Articles about Open Source

Dell must have read my story on “What will it take to make Linux popular?”, agreed with Linus Torvalds' initial thoughts, then thought that it might be a good idea to publicly announce “Project Sputnik”, which despite the name doesn’t have anything to do with spacecraft like Dell would want you to believe. (Okay, so the skunkworks project predates my story by six months, but surely official timing can't be a coincidence?)

What Project Sputnik does is bring “an official developer laptop based on the Dell XPS 13 with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS preloaded, available in select geographies”, meaning Linux for the people on the Dell XPS 13 in much simpler words. Dell is taking the project to the next level by officially releasing it this fall. Timing is interesting with Windows 8 launching October 26. Since the laptop comes with Linux, presumably it will cost less than its counterpart running Windows.

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Google has released the latest and greatest version of its Android mobile operating system, known as Jelly Bean, or Android 4.1 into the open source channel on Monday afternoon.

An announcement from Jean-Baptiste Queru, Google's head of the Android Open Source Project, officially opened availability of the Jelly Bean binaries Monday. Generally speaking, open sourcing is the very first step in broad availability for the newest build of Android, as this is the framework phonemakers use to build their respective versions of the operating system.

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File synchronization services like Dropbox have really taken off in recent time. They basically allow you to sync files between devices using cloud storage as buffer. Depending on the service, you get web access, document editing options, photo galleries, media streaming and more on top of that.

All services have in common that they encrypt the connection between your computer and the cloud host to protect the data from third parties that try to intercept or record what is being transferred. Each service has implemented its own scheme, and it is often difficult and sometimes even impossible to find out how the data is protected by the service.

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If you’re looking to equip your PC with a free spreadsheet, then your first thought will probably be to download one of the open-source Office competitors: OpenOffice, maybe, or LibreOffice.

But if you prefer something a little more lightweight then there’s an interesting alternative in the GNOME Project’s Gnumeric.

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In a recent interview Linus Torvalds, the mastermind behind the Linux kernel, said that the operating system is not as popular as Windows on consumer PCs because it doesn’t come preinstalled. Manufacturers sell the computers they make with an operating system on board, which most of the time is Windows. Why can’t it be Linux instead?

According to Net Applications, in 2011, sales estimates have Linux at roughly 1.5 percent usage share on desktop and laptop computers. Windows on the other hand was evaluated at 92 percent in the same estimate.  The discrepancy in sales points out few of the issues that Linux has to overcome in order to reach a broader market adoption, but it can also provide a solution.

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Hybrid cloud software provider Eucalyptus open sourced its software on Tuesday, moving the entire package to code-sharing site GitHub. Version 3.1 of the software includes performance enhancements and a feature called FastStart, which allows IT administrators to deploy Amazon Web Services-compatible clouds in under 20 minutes.

Eucalyptus is an application that reproduces the AWS cloud locally, which in turn allows IT personnel to easily migrate cloud applications built from AWS back and forth from the public to private cloud. Amazon itself supports Eucalyptus, giving the nod to Eucalyptus' efforts to support Amazon Web Services' APIs back in March.

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Open-source RTS games aren’t generally known for having quality graphics, even when finished, so you probably wouldn’t expect too much from an alpha build. Which is why 0 A.D. is a real surprise, thanks to visuals that are more impressive than many commercial products.

Okay, it’s true, the program has been in alpha for a very long time (running on Windows, the Mac and Linux must make for a complex development process), but the attention to detail is still impressive. Your citizens are people, not anonymous blobs. Buildings look as though like people live in them, with seating areas, pots and vases scattered around. And they live in a realistic and complex world, so for instance a desert will have sand, rocks, animals, perhaps palm trees which cast true shadows.

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More than half of all software acquired by IT in the next five years will be open source, according to a new study, and open source software (OSS) leads in the areas of cloud, big data, mobile apps and enterprise mobility.

"Taken together with applications like mobile and enabled by cloud, we are entering an exciting new era of 'Open Innovation on Demand,' where not only can OSS innovate faster, it can be deployed immediately and consumed as a service from the cloud", says Michael Skok, general partner at North Bridge Venture Partners, one of the sponsors of the survey.

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Code sharing site GitHub announced a client for Windows on Monday, aimed at making it easier to search for code on the platform. The move is an obvious nod to Microsoft's dominance in computing, and done more out of necessity than anything.

GitHub is built on top of the command line Git application, and has quickly begun to change the way software is developed. It makes the process of managing an open-source project a whole lot easier, and allows work on code by many developers versus a few "gatekeepers" who control what gets into daily builds.

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Red Hat celebrated the 10th anniversary of its flagship Enterprise Linux product, but reaffirmed the decision to shift focus to cloud computing, pledging that open-source roots would be key to success in the new business venture.

The company plans to release Enterprise Linux 7 in in late 2013, but offered little during a Tuesday press conference on what to expect. What may play a large part in the new release is a focus on the cloud. For all intents and purposes, Red Hat believes Linux is in the past and the cloud is the future.

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The Apache Software Foundation announced the release of Apache OpenOffice 3.4, the first new build of OpenOffice since it was handed to the ASF by Oracle after development stalled when many contributors defected across to The Document Foundation’s LibreOffice, which is also based on OpenOffice.

Version 3.4’s major features can be found under the hood -- vastly improved startup times, improved OLEObject handling, better chart rendering and support for scalable vector graphics are the most notable changes in this new release. Also implemented is ODF 1.2 encryption, while the suite is now licensed under the Apache License 2 engine.

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In terms of version numbering the release of GIMP 2.8 might seem like a minor one, but in reality it is very big news. The cross-platform image editor has been available for Windows, OS X and Linux for many years now and one thing that Windows’ user have often struggled with is the abnormal interface that comprises multiple windows; in this latest version there is now the option of working in a single window mode.

The great thing here is that there is a choice, so if you have become used to the way GIMP has worked in the past you can stick with this interface but if you have found this is the one thing that prevent you from using the image editor, you have a new option available to you.

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At first glance Linux Live USB Creator looks much like UNetbootin, theUniversal USB Installer, and every other tool that aims to help you download and create a bootable Linux environment for your PC. And as those existing tools are generally very good it’s not immediately obvious why we might need another.

Take a closer look at the Linux Live USB Creator and you’ll see it’s not just another “me too” utility, though -- the program really does have enough features and functionality to stand up against the best of the rest.

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Shares of Red Hat rose 17 percent to $60.12 in heavy midday trading. Yesterday, after the bell, the company reported $1.13 billion revenues for fiscal 2012, ended February 29. Red Hat is the first open-source based company to post $1 billion in revenues

Quite a feat for a platform Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer once called a "cancer" and has repeatedly questioned the security of. One has to wonder if Ballmer might be reconsidering the parnership Microsoft penned with Red Hat back in February 2009.

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The busy folks at Pen Drive Linux have updated their handy Universal USB Installer tool to support four more distros. Which means it can now convert live CDs of Deepin Linux, LinHES Linux, Trisquel Linux and Satux Linux to run on USB keys.

And that’s not bad at all, as the tool already supported all the usual big name distros (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE and more, each in multiple versions), as well as a lengthy list of Linux-based utilities: Gparted, System Rescue CD, and antivirus rescue CDs from AVG, Avira, BitDefender, F-Secure and Kaspersky, amongst others.

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