The news has been abuzz about Google's upcoming OS. Many people have been arguing reasons for and against the system, its viability in such a market, and, if the OS is successful, even the morality of the company who may be trusted with even more private information than it already has. Well, here's another reason for Chrome OS: it could bring more jobs in the area of Linux IT.
With the worldwide recession, people in just about every industry are feeling or at least witnessing the effects in some way. According to CV Screen, a recruitment agency, the IT industry overall has lost 55% of its jobs in the last twelve months. On the other hand, open source jobs have been able to weather the storm a little easier; Linux IT jobs have only dropped by about 30% in that same twelve months, meaning that Linux IT seems to be the better way to go if one intends on keeping his or her occupation.
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Friday, July 17, 2009
Chrome OS to Bring More Linux IT Jobs?
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Linux development platform takes on license compliance
Embedded Alley has upgraded its "Development System for Linux" with tools to create software Bills of Materials, track open source components, trace binary sources, and help OEMs comply with open source license obligations. The new platform also adds support for the Freescale i.MX31 PDK (pictured).
EA's tracking system for open source licensing compliance is claimed to be a first for a Linux development platform. The tracking tools reflect the growing cost of license compliance for OEMs, as well as the frustration developers have with hunting down sources and licensing different components used in open source projects.
"Device manufacturers are using more and more open source packages, and with the number of stacks proliferating, each with different licensing, it becomes more challenging to track," said EA's COO, Matthew Locke, in an interview, "There's a need for a greater level of sophistication of these compliance tools, helping people through production and beyond, and helping OEMs comply with licensing obligations. We're combining development tools with best practices."
The focus on component tracking and licensing appears to be part of a trend in Linux development platforms. With key technological components now in place, the platforms are increasingly focusing on procedural and supply chain issues aimed at reducing development time. For example, the upcoming MontaVista Linux 6 will offer different versions based on various semiconductor distributions, and it provides a new build platform and content server for keeping track of open source components. Timesys has also focused on tracking issues with its DIY-oriented LinuxLink 3.0 subscription service. (See farther below for more on the new license compliance features, as well as additional comments from Locke.)
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Friday, April 10, 2009
Reaping the benefits of Open Source
A few months ago, a Gartner report, The State of Open Source 2008, mentioned: “By 2012, more than 90 percent of enterprises will use Open Source in direct or embedded forms.” The report added: “Open Source is a phenomenon with a broad impact. Chances are, if you do not think you use it, then you use it; and if you think you do use it, then you use lots more of it than you know.”
Why is Open Source becoming so pervasive? The reason is that we are now entering an era of Collaborative Innovation. Open Source Software (OSS) is the leading example of this trend, but the Open Source development model based on collaboration, community and the shared ownership of knowledge is rapidly expanding to other areas like content (Wikipedia), medicine (Open Source Drug Discovery), scientific publishing (Public Library of Science) and other areas of society.
With 1.5 billion people online, the Internet, which is the largest collaborative platform that mankind has ever seen, has enabled OSS like Linux, Apache, Mozilla Firefox, Open Office and others to flourish. In the next couple of years another 600 million people will join the Internet. Thus the trend towards increasing collaboration is only set to grow and this is reflected in the explosive growth of Open Source projects on websites like sourceforge.net and other collaborative websites.
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Sunday, February 8, 2009
Game up for desktop Linux?
[Duncan McLeod Financial Mail] With Microsoft readying itself for the release of a fast, streamlined operating system in Windows 7, the Linux community needs to pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat if the free and open-source operating system is to stay relevant on desktop computers.
Microsoft last month released a “beta” or test version of Windows 7, its newest operating system for desktop PCs. Unlike Vista, which was derided by consumers and the technology press for being bloated, slow and problematic for many users, Windows 7 is winning plaudits from those who have installed it.
Windows 7 runs faster than Vista and works well on the new generation of “netbooks”, the low-cost, low-power laptops from the likes of Acer, Toshiba and Asus. These lightweight, barebones machines typically sell for between R3 000 and R6 000, prompting many consumers who use their computers for Web browsing, e-mail and basic productivity tasks to shun more expensive notebooks.
Most netbooks are, however, unable to run Vista, causing a big headache for Microsoft — the company has been forced to continue selling and supporting the now eight-year-old Windows XP on these machines. Worse, the rise of netbooks has resulted in Linux, which is less demanding of system resources than Vista, gaining a toehold in a market that Microsoft had completely dominated.
