KDE 4 is seen by many to be the next big step on the free software desktop, while others think releasing 4.0 in its current condition was misleading and a mistake. Either way, it’s an innovative release and in line with Fedora’s goal of providing the latest and greatest free software. It is set to be the default KDE environment in the next major release of Fedora. Fedora Interviews caught up with Rex Dieter, Sebastien Vahl, and Kevin Kofler of the KDE SIG to talk about the work they’re doing to get it ready for release, their own opinions on the software and what they think about the progress made by Fedora in getting over its GNOME-centric reputation. » Read more
It’s the last day of JBoss World! If you’re there, we hope you’ve enjoyed it. If you’re not, catch up on what you’re missing with a few more blog posts. You can also watch the keynotes and read about the Innovation Award winners at jbossworld.com. » Read more
I am a fan of affordable technology. I like relatively cheap gadgets, and I like open source. When I heard about Asus’ Eee PC, I took it with a certain grain of salt. I thought that maybe it was just another company trying to take a piece of the pie from the One Laptop Per Child initiative.
Then the more I read about the OLPC, the more I realized that the two gadgets may have been created for different purposes. The OLPC is a non-profit, educational-social project, while the Eee PC is an affordable subnotebook being sold with the intent for profit. » Read more
Today’s the first day of the largest-ever JBoss World! To celebrate, we’re giving you a few links to bloggers who are talking about it. What’s below are just clips from what they’ve posted so far. Watch JBoss bloggers and check back here to find out more as the event goes on.
In addition, the Red Hat management team will host two middleware strategy press conferences that will be broadcast live via webcast from Orlando. The first happened earlier today, but you can still catch the second at 1 p.m. ET on Thursday, February 14. More info.
Over the last few months, open source has gained momentum at Stanford University in the form of the Stanford Open Source Lab. Inspired by groups like the Free Software Foundation, Oregon State University’s Open Source Lab, Drupal, Openflows Community Technology Lab, and MIT’s Open Course Ware, a few people at Stanford decided to band together and dedicate their time and energies to the development of free/open/libre learning and knowledge resources. The vision of the Open Source Lab is to be a nexus on campus for the discussion, advocacy, and technical support of community-based technologies and information systems. » Read more
Saturday, January 19th, 2008, marked the 30-year countdown to the Y2K38 wraparound of regular 32-bit UNIX time. UNIX internal time is stored in a data structure using a long int, containing the number of seconds since 1970. On a 32-bit machine this value is sufficient to store time up to the 18th of January 2038. After this date, 32-bit clocks will overflow and return false values.
Exposure to this bug is limited right now to 32-bit applications that rely on the time_t data type. Applications must also be calculating time 30 years in the future, so applications that run financial forecasts, or long-term mortgage interest calculations may be impacted by this limitation.
If an application that falls into this category, the immediate solution is to migrate that application to a 64-bit platform. When dealing with a 64-bit program, a time_t can hold a date and time in the future out to the year 292,000,000,000, eliminating this issue. » Read more
This week we’ve got DJ Spooky, Linux-friendly gaming, and animated explosions. That should be enough to fill your weekend. See you Monday! » Read more
Hey you, ya you! Do you write Bash scripts?
Come here, I have a secret to tell you.
Python is easy to learn, and more powerful than Bash. I wasn’t supposed to tell you this–it’s supposed to be a secret. Anything more than a few lines of Bash could be done better in Python. Python is often just as portable as Bash too. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any *NIX operating systems, that don’t include Python. Even IRIX has Python installed. » Read more
