Features
Open source hardware is increasingly making the news but could it change the world? Andrew Back takes a look at five projects which just might bring about that change
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Can Canonical learn the lesson that Red Hat and SUSE learned? When trying to establish bigger projects, doing it with only your own distribution can be difficult and often unwise
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What does it take to open up a proprietary application and make it a successful open source project? To answer this, Glyn Moody takes a look at some prominent successes and failures and identifies the best practices
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Version 3.3 of the Linux kernel offers another way to team multiple Ethernet devices. Support for "Open vSwitch", a virtual network switch that was specifically developed for virtualised environments, has also been added. Byte Queue Limits are designed to reduce the latencies that cause the much-discussed "buffer bloat"
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The H Community Calendar presents the coming month's events in various open source, development, Linux, Unix and other communities, from multi-day conferences to user group get-togethers
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Linux 3.3 can change the size of ext4 filesystems faster and supports ACPI 5.0, LPAE for ARM processors, Ethernet teaming and hot replace for software RAID. Meanwhile, the end for Linux 3.1, and "Linux Ate My RAM" explained
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Ubuntu on your TV, Android running your refrigerator. Glyn Moody looks at some of the developments announced at the recent Consumer Electronic Show and explains how Linux is the natural choice for intelligent appliances
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The specification for Java caching, JSR 107, is close to being submitted for ratification after over ten years in the wilderness. The H talks to Greg Luck, one of the specification leads for JSR107, about its return to life
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GNOME shell extensions can be used to enchance the often criticised GNOME 3 interface - or even give it a GNOME 2 feel
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With the merger of the first changes into Linux 3.3, the number of lines of kernel source code has passed through the 15 million mark. Maintenance of Linux 2.6.32 is set to end in one month's time, while Linux 3.0 and real-time kernels based on it will be maintained for the next two years
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The success of Linux Mint is down to its usability - easy to set up and get running and then use. The latest development is a new user interface, Cinnamon. Richard Hillesley looks at the history of Mint and considers whether Cinnamon marks a turning point for the distribution
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Using the make target "localmodconfig" saves time and effort when creating a configuration for a custom Linux kernel
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Improvements to the Ext4 filesystem, network code optimisations and thin provisioning support in the Device Mapper are some of the major improvements in Linux 3.2. Further additions include new and improved drivers - for example, for graphics hardware by Intel and NVIDIA, as well as Wi-Fi components by Atheros and Broadcom
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Free software plays in supporting online freedom and Glyn Moody thinks there are some projects it should take on in 2012 to help reinforce or reestablish those freedoms
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The H Community Calendar presents the coming month's events in various open source, development, Linux, Unix and other communities, from multi-day conferences to user group get-togethers
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Kernel version 3.2, expected around New Year, improves support for multitouch touchpads. It also enhances support for modern NVIDIA graphics chips and offers a range of new and improved drivers for DVB hardware.
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X-Server 1.12 will include proper support for touch screens with multitouch capabilities. All three major manufacturers of graphics hardware for PCs have released new drivers. Linux 3.0 is still being maintained even though Linux 3.1 has already been out for a few weeks
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GNOME and KDE may be the high profile Linux desktop environments, but they are not to everybody's tastes. Richard Hillesley describes the different approaches taken by a couple of the more prominent alternatives
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Given the recent concerns raised about Mozilla's dependence on its relationship with Google for revenues, what does the future hold for the organisation? Glyn Moody looks at the directions that its stated commitment to an open web is taking Mozilla
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Changes to the memory subsystem promise improved response times and performance. From Linux 3.2, device-mapper supports thin provisioning and is able to use this ability for improved snapshot functionality
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After HP ignominiously dumped the hardware, the webOS software is now to be released as open source. With many companies in the mobile space looking for a backup plan, a Plan B, to Google's Android, is webOS the open source mobile operating system they have been waiting for?
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The enterprise distribution's second update of its sixth edition offers numerous virtualisation, resource management and filesystem optimisations. New and improved drivers and a major X Server update enhance the distribution's hardware support
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Optimised assembler code paths accelerate SHA1 and speed up the Blowfish and Twofish encryption algorithms. The next scheduled Linux kernel release also avoids a cache problem found in AMD's latest processors and includes new and extended drivers for Intel CPUs
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A number of changes to Btrfs mean that filesystem structures will not be as prone to corruption in case of system crashes. By bundling blocks into clusters, Ext4 should be a lot faster in some scenarios. CIFS also promises speed gains
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The world of libraries is not one we normally associate with passion and high drama. And yet Glyn Moody finds that is precisely what the long-running saga of Koha, the open source library management system, has been filled with
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