Linux Archive

  • Q&A with Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation

    Q&A with Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation

    Posted on April 14, 2010 | No Comments
    Today marks the start of the fourth annual Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, which is "an exclusive, invitation-only summit gathering core kernel developers, distribution maintainers, ISVs, end users, system vendors and other community organizations for plenary sessions and workgroup meetings to meet face-to-face to tackle and solve the most pressing issues facing Linux today." All the names you'd normally expect at a Linux event are going to be there -- IBM, Google, Hewlett Packard -- along with companies jumping on the MeeGo bandwagon -- Nokia, Intel, and more. The agenda lists some interesting topics, but the Summit itself raised a number of questions for me. I exchanged emails with Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, about the Summit, and the state of Linux in general.

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  • PS3 owner gets $130 rebate because of Linux removal

    PS3 owner gets $130 rebate because of Linux removal

    Posted on April 9, 2010 | No Comments
    Y'all know that Sony killed Linux support on the PS3 with the latest firmware update (and had previously killed it with the introduction of the PS3 Slim), yes? Yes. A European PS3 owner has received a £84.00 (around $130) rebate from Amazon for removing support for the free and open source operating system. Win~!

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  • Is IBM splitting hairs with open source?

    Is IBM splitting hairs with open source?

    Posted on April 8, 2010 | No Comments
    It's no secret that I'm a big Free Software fan. It's no secret that IBM is a giant company with more money than I can possibly imagine. So I was pretty happy in 2005 when IBM, in an obvious PR stunt to get buddy-buddy with the open source community, made its Statement of Non-Assertion of Named Patents Against OSS, ostensibly saying that it would permit open source projects to use any of the items covered by those patents without risk of penalty or lawsuit. Yay! Finally, a BigCo getting it and doing the right thing! But five years is a long time, people come and go, and promises can be forgotten. IBM has lately threatened to sue someone for infringement of a lot of IBM patents, including at least two that were included in the Non-Assertion statement.

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  • Remember the Linux wristwatch?

    Remember the Linux wristwatch?

    Posted on April 5, 2010 | No Comments
    With all the hype about the iPad, and indeed, the hype about smaller and smaller mobile computing devices, I thought I would remind you all that there was at one point a Linux-powered wristwatch! This marvelous curiosity was discussed back in 2001, when it ran kernel version 2.2.1, had 8 megabytes of flash memory, and had IrDA (remember that?!). It even had a touchscreen display, and had a PIM suite that "consists of an organizer, WML browser, to-do list and a calculator" all in 51K of code!

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  • No more Linux for the PS3

    No more Linux for the PS3

    Posted on March 29, 2010 | No Comments
    I almost bought a Sony PS3 specifically so that I could use Linux on it. Now, I'm glad I didn't, because Sony has announced that in an upcoming firmware release they're going to remove support for alternate operating systems. The official explanation for the removal of this feature is "due to security concerns", but no specific security concerns have actually been mentioned yet.

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  • Masen Marshall, the Ultimate Linux Guru, has a special laptop

    Masen Marshall, the Ultimate Linux Guru, has a special laptop

    Posted on March 23, 2010 | No Comments
    Masen Marshall, pictured above, is not your ordinary Linux user. No, he's the Ultimate Linux Guru, a title bestowed upon him by his significant contributions to the Linux.com user community. He's seen here holding a laptop signed by Linux creator Linus Torvalds. All of the stickers and bling you've added to your laptop are now decidedly second rate.

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  • Linux.com store adds more clothing options for your geek lifestyle

    Linux.com store adds more clothing options for your geek lifestyle

    Posted on March 10, 2010 | No Comments
    The Linux.com store is open for business! Nice looking shirts, hats, and onesies are available for Linux users of all ages. Also available are mugs for the all-important coffee, and stickers. All proceeds benefit the Linux Foundation's various programs.

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  • North Korea develops its own Linux distro called Red Star OS

    North Korea develops its own Linux distro called Red Star OS

    Posted on March 5, 2010 | No Comments
    If you guys weren't terrified of North Korea by now, here's more evidence that the country is absolutely nuts: they've developed their own Linux distribution! It's called Red Star OS, and we can thank a Russian student for unearthing it for us. I now fully expect to see knee-jerk reactions like, "Down with Linux!" even though that makes no sense at all.

