Basic Lesson #4: Can You See It?

In this lesson, we discuss more about stability issues. A popular buzzword these days is "interface". That's just a fancy word implying that two or more people are face to face. In actual practice, it usually means anything but face to face. It's a means of interacting with another. You are said to "interface" by some means. So it is with computers.

As the Macworld turns

Wait, Steve, back
up a slide; I blinked. What was that skinny rack thing with the
turbo ports carved out of the front? Oh, never mind. That's a cute
little iPod you've got there.

Red Hat to Protect Linux Customers

Red Hat Inc. on Tuesday will follow the lead of Hewlett-Packard Co. and Novell Inc. by announcing a plan to protect its enterprise Linux customers.

Is SCO Denting Customers' Buying Plans?

Are The SCO Group Inc.'s ongoing legal attacks against Linux vendors putting any dent in customers' plans to buy Linux? The answer is a resounding “No,” judging from reactions of showgoers at this week's LinuxWorld here.

Apple bolsters Xserve Platform

Apple next month will offer the Mac business market much-anticipated hardware upgrades to its Xserve platform. Forthcoming will be a 2GHz dual-processor G5 server in a 1U form factor and Xserve RAID with 3.5TB of storage capacity.

Apple's core: The Mac turns 20

Its dedicated users are so passionate they're often described as religious about their love for the machine.

Panther: A Look at Mac on Its 20th Birthday

Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the Apple Macintosh computer. While the original Mac is certainly meager by today's standards, there are few that would argue against its revolutionary status in the early years of personal computing. In commemoration of that event, today also marks the launch of OfB MacFor.Biz, the new section of Open for Business that will cover the Mac in much the same way OfB covers GNU/Linux and BSD. In this premier piece, we will examine the latest Mac OS X, 10.3 “Panther,” on two separate generations of Macintosh systems.

Update: Improved OpenGL benchmark results included below.

MandrakeSoft Reports Profitable Quarter

MandrakeSoft, the French GNU/Linux distributor who filed for bankruptcy protection one year ago last week, announced today that its first fiscal quarter of 2004 resulted in a positive operating result of €280,000. This follows news in recent weeks that the company is preparing an exit plan to leave bankruptcy protection by the end of the quarter.

Basic Lesson #3: Talk to Me

So far, we have discussed how Open Source technology is more secure because of how files are handled. Now we will examine stability issues.

IceWM with Sound

In previous articles, I've focused on helping users of older hardware get the most from it. While most of the FOSS world uses one of the two major desktop interfaces -- KDE or Gnome -- there are plenty of folks using interfaces that are less resource hungry. While it's important to note here that hogging resources is what one pays for all the nifty automatic features found in KDE or Gnome, in reality there are few other compelling reasons to use either. While XFce is a much lighter competitor for them, the latest version (4.x) disappoints me with its lack of a sound module.