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Billed as a "mini-Y2K," this weekend could produce myriad horrors, if you believe broadcasters' reports. Hospitals could incorrectly dispense medications. On Monday, conference rooms could be overrun by workers arriving for a meeting scheduled an hour earlier. Financial transactions could be delayed...

Themis Computer announced Thursday a joint project with Terra Soft Solutions to develop a complete Linux distribution to run on the TPPC64, Themis' new line of 6U VMEbus single board computers based on the IBM PowerPC 970FX superscalar RISC processor. The TPPC64 is a high-end computer built around a...

"Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" The question seemingly has no real answer, and biologists can argue either reply ad nauseam. The computer world has an equally pervasive question that cannot provide a single answer: "What are the top three Linux distributions?" Ask any collection o...

TurboLinux last week announced the release of a palm-sized USB device that comes with the firm's FUJI operating system embedded in its 4 GB flash memory. Called "Wizpy," the device will allow users to load Linux on any computer. The company plans to first distribute Wizpy in Japan in February. An En...

Mozilla released the first security reinforcements for Firefox 2.0, the latest version of its popular Web browser, providing users of the open source software with fixes for five critical and three minor security holes. Security has emerged as one of the most important aspects of browser software fr...

As consumers experiment with the Linux operating system and consider switching from Windows, the first carryover they expect to find is applications for virus and spyware protection. However, few exist because Linux does not need them. Nearly all Linux distributions bundle a firewall package, but th...

Linux is fast becoming my operating system of choice because it lacks the software bloat and high overhead plaguing both Microsoft and Apple computing. Those words do not come easily to me. I have been a devout Windows user from the early days. Each Linux distribution offers a distinct flavor of the...

Linux has long been a contender in the corporate world to Windows. In addition, consumer interest is on the rise for this free, open source alternative to Windows or the Macintosh OS. Linux developed along similar lines as Windows in terms of GUI and performance capabilities with one major distinct...

Microsoft's Open XML office software format, pushed by the tech giant to compete with the Open Document Format, cleared a standards hurdle this week, winning approval from the Ecma international standards body. The vote was not unanimous, however, as ODF supporter and Ecma member IBM gave Microsoft'...

IBM announced this week that 372 new Linux on Power applications were released in 2006, yielding a total of 2,500 tested Linux-based solutions available for the Power processor platform. In addition, Big Blue announced the latest Linux on Power application, the Sybase Unwired Accelerator, which offe...

Can you use a reliable, free operating system that can run on new or older computers? How about an operating system that comes packed with hundreds of software programs? Do you want to try out a fully functional OS that runs in a live CD session and can coexist with Windows or Mac operating systems ...

Software maker Adobe made available the highly-anticipated Linux version of Flash Player 9 in beta form this week. The media player, combined with Adobe's Flex 2 Software Development Kit, make up a fully-supported, free platform for rich Internet applications. A final version of the Linux-specific p...

Most fans of Linux know that while the open source operating system has proven its might in corporate computer servers, it has languished on the desktop, where Microsoft maintains its monopoly. While companies such as Linspire, Xandros and others try to make Linux more appealing on the desktop, Ubun...

In an effort to reach out to open source developers, Apple Computer this week said it will release buildable kernel source code for Intel-based Macs, beginning with code for Mac OS X, version 10.4.7. The firm previously released similar code for its PowerPC-based Macs. Apple quietly announced the o...

Mozilla's open source Firefox browser continues to chip away at Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Firefox's share of the global browser market grew to 12.93 percent in July, according to a new report from Web analytics provider OneStat.com. Although that number is still small, compared to the whopping ...

Mozilla's open source Firefox browser continues to creep up on Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Firefox's share of the global browser market grew to 12.93 percent in July, according to a new report. Although that number is still small, compared to the whopping 83.05 percent enjoyed by IE, Firefox's to...

Google on Wednesday released a Firefox extension to keep browser settings in sync across multiple computers. Google Browser Sync is a free plug-in for the popular open source browser that continuously synchronizes bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, tabs and saved passwords across different PCs....

Red Hat is reaching beyond Linux geeks and system administrators with its latest effort to provide open source tools and community networks not around enterprise computing, but centered on digital media including music and television. Dubbed "Mugshot," the new Red Hat initiative consists of a Web si...

Mobile phone giant Nokia released its S60 mobile browser source code under the open source BSD license this week, claiming the move will promote handset platform consistency and avoid the fragmentation that has held back mobile browsing. Nokia is choosing to open the mobile browser engine code becau...

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's open source security audit program has identified the biggest X Window System security vulnerability in the last six years. The X Window System is used in Unix and Linux operating systems. It also ships as an optional GUI with Apple's Macintosh computers. C...