The company is fighting back hard with Windows 7. The new operating system, due for release later this year, could spell the end for Linux on the desktop — before the free system, developed by enthusiast programmers around the world, has had a chance to establish a meaningful place for itself.
The problems for desktop Linux go beyond Windows 7, though. Ubuntu, the most popular version of Linux — its development is funded by SA-born billionaire Mark Shuttleworth — is looking increasingly dated.
Next to Windows 7 and Apple’s Mac OS X, Ubuntu and other Linuxes are looking old fashioned. Other than some nifty 3D effects, Ubuntu has not had a significant refresh of its graphical user interface since it was launched more than four years ago.
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Friday, January 23, 2009
Open source survey: Mobile most lucrative
Mobile application development projects bring in more money than other types of open source software development, a study found. The survey was based on "extensive interviews" of 380 developers involved in open source Linux projects, says Dublin, Ireland, based research firm Research and Markets.
Though generally focused on enterprise and desktop Linux development, the survey also explores mobile and embedded development. Topics include languages, distributions, type and number of applications released, major obstacles to Linux and open source, development tools, security concerns, preferred chipsets, and licensing issues. A partial table of contents is listed farther below, and a link to the full contents list is found at the end of the story.
Research and Markets is keeping the bulk of its Linux survey results close to the vest for now (except to paying customers, of course), but it has released a few interesting tidbits, covering distribution channels, bug fix durations, and types of open source projects. Here are some snapshots:
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Sunday, January 18, 2009
Linux & Open Source Bridging the Server Divide
Consolidating Linux and Windows servers may not be easy, but it may be best for the business.
Over the last several years, it has become very clear that the two dominant server operating system environments are Windows and Linux. In fact, it’s not at all uncommon to find both these environments running inside the same organization.
Basically, there are three ways for this situation to come about. The first way is through inheritance, which is usually the result of some merger and acquisition activity in which one side of the deal was primarily running Windows servers while the other favored Linux.
The second, more common, scenario is more ad hoc. At some point, someone on the IT staff brought in Linux servers through the back door, and the application load running on those servers grew over time.
The third and most likely scenario involves a more deliberate strategy whereby the IT leadership has decided to embrace both operating system environments for different types of application workloads.
Most IT organizations chalk up the bickering between the Windows and Linux partisans to good-natured rivalry. But as the economy has taken what looks like an extended turn for the worse, the issue of costs associated with running both operating environments is starting to raise its ugly head.
As a result, the tenor of the Windows-versus-Linux debate is becoming shriller, as advocates for each begin to view the issue as a matter of survival: Many companies must start thinking about standardizing on one environment to reduce costs. The core issue is that each environment requires its own dedicated hardware, management tools and associated specialists.
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Wednesday, January 7, 2009
10 predictions for Linux and open source in 2009
2009 is here. And for people like me, that means it’s time to put together not a “year in review” but a “year in preview.” I don’t like to look back; I like to look ahead. So I offer you this list of what I see in the year to come for the Linux operating system and open source software.
#1: Android
I think 2009 is going to see the Android mobile operating system finally showing Apple and the iPhone that there is, indeed, another game in town. So far, we really only have the T-Mobile G1. But waiting in the wings are the Motorola Android phone, the Asus Eee Phone, the OpenMoko GTA02, and an LG Android phone. These are all rumored to be arriving some time in 2009. When they do hit the shelves, things are going to be interesting for the iPhone.
Think about it — an iPhone-like piece of hardware with open source software that anyone can develop for. No more App Store headaches. No more wondering if anyone might ever develop that killer app you need (or waiting for Apple to approve that killer app you need). Add to that the fact that the operating system itself is open, which means when problems arise they will be fixed. Oh, and need I say “copy/paste”? I didn’t think so. 2009 will bring an end to the idea that the iPhone is the only smart phone to own.
#2: GNOME vs. KDE
I think 2009 will finally see GNOME rise above KDE as the better Linux desktop. For a long time, GNOME has been suffocated by the presence of KDE 3.x and with good reason — KDE 3.x was an outstanding desktop. KDE 3.x had everything a good Linux desktop should have: user friendliness, stability, flexibility, eye candy. GNOME was trying too hard to be a bad copy of OS X. With the advent of KDE 4 the tables have turned.
