Archive

Recent conversations at OSCON, which I've attended since 2004, as well as observations through talks with vendors, users and developers in open source all indicate a common theme: With commercial successes for open source software come some community growing pains. This was also illustrated to some ...

Jokosher is an audio editing application that gets the job done without an overly stuffed toolset. It lags behind other professional-strength audio editing packages available on the Linux platform. But what it lacks will not be missed by audiophile tinkerers and musicians who want to handle their ow...

To say Android's popular among consumers is like saying Godzilla's a lizard. It's a question of degree. More than 500,000 new Android devices were being activated daily, and the number was growing at 4.4 percent week over week, Google's Andy Rubin tweeted in late June. comScore's figures show that f...

Members of the cloud computing industry this week announced the Open Cloud Initiative, a non-profit organization to advocate open standards in cloud computing, at the OSCON 2011 open source convention in Portland, Ore. The organization maintains a set of Open Cloud Principles, adherence to which wil...

Eqonomize is a personal accounting package that is fast becoming my app of choice for all things financial. It is packed with features and is simple to learn. Plus, its KDE interface makes it an ideal solution to handle my small household economy. Keeping track of personal and business finances is o...

Android Honeycomb tablets are now on store shelves and vendor websites. Six months from Honeycomb's release, tablet makers have finally optimized their hardware to fit the new made-for-tablets OS version to their larger-than-smartphone screens. But where are the apps? Buyers of shiny new 8- and 10-i...

Less than a month after Mozilla evangelist Aza Dotzler blew off enterprise users of the company's Firefox Web browser, triggering an avalanche of angry responses, the Mozilla Foundation is seeking to make nice with corporate America. The Foundation has announced that it's re-establishing the Mozilla...

When I first left the Big Blue OS behind for the world of Linux, I wallowed in guesses over how my disk space was filling up. One thing that was hard to replace from my Windows XP days was the colorful pie chart of disk ingredients that resulted from right-clicking the lettered drive names. Linux of...

Google Friday announced Android 3.2 and released updated software development kit tools for the platform. Android 3.2 is an incremental release that adds several new capabilities for both users and developers, the Internet giant said. It includes changes to the application programming interface and ...

Sometimes things that are supposedly free for the taking -- such as open source software -- can ultimately cost a wad of dough from the corporate coffers. That could well be the lesson Google learns from a lawsuit Oracle filed last year alleging that Google violated its intellectual property as well...

For years, a staple tool I have relied on is a clipboard manager to keep tabs on reusable text snippets. The Linux desktop has several noteworthy clipboard managers. Some are much handier than others for working with parcels of text that I can easily swap from a clipping queue to a document or Web p...

I've been tracking the Top500 Supercomputer List with a particular eye on Linux for some time now, highlighting how Linux continues to power the majority of the world's fastest supercomputing systems. So it's no surprise to see continued dominance for Linux, but there are some interesting changes ev...

Microsoft has reportedly trained its Android patent guns on Samsung Electronics, demanding $15 for every Android-based handset the Korean manufacturer produces. If true, this could be the highest fee demanded by Redmond for its Android patents so far. Microsoft is reportedly getting royalties of $5 ...

When it comes to image viewers, one app is not always hands-down better than others. It is rare to find an image viewing tool that has every feature stockpiled on your wish list. So having a collection of go-to viewing tools to meet a variety of graphics needs is a better strategy. That said, the Ge...

Adobe's recent decision to pull support away from Air for Linux might be the first in a series of market adjustments designed to throttle its bottom line with Android rather than the traditional Linux platform. But the move could cost the company a bank roll of good will. Adobe officials do not see ...