Linux/Open Source News

When Google unveiled its open source Chrome OS on Thursday, many commentators were quick to dismiss the new operating system as unimpressive and underwhelming.

San Francisco - Ruby, the popular open source dynamic language, is making headway not only on Java but also on the Windows and Mac platforms.

The open source version of Google Chrome OS was released on Thursday, and tech wizards didn't waste any time turning the code into a workable test version of the new operating system. If you don't want to wait until next year to see what's going on with Chrome OS, then follow this handy guide to find all the information you need to get the new system up and running on almost any computer.

Not surprisingly, developers have already snapped up the code to Google's open-source Chrome OS, known as Chromium, then compiled it and put it on the Web for users to download.

Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, one of the more user-friendly versions of Linux around, has agreed to assist Google with its Chrome OS.

Oracle and Sun Microsystems have been granted an extra week to defend their planned US$7 billion merger in front of European regulators, the European Commission said Friday.Earlier this month the Commission, Europe's top antitrust regulator, issued formal objections to the deal, arguing that it posed a threat to competition in the market for database software.The deadline for a final ruling has been put back to Jan. 27 from Jan. 19, which amounts to six additional working days for Oracle to win over the skeptical regulator. "Oracle requested the extension in order to have the opportunity to further develop its arguments in response to the Commission's concerns," the Commission said in a routine weekly statement on the status of ongoing merger investigations.The Commission's concerns center on Oracle acquiring MySQL, an open source database developed in Europe and bought by Sun a year ago for $1 billion. It argued in its statement of objections that the acquisition of the most significant open source database on the market by Oracle, the proprietary database market leader, could harm competition.

Watching Google's Chrome OS event made me realize: There is a lot in Google's OS that can benefit Microsoft--like giving it a completely new platform and one it needs. If Google is really true to its open source promises, Microsoft should join the fun.

Google released its Chrome operating system to the open-source community on Thursday and said it has designed the netbook OS to be faster, simpler and more secure than existing ones.

San Francisco - Several years after open source began to take the world by storm, the question of how to make money in the genre still remains an issue, with a prominent Novell official Wednesday advising caution for those considering a move to open source.

Software company Red Hat could be working on a square box base.

Google Chome OS, which Google is expected to preview this Thursday, has been the subject of much speculation and rumors since its announcement last summer, when Google made public its plans to develop a lightweight, open-source Linux-based OS aimed primarily at netbooks. Ever since, a series of fake screenshots and speculation as to what Chrome will offer has bombarded the Web.

Just a week after the second beta launch, Mozilla on Wednesday released Firefox 3.6 beta 3, which adds 80 changes to the previous version.

Nokia says its Linux-based Maemo operating system is the future of its high-end smartphones, ending hope for Symbian OS to reign supreme. The change emphasizes how far behind the world's largest handset maker has become.

The pace of interactive multimedia continues to evolve with the release Tuesday of Adobe Systems' beta versions of its AIR 2 and Flash Player 10.1 software. The updates are available for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems. The 10.1 player is also available for x86-based netbooks and, at some point in 2010, for smartphones and other mobile devices.

On Tuesday, YouTube announced a new service that lets news and media outlets request, review and even rebroadcast clips YouTube users shoot and upload to the site. Dubbed YouTube Direct, the new tool is built from YouTube's API. YouTube Direct is an open-source application that makes it possible for media organizations to allow customized versions of YouTube's upload platform on their web sites.

I used to think Ubuntu was destined to lead Linux into the mainstream, but now it's looking much more like Google--not Canonical--will be the first Linux vendor to truly challenge Microsoft.

San Francisco - Microsoft announced on Monday the release and open-sourcing of its .Net Micro Framework 4.0, which provides a .Net-based development and execution environment for small devices. But the TCP/IP stack and cryptography stack were omitted  from the open source effort.

Mozilla's developer community has released the second beta of Firefox 3.6 to fix 190 bugs in the original release. Moreover, all current Firefox 3.6 beta users have been issued an update containing improvements of interest to users as well as web and add-on developers.

Nokia's N900, the next tablet/smartphone/whatever to bat against Apple's iPhone, ships today. It's a big occasion for Nokia, as the N900 is its most powerful smartphone yet, and the device's Maemo 5 open source operating system is a diversion from Symbian, which Nokia tends to support.

Mozilla on Tuesday released Firefox 3.6 Beta 2, which includes more than 190 fixes from the first beta.

Google's dominated search, online document collaboration, e-mail, telephony, and more, so why not programming? The tech giant has announced its own open-source, object-oriented programming language, called Go.

San Francisco - Google on Tuesday said it was putting into the open source realm an experimental programming language called Go, which attempts to combine the development speed of a dynamic language like Python with the performance and safety of a compiled language like C or C++.

San Francisco - With a product introduction on Tuesday, Novell will enable developers to use Microsoft's Visual Studio software development platform to both build and debug .Net-based applications for deployment on Linux and other non-Windows platforms.

HELSINKI (Reuters) - Nokia has started deliveries of its new top-of-the-range model N900, a key product for the world's top phone maker in its battle against rivals iPhone and Blackberry.

Mozilla's success had demonstrated open source's potential. Pay attention, Microsoft.

Mozilla's Firefox Web browser turned five years old today, and as I took it for a celebratory spin (I'm a recent Chrome convert), it was easy to notice how similar all the major browsers have become in terms of basic functionality.

On its fifth birthday, Firefox must be considered both an incredible success and somewhat of a failure. The open source Web browser is a great product and quite an achievement, but has not tremendously advanced the cause of "free" software.

On November 9, 2004, Mozilla's Firefox 1.0 debuted and quickly became a serious contender in the ongoing browser wars. At the time, Microsoft's Internet Explorer dominated the market with a 99 percent market share. Five years later, Internet Explorer still reigns at 65 percent, but Firefox comes in second with an impressive 23 percent.

Firefox celebrated a milestone birthday Monday. Five years ago today, Mozilla shipped version 1.0 of the open-source browser.