Practical Technology

for practical people.

May 13, 2009
by sjvn01
4 Comments

MySQL Forks

Sun may have the MySQL name, but every one has its open-source code and MySQL co-founder Monty Widenius is taking the popular open-source DBMS (database management system) and forking it in a new directions.

It came as no surprise to those who follow MySQL that Monty Program Ab, Widenius’ MySQL database engineering company, and Percona, a MySQL services and support firm, announced on May 13th that they were forming a vendor-neutral consortium, “The Open Database Alliance,” to become MySQL’s industry hub.

What they have in mind is to use Widenius’ own branch of MySQL, MariaDB, and its derivative code, binaries, training, support, and other enhancements as the new “MySQL industry hub.” According to Widenius, “MariaDB will work exactly as MySQL; all commands, interfaces, libraries and APIs [Application Programming Interface] that exist in MySQL also exist in MariaDB.”

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May 13, 2009
by sjvn01
1 Comment

Could Adobe be open-sourcing Flash?

Over the years, Adobe has become more Linux friendly. First, Adobe released an excellent version of its Flash Player for Linux, and, more recently, the company launched a version of AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) for Linux. Now, however, with Strobe, its just announced Flash framework, Adobe looks like it may be getting more open-source friendly as well.

Strobe, which will show up in the 3rd quarter of 2009, is an open framework for creating SWF (ShockWave Flash) server-side players. With Strobe, content creators and Web developers will be able to easily create sites that host their own video.

According to the Adobe, Strobe will be teamed up with the Open Screen Project to create easy-to-deploy Flash players via a consistent runtime that will run on not just Linux, Mac and Windows PCs, but on all other platforms such as phones and televisions.

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May 12, 2009
by sjvn01
2 Comments

Linux does have a future on netbooks

I’m puzzled. Desktop Linux, for the first time ever, has at least 1% of the desktop market. Linux probably has considerably more than that. So, why is Lenovo’s Worldwide Competitive Analyst Matt Kohut claiming that Linux has no future on netbooks?

Could it be because, as Kohut said, “there were a lot of returns because people didn’t know what to do with it.” Really? That’s odd. Most of the time, you have to ask for Linux by name. Of the big name computer companies only Dell makes it easy to choose Linux and even at Dell, you really should head straight to Dell’s Ubuntu Linux site or you can spend a lot of time looking for it.

That reminds me. Dell is now offering the newer Ubuntu 8.10 on its Inspiron 15n laptop. In the past, they were only offering the LTS (Long Term Service) Ubuntu 7.04. Check it out. You see, Dell is taking desktop Linux seriously.

All the other big vendors, including Lenovo, make it almost impossible to find their desktop Linux offerings. You’d almost think they want desktop Linux to fail, and they’re only offering it because those darn, pesky customers keep asking for it.

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May 12, 2009
by sjvn01
0 comments

What’s the point of XP Mode anyway?

Microsoft made XP Mode so that you can run XP applications from inside Windows 7. Ah… OK, doesn’t Win 7 run XP applications anyway?

Let me check. I’m currently running Office 2003, OpenOffice 3.1, Quicken 2008, iTunes 8.1.1, ooVoo, (a video-conferencing program), and a host of other XP programs on Windows 7 on my Gateway DX4710 with its 2.5-GHz Intel Core 2 Quad processor and 6GBs of RAM. And, you know what? They’re running just fine.

Sure, there are some XP programs that don’t run well on Vista or Windows 7, like ah… ah… hmmm. You know, these days I really can’t think of a single popular program that won’t run on them.

This is a feature?

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May 11, 2009
by sjvn01
0 comments

OpenOffice.org 3.1: The next generation

The latest version of the open-source office suite OpenOffice.org 3.1 has just arrived, and it’s a good one. While some of the improvements are visible to the naked eye, I found that the most important changes were hidden under the hood.

What is it? OpenOffice.org 3.1 is a set of office productivity applications: Writer (word processor), Calc (spreadsheet), Impress (presentation manager) and Base (database manager). It’s missing an Outlook substitute, but otherwise it’s a complete replacement for Microsoft Office. The suite is available as a free download for Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, and Windows; there are versions for most major languages.

What does it do? The first thing you’ll notice about the new OpenOffice.org is that it just looks better. Thanks to its use of anti-aliasing, the program menus, letters and images it displays are sharper and clearer. (You can see examples at Sun’s OpenOffice.org engineering blog.)

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May 11, 2009
by sjvn01
0 comments

What was the first netbook?

wasn’t aware that there was a question about what the first netbook was, but Anthony, a blogger at the Coffee Desk, asserts that 1996’s Toshiba Libretto 70CT was the first netbook. Ah… no.

His post was then picked up by Slashdot, and, to my surprise, most of the people there also don’t seem to know what the first netbook was. Odd.

So, let me start from the top. What is a netbook anyway? First, legally speaking, Intel is fighting with Psion, the UK hand-held OEM, over who owns the trademark. I’m not interested in that aspect of the conversation and I don’t think anyone outside of marketing and legal circles is either.

OK, so technically speaking what’ a netbook, or to use the long-winded phrase we used to use for them: an UMPC (ultra-mobile PC). According to Anthony, it wasn’t the size-factor alone, the Toshiba made the grade because it was the first to use infrared and PCMCIA-based phone card connections and it also included a Web browser, Internet Explorer 2.0.

Sorry, that doesn’t make it.

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