Practical Technology

for practical people.

June 1, 2011
by sjvn01
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Oracle gives OpenOffice to Apache

As I reported on May 31st, 2011, Oracle has, with IBM’s encouragement, given the open-source OpenOffice office suite to The Apache Software Foundation (ASF).

In a statement issued this morning, June 1st, Oracle’s Luke Kowalski, VP of Oracle Corporate Architecture Group, stated that the company was going to “contribute the OpenOffice.org code to The Apache Software Foundation’s Incubator. The company then claims that Oracle is doing this to “demonstrate its commitment to the developer and open source communities. [By] Donating OpenOffice.org to Apache gives this popular consumer software a mature, open, and well established infrastructure to continue well into the future. The Apache Software Foundation’s model makes it possible for commercial and individual volunteer contributors to collaborate on open source product development.”

IBM’s Kevin Cavanaugh, VP of Collaboration Solutions., which lobbied for Oracle to spin OpenOffice off after it became clear that Oracle wasn’t going to put much, if any, resources into OpenOffice, said in a statement, “IBM welcomes Oracle’s contribution of OpenOffice software to the Apache Software Foundation. We look forward to engaging with other community members to advance the technology beginning with our strong support of the incubation process for OpenOffice at Apache.”

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May 31, 2011
by sjvn01
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What the heck is happening with OpenOffice?

This weekend was filled with rumors about the fate of OpenOffice. Oracle essentially abandoned OpenOffice, after The Document Foundation’s LibreOffice fork but rumor has it that IBM wants the project to continue. The big question, which is still unresolved as I write this, is, “How?”

At the moment, almost all of what I have are comments from people close to the matter who are unable to go on the record. That said, here’s my current understanding of what’s going on with OpenOffice.

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May 30, 2011
by sjvn01
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New Linux Kernel, Same as the old Linux Kernel

In 1996, Linus Torvalds released Linux 2.0, and we got symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) and we were on our way to Linux supercomputers. In 1999, Linux 2.2 appeared, and Linux made a major move off Intel chip architectures. In 2001, after some delays, Linux 2.4 turned up with great server improvements. And, in 2003, Linux 2.6 showed up, the prototype for modern Linux. So why haven’t we seen a Linux 2.8 or 3.0 in the last few years? I’ll let Torvalds explain:

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May 27, 2011
by sjvn01
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How to install Google’s Chrome OS

The commercial Chromebooks are almost here, but if you want to try Chrome OS sooner than that you can do it. Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as you might think. Here’s how to do it.

First, if you just try looking for “Chrome OS download” on Google, ironically, you’re going to have trouble finding it. Instead, you’re most likely to find links that will eventually take you to Chrome OS Linux. This is not Google’s Chrome OS. It’s a Linux distribution that uses Chrome OS. It may be fine. I don’t know. I haven’t tried it, but it’s not the Chrome OS that you’re looking for.

The real Chrome OS, which is indeed based on Linux flavored by Ubuntu, is available as source code, along with build instructions, at the Chromium OS Developer Guide. If you’re not an experienced programmer with access to a 64-bit Linux system, Ubuntu 10.04 Long Term Support (LTS) version for choice, you don’t want to go this route though.

For people who don’t program in C for a living, the smart thing to do is to download a Chrome OS virtual machine (VM) or USB stick live image from Hexxen.

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May 25, 2011
by sjvn01
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Here comes the Chromebooks

In about three weeks, we can stop talking about how Chromebooks-light-weight laptops running Google’s Chrome OS-might, or might not, work in the real world because we’ll get our hands on the first two models: the Samsung Series 5 and the Acer Wi-Fi Chromebook. Here’s what we know now about them.

First things first. The Chromebooks you’re going to see in mid-June are not going to be those dreadful beta CR-48 netbooks with some lipstick on. These are real netbook-sized laptops from Acer and Samsung: companies that know a thing or two about design.

Next, none of these laptops are powerhouses. For processors they use the 1.66GHz duel-core Intel Atom Processor N570 and they come with 2-gigabytes of RAM. On the other hand, they’re not trying to run Windows 7 or even Ubuntu Unity. They’re running Chrome OS, which is little more than the latest Chrome Web browser with a bare-bones Linux foundation. You don’t need much to run that.

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May 25, 2011
by sjvn01
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Microsoft Skype breaks open-source partnership

I told you so. I knew that Steve Ballmer could talk all he wanted about how Microsoft would continue to support non-Microsoft platforms, but that there was no way he’d actually do it. The first proof is here. Digium, the company behind the popular open-source Asterisk private-branch exchange (PBX) program, has announced that Skype has unilaterally ended its deal that allowed Asterisk to work with Skype.

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