Free Republic

The North Korean government has developed its own operating system based on the open source Linux OS. The "Red Star" operating system has apparently been in development since 2006 but came to light after Russian news channel, Russia Today, covered a blog post by Russian college student "Mikhail". The student claims that the North Korean OS can be purchased in Pyongyang for $5 and looks very similar to Microsoft Windows, with a similar user interface. The system has both server and client versions, and separate application programmes can be purchased at $10 a pop. Mikhail also mentions that some North...

Another day, another botnet. This time, it has the rather pretty name of Mariposa - it means butterfly - and is believed to be one of the world's largest. More than 13 million PCs were infected by Mariposa, which apparently infected more than half the world's 1,000 largest companies and at least 40 major financial institutions. The botnet was , and three men have been arrested. According to Panda Security, the three men used the aliases Netkairo, Ostiator and Johnyloleante. "Designed for information theft, Mariposa has stolen personal data from millions of compromised computers," says Defence Intelligence. "Amongst this personal...

MWC Intel and Nokia have joined forced to create a new platform to take on Google's Android - MeeGo. MeeGo, announced this morning, is to be constructed from the best bits of Maemo and Moblin: Nokia and Intel's existing Linux-based platforms respectively. It will be available later this year with the avowed intention of taking on Android in everything from smartphones to tablets, and all those other form factors we haven't thought of yet. Clearly, Symbian hasn't been punching its weight in the fight against Android. When asked directly what MeeGo means for the world's most-popular smartphone platform, Nokia responded...

I had the free version of AVG on my computer but these past few days things started messing up all over the place (processes getting slower and slower, couldn't download, mouse right click stopped working, among others). Went online and followed the suggestion on one site to remove AVG, which worked! Everything is running blazing fast, no hiccups, mouse is working again. Only problem is my computer isn't protected from viruses, malware, etc. Looking for a FREE product that works without all the unnecessary bells and whistles. Any recommendations, FReepers? TIA!

I'm a long time Firefox fan, but I've also grown fond of Google's Chrome browser. In fact, I've pretty much switched to Chrome as my browser of choice on my Windows PCs. Up until now though I've stuck with Firefox on Linux, but now that Chrome is available as a beta on Linux, I'm being tempted to switch. I've been using the Chrome developer builds on Linux for months. It was fast, but it was also unstable so I never seriously considered it as a Firefox replacement. With the Chrome beta, though Chrome is proving to be both faster than...

CrunchBang Linux is an Ubuntu based distribution featuring the lightweight Openbox window manager and GTK+ applications. The distribution has been built and customised from a minimal Ubuntu install. The distribution has been designed to offer a good balance of speed and functionality. CrunchBang Linux is currently available as a LiveCD; however, best performance is achieved by installing CrunchBang Linux to your hard disk - CrunchBang Linux comes with the ability to play most popular media formats, including but not limited to MP3, DVD playback & Adobe Flash. CrunchBang Linux also comes with many popular applications installed by default, including but...

Mac clone maker defends Rebel EFI, likens it to 'reading a book in the bathroom'Mac clone maker Psystar last week indefinitely suspended sales of its only product, a $50 utility that lets customers install Apple's Snow Leopard operating system on generic Intel-based computers. The company also said it would resume selling systems "in the coming days." Those machines will run Linux rather than Mac OS X. Psystar, which began selling Mac clones in April 2008, has been battling Apple in federal court in California since July 2008, when Apple sued the Doral, Fla. firm, saying it violated copyright laws by...

If there was one word that could get Open Source readers more passionate than Microsoft in 2009, it was Ubuntu. Ubuntu is not the most profitable Linux, and it’s not the distro with the biggest penetration of any major market. But partly due to its commercial arm Canonical, based officially on the Isle of Man but actually located in London, Canonical’s charismatic CEO, Mark Shuttleworth, and to its desktop ambitions, it is the Linux distro you most liked reading about. I was only dimly aware of this at the start of the year. But I learned. Ubuntu 9.04 to be...

Linux Vendors Need To Get Off the Stick to Compete with Windows

Moody Gardens welcomed another baby penguin on Sunday, the third this month. The new babies are among 24 eggs expected to hatch this season, which would be a record. They include gentoo, chinstrap and king penguins. Since the penguins are originally from the Southern Hemisphere of the world, they observe opposite seasons from Texas. This is their springtime and breeding season. Chinstrap and gentoo penguins build rock nests that can reach up to three feet across to protect the eggs from sudden floods and the cold ground. King penguins, on the other hand, hold their eggs on their feet, switching...

