Linux Solutions

Intel’s low-cost laptop initiative has had a boost from Portugal’s government, which has pledged to provide school children with 500,000 computers based on the chipmakers Classmate PC design. The announcement brings Intel’s rivalry with the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organisation into the limelight once more.

Back in may, the OLPC group announced that its XO laptop computers would work with Microsoft’s Windows, as well as a homegrown Linux-based OS. The move was seen by many as a way to make the “$100 laptop”, which actually costs $188, more palatable to education ministers who were unsure of an open source system.

Now with this deal, Intel has matched OLPC’s total orders to date – 600,000 units as of May. This has made many people question whether the inclusion of Windows has made any notable difference.

Intel spokesperson, Agnes Kwan, has said that the company will serve as a “technology adviser to Portugal’s Ministry of Public Works, Transportation and Communications, which is coordinating the laptop program.”

Kwan said, “Parents of young school children will be able to choose between computers running Microsoft’s Windows operating system and ones with an open source Linux operating system, and that the government will distribute the machines to Portugal’s elementary school students over the course of the 2008-2009 school year.”

As of the middle of this year, “hundreds of thousands” of the Classmate PCs had already shipped to customers in more than 30 countries, according to Kwan.

Kwan declined to disclose how much the laptops will cost parents or other financial terms of the deal. She said Portugal’s Ministry of Education is “working out pricing details”.

Classmate PCs are based on Intel’s design and include its processors, but they are pieced together by other manufacturers and sold under various guises.

OLPC XO and Intel’s Classmate PC are just two of a growing number of small, low-cost computers aimed at the millions of students in developing countries around the world who have not had access to technology or the internet.

The relationship between Intel and OLPC, whose XO machine uses microprocessors made by Intel competitor Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has been a bumpy one.

The two declared a truce last summer, but earlier this year relations turned frosty again when Intel abruptly pulled out from OLPC’s board of directors.

A survey by the Open Solutions Alliance (OSA) has found that the stagnant economy may be helping to push open source adoption.

The survey of over 100 of its member organisations found that 83 percent said they expect to see a year-over-year increase in revenue in 2008 from open-source related software and services.

78 percent of those surveyed believed that the affordable price of open source software is motivating their customers.

“We see that the market for commercial open source software and services is growing and growing fast. And I see the economy contributing to that because of the cost,” Dominic Sartorio, senior director of product management for SpikeSource and president of the OSA, said.

Sartorio said the survey showed that open source companies are serious about collaborating. Nearly 97 percent said they have active partnerships with other open-source software and service companies. “The average survey participant had 10 such partnerships,” he said. “We knew that collaboration was important to open source companies, but this statistic was surprising,” he added

The survey also showed that nearly 85 percent of the companies polled said they sell open source products or services that run on Microsoft Windows or otherwise interoperate with Microsoft products.

“Microsoft is an important partner to numerous open source companies and will continue to be more so moving forward,” said Anthony Gold, vice president and general manager for the open-source business at Unisys and an OSA board member. “Enterprises need to maximize their IT resources and many realize that a hybrid Microsoft open-source environment can be the best option for their requirements.”

The OSA survey was conducted in late June, and covered a number of topics that are interesting to the open source community.

Other key findings include that most open-source companies surveyed - 85 percent - have operations outside the United States, and of those, 58 percent say they see more widespread open source-adoption outside the United States. 72 percent of respondents said software-as-a-service is an important part of their business strategy.

Meanwhile, 56 percent of survey participants said their customers were concerned about interoperability between open-source applications, and 79 percent said their customers were concerned about interoperability between open-source and proprietary solutions.

The OSA released the findings of its survey at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention in July.

In a move that will send mild shockwaves through the Linux community, Microsoft has become a sponsor of the open source Apache Software Foundation (ASF) and has opened up some of its protocols for use by open source software (OSS) developers.

Sam Ramji, director of Microsoft’s Open Source Software Lab, made the announcement at OSCON.

Neither party has given the specifics of the sponsorship deal, it is reportedly around the US$100,00 per year mark, which will help the ASF pay for its administrators and support staff, allowing developers to “focus on writing great software,” noted Ramji.

Perhaps even more important than the added revenue for the ASF is the new Open Specification Promise (OSP) from Microsoft. The company is putting forward a wide range of protocols that were formerly in the Communications Protocol Program under OSP.

“This guarantees their freedom from any patent claims from Microsoft now or in the future, and includes both Microsoft-developed and industry-developed protocols,” Ramji said.

“We have established a clarification to the OSP that guarantees developer rights to build software of any kind and for any purpose using these specifications, including commercial use,” he added.

