Matt Croydon::Postneo

Category: Linux

  • Mono Daily Builds

    The Mono team is now providing nightly snapshots in three different flavours.  They provide release-style tarballs, a tarball of componenets built on that day, and a lightweight distro for bootstrapping.

    Get your daily mono goodness here.

  • Channels Are Back

    Sorry for the outage, but I’ve not been using categories for quite some time because of space issues.

    My web provider recently gave me more storage, so I’ll be posting to categories again.

    Enjoy.

  • Lindows Laptop

    Man, I want a Lindows Laptop.

  • Open Source in the Java Application Server Market

    CNet:

    Analysts say it’s difficult to measure the extent to which open-source Java application servers, such as Tomcat and JBoss, have eaten into the revenue of commercial providers of Java application servers. But the growing popularity of the open-source application servers is undeniable.

    […]

    Last year also saw freely available open-source application servers such as Tomcat and JBoss increasingly make their mark. While Tomcat is appropriate for less complex applications that serve up Web pages to PCs, JBoss is attracting increasing attention because of its completeness and compatibility with the J2EE specification.

    I’m always glad to see stories like this.  The only downside to JBoss is that any documentation more than a plaintext README or INSTALL seems to be only available in book form.  I know that JBoss Group needs to make money, but I’d like to have enough docs available to me in order to evaluate the product.  Then if I’m running an app on JBoss, I can grab the book to find out how to do stuff.

  • Mono Developments

    Here’s the new news from the Mono team:

    • Mono now distributes a few new assemblies: Mono.Security.Win32 as a layer to use the crypto functionality on Win32. The Mono.Posix assembly which contains functionality for taking advantage of Unix facilities.
    • There’s a Mono site in Poland.
    • Stubs for the Gtk# documentation have been checked into CVS. If you want to contribute please read this message.
    • Mono development is moving quickly: Tim and Daniel have been improving the Oracle database provider and Sebastien Pouliot has got code signing to work using Authenticode with pure open source and managed code. Plenty of new VB.NET work from Marco (compiler) and Daniel (runtime). Also Jackson has resumed work on the IL assembler and the fully managed library to generate CIL images (Sergey wrote the first Mono.PEToolkit).

  • Linux Cellphone

    LinuxDevices:

    Motorola, Inc. today announced the Motorola A760, the world’s first handset combining a Linux Operating System and Java Technology, with full multimedia PDA functionality.

    The Motorola A760 is designed to offer a rich end-user mobile experience based on the open source OS. Motorola’s leadership in Java technology coupled with the Linux OS, arms mobile developers with an increased freedom to create new Java applications, from games to productivity tools, for smart devices like the A760.

    [via NewsForge]

  • Dual G4’s on a PCI Card

    MacNN:

    TechnoWarehouse has released “Windjammer,” a $4000 PCI card that contains dual-PowerPC G4 processors. The “self-contained super computer ” card can run Linux, and can be installed in a “standard desktop computer” or can be “scaled-up” for industrial applications. It uses 25 to 50 Watts, contains one serial connector, two Ethernet ports, an IDE controller, two RAM sockets, and other connectivity and upgrade options.

    Pretty cool in that too expensive for me kind of way.

  • .NET Patents

    CNet:

    Microsoft is applying for a patent that covers a variety of functions related to its .Net initiative. But critics say if approved, the wide-ranging patent could stymie innovation.

    Hmm, this could suck big time for open source implementations of .NET such as Mono.

  • The Art of Unix Programming

    LWN:

    Eric Raymond informs us that a draft version of his book The Art of Unix Programming is now available for review. It can be found, along with the rest of Eric’s writings, at his new “catb.org” domain.

    From a section of the book:

    Though the term “open source” and the Open Source Definition were not invented until 1998, peer-review-intensive development of freely shared source code was a key feature of the Unix culture from its beginnings.

    For its first ten years AT&T’s original Unix was normally distributed with source code. This enabled most of the other good things that follow here.

    This work in progress looks quite promising.

  • Mono Doc 0.1 Released

    From the Mono site: “A preliminary release of the Mono Documentation Browser is now availble. Release notes“

  • Linux on an iPod

    Slashdot:

    Here is the announcement for a port of uClinux to the Apple iPod, checkout the project page for extra details. Currently the frame buffer, audio and IDE devices are working. Still plenty of work to do.”

    From the FAQ:

    1.2 Why would you do that?

    A number of reasons but mainly because its there.

  • Linux.Conf.Au Wrapup

    Hemos attended Linux.Conf.Au while myself and others were converging on New York City:

    I’ve just recently returned from Linux Conference Australia 2003, held in Perth, Western Australia. I’ve had an incredible time, and this has easily been the best technical/Linux show I’ve been to since ALS was still operating. I’ve got a write-up below, and some notes on what happened, what’s the plan for next year (It’ll be in Adelaide, and I’m greatly looking forward to it!), and a photo round up. A number of other articles have appeared, and Kate MacKenzie’s write up in The Australian was good as well, in addition to Telsa Gwynne’s excellent write-up and Linux Magazine Au has some articles as well.

    This was the geekier of two simultaneous Linux conferences.  LinuxWorld was the east coast biz Linux show, while the one in Austrailia had Linus.  ‘Nuff said.

