Practical Technology

for practical people.

June 24, 2009
by sjvn01
0 comments

Apple TV 2.4: Well worth the download

The latest version of the Apple TV firmware, Apple TV 2.4, doesn’t have any major improvements, but it does include a few nice, new features and, from what I can see, gives the Apple TV a real performance kick.

First, the features. The one that I like the most is that when you’re looking over your collection you can now view movies by genre, title, or by whether you’ve already viewed them or not. With your TV Shows or Podcasts in addition to seeing them grouped by show, you can also now view them by date or by whether you’ve watched them or not.

The Apple TV’s remote has also had a bit more functionality added to it. Now, when watching a video you can not only click right or left to fast forward or rewind, but if you click again you’ll increase the speed. In addition, although Apple doesn’t say so, it certainly seems to me that the Apple TV does a better job of displaying the video while either rewinding or fast-forwarding. If you click down, you’ll see chapter markets and can navigate through your video with these.

Continue Reading →

June 24, 2009
by sjvn01
1 Comment

Red Hat rakes in big bucks

Some companies, OK most companies, are in trouble, but Red Hat, the world’s number one Linux company just keeps signing the customers and making the bucks.

In its first financial quarter for the 2010 fiscal year, which ended May 31st, 2009, Red Hat’s total revenue was $174.4 million, an 11% increase from the year ago quarter. The company also reports that “subscription revenue for the quarter was $148.8 million, up 14% year-over-year.”

GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) operating income for the quarter was $25.1 million with a 14.4% operating margin. After the usual adjustments for stock compensation and amortization non-GAAP operating income for the first quarter was $40.7 million, up 19% year-over-year. Non-GAAP operating margin was 23.4%, up 160 basis points from the year ago quarter. None too shabby eh?

More >

June 24, 2009
by sjvn01
1 Comment

The little Linux school house

As I pointed out recently, open-source software in schools isn’t just a good idea, it’s becoming a financial necessity if we’re to keep enough teachers for our kids in classrooms. So, it’s particular good timing that Sugar Labs and openSUSE have released free Linux distributions expressly designed for education.

Sugar Labs, for those of you who don’t know them, is a software non-profit spin off from the OLPC (One Laptop per Child). Sugar Labs provides the Sugar desktop interface, which runs in turn, on top of a version of Fedora 10.

On June 24th, at LinuxTag in Berlin, Germany, Sugar Labs announced the immediate availability of Sugar on a Stick v1 Strawberry. As the name indicates, Sugar on a Stick is a live USB flash drive distribution. It requires at least a GB-sized drive. With it, you can boot Sugar on any PC. It was designed to work on older PCs, netbooks, and other low-end hardware. You can also run Sugar with the provided virtual machine software on both Intel-based Macs Windows PCs.

More >

June 23, 2009
by sjvn01
4 Comments

Cisco releases Linux-powered 802.11n router and media-server

This just came in over the press-wire, and I’m already interested. Cisco has announced on June 23 that a new Linux powered router, the Linksys by Cisco Wireless-N Broadband Router with Storage Link, the WRT160NL is out.

At first glance that may not seem that interesting. But, this isn’t just a new Wi-Fi router with Linux. Cisco, via its Linksys subsidiary has long been offering users Linux-powered, hackable Wi-Fi routers like the WRT54GL. But, this one also includes integrated Storage Link functionality that lets you use inexpensive USB storage devices as NAS (Network Attached Storage) and a built-in media-sharing server that Cisco says can handle video, photo, and music sharing.

Continue Reading →

June 23, 2009
by sjvn01
1 Comment

Linux: It doesn’t get any faster

The Windows’ fan club likes to point out that Windows is far more popular than Linux. The reason for that has nothing to do with quality and everything to do with monopoly. Nothing shows that better than the semi-annual TOP500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers. In the latest ranking, where performance is everything and nothing else matters, Windows is stalled out at the starting line, and Linux is lapping the field.

Specifically, Linux has increased its already substantial supercomputer market share to 88.6%. Linux is followed by hybrid Unix/Linux systems with 5.8%; Unix, mostly IBM’s AIX, with 4.4%; and running close to last, Windows HPC (high-performance computing) with 1%. Only BSD, with a single representative on the list, trails Windows.

In the lead at the number 1 spot with 1.105 petaflop/s (quadrillions of floating point operations per second) is the Los Alamos National Laboratory Roadrunner system by IBM. Roadrunner was the first system, to break the petaflop/s Linpack barrier in June 2008.

More >

June 22, 2009
by sjvn01
0 comments

Easily run Windows apps on Linux with CrossOver Linux 8

I was running Windows, and before it came along, MS-DOS, applications on Unix and Linux for ages. It was never especially easy, but experts could do it. With CodeWeavers’ latest CrossOver Linux 8, though, it’s become so easy that anyone should be able to do it.

Now, if all your desktop needs are already being met by Linux applications, you don’t need to worry with Crossover. But, if like many of us, you still want to use Quicken for your banking or you’re stuck with a Web site that refused to work with any Web browser except Internet Explorer, then Crossover Linux 8 is for you.

CrossOver Linux 8 is built on top of the open-source project Wine. This is an implementation of the Windows API (application programming interface) on top of the Unix/Linux operating system family. As far as any given program is concerned, it’s running on Windows so you don’t have to tweak the applicaton itself to run on Linux. Wine is a very active project, with 16 years of development behind it. In other words, this program has been better-tested for Windows compatibility than almost any native Windows operating system.

You can use Wine alone to run Windows programs, but it requires a fair amount of technical expertise. With CrossOver, you don’t need to be an expert.

More >