Free Software Linux

Now that open source has largely overcome its earlier problems with limited application availability – there's practically no area today that is not served reasonably well by free software – the remaining challenge is hardware support. That's obviously harder to resolve than the earlier software dearth, since it depends not on the willingness of coders to roll up their sleeves and write stuff, but on hardware manufacturers to release either open source drivers, or at least full specs for their kit. But even here, open source continues to demolish the barriers....On Open Enterprise blog.

Open Source indeed has better future than closed source. Why? Well, I’ll describe in this post about both Open Source software and hardware. Before I say one word more, I’d say that this article is not and is of course not meant to be against proprietary programs/hardwares and/or their companies, but this is definitely and is only in favor of Open Source (In fact my whole blog is about that). I’ll describe this post with examples for both Open Source softwares and hardwares. In case of softwares, the merits are well known:

"The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them." Mark Twain It wasn't until after I got my Kindle, Amazon's electronic book, that it dawned on me- "Why didn't Amazon do this years ago?" Considering they're one of the biggest channels for moving books one would have thought selling a device that taps into their distribution channel as seamlessly as the Kindle does would be a no-brainer. Eventually Amazon had its "ah-ha" moment, probably after witnessing the popularity of the iPod and the iTunes music store. read more

"Things really _have_ calmed down, and hopefully we've also resolved a lot of the regressions in -rc3," began Linus Torvalds, announcing the 2.6.27-rc3 Linux kernel. He noted that much of the patch size was from the inclusion of the new ath9k wireless driver, with much of the rest of the patch size due to the renaming of many arch include files in the ARM, AVR32 and m68lnommu architectures. Linus continued: "All the small changes are where the regression fixes are, and other random improvements. And they're all over. The ShortLog (appended) probably gives a taste of it." read more

Mac only: Leopard's built-in Airport utility doesn't do much except show you what Wi-Fi networks are nearby, and which require a password—but free utility AirRadar does much more. AirRadar...

Apple may open up its iPhone and iPod touch devices to third-party apps next month, but the chances that Linux users will get invited to the party are slim at best. That hasn't stopped some intrepid...

Windows only: By default Windows hides WEP and WPA keys stored on your PC to connect to various Wi-Fi networks, but freeware utility WirelessKeyView lists them for you. When you've forgotten that...

Wireless in Linux has finally reached a point where it’s easy to setup and use. Most distributions provide graphical applications to manage your wireless connection. Ubuntu is one of them with its simple but effective and easy to use network-admin.

This once I wish I could attach an audio clip to the headline, so that you could hear William Shatner singing "It Was a Very Good Year", just to get into the proper mood.