Free Republic

Software radical Richard Stallman helped build the Linux revolution. Now he threatens to tear it apart. The free Linux operating system set off one of the biggest revolutions in the history of computing when it leapt from the fingertips of a Finnish college kid named Linus Torvalds 15 years ago. Linux now drives $15 billion in annual sales of hardware, software and services, and this wondrous bit of code has been tweaked by thousands of independent programmers to run the world's most powerful supercomputers, the latest cell phones and TiVo video recorders and other gadgets. But while Torvalds has been...

Repeat after me: "There is no Oracle Linux." I don't care how many times you hear stock analysts say that Oracle is about to launch its own Linux. It's just not going to happen. Spread the word: digg this story The latest example of wishful thinking comes from Jefferies & Co. analyst Katherine Egbert, who wrote on October 13, "Our independent checks in the past two weeks indicate that Oracle seems to be close to introducing its own software 'stack.'" Jefferies, an investment bank, then cut its price target on Red Hat from $24 to $21. Red Hat's stock price...

Novell is changing the file system software used by default in its Suse Linux operating system, aligning with rival Red Hat and moving away from a project whose future has become entangled with the fate of a murder suspect. Novell said Thursday that new versions of Suse Linux Enterprise will use ext3 as the default file system, important foundational software that manages how data is stored on hard drives. The change demotes the current default, ReiserFS, to a secondary, though still supported, option. ReiserFS has been under the control of Hans Reiser, a programmer who this week was arrested on...

O ye great and knowledgeable FReeper Technogods.... We're looking to considerably expand our home network and I've been toying with the idea of a "thin client" setup, not only for the sake of expense but also for ease of upkeep and administrative supervision. I've spent many hours in the last several weeks reading about how to build a server for small business/educational settings, and I'm starting to get information overload. One article will seem terrifically informative -- but written 5 years ago. Another will have some great cutting edge ideas, but little of the "how to" specifics I need. My...

Vista Licenses Limit OS Transfers, Ban VM Use By Gregg Keizer, TechWeb Technology News Microsoft has released licenses for the Windows Vista operating system that dramatically differ from those for Windows XP in that they limit the number of times that retail editions can be transferred to another device and ban the two least-expensive versions from running in a virtual machine. The new licenses, which were highlighted by the Vista team on its official blog Tuesday, add new restrictions to how and where Windows can be used. "The first user of the software may reassign the license to another device...

Capping a monthlong investigation, Oakland police arrested the estranged husband of a missing Oakland woman Tuesday on suspicion of murder. Police said they have evidence to suggest that Nina Reiser, 31, who went missing Sept. 3, is dead. Her body has not been found. "All avenues led us to Mr. Reiser being responsible for the death and disappearance of Ms. Nina Reiser," said homicide Lt. Ersie Joyner.

Linux or open source seems to thrive wherever Left governments rule. And as Kerala schools log Microsoft out and boot open source systems, Linux world is buzzing with excitement over possibilities in the communist-ruled states. Though West Bengal and Tripura have to go whole hog to adopt a free software model, ideological closeness is more than evident. Kerala, most insiders’ feel, is turning out to be Richard Stallman's happiest hunting ground. His personal vibes with Velikakathu Sankaran Achuthanandan, even from VS's pre-chief minister era, are in play. It’s a picture watching the duo cozying together in a similar attire —...

Excerpt: At the moment, I'm ticked off because the Debian community's recent hissy-fit over the Mozilla Corp.'s trademarked Firefox logo has led them, and others, to forking the Firefox code to avoid the use of the logo. Gnutella, part of the Free Software Foundation's GNU Project, is creating "the 'GNU/Linux' version of same, to be dubbed 'IceWeasel.'" This may, or may not, become the logo-free version of Firefox that Debian will ship in its next distribution. Regardless of how this turns out, the Firefox "bug" has been removed from Debian. What are these people thinking! It will mean more work...

In the ongoing saga of SCO v. IBM, one peripheral question has been the extent of Microsoft's financial support for SCO. Groklaw has dug up an interesting bit of data in the case, namely that Microsoft supposedly promised venture capital firm BayStar that they would guarantee their multimillion-dollar investment in SCO.Buried in IBM's recent motion for summary judgment against SCO is a Declaration from BayStar general partner Larry Goldfarb. Near the beginning of the long-running legal soap opera, BayStar invested $50 million in SCO. In exchange for their investment, BayStar received 20,000 shares of preferred stock in SCO.In his declaration,...