This is not just a situation where KDE 4.x is so bad that GNOME, as bad as it is, is better. GNOME 2.24 is good, really good. GNOME has gone a little ways to restoring its roots and allowing a bit more flexibility with the desktop. But more important, GNOME 2.24 has finally found some solid footing. GNOME is now as stable as KDE 3.x ever was. And now that KDE has obviously decided to go down a much less popular route with KDE 4, it is going to have a hard year. More and more people and distributions will drop KDE in favor of GNOME. I realize there is no going back for KDE, but going forward better bring much more promise than this Linux desktop has shown thus far.
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Tuesday, August 12, 2008
IBM to open source supercomputing code
IBM Tuesday marked its 10 years of participation in Linux and open source by introducing new software, upgrades to existing platforms and an open source code contribution focused on supercomputing.
The company said its HPC Open Source Software Stack, which includes IBM’s Extreme Cluster Administration Toolkit, was its first ever contribution of open source code for supercomputing.
The announcements were made at the LinuxWorld/Next Generation Data Center conference that opened Monday. (Disclosure: The conference is run by Network World’s parent company IDG.)
The company also introduced a software appliance toolkit and announced it would pre-load Novell SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 in Lotus Foundations to battle Microsoft Small Business Server.
IBM also said it would expand its real-time Linux initiative and it introduced version 5.4 of z/VM, its virtualization platform.
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Monday, August 11, 2008
Linux rises to top dog in servers
LAST week's LinuxWorld talkfest in San Francisco, which brought together 10,000 vendors and users of the open source operating system, offered yet another indicator of its growing popularity across enterprise IT groups and among developers.
The steady march of Linux into ever more central areas of enterprise IT has been visible in the US for about seven or eight years, and has accelerated in the past two.
Once consigned to "non-essential" functions such as serving web pages, Linux is increasingly the basis for software stacks that perform critical data centre tasks.
This trend is likely to continue, and is a remarkable success story for software once ridiculed as unfit for corporate use, but the focus at LinuxWorld was not the story to date, as much as the future - where Linux and the open source apps that often sit atop it may be headed next. The rise of Linux in enterprises has so far come largely at the expense of older, proprietary flavours of Unix such as Hewlett-Packard/UX, AIX and Solaris, rather than Windows, although this is changing and the more direct open source challenge to Microsoft's market share is growing.
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Sunday, July 13, 2008
Closed Source vs. Open Source in Desktop Linux
When most people in IT think of Linux, they picture an open source operating system kernel, along with other software, coming together to create the server and desktop OS based on Free software. That image is accurate – and there’s no question that it’s open source code (and community cooperation) that has helped Linux to become the powerhouse that it is today.
But at what point do we accept that – whether we like it or not – closed source applications will eventually have to be let in to this otherwise "open" world? After all, this has already been happening for years, despite the Linux purists kicking and screaming the entire time.
In fact, closed source code is used everyday within the Linux world. And here’s the funny thing: most of us never really think twice about it.
Closed source with Linux – it's not a new concept.
While the core of the desktop Linux operating system (regardless of distribution) is powered by open source code, it is commonly used side by side with code that gets less attention – indeed, many Linux purists seem to forget about: Closed source software and drivers are used with desktop Linux every single day by thousands of people.
From specific firmware added by select distributions to ensure wireless compatibility to the open source software known as WINE, which allows users to run closed source Windows applications, proprietary code has its place on the Linux desktop.
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Friday, June 13, 2008
The Next Frontier for Open Source
But the effects of open source development and business models continue to be heavily disruptive as they spread into new technology markets. Disruption often benefits consumers directly.
Cell phones are the next device that will move to open standards. Whether the big providers like it or not.
Can you remember doing business before there were cell phones? Neither can I. It’s one of those technologies that became truly indispensable. (link) Indispensable but not invincible. Quality of service is somewhere near early-adopter stage even after over 15 years of mass adoption. Intentionally obtuse billing. And from a technology standpoint, there’s vendor lock-in, monopolistic advantages, and a resistance to new disruptive technologies. Still, being able to do a phone call from virtually anywhere is extremely valuable, so the consumers put up with a lot.
If you can do phone calls from anywhere you should be able to do computing from anywhere. Reading email, browsing the web… you’ve become dependent on those apps at your desk. In the rest of the world, you’re used to it on your phone now, too. (link) In the US, the cell phone carriers and manufactures misguided attempt to control everything has left consumers short and arguably not served their shareholders as well.