Ramji was quick to point out that Microsoft is not moving away from Internet Information Services (IIS) as Microsoft’s strategic Web server technology.

“We have invested significantly in refactoring and adding new, state-of-the-art features to IIS, including support for PHP. We will continue to invest in IIS for the long term and are currently underway with development of IIS 8,” he noted.

“It is a strong endorsement of the Apache way and opens a new chapter in our relationship with the ASF. We have worked with Apache POI, Apache Axis2, Jakarta and other projects in the last year, and we will continue our technical support and interoperability testing work for this open source software,” he explained.

The open source licensing models supported by ASF allow for commercial use of code in closed source solutions.

“It’s a good step for Microsoft, and positive news for Apache - though some members disagree,” Stephen O’Grady, an industry analyst for Redmonk said..

“Some feel that this is the continuation of the ASF as a more corporate organization, rather than an agile open source enabler,” he explained.

“Both organizations stand to gain: Microsoft, because of the potential for good will and a better interoperability story, and Apache because of both the money and the explicit endorsement,” O’Grady said.

Phoronix have posted an update on the development of Phoronix Test Suite 1.2 – codenamed “Malvik”.

They say that Phoronix Test Suite 1.2 (PTS1.2) will be released in September under the GNU GPLv3 licence, with full support for a module/plug-in architecture, advanced analytical features, enhanced hardware/software detection support, and support for other UNIX operating systems.

Work on the modules support for v1.2 began almost immediately after Test Suite 1.0 “Trondheim” made an appearance, with the idea that third-parties can extend the functionality of the Test Suite without having to delve in to the inner workings of the PTS-core.

Phoronix said in a statement:

“The PTS modules support also provides some other features for the Phoronix Test Suite that are needed but don’t necessarily belong within PTS-core. For example, the screensaver toggling support has been moved into a module as well as the entire sensor monitoring support. Modules are easy to build by either writing a simple PHP class or a shell (SH) script.

“The modules framework has also been engineered to support multi-threading processes. This will be hugely beneficial in areas such as with the sensor monitoring module, so that sensors can be polled on a set interval even while tests are running or the pts-core performing other tasks. In addition, this framework provides a number of other functions for making it very easy for independent users and companies to write their own modules to serve their own purposes. For those interested in writing their own modules with Phoronix Test Suite 1.2, a good area to start is by looking at the dummy_module and dummy_script_module files as well as the other modules that will ship with the Phoronix Test Suite.

“In addition to the system_monitor module for sensor monitoring and toggle_screensaver for controlling the automatic enabling/disabling of the screensaver, there is also a email_results module that will automatically email the test results to a specified email address as well as graphics_override for forcing new anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering levels for the ATI and NVIDIA binary drivers. The FORCE_AA amd FORCE_AF environmental variables can be set, and then this graphics_override module will read the new values and communicate them to the respective ATI/NVIDIA binary driver.

“Once the tests are then completed, their previous over-ride state will be restored (or turning off AA/AF if that’s what was set before). We expect many other modules will also be developed in the near future. To see which modules are available, run phoronix-test-suite list-modules and there is now a module-info argument for obtaining information on a specific module (i.e. phoronix-test-suite module-info system_monitor).”

Internet search giant Google has released a new knowledge base called “Knol”. A ‘Knol’, according to Google, is a unit of knowledge.

To be a bit more specific, a Knol is an authoritative article about a specific topic, which has been written by people who know about those subjects. Announced last year, Google kept Knol it an invite only beta – until now.

In a similar fashion to Wikipedia, Google’s Knol is an attempt to allow people with knowledge to spreads it around for us simpletons to digest, regurgitate and look intelligent at our next dinner party. Rather than the anonymity awarded by Wikipedia, Google’s Knol gives the authors a name.

“The key principle behind Knol is authorship,” said Google employees Cedric Dupont and Michael McNally.

“Every knol will have an author (or group of authors) who put their name behind their content. It’s their knol, their voice, their opinion. We expect that there will be multiple knols on the same subject, and we think that is good,” they said.

Although Google intends to push the author as expert, the company isn’t going to ignore general net users. With “moderated collaboration,” any reader can make suggested edits to a Knol, and the author can choose to accept, reject or modify the suggestions and remain in control of the content.

Knols are also dynamic, which means people can submit comments, rate or write a review of a knol.

“Knol will be a conversation open to everyone, not just the experts,” Paul Saffo, an independent technology forecaster, said.

“It’ll be entertaining, I’m sure - there’ll be UFO (unidentified flying object) nuts writing very authoritatively on their chosen subject,” he added.

