Cody Taylor

Free open-source software is not so free anymore as more companies — including longtime makers of conventional software — strive to make money on the technology.

jhfry writes “An interesting development by an unexpected source, Phoenix Technologies is releasing a Linux based, virtualization enabled, BIOS based OS for computers. They implemented a full Linux distro right on the BIOS chips, and using integrated virtualization technology it ‘allows PCs and laptops to hot-switch between the main operating system, such as Windows, and the HyperSpace environment.’ So essentially they are ‘trying to create a new market using the ideas of a fast-booting, safe platform that people can work in, but remain outside of Windows.'”

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Craig writes “Gamepark have officially released the follow up to its successful Linux handheld the GP2X, the GP2X Wiz is a 533Mhz Linux-based handheld that’s a similar size to the GBA Micro with a touchscreen and 12 games preloaded into memory, many of which are demos of commercial games. The system comes with 1GB of flash memory which can be expanded with SD cards. The Homebrew Community have already released ports of games such as Quake, Wolfenstein3d, Warcraft and emulators for SNES, Genesis, Commodore 64 and the arcade emulator Mame.”

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The cloud-based service Ubuntu One goes into the public beta phase. Through this, computers can be synchronized via online memory. As of yet, Canonical is withholding details.

Clouds are such big Linux news these days that, in the physical world, it would be raining by now. Or at least heavily overcast.

The ability to login graphically into any computer from a remote location has a number of uses. In my case it allows me to create a setup were students in my school can easily login graphically into the universities computer lab and use many of the applications which are installed there (like Matlab which is only licensed to run on our lab computer

Hugh Pickens writes “A team of Army cadets spent four days at West Point last week struggling around the clock to keep a computer network operating while hackers from the National Security Agency tried to infiltrate it with methods that an enemy might use. The NSA made the cadets’ task more difficult by planting viruses on some of the equipment, just as real-world hackers have done on millions of computers around the world. The competition was a final exam for computer science and information technology majors, who competed against teams from the Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine as well as the Naval Postgraduate Academy and the Air Force Institute of Technology. Ideally, the teams would be allowed to attack other schools’ networks while also defending their own but only the NSA, with its arsenal of waivers, loopholes, special authorizations is allowed to take down a US network. NSA tailored its attacks to be just ‘a little too hard for the strongest undergraduate team to deal with, so that we could distinguish the strongest teams from the weaker ones.’ The winning West Point team used Linux, instead of relying on proprietary products from big-name companies like Microsoft or Sun Microsystems.”

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No matter how experienced you are with Linux systems, there is always something new you can learn from a good book that focuses on specific aspects of a Linux system.

An anonymous reader writes “Last month, Google officially announced the Android 1.5 update, dubbed ‘cupcake.’ The new software is apparently ready to roll out to Android-powered devices beginning tomorrow. Make no mistake, Android 1.5 is a major upgrade — they could have called it 2.0. The software brings a host of new capabilities, some of which can’t be found on rival mobile platforms, including video recording and sharing.”

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thefickler touts an interview in tech.blorge with Lenovo’s Worldwide Competitive Analyst, Matt Kohut, who spoke about his vision of the future of netbooks, which involves Windows 7, bigger screens, built-in 3G, touch integration, and lower prices. Linux fans will be disappointed to hear that Kohut thinks Windows 7 will dominate future generations of netbooks because it offers a better, more familiar solution, with the benefits of touch. Quoting Kohut: “The other challenge has been, in order to keep the price points down, a lot of people thought that Linux would be the savior of all of these netbooks. You know, there were a lot of netbooks loaded with Linux, which saves or 0 or whatever it happens to be, based on Microsoft’s pricing and, again, from an industry standpoint, there were a lot of returns because people didn’t know what to do with it. Linux, even if you’ve got a great distribution and you can argue which one is better or not, still requires a lot more hands-on than somebody who is using Windows. So, we’ve seen overwhelmingly people wanting to stay with Windows because it just makes more sense: you just take it out of the box and it’s ready to go.”

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