Open source is about to hit the cell phone industry hard. It may even take with it one of the early darlings of US smart phones — a halfway station to open cell phone technology — the iPhone. Apple will be announcing the results of opening up the iPhone to third party developers next week at Apple’s WWDC 08. But the iPhone SDK is accessible only to existing Mac developers. That’s not open enough. ABI Research is estimating that somewhere near one quarter of the world’s smartphones will be Linux-based in 5 years. (link) This is the iPhone’s real competition: Linux.
Where Linux goes, the consumer wins.
Source : http://www.e-linux.it/
Friday, May 23, 2008
Can Microsoft 'do' open source by 2015?
Sam Ramji wants people to clearly understand what projects the company is contributing to, and what code Microsoft is making available - along with the terms - on a routine basis.
It seems Ramji is talking about people both inside and outside Microsoft knowing what’s going on.
"We don't have hard rules... right now, it's still careful judgment case by case. By 2015, I think it would be set up," he told Reg Dev, just before his promotion.
"It'll be understood, woven in to the fabric and in product-development cycles, so it's well understood: 'Here is the parts of our product that will be open source.”
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Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Oracle: Eating its Own Open Source Food
Where in the world's largest database vendor does open source fit? At the very heart, according to Wim Coekaerts, Director of Linux Engineering at database giant Oracle.
Coekaerts leads Oracle's Linux and open source support, which includes OracleVM, the open source Xen-based virtualization hypervisor effort.
In an exhaustive interview with InternetNews.com Coekaerts outlined where Oracle is going with its unbreakable Linux distribution, Linux kernel development and virtualization. (Oracle's Linux support stepped up in 2006 when it announced its own support of Linux based on the binaries of Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), the number one Linux distributor.)
Coekaerts said the critical thing for Oracle is to actively contribute to the Linux and virtualization communities that serve as the base for Oracle's open source offerings. That doesn't mean he necessarily agrees with what other vendors, in particular Red Hat and XenSource are doing, even though the company works with both of their open source products. The ultimate impact of Oracle's open source effort could well lead to a broader use of Linux and Xen or it could lead to greater fragmentation among the various open source groups supporting the two projects.
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Monday, May 5, 2008
Best of open source in software development
The wealth of open source software development goodies is heaven for the developer community, but it's hell on an awards committee. Considering IDEs, debuggers, defect trackers, code coverage tools, unit testers, load testers, and so on, we could have come up with more awards here than the rest of the Bossies combined. Then there were paths that could only lead to trouble. Could we really choose a best language? Or a best development platform? Could we pick Python over Perl, or Rails over Mono?
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Thursday, May 1, 2008
Microsoft Uses Open Source To Extend Systems Management To Linux
Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s management software has never quite measured up to that of Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), IBM (NYSE: IBM), BMC (NYSE: BMC), or CA (NYSE: CA), the "big four" of IT systems management. But the company hopes to begin changing minds about that at the annual Microsoft Management Summit this week, and much of the impetus comes from a rather unlikely place: the integration of open source code into a System Center management product.
On Tuesday, Microsoft announced that it's extending its management software to Linux and Unix environments by integrating some of the open source OpenPegasus project's code into System Center Operations Manager, and will contribute back. The addition of cross-operating system management, the number one customer request for System Center, represents further recognition by Microsoft that it's not a Windows-only world. It also is a significant move toward putting Microsoft on equal footing as a legitimate enterprise management vendor.
"I don't care what enterprise you walk into, they're not going to be single platform. You just don't see that," said Clear Channel solution architect Curt Smith, a System Center customer, in an interview. Clear Channel uses Linux to operate its radio Web platform, has a bunch of creative employees on Apple OS X, and uses VMware for virtualization. "I want the ability to manage it all from one spot. You can't have a bunch of tools all over the place, or else you'll just end up cracking up."
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Friday, April 11, 2008
Linux or open source?
The name of this blog is “Linux and open source” but the question Microsoft wants you to ask yourself is, simply, Linux or open source?
While Linux is an open source operating system, it’s not always free. There is a lot of free open source for Windows. It’s quite easy to have both open source and Windows. I do. You probably do, too.
In such an environment, the battle comes down, again, to where will you find the applications you most want and need?