For those interested in seeing official open-source support from NVIDIA or open specifications, there is an open letter for open drivers to NVIDIA at OpenTheBlob.com. With both AMD and Intel now supporting open-source X.Org drivers and releasing specifications/documentation, the community is looking for the same (if not more) from NVIDIA…
Sun has claimed that completing its purchase of the open source database developer MySQL will enable it to become the most complete provider of open source server software.
Jonathan Schwartz, Sun’s chief executive, said in a conference call on Tuesday that the US$1 billion acquisition “completed our capability to deliver a holistic, secure, open source platform for networks”, providing the last, key piece in a software stack that now rivals Microsoft’s.
The move, which Schwartz described as “the most important acquisition in Sun’s history and in the history of the modern software industry” is significant because: “What we see customers doing is migrating to complete platforms. The market clearly elected a proprietary platform for desktops and we see that happening increasingly with open source solutions on the server side.”
One year after the release of Debian GNU/Linux 4.0, codenamed ‘etch’, and nearly three years after the release of Debian GNU/Linux 3.1, security support for Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 will cease at the end of March.The Debian project released Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 on 8 April this year. In a statement today the development team said: “Users and distributors have been given a one-year timeframe to upgrade their old installations to the current stable release.
As soon as the primary mirror copies data from FTP, I’ll release Slax 6.0.1 (so it may be already available if you’re reading this few hours after this post was published). Changes are the following:
Also note that the Slax logo at DistroWatch is outdated. Please don’t write to me about it, I know it. I can’t change that. Slax’s logo has been modified five times in the past few years, and people@distrowatch have better things to do then updating the icon once per year. Justitia suum cuique distribuit …
GUADEC, the annual GNOME conference will be held in Istanbul, Turkey from the 7th to the 12th of July 2008. The conference will bring together the GNOME development and user community and key personalities from businesses and governments, to discuss the future direction of the GNOME project.The call for participation in the conference is now open, and will close on March 30th. A variety of presentations and session can be proposed. “Emerging GNOME trends set the dialog at GUADEC. It was Online Desktop last year, and GNOME Mobile the year before that.” said the program chair, Behdad Esfahbod, “We are excited to see what the community brings to GUADEC this year.”
Read the full announcement here
The GNOME Foundation is running an accessibility outreach program, offering USD$50,000 to be split among individuals. This program will promote software accessibility awareness among the GNOME community as well as harden and improve the overall quality of the GNOME accessibility offering. Read the full announcement.
So far so good for Novell.
For its first quarter 2008 results Novell reported growing income and revenues with a strong year over year showing from its Linux platform business. With Microsoft’s Windows Server 2008 set to enter the market, Novell’s CEO is optimistic that Novell will continue to grow its business even further.
Novell reported first quarter 2008 net revenue of $231 million which was up from $218 million in the first fiscal quarter of 2007.
[cob:Related_Stories]First-quarter net income was $16.8 million, ($0.05 cents per share), which is a turnaround from the net loss of $19.9 million ($0.06 cents per share), it reported for the first quarter of 2007.
Everywhere you turn nowadays, another company is targeting the Small and Medium Business (SMB) marketplace. SMBs are growing, and represent a segment of the IT market that has not been fully exploited by many, including open source software vendors that boasted early successes with large enterprises.
However, as vendors have learned, there have been obstacles to penetrating the SMB space. SMBs are reluctant to taking a chance on an open source solution in what has become a Microsoft market. They want IT solutions that are easy to install, configure, and maintain. The full penetration by open source software vendors is sluggish, but it’s moving.
Internal Microsoft emails used by plaintiffs as evidence in the Windows Vista Capable lawsuit have revealed that the software giant caved into pressure from Intel to enable its 915 series integrated graphics chipsets to run Windows Vista.
What’s significant about this is that before this decision, Microsoft had been adamant that, in order for a system to support Windows Vista, its graphics processor had to support the Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM)—a specification that Intel’s 915 graphics chipset didn’t conform to.