  • Freshmeat: Databases, RSS for Java, and a Web Services-enabled CMS

    Several releases worth mentioning on Freshmeat today:

    SAP DB 7.4.03.10 (Development) was released:

    This release marks the end of the beta phase. It contains bugfixes, new capabilities for the SERIAL datatype, and a new WebDAV server.

    See Kenneth Hunt’s entry for more info.

    RSSLibJ:

    RSSLibJ is a Java class library designed primarily to generate RSS data in various formats, based on a simple object model. Either RSS or RDF can be generated, and custom generators can be supplied as well.

    I’ve checked out the online example.  It looks really easy to generate a valid RSS feed in Java.  Here’s what’s new in 0.1.4:

    This release generates validatable RSS 0.92, RDF, and RSS 2.0, as tested by http://feeds.archive.org/validator.

    Ampoliros 3.2.1 looks interesting:

    Ampoliros is an advanced and easy to use distributed PHP Web applications platform, featuring a powerful XML-RPC and SOAP interface. It is suitable as an Internet/Intranet development and deployment system. It has a very strong modular architecture and allows very fast deployment of Web solutions.

    I like the XML-RPC and SOAP part.  It looks like mostly a bugfix release, though I haven’t stumbled across it before:

    PHP 4.3.0 and Windows related bugs have been fixed. Various other code improvements and fixes have been made.

    It looks like a solid *nuke-like (but unique) CMS in PHP.  Screenshots look extremely clean and useful.  This looks like a CMS to keep your eyes on.

  • Washington Technology has a story about Linux in Space:

    On board the shuttle, which circles the planet at approximately 150 miles in the atmosphere, an embedded PC module holds a 233-megahertz processor with 128 megabytes of random access memory and a solid-state 144-megabyte hard drive disk. The computer runs a commercial Linux operating system, Red Hat version 6.1, according to Frank Hallahan, a Computer Science Corp. employee, who is a member of the OMNI team.

    [via NewsForge]

  • How Many Langues Will Fit in my Head?

    I’m going to one of my classes for the first time tonight.  It looks like I’ll be working almost exclusively in .NET and C#.  For kicks, I thought I’d wear my Linux Rocks tshirt to class.  We’ll see if people have a sense of humor or not.

    Now all I have to do is find a Microsoft shirt to wear to my Saturday morning class in which I’ll be working almost exclusively in Java.

    Java in the morning, C++ in the afternoon, C# in the evening.  If you count my recent Python on the side (and in the middle of the night), you could explain my current headache.  I’ll blame it on a lack of caffeine, though.

  • Ximian Desktop 2.0

    NewsForge notes that Linux and Main‘s Dennis Powell actually fit inside that tiny little hut (along with other people!) at the Ximian booth at LinuxWorld.  He also managed to sneak a peek at Ximian Desktop 2.0.

  • ReiserFS

    Linux Orbit goes over ReiserFS basics. [via Linux Today]

  • News Briefs

    Here’s a quick lunchtime roundup from my RSS feeds:

    • Mark would like to have quickies like this or his ‘in brief’ posts autogenerated.  Me too.  It’d be nice to have a section of autogenerated links at the bottom of each day (or something like that)
    • Rael is posting to his Blosxom blog with NetNewsWire Pro
    • CK Sample has a mini-review of the 12 inch Powerbook
    • Ingo wants to write a .NET column, and get paid for it!
    • Diego notes that Microsoft forgot to patch some boxes.
    • PC Linux Online notes that there is a new Gnomemeeting release.

  • Red Hat Changes Support and KDE 3.1 Released

    Two quickies from PC Linux Online: Red Hat changes their support model and KDE 3.1 has been released.

  • LinuxWorld In Words – Mono Notes

    I stuck around LinuxWorld until Miguel de Icaza issued his State of the Mono Address.  I’ve been following the Mono project for some time via the website, but this was much better.

    C# is done, VB is 70% done, and JavaScript is 50% done.  This is good.  Miguel demonstrated an almost unmodified version of iBuySpy that was only really slow because it was connecting to an MSSQL server in Spain over 802.11b.

    In theory, you could write an ASP.NET web application today and deploy it on a Linux server using Mono.  You can reuse the docs that are available for C# and .NET (from Microsoft), and you can also reuse the docs and resources available from MS and third parties.

    Miguel stressed that we should reuse the Microsoft booth (next to the Mono booth) to learn about all of the cool ASP stuff that you can do.

    The Mono team is also working on a new version fo their JIT compiler which will speed up apps significantly.  He also demoed a sweet debugger written in GTK# (GTK bindings for C#) and a digital camera organization app that he wrote for himself (not for you).  It was running slow over a wireless connection, so he brought out the laptop to reassure us that the app was fast and non-blocking.

    It is obvious that WinForms is one of the least mature parts of Mono.  More people are interested in using Mono for hosting ASP apps, so that stuff is getting done quicker.  He stressed several times that if we wrote some regression tests, patched some code, did some documentation, that Mono would be complete in a matter of weeks.

    There is database support for pretty much every popular database that runs under Linux.  You can take an exe produced from Visual Studio or the mono compiler and run it using mono.

    Overall I was impressed by the state of Mono and the demos.  It’s awsome to be able to take a Microsoft demo app out of the box and run it using Mono.  There were only a few configuration changes that had to be made to take case specific files into consideration.  Other than that, it just worked: mono server.exe 8080.