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  • Nice Doggie: Puppy Arcade 7 available

    Nice Doggie: Puppy Arcade 7 available

    Posted on March 2, 2010 | No Comments
    Of all the wonderful uses for Linux, gaming hasn’t traditionally been one of its stronger suits. But as we all know, old console emulators provide eons of entertainment and said emulators run across a variety of operating systems. And so there’s Puppy Arcade, a derivation of the small-footprint, runs-on-just-about-any-hardware Puppy Linux.

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  • Dell’s “Linux Tax” is outrageous

    Dell’s “Linux Tax” is outrageous

    Posted on March 1, 2010 | No Comments
    I knew you had to pay a little extra to get Windows, but $100,000 to get Linux on your Mini 10n netbook? Good lord! What are the manuals written on? The skin of unicorns? Click to embiggen.

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  • Smartphone Sales Up 24 Percent, iPhone’s Share Nearly Doubled Last Year (Gartner)

    Smartphone Sales Up 24 Percent, iPhone’s Share Nearly Doubled Last Year (Gartner)

    Posted on February 23, 2010 | No Comments
    Last year, Apple's iPhone nearly doubled its worldwide market share of smartphone sales to 14.4 percent, up 6.2 points from the year before, according to the latest market share figures put out by Gartner. The iPhone still trails behind Nokia's Symbian-powered smartphones (No. 1), which saw their share decline 5.5 points to 46.9 percent, and RIM Blackberries (No. 2), which gained 3.3 points to end the year with a 19.9 percent share. Remember, these are worldwide estimates. In the U.S., both Blackberry and Apple are much larger than Symbian. And when it comes to mobile Web traffic, Apple and Android dominate with 81 percent share. According to Gartner, Android phone sales jumped 3.4 points (to 3.9 percent), but Android is still smaller than WIndows Mobile or Linux. Those mobile OSes, however, saw their market share drop 3.1 and 2.9 percent, respectively. Palm's WebOS barely made a mark with 0.7 percent share.

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  • Ksplice Uptrack now available for Linux users everywhere

    Ksplice Uptrack now available for Linux users everywhere

    Posted on February 9, 2010 | No Comments
    Last summer we wrote about Ksplice, a hot new technology that allows Linux kernel updates to be applied in real time, without requiring a reboot. Whether you want to use this for your personal laptop, or a lab room full of PCs, or a data center hosting environment, Ksplice Uptrack, the company's hosted service, is now available to the general public. They're offering a thirty day free trial, plus a completely free (as in beer) version for Ubuntu users.

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  • Linux creator says, ‘Nexus One is a winner’

    Linux creator says, ‘Nexus One is a winner’

    Posted on February 7, 2010 | No Comments
    Since we all know that Android runs a modified version of Linux, you’d think that the creator of Linux, Linus Torvalds, would absolutely love Android handsets. Nope. As a matter of fact, the man hates cell phones. Torvalds says that he got the G1 when it came out but rarely used it because of his [...]

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  • I’m Linux, you’re Linux, we’re all Linux!

    I’m Linux, you’re Linux, we’re all Linux!

    Posted on February 5, 2010 | No Comments
    I've been a full-time Linux user since 1999. I've been an advocate for Linux and Free Software for most of that time. My advocacy efforts usually stay within my social group, or at FreeGeek Columbus, though occasionally I'll use my posts here to support the penguin. Linux, as an open source project developed by an ad-hoc group of people, often with competing agendas, has succeeded without much mainstream advertising. Microsoft had their laptop shopper commercials, and Apple has had their wildly successful "I'm a Mac" commercials, but there have been few Linux commercials. In the open source style of Linux development, now's your chance to change that state of affairs!

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  • Linux skills now more employable than ever

    Linux skills now more employable than ever

    Posted on January 14, 2010 | No Comments
    tuxcashWhen I first started using Linux, back in the late 1990s and the Red Hat 5.2 era, the skills I gained weren't very useful to many employers. I initially hoped that learning Linux would help me spring into some kind of "real" UNIX job. Now, more than a decade later, Linux is more and more common, has replaced a lot of "real" UNIX systems, and the skills required to administer Linux systems are actually helpful when looking for a job. Linux is found in networks and appliances all over, and the monoculture of Microsoft hegemony is slowing fading. According to the Linux Foundation, Linux-related jobs have grown 80% since 2005.

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