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Linux and Open Source Blog (7 unread)

IBM To Linux Desktop Developers: ‘Stop Copying Windows’

Posted: August 8th, 2008, 4:35am MYT by E@zyVG™

Company executives call on the open source community to do more to make Linux popular as a desktop OS for consumers and businesses.

IBM, whose decision to back Linux years ago was a driving force in its adoption by business, called on developers of the open-source operating system to make it more “green” and to stop copying Windows, if they want to see Linux on the desktop.

Bob Sutor, VP of open source and standards at IBM, told attendees of the LinuxWorld Conference in San Francisco, that what the open source community needs to make Linux popular as a desktop OS used by consumers and businesses are “some really good graphic designers.”

“Stop copying 2001 Windows. That’s not where the usability action is,” Sutor said during his afternoon keynote.

Sutor’s comments came a day after IBM announced at the show that it was joining Linux distributors Canonical, Novell, and Red Hat in building Microsoft-free PCs for business. The four companies agreed to provide hardware partners with the software to build desktops that would have alternatives to Windows and Office.

IBM’s comments to the Linux community of developers carry a lot of weight, given the huge investment and contribution the tech company has made to the OS. IBM threw its weight behind Linux in December 2000, when it promised to spend $1 billion on development of the OS the following year.

Complete Article

Related: IBM exec predicts the future of Linux, open source
VMware Joins The Linux Foundation

Posted: August 8th, 2008, 4:26am MYT by E@zyVG™

The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that VMware has become a member of the Foundation. The company joins existing Linux Foundation members and technology leaders such as Adobe, AMD, Dell, Fujitsu, Google, Hitachi, HP, IBM, Intel, Motorola, NEC, Novell, Oracle and Red Hat, among others.
“A growing number of organizations run their Linux environments on VMware virtualization, and the Linux Foundation gives us a collaborative forum to effectively address the needs of our customers,” said Dan Chu, vice president of emerging products and solutions at VMware. “We are delighted to become a member of The Linux Foundation and look forward to making future contributions to the Linux community.” According to research firm IDC, revenue for the virtual machine software market may increase by more than four times from 2006-2011 to reach $4.8 billion by 2011*. As adoption of Linux expands as a result of its natural position as a platform for next-generation computing in the cloud and in virtualized environments, companies such as VMware are looking to The Linux Foundation as the forum for collaboration. VMware’s participation in the Linux community includes the contribution of the Virtual Machine Interface (VMI), a paravirtualization interface as an open specification, and subsequent collaboration with the Linux kernel community and others in the development of a source-level paravirtualization interface (paravirt-ops) for the Linux kernel. In 2007, VMware announced the release of its Open Virtual Machine Tools, the open source implementation of VMware Tools, and the creation of the open-vm-tools project to enable community participation. “Linux is a natural platform for virtualization and cloud computing. VMware is obviously a leader in that field and a leading ISV who has embraced the Linux platform,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation. “We’re excited to have VMware as our newest member.”
Promise Technology Announces More Linux Support for Its Products

Posted: August 5th, 2008, 11:56am MYT by E@zyVG™

I’m no graphics professional, but like probably most of you, I do need to edit photos from time to time. I used Adobe Photoshop before since it is the most widely used image manipulating software. But when I started using Linux, things changed.

Since GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is included by default in most Linux distros, I had no other choice but to try it. I then became more and more comfortable using it that I completely forgot about Photoshop. I know that I can still install Photoshop in Linux through software virtualization, but no thanks.

Here are my reasons why I made the switch and why I think GIMP is better than Photoshop:

1. GIMP has a simple and easy to use Graphical User Interface compared to a more cluttered working environment in Photoshop.

2. GIMP has a way lighter footprint than Photoshop. You don’t need plenty of disk space to install GIMP. The size of Gimp’s installer is less than 20MB; Photoshop could be around 600MB.

3. GIMP is wicked fast. The minimum recommended RAM requirement to run GIMP is only 128MB. The latest version of Photoshop will probably need 512MB at minimum.

4. GIMP has the right amount of essential features that I need. I think Photoshop is way too bloated and some of its included features are unnecessary.

5. GIMP can read and write most Photoshop native PSD format files, but Photoshop does not support GIMP’s native XCF file format.

6. GIMP has a more powerful automation than Photoshop.

7. GIMP’s open development model means that it is much more readily available on more operating systems, plugin development is not limited by developers and as such has no need to compete with Photoshop; by comparison, access to Adobe Photoshop’s SDK requires authorization.

8. GIMP is available at no cost compared to Photoshop’s hefty price tag.

How about you? Do you also feel that GIMP is better than Adobe Photoshop?

