Google headquarters this week to debate the future of the movement and face down recent patent threats by Microsoft.
Leading names of Linux, the world's biggest grassroots software phenomenon, are spending three days debating whether an increasingly commercial open-source community should fight or ignore the world's largest software maker.
Linux leader Linus Torvalds has finally found something that could convince him that the forthcoming version 3 of the General Public License is worth adopting: open-source Solaris.
The latest iteration of the Linux kernel has been released, bringing the lastest current (stable) release version to 2.6.21. It's been two and a half months in the making since the original 2.6.20 release, and several key improvements have been added that will make it more attractive to the enterprise. Particularly, many improvements to virtualization have been made, such as VMI. Many other fixes and additional hardware support has been introduced.
A bug has been found in a major Linux Wi-Fi driver that can allow an attacker to take control of a laptop -- even when it is not on a Wi-Fi network.
There have not been many Linux Wi-Fi device drivers, and this is apparently the first remotely executable Wi-Fi bug. It affects the widely used MadWi-Fi Linux kernel device driver for Atheros-based Wi-Fi chipsets, according to Laurent Butti, a researcher from France Telecom Orange, who found the flaw and released the information in a presentation at last month's Black Hat conference in Amsterdam.
Ironically for Microsoft, Vista is just the shot in the arm that desktop systems with open-source Linux operating systems needed to boost their sales.
For three consecutive months, data that CRN has collected from readers selling open source and Linux solutions has shown consistent expectations of large sales increases in the immediate future, while follow-up data reveals sales, on average, falling far short of expectations.
Proposed changes in version three of the GNU general public licence (GPL), which governs the use of open-source code, could split the open-source community, according to experts.
The third discussion draft of the licence was released this week, ahead of a final version due in July. It gives permission to the recent cross-licensing deal between Microsoft and Novell, in which Microsoft said it would indemnify firms purchasing Novell?s Suse Linux Enterprise Server for all its patents.
