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Windows users have a real problem when it comes to updates. Sure they have Microsoft Update and certainly many applications include their own update mechanisms. Yet despite that, there seems to be a problem with Windows users actually updating. So allow me to make a suggestion. Microsoft (or a really smart ISV) should build a full application manager for Windows, similar to what most Linux distributions do today. For the non-Linux users out there - what Linux distros typically do is have a package management utility of some sort that pulls updates from a package repository (or repositories). Those updates...

A month ago NVIDIA had introduced the Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix (VDPAU) that brought PureVideo-like features to Linux. Our initial benchmarks of this video decoding API within NVIDIA's binary driver were quite favorable as it was able to dramatically cut down on the CPU usage when playing H.264 video files. To see how well NVIDIA's VDPAU really is though, we have carried out some more thorough testing now and our hardware consists of a CPU we purchased for $20 USD and a NVIDIA GeForce graphics card that retails for just $30. Can this very low-end hardware manage...

In an age where Windows and OS X reign supreme, it's no wonder that a local AISD middle school teacher became enraged after discovering one of her students distributing what she believed to be bootlegged copies of an operating system in class. While teacher "Karen" was clearly operating under the assumption that she'd scored a minor victory for the Microsofts and other downtrodden software giants of the world, the particular operating system that she ended up disciplining her student for was a freely distributable version of Linux. To wit, the following is part of an email that the teacher sent...

Following several months in development, Red Hat has just released Fedora 10 (codenamed Cambridge). A number of new Red Hat innovations can be found in this release, such as Plymouth, and there are many updated packages such as those from X.Org and the Linux kernel. In this article are some screenshots from Fedora 10 final along with some of the other features that make up the tenth release of this very popular Linux distribution.

As the recession puts pressure on tech spending, many companies are turning to open-source software to handle more IT tasks After the tech bubble burst, E*Trade's technology chief, Lee Thompson, needed to find a way to do more with less. In 2001 and 2002, the online stock trading company shrank its tech budget by one-third. "We had to go through and figure out every penny that we were spending…and make alternatives to reduce those costs," says Thompson, vice-president and chief technologist of E*Trade (ETFC). So he began using software that can be downloaded at no cost via the Internet. By...

Episode One Thanks to their design as appliances, you can get down to useful work straight away with any of the new breed of Linux-based netbooks. But sooner or later, a fair few folk come up against the unfamiliarity of Linux. And, like the legendary tribe of pygmies, you may find yourself jumping up and down in the head-high long grass shouting out the incantation that gave the tribe its name: "We're the Fukarwi." This series is designed to address that cri de coeur. Let's plunge straight into the practicalities by taking a look at Acer's Aspire One - the...

Published today are four programming guides to cover the VX800/820 Graphics Core & 2D (100 pages), VX800/820 3D & video (157 pages), CX700/VX700 Graphics Core & 2D (100 pages), and CX700/VX700 3D & video (91 pages). This is essentially just about 450 pages worth of register descriptions. We are still looking over this documentation to gauge its completeness. If you are a developer interested in this information, it can be found on the X.Org web-site. In addition to releasing 2D, 3D, and video register guides, VIA has also announced today it has partnered up with the OpenChrome team. A press...

The final judgment [PDF] from Utah is here at last. It recites what the August 10, 2007 and July 16, 2008 orders said, but it also resolves the recent dispute over SCO's desire to voluntarily waive some claims and then bring them back to the table after an appeal, should it prove successful. Here's SCO's motion to voluntarily dismiss, and Novell's response, so you can verify that this judgment indeed represents another loss for SCO. You'll see that it was Novell that suggested the wording regarding SCO's voluntarily dismissed claims that we see in the judgment, that they be dismissed...

Neighbor has an old laptop that won't boot. Can a linux bootable CD save her media files to another folder or to another usb drive?

Los Angeles: Barack Obama has promised to increase taxes if he becomes president of the United States. But the really rich want change and many of them have said they are voting for the senator from Illinois. Despite the tradition that says the country's wealthy tend to favour the Republican Party, there has been an unexpected swing ahead of Tuesday's election that favours the black Democratic candidate. For starters, the country's two richest men, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, have already said they will vote for Obama. According to Forbes magazine, Gates - worth an estimated $55.5 billion - contributed...

As promised, this is an article about why Linux is inherently more secure than Windows. I don’t promise that it’s 100% accurate down to the last detail; in fact, I have purposely simplified many details, and left out some more complex topics. I apologise about the length, too; it’s rather long, but I hope it’s interesting reading for people who are new to Linux as well as those who have not properly tried the Linux platform yet.———- In an earlier article “How to get down off an elephant”, I described why Windows viruses don’t infect Linux systems, and why you...

President Bush gets a lot of grief over the economic woes that have occurred under his watch, but now people can thank him for something spiffy: Free software. It comes courtesy of the Great American Lame Duck Presidential Challenge. In July, St. Paul software developer CodeWeavers came up with the gimmick to make its products available free for a day if any one of five positive (but seemingly unlikely at the time) things happened during Bush's last six months in office: gas drops to $2.79 a gallon, milk drops to $3.50 a gallon, U.S. jobs exceed 138 million, the Twin...

To avoid having to spend 11 hours deploying each Windows machine with all the requisite software, I have taken a finished Windows XP machine, made a bit perfect copy of it's hard drive, and copied it to the hard drive of a hardware-identical machine. Both machines have OEM licenses of Windows XP. Total time of deployment of subsequent machines: 60 minutes. Time saved: 10 hours per machine

We all love the iPod, but sadly, Apple is still not kind enough to provide an iPod manager for those of us who use Linux. However, this is not really a big issue nowadays as there are other means to manage your iPod under Linux. Thanks to these excellent free and open source media players that are certified to handle your iPod the way iTunes can. Banshee Banshee is built upon Mono and Gtk# and uses the GStreamer multimedia platform for encoding, and decoding various media formats, including Ogg Vorbis, MP3 and FLAC. Banshee can play, import, and burn audio...

The carefully crafted ecosystem of tech companies built around Microsoft's Windows operating system is showing signs of strain. Hewlett-Packard, a longtime Microsoft ally, has quietly assembled a group of engineers to develop software that would make Windows Vista easier to use, or bypass some of its more onerous features. A Skunk Works of engineers at the company is even angling to replace Windows with an HP-assembled operating system, sources say.

My colleague Eric Lai discovered recently that while top animation and FX (special effects) programs are run on Macs and some of them, like RenderMan Pro Server are being ported to Windows, it's on Linux clusters that the really serious movie and television visual effects are created. As Robin Rowe writes at LinuxMovies.org, "In the film industry, Linux has won. It's running on practically all servers and desktops used for feature animation and visual effects." Rowe's not just being a Linux booster. It's the Gospel truth. The animation and FX for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull;...

From the "who needs a pre-load when you're embedded" files: Dude - if you're getting a Dell then you're getting Linux. No you don't have to order one of those fancy Ubuntu pre-load deals. This is an embedded Linux that will be available on a whole bunch of new Dell Latitude laptops in a feature called Latitude ON. This is a feature that uses an embedded Linux to allow for instant on access to email, calendar and Internet.

Some of the coolest OS features are nowhere to be found in Windows XP or Vista. Here are 18 brilliant features that Microsoft should beg for, borrow, or steal--plus tips on how you can add many of them to your PC now. Love it or hate it, Microsoft Windows is the world's most dominant operating system. But when you look at some of the hot features found in competitors such as Linux and Mac OS X, both XP and Vista can seem a little incomplete. From intuitive interface features like Apple's application dock and Cover Flow to basic media capabilities...

July 24th, 2016.Josef Konsumer, a home-based employee and portfolio manager for ICBC/CiticorpChase, a Chinese-owned multinational investment bank, wakes up to hear his alarm clock go off at 8am, and gets out of bed, his 47-year old body aching from an aggressive personal trainer session from the day before. His morning double espresso with frothed skim milk and mocha is already waiting for him, thanks to his new Korean-made LG RoboCafe, which brews and extracts a perfect crema every time using pre-portioned, mess-free nitrogen-sealed pods imported from Brazil. He considers nudging his wife, Mindy, to get up and make him breakfast,...

When you buy a new PC today, unless you hunt down a Linux system or you buy a Mac, you're pretty much stuck with Vista. Sad, but true. So, when I had to get a new PC in a hurry, after one of my PCs went to the big bit-ranch in the sky with a fried motherboard, the one I bought, a Dell Inspiron 530S from my local Best Buy came pre-infected with Vista Home Premium. Big deal. It took me less than an hour to install Linux Mint 5 Elyssa R1 on it. As expected, everything on this 2.4GHz...