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• Is encumbered by mandatory "Open Logging" of your metadata (privacy loss) if used with multi-user access.
• Has a history of gaining more restrictive conditions over time. E.g.: The licence initially provided that, if the company's Open Logging servers cease to function for 180 days, the software would convert to GPL, but that provision was later withdrawn. Source code access was also withdrawn. The non-compete clause was added. A provision was added (and later removed) to allow BitMover to terminate the licences of any individuals or groups whose usage is deemed to have cost BitMover over US $20,000 in support costs. Consequently:
  1. Publicly posted comments about BitKeeper are often outdated.
  2. It is recommended to download the program and read its current licence agreement. (See slightly outdated licence analysis, copy 1 2, for which the author was unfortunately threatened with litigation.)
• Is subject to mandatory upgrading, per the licence's requirement, when new versions come out. There are compelling technical reasons why BitMover requires this. However, it should be noted that replacement versions have often introduced new licensing containing novel restrictions, such as the non-compete clause. (The point is not to portray this as somehow sinister: It's to prevent people from assuming they may keep using older versions, if they don't like newer ones' terms of use.)
• Is encumbered by a non-compete clause, http://lwn.net/Articles/12120/. If you or your employer develops, produces, or [re]sells a "substantially similar" competing product, you may not use it. BitMover sometimes waives this restriction for particular users. BitMover has advised some Linux kernel developers that they may not use the gratis-usage version, given their work on other SCMs. (They would have to buy the commercial version.)
• Requires in recent versions that the the hosted repositories' source code contents be available (on BitMover request) via the BitKeeper access protocol.

The moderation system: It would severely reduce useful contribution, period. It's "unwiki" and unfriendly.

"all kinds of business ventures"
It isn't for profit.

"a dead-tree Wikipedia set, CDs and DVDs"
There is inherent risk here. Sending out text which may be copyrighted - and even making people pay for it - is insanely risky. There would need to be validation first.

"A Wikipedia magazine, containing random articles picked by a small staff"
Why? Anybody can read unusual articles[1] online.

"might bring in money to pay a staff of researchers to go through the entire encyclopedia and increase the detail level and quality of its contents."
That would take years. I'de much rather let the same thing happen, only slower; I'de also like the site to always work quickly and reliably[2] and to have fulltext search. That's more important.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unusual_art icles
[2] http://openfacts.berlios.de/index-en.phtml?title=W ikipedia_Status

http://developer.berlios.de/projects/wikioncd/

WikiOnCD is dedicated to producing software for converting Wikipedia and other Mediwiki databases to a browsable CD format, and, as licensing permits, to produce these CDs.

It uses on the fly compression trickery to fit more than 800 meg of text onto a cd.

I would really love to see a comparison of CVS vs. Subversion vs. GNU Arch vs. Monotone vs. http://better-scm.berlios.de/comparison/comparison .html
BTW, on the LKML Linus pretty much ruled out svn and gave a hint towards monotone. The reason is probably the support for distributed development. This gives GNU/arch and monotone the best chances. (Darcs still seems to have scaling problems)

While it may or may not have your personal favorite, this page compares the features of 13 different source control systems. I found it via this page that compared five of the more popular open-source systems.

Found these links when I was doing a websearch on monotone and other CMS systems.

Problems with BK's license

A critique of the license.

And a nastygram of BK to the subversion group.

I think the closest GNU alternative to BitKeeper is Arch.

I'm not familliar with both but from what I recall they're distributed version control systems as opposed to centralised CVS and Subversion.

You can find more about the differences at
http://better-scm.berlios.de/comparison/

"The better SCM initiative was established to encourage improved OSS/FS SCM systems, by discussing and comparing them. Among other things, see their comparison file. Zooko has written a short review of OSS/FS SCM tools. Shlomi Fish's OnLamp.com article compares various CM systems as does his Evolution of a Revision Control User. The arch folks have developed a comparison of arch with Subversion and CVS (obviously, they like arch). Another pro-arch discussion is Why the Future is Distributed. A pro-subversion discussion is available at Dispelling Subversion FUD. Slashdot had a discussion when Subversion 1.0 was announced. Kernel traffic posted a summary of a technical discussion about BitKeeper. Brad Appleton has collected lots of interesting SCM links. jemfinch has some interesting essays about SCMs (he uses the term VCS), including why he thinks the approach to branches used by Darcs, Arch, and Bazaar-ng is a poor one. A brief overview of SCM systems that can run on Linux is available."

There are lots of OSS/FS software configuration management (SCM) tools. CVS, Subversion (SVN), and GNU arch get lots of press, but there are many others such as Aegis, CVSNT, Darcs, FastCST, OpenCM, Vesta, Codeville, Bazaar and Bazaar-NG.

You might also take a peek at my paper Software Configuration Management (SCM) Security.

"The better SCM initiative was established to encourage improved OSS/FS SCM systems, by discussing and comparing them. Among other things, see their comparison file. Zooko has written a short review of OSS/FS SCM tools. Shlomi Fish's OnLamp.com article compares various CM systems as does his Evolution of a Revision Control User. The arch folks have developed a comparison of arch with Subversion and CVS (obviously, they like arch). Another pro-arch discussion is Why the Future is Distributed. A pro-subversion discussion is available at Dispelling Subversion FUD. Slashdot had a discussion when Subversion 1.0 was announced. Kernel traffic posted a summary of a technical discussion about BitKeeper. Brad Appleton has collected lots of interesting SCM links. jemfinch has some interesting essays about SCMs (he uses the term VCS), including why he thinks the approach to branches used by Darcs, Arch, and Bazaar-ng is a poor one. A brief overview of SCM systems that can run on Linux is available."

There are lots of OSS/FS software configuration management (SCM) tools. CVS, Subversion (SVN), and GNU arch get lots of press, but there are many others such as Aegis, CVSNT, Darcs, FastCST, OpenCM, Vesta, Codeville, Bazaar and Bazaar-NG.

You might also take a peek at my paper Software Configuration Management (SCM) Security.

"The better SCM initiative was established to encourage improved OSS/FS SCM systems, by discussing and comparing them. Among other things, see their comparison file. Zooko has written a short review of OSS/FS SCM tools. Shlomi Fish's OnLamp.com article compares various CM systems as does his Evolution of a Revision Control User. The arch folks have developed a comparison of arch with Subversion and CVS (obviously, they like arch). Another pro-arch discussion is Why the Future is Distributed. A pro-subversion discussion is available