LCD televisions are one of the most popular styles of TVs on the market. They have a very high resolution and a clear picture that you cannot find with another style. At the same time, the design is very sleek and stylish. For this reason, it is important that you do not buy a cheap stand that will take away from the overall trendy look of the LCD TV. There are numerous styles of stands on the market that come in all shapes and sizes. When shopping, you will see them in metal, wood, plastic, laminate, or fiberglass. Sometimes, it is a mixture of all materials for a very modern look. There are also different types of finishes or lacquers.
While the look of the stand is important, it is also crucial to consider the quality of the stand. It the model cannot support the weight of the television, then you will have some serious issues. Most stands will have the weight capacity listed with the description, and your televisions should have the total weight of the product printed. Do not be fooled by the size of the stand. Just because it is bigger does not mean that is will hold the weight of your TV. The depending factor is what the stand is made of, and how well the manufacturer put the product together. When you are shopping, examine the joints and legs thoroughly. Even if the sales person says that it is the highest grade, it does not mean that you should not look.
Another consideration is the floor space that you have in your home. If your living room is quite large, then you should opt for a stand that swivels. A swivel TV stand will allow your TV to be turned in all different directions so that you can see it from all angles of the room. There should also be enough space between the wall and the stand so that you can turn the TV. You can purchase stands with wheels, which will help if you like to watch the TV in other rooms of the house. Portable TV stands are ideal if your kitchen is open to the living room and you want to watch it in the kitchen.
As mentioned earlier, the quality of the product is more important than the design, but you should still consider what type of design will work in your home. If you have all black wooden furniture in the room presently, then a cherry oak stand might clash with the rest of the room. You should also make sure that the finish that you choose will not stand out so much that it is the focal point. This will distract the eye from the TV.
Television stands for LCD TVs can be quite expensive. They vary in price from several hundred dollars all the way up to a few thousand dollars. If you have the money, then a custom-made stand is a great option. The best way to go about having one made is to listen to recommendations around town about the best carpenter and have it made to your specific requirements. The benefit is that you will know who made it, the quality of the product, and that no one else will have the same model.
With the cost of living going up, your budget is probably much smaller, and you will have to settle for a model from the furniture store. Either way, do not settle for an expensive price. Compare prices at each place to ensure that you are receiving the best price possible.

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Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu Linux, has urged the development of a Linux desktop to rival what Apple Inc. has achieved.

Speaking at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (Oscon) in Portland, yesterday, he also pressed for the development of a new revenue model to fund free software, and set his sights on a services-based mechanism. He also stressed the importance of interoperability with Windows.

Shuttleworth, who is the CEO of Canonical Ltd, emphasised the development of the Linux Desktop as well as mobile development.

“Can we go right past Apple in the user experience we deliver?” Shuttleworth asked the audience. “Certainly, on the desktop experience, we need to shoot beyond the Mac, but I think it’s equally relevant [in] the mobile space. The challenge for us is to figure out how to deliver something which is crisp and clean” without sacrificing the community process,” he said.

“It would be hard to do from a free software point of view, I think, because so many people have so many different opinions,” said Brad Cavanagh, data reduction software engineer at the Joint Astronomy Centre in Hilo, Hawaii.

“That’s not to say you can’t get good things out of open source. Obviously, you can, but it’s going to be tough,” Cavanagh said.

Shuttleworth went on to emphasise the need for new business models beyond advertising for free software. “We had the Web for quite a long time before we figured out how [to do] ad-funded Web businesses,” Shuttleworth said.

But Shuttleworth said he didn’t know how advertising could fund Web-based and free applications. He instead noted an emerging emphasis on services, calling them the engine for funding investments in free software.

“I think advertising works very well in the search case, but I don’t think it’s the sort of final solution in terms of business models to drive investment in free software,” Shuttleworth said. “A more general view of services is required.”

“The free software world is in a quest for a complementary economic model. When we look back at this era, we’ll be looking at economics as much as factors such as technology,” Shuttleworth said.

“Technology,” he said, “provides the opportunities to drive economic change, create wealth and change society. The way we run our lives today, software determines more and more of it,” Shuttleworth said.

“In a very real sense, everything is becoming software,” he continued. “There have never been better opportunities to create wealth, better opportunities to change the world. Recent wealth creators such as Google Inc. have been built on free software. Free software, meanwhile, is the ultimate form of disclosure and serves as an engine for innovation,” he noted.

“The question we should be asking the free software world is how can we stimulate that? How can we drive innovation faster?” Shuttleworth said.

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