- by Jun Auza
Headlines: LinuxWorld Conference

Posted: August 5th, 2008, 11:46am MYT by E@zyVG™
The 10th annual LinuxWorld Conference & Expo and its partner Next Generation Data Center Conference kick off today at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, where the open-source operating system will be the center of attention for enterprise users, vendors and IT enthusiasts. As Linux markets grow and innovate, so does LinuxWorld. One new area this year is the Mobile Linux Conference, an indication of the growing strength of open source on mobile platforms. It’s good to see LinuxWorld covering “the third screen” of Linux. This year’s conference includes an open source voting demonstration, where attendees will cast mock ballots for the 2008 presidential election and more. At the same time, many IT vendors will be making product and service announcements at the show.
Playstation3 + Linux = More Than a Toy

Posted: August 4th, 2008, 4:02am MYT by E@zyVG™

When Sony first announced that the PlayStation 3 would be able to run Linux natively, a great deal of excitement ensued. Early on, it was a bit of a challenge to get Linux natively installed. The supported installer ran a custom script that hand-mangled a Fedora Core 5 or 6 install DVD into a runnable system with a special PS3 kernel. People put in hours and hours of effort to get other systems, such as Ubuntu, working. Terrasoft’s Yellow Dog Linux, with an actual graphical installer that ran on the PS3, was the king of the hill.

Time has passed, and a great deal has changed. Fedora 7 installs on the PS3 out of the box, with the most challenging parts being selecting the PS3 storage driver so it can find the install DVD, and remembering to specify a video mode on the initial install command line so you’ll be able to see the installer.

So, you can run Linux on the PS3. It’s easy. The problem is, it doesn’t necessarily run well. If you picked the PS3 up as a cheap Cell development system, it’s a little frustrating to discover that, having followed the default install procedure, you have a system that comes up with a hundred megs or more of swap in use by the time you get to a shell prompt.

With these tweaks, the PS3 becomes a viable, and even sort of roomy, development environment. (It’s one of the most accessible environments for someone looking to dabble with the Cell Broadband Engine.) It stays responsive during compiles, and compiles run noticeably faster than they used to. While the memory provided isn’t so great for a desktop system, with video players and Web browsers and e-mail clients all running at once, it’s certainly adequate for a development effort, and indeed, with the overhead of GNOME and KDE out of the way, it can even manage some desktop work. It’s quite possible that future updates to the PS3 firmware will improve things, as might new kernel versions or drivers. Just remember to stay focused on what you need out of the system, and go ahead and disable features you aren’t using.

Part 1 - Getting Started

Part 2 of this series discusses getting the latest PS3 addons installed and updated on your system, and some of the configuration changes you can make to reduce the basic memory footprint until you’ve got a bit of breathing room.

Part 3 in this series looks at what you can do to get a usable X environment for doing simple graphical work, without losing the ability to run the compiler.
Pidgin IM vs MSN Messenger

Posted: August 3rd, 2008, 3:32pm MYT by E@zyVG™

I am talking about the latest instant messaging client from the Gaim series, called Pidgin, which came after a long period of waiting and broke the download tops. Why Pidgin 2 and not Gaim 2 … the story begins a long time ago, when AOL used to complain about Gaim’s original name, GTK+ AOL Instant Messenger. Now, when AOL trademarked the AIM acronym too, Gaim had nothing left to do than change its name again. Pidgin came as the most suitable alternative, as it best describes this application’s purpose and usage. The word pidgin defines a second language used as a means of communication between groups of individuals who do not share a common language. Even though it was designed for the Unix-like operating systems, Pidgin can now run on platforms such as Windows, Solaris, SkyOS and Qtopia, beside FreeBSD and Linux of course.

Here’s a short list of good reasons to replace your MSN Messenger or Live Messenger with Pidgin:

Pidgin is open source

An open-source software have many advantages: It’s free most of the time, and its source code is accessible, so you can be sure that no backdoor exists in the program

Pidgin can deal with 16 IM protocols

Of course, Pidgin works with the MSN protocol, but also on AIM, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, Groupwise, ICQ, IRC, MySpaceIM, QQ, SILC, SIMPLE, Sametime, XMPP, Yahoo! Messenger and Zephyr, for a total of 16 IM protocols.

Remember some years ago, when you had to download a new client just because the friend you wanted to talk to didn’t use the same protocol as you? With Pidgin, this time’s over.
Note, Pidgin can also work with the Skype protocol.