I know devfs is depricated, but for some reason my server is still trying to mount the devfs filesystem.Does anyone know if there is any way to correct this? Thanks in advance.

When Bill Clinton made his speech to the Labour Party conference, he bamboozled a few by finishing with the word "Ubuntu".

Summary Judgment Motions: Where the Rubber Hits the Road on Evidence Production Wednesday, September 27 2006 @ 02:36 AM EDT Now that IBM has filed motions for summary judgment regarding all of SCO's claims, it's obvious what one purpose of filing such motions would be -- to win without having to bother with a trial. But since winning 100% of all the summary judgment motions you file would probably put your firm in the Guinness Book of World Records, what else might be the benefit of filing them? Ask yourself: What is the most annoying aspect to this case so...

Two U.S. software firms are asking the European Commission to take action against Microsoft's new Vista operating system, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. Adobe Systems has told EU regulators that Microsoft should be banned from incorporating free competing software for reading and creating electronic documents with Vista, the paper said, quoting people familiar with the situation. Antivirus software maker Symantec will send officials to Brussels, Belgium, next week to brief journalists about features of Vista that it says will undercut rival makers of computer security software, the paper said. Symantec confirmed on Thursday that two executives would travel...

Greetings! This document describes how to install Postfix, Amavisd-new, SpamAssassin, Pyzor, Razor, and DCC on one box running Fedora Core 4. The installation assumes that Postfix will not be the final destination of incoming mail. Also, no e-mail is sent through it to the outside world. It is a simple MTA that receives e-mail, scans it, and moves it to another MTA for processing.

SCO has filed its 10Q for the quarter ending July 31, 2006, and it's a sad story of decline, which it blames squarely on everyone but itself: Revenue from our UNIX business decreased by $1,931,000, or 21%, for the three months ended July 31, 2006 compared to the three months ended July 31, 2005 and decreased by $5,549,000, or 20%, for the nine months ended July 31, 2006 compared to the nine months ended July 31, 2005. The revenue from this business has been declining over the last several periods primarily as a result of increased competition from alternative operating...

ark Shuttleworth is rich enough to cause some havoc in the feel-good Linux community. In January 2000, at the peak of the dot-com bubble, Shuttleworth sold his South African security software firm, Thawte, to VeriSign for $700 million in stock. Shuttleworth cashed out almost immediately, walking away with the entire purchase price, just as VeriSign's stock began its rapid descent. “Life has been kind to me,” he says. But the 32-year-old has no children and doesn’t feel much need to hang on to his money. He spent $20 million in 2002 to orbit the Earth for a week in a...

Fun excersize to see what Linux Distro is right for you..

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- IBM will build a next-generation supercomputer for the U.S. Energy Department with the potential to achieve a sustained speed of 1,000 trillion calculations per second, or one petaflop, the department said on Wednesday. The new computer, dubbed "Roadrunner", will be built at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Congress provided $35 million in fiscal 2006, which ends on September 30, to launch the computer project. Roadrunner may eventually be used for an Energy Department program that ensures the U.S. stockpile of nuclear weapons is safe and reliable without the resumption of underground testing, the department...

I once installed Damn Small Linux on a smaller USB flash drive (512 MB), but it was only operable from within Windows (and then only s-l-o-w-l-y) -- wasn't able to get it to boot on its own. Just got a deal on a 4GB USB 2.0 flash drive and would like to install a bootable version of Linux on it. xubuntu ("Ubuntu Lite") appeared to go through the steps of properly installing itself on the flash drive. Set up my PC's CMOS to boot first from "USB-HDD". Inserted the flash drive and rebooted -- and the drive was ignored in...

In a surprise move, Linspire is now offering its CNR ("Click 'N Run") software service at no charge to its Linspire and Freespire Linux distribution customers. In addition, the company will soon be open-sourcing the CNR Client. CNR, previously a fee-based service offered at annual subscription rates of $20 for basic and $50 for premium ("Gold") access to new programs, had been the San Diego-based company main source of income. Now, however, according to CEO Kevin Carmony, Linspire is doing well enough from selling its higher-end products and services that it can afford to offer its basic CNR service free...