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Banshee Wails its Way to 1.0

The coming of the banshee isn't generally considered a welcome appearance, however, it was last week as the Banshee jukebox reached its first stable release with Version 1.0.

Convert a File to a C Data Structure

Yesterday's post about embedding a file in an executable has gotten a couple of replies about programs that will convert the file to a C data structure. This is certainly an option, here's a script that does that without the need to go searching for programs, it uses standard Linux tools:

Are There Any Evil Distros?

If you take a gander at the number of Linux distributions listed at Distrowatch, you'll find there are tons of "forks" and "offshoots" from one distribution to another. With Linux, we have the freedom to do that, but I'm curious if there are any Linux flavors that are truly offensive to people.

Nokia is Preaching, But not Really to the Choir

Nobody likes to be told they need to learn how things work in their own back yard, but when the lesson is about being taken to the cleaners, it's doubly offensive. Such was the message from Nokia on Tuesday, as its Open Source head took the OS community to task for not letting corporate greed run roughshod over the principles upon which Open Source stands.

Latest X Server Sees the Light of Day

Pulling things together for a stable software release isn't easy, and for many projects, it's a process that comes together when it's ready to come together. Other projects, however, have a more predictable cycle for their releases — and when the wheels come off the cycle, people take notice.

Embedding a File in an Executable, aka Hello World, Version 5967

I recently had the need to embed a file in an executable. Since I'm working at the command line with gcc, et al and not with a fancy RAD tool that makes it all happen magically it wasn't immediately obvious to me how to make this happen. A bit of searching on the net found a hack to essentially cat it onto the end of the executable and then decipher where it was based on a bunch of information I didn't want to know about. Seemed like there ought to be a better way...

RMS Trashes the Tube

Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman is no stranger to controversy, and probably never will be. He grabbed himself a fresh dose of it on Monday, attacking London's famed Underground over the potential for government tracking of citizens via the smartcard season pass.

It Petaflops, and it's Linux

When it comes to supercomputing, flopping is a good thing. While geeks everywhere are gushing over gigahertz and terabytes, the uber-geeks at IBM, in conjunction with the nuclear overlords at Los Alamos, have been chasing the elusive petaflop — and they've finally got it, 6000ft² of it.

EU Superwoman Gives Open Source a Boost

Neelie Kroes is a force to be reckoned with. As head of the European Union's antitrust division, she holds in her hands the future — and the financial health — of any company foolhardy enough to make monopolistic advances on the Old World. To top it off, she's now a vocal proponent of Open Source software.