Pidgin is ads free

Microsoft makes lots of money with the Windows Live Messenger ads. Pidgin developers aren’t that interested in money: The software is advertising-free, which results in more speed and less memory use.

Pidgin is quicker than MSN/Live Messenger

Make a test and see: Due to the fact it don’t have any ads or useless features as in MSN, Pidgin starts 2 to 3 times quicker than the official MSN client.

You can use more than 1 account at time

If you have a msn account for your job and another one for your friends and family, you’ll be able to connect both of them at the same time. With MSN Messenger, it’s one account, and that’s all. I remember a time when I used two different versions of MSN Messenger in order to chat with two different accounts at the same time, but with Pidgin, that’s not going to happen again!

Pidgin is cross platform

You’re a Mac user, your browser prefers Ubuntu and your girlfriend works on Windows? No problem, anyone can use Pidgin on his or hers favorite operating system. Note, on Mac OS X, this is not really Pidgin but a similar software called Adium, and which have almost exactly the same functionality as Pidgin.

Pidgin can be used in command line mode

Most users will probably don’t care, but the ultimate geek will be very happy to know that Finch is a Pidgin command-line version, in Lynx style!

Pidgin uses a tabbed interface

Why taking all the available space on your monitor when a single window is enough? If you like tabs in Firefox, you’ll love it in Pidgin. Right, you can use MSN Plus to have tabs in the official MSN client interface, but why installing one more software add-on when you simply can install a better IM client?

Fear of being deleted? Pidgin will tell you.

In the world of instant messengers, you can easily become paranoid: Did she blocked me? Am I still on his friend list? It’s kinda easy to know, if you’re a Pidgin user: Just put the mouse cursor over one of your contacts name, and you’ll see if you’re still in this person’s buddy list.

You can modify your friend’s nicknames

The basic MSN user often put a very loooooooong nickname, or even worst, tell everyone about his mood as his was on twitter. And for you, nothing more boring than to be forced to open a conversation window just to be able to know who is that person. With Pidgin, it is possible to locally edit the screenname of your buddies.

Here is a video showing what Pidgin can do:

[www.youtube.com]

KDE Users: An alternative to pidgin for KDE users is kopete. I usually prefer to stick with Gtk apps on Gnome and QT apps on KDE, hence Pidgin on Gnome and Kopete on KDE.
Review: Intel GMA X4500HD G45 IGP on Linux

Posted: August 1st, 2008, 2:07pm MYT by E@zyVG™

Earlier this month Intel had announced the GMA X4500 series, which is their latest and greatest when it comes to integrated graphics processors. These IGPs were greeted by same-day Linux support (it had actually arrived before the chipset was announced), but it’s still next to impossible to find motherboards using the G43 and G45 Chipsets that bear this IGP. Fortunately, however, our friends at Super Micro have come through and we have managed to get our hands on the C2SEA. The Super Micro C2SEA is an ATX motherboard that uses the Intel G45 Chipset in conjunction with an ICH10 Southbridge. This motherboard provides Intel GMA X4500HD graphics with VGA and HDMI interfaces. In this article, we are looking at the performance of this new Intel graphics processor under Linux.

In the GMA X4500 desktop series there are currently two variants, the vanilla X4500 and then the X4500HD. The GMA X4500 is used by Intel’s lower-end chipsets, which is currently the G43 and soon-to-be-released G41, while the GMA X4500HD is found on the G45. Intel’s IGPs are quite popular on the mobile front and for that they have introduced the GMA 4500MHD, which is the mobile variant to the X4500HD. In addition to the X4500, X4500HD, and X4500MHD, Intel will be introducing a fourth X4500 part in the coming months that will be a cut-down version of the X4500 and used by the forthcoming Q43 and Q45 Chipsets. The IGPs with the “HD” postfix are supposed to be able to handle full 1080p high-definition video playback along with Blu-ray Disc movies, at least under Windows.

The GMA (Graphics Media Accelerator) X4500 series is Intel’s second graphics solution that supports Microsoft DirectX 10.0 and Shader Model 2.0 (the first was the Intel GMA X3500). In addition, it presents support for Intel Clear Video Technology, HDMI capabilities, and DisplayPort capabilities. Intel Clear Video Technology presents full hardware HD decoding support for H.264, VC-1, and MPEG-2. It also includes HD and SD video post processing support. Unfortunately when it comes to video playback, the full capabilities of Clear Video aren’t taken advantage of under Linux, at least not yet. Intel’s Linux driver (xf86-video-intel) supports both X-Video and XvMC (X-Video Motion Compensation) for video playback. XvMC though is currently limited to MPEG-2 format (a generic limitation and not something Intel-specific).

Complete Review