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I tried, I really did, to like KDE 4.2 I really didn't like the early versions of KDE 4. I then tried KDE 4.1. I hated it. I kept getting told by people that I just didn't get it. OK, I thought. Maybe I didn't get it. So, I gave the last KDE 4.2 beta and release candidate another try for a month on one of my openSUSE 11.1 desktops. Historically, SUSE and KDE developers work closely with each other, so openSUSE is a great distribution for any version of KDE. Well, they may work well together, but openSUSE with...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 (UPI) -- A virulent computer virus has infected as many as 15 million computers around the world so far, according to various estimates. The virus -- a self-replicating computer worm known as Downadup, Conficker or Kido -- spreads across computer networks using Microsoft Windows software which have not been patched or updated properly. Microsoft issued a patch that fixes the vulnerability the virus exploits last October. The Independent on Sunday newspaper said in London at the weekend that more than 3,000 British organizations, including hospitals and the Ministry of Defense, have been hit by the virus.

Back in 2002, as Roy Schestowitz calls out, Microsoft was desperately trying to figure out a response to Linux. The problem wasn't Linux as a product-level competitor. The problem, as its Windows chief, Jim Allchin, told a small gathering of Microsoft partners (PDF), is that Linux changes the nature of software competition with odd things like "community" and "GPL licensing," the latter of which Microsoft didn't like one bit : We feel a huge threat from Linux. Maybe we shouldn't, which is a question you could answer from your perspective...There's Linux the community. We're going to learn from Linux the...

In what may come to be seen as a deeply symbolic moment in the history of operating systems, Red Hat is on the verge of surpassing Sun Microsystems' market capitalization for the first time. Sun, perhaps unfairly, represents a fading Unix market. Red Hat, for its part, represents the rising Linux market. As I write this, Red Hat's market capitalization sits at $2.62 billion, while Sun is just ahead, at $2.7 billion. The stock prices are way out of whack with revenues: Red Hat pulled in $627 million in 2008. Sun? More than $13 billion. Such is Wall Street's confidence...

The New York Times ran a piece this Sunday featuring Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth. Though a majority of the piece was biographical, and the rest wasn't exactly the picture of accuracy in its portrayal of Ubuntu (or Linux in general), there were a few interesting figures. It gives pause to wonder how, in this economy, and in an ever-changing industry, profit still gets much better press than growth. The Times reports Canonical is approaching the $30 million a year mark in terms of revenue, and Shuttleworth feels that is the point when the company will become self-sustaining. The Times also...

Russell Coker is not a man who sleeps with his computers. But he does come pretty close - two servers are positioned in a little cabinet in his bedroom, one being his server and the other his Security Enhanced Linux "play machine." The play machine is open to anyone to log in and try to break the security. The root password is out in public - this is one of the many ways in which he engages with the wider FOSS community and a way by which he tried to improve what has become the project to which he devotes...

From the very start, anyone who paid attention to SCO's attempts to throw a spanner in the Linux works, knew that they had no case. Over the years, I've covered their decline from the last major x86 Unix power to an industry joke. And, now SCO's story is almost over. It's garbage time now for SCO. Those of you who follow basketball know exactly what I mean. This is when the winning team, Linux, and its chief champions in the SCO lawsuits. Novell and IBM, can send in the reserves from the end of the bench. SCO's lawsuits are smashed...

VietNamNet Bridge – The Ministry of Information and Communications has issued an instruction on using open source software products at state agencies. Accordingly, by June 30, 2009, 100% of servers of IT divisions of government agencies must be installed with open source software; 100% of staffs at these IT divisions must be trained in the use of these software products and at least 50% use them proficiently. IT divisions at government agencies comprise the IT departments of ministries and government agencies, provincial and municipal Departments of Information and Communications. Open source software products are OpenOffice, email software for servers of...

Taking baby steps to become more familiar with a new operating system can be as simple as revamping the OS already in use on your computer. It begins with unlearning Windows-born behavior to free up your mind for a new way of doing things. Here are some tips on utilizing different open source resources to make the goal of a full time switch over to Linux a lasting one: Relearning software installation with Win-Get For Windows users, software installation is nearly always accomplished from some sort of simple GUI installer. The idea is basically to keep pounding away on the...

Happy New Year and welcome to this year's first issue of DistroWatch Weekly! Perhaps a good way of starting the year is with a look at the 17-year old history of Linux and Linux distributions - from the modest first release of "it won't be as big as GNU" to today's dominance of the free operating system in server rooms, if not yet on the desktop.

The hedge fund industry is hurting. Perhaps more collaboration among funds will help I read closely BusinessWeek.com's recent special section for CEOs about open-source software, and I wanted to offer some modest suggestions about what open source might do for the hedge fund industry. I run a San Francisco-based hedge fund called Algert Coldiron Investors. Our industry is in a lot of hurt right now, and I want to see some open-source love, too. The financial-services implosion was like an atomic bomb hitting our industry. It nuked profitability. Experts predict anywhere from 30 percent to 70 percent of hedge funds...

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?