With the stable release of FreeBSD 8.0 arriving last week we finally were able to put it up on the test bench and give it a thorough look over with the Phoronix Test Suite. We compared the FreeBSD 8.0 performance between it and the earlier FreeBSD 7.2 release along with Fedora 12 and Ubuntu 9.10 on the Linux side and then the OpenSolaris 2010.02 b127 snapshot on the Sun OS side. ..... All operating systems were left with their default options during the installation process and left with the default set of packages for each operating system except for the...

2010…a new decade, and with it must come a new round of predictions, right? It’s a particularly interesting time to be a pundit, though. Not only is technology emerging at a blistering pace, but education itself is undergoing some serious transformations as we look towards global competition. I won’t even try to predict how Ed Tech will look in 2020. Ubiquitous WiFi was barely conceivable in 2000; we were just happy that we finally got to party like it was 1999. I can take a pretty good stab at the next couple of years though. Let me know what you...

Linux and open source middleware JBoss has made its mark in the enterprise, and it is just a matter of time before open source becomes mainstream in other functional parts of the IT infrastructure as well. Where exactly that will happen, however, is the interesting question.With most companies spending 10 to 20 percent of their revenue on enterprise software, many IT managers would love to see more enterprise-class open source options. However, IT architects and project managers of IT tend to be cautious -- the back office has a low tolerance for risk, which makes it difficult for projects to...

Apparently the Department of Defense believes that PS3s are a better value when it comes to supercomputers than IBM products specifically designed for the purpose. Granted recent price drops probably didn't hurt in justifying a 2,200 console order either. This isn't the first time that the DoD is using PS3 consoles for supercomputing. In fact, these 2,200 units are going to be added to an existing Linux cluster of 336 PS3s used by the United States Air Force.

With the intention of expanding its server lineup, International Business Machines (IBM), has rolled out a new mainframe system which is specifically designed for Linux, targeting high-end x86 systems. The new server system, which uses IBM’s specialty Linux processors, will either run on Novell SUSE or Red Hat based systems thereby bypassing the z/OS mainframe operating system. Instead, the server includes mainframe management software as well as IBM's z/Virtual Machine system which come together to form IBM’s low-cost integrated stacks for mainframe. Interestingly, the new system is designed to compete directly with large multicore systems used for virtualization consolidation and comes in two...

What is it? Where is it? What's it do? ZoneAlarm Firewall

Conclusion After spending several days with Fedora, I find that I'm happy with this release. The live CD by itself was a bit underwhelming, but the distribution as a whole has been excellent. This is probably the most stable and most polished release the Fedora team has put together to date. Security is strong over most of the system, though the hole introduced in the software management system is a concern. Package management is fast and KDE feels like it's getting the attention it deserves. The system is responsive and I have yet to run into any serious problems. Due...

A radical new day has dawned for the operating system. Today Google finally aired its long awaited Chrome Operating System. The operating system was detailed at a press conference starting at 1 p.m. EST, and the open source code was posted online just before the start of the presentation. The new operating system brings a dramatically different look and perspective to the market and just may give Microsoft and OS X some tough competition by reinventing a tired old wheel -- the operating system -- offering the first laptop/desktop OS built around the browser and web applications. A Google engineer...

Welcome to the third edition of Eva's Useful Guide to Ubuntu! This guide contains many tips to enhance and customize a fresh Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" installation. I have been using various Linux distributions since 1998, and Ubuntu since its first release in 2004. During the last five years, I have accumulated some experience installing and maintaining Ubuntu systems. This guide was first meant to be my own reference, but I think it can be useful to anyone wanting to get the best of his Ubuntu box.   SummaryA. Media codecs, DVD support and more B. Use the Gnome Control...

cptdondo writes "I've got an old laptop that I've been trying to resurrect. It has a 486MHz CPU, 28 MB of RAM, a 720 MB HD, a 1.44MB floppy drive, and 640x480 VESA video. It does not have a CD drive, USB port, or a network port. It has PCMCIA, and I have a network card for that. My goal is to get a minimal GUI that lets me run a basic browser like Dillo and open a couple of xterms. I've spent the last few days trying to find a Linux distro that will work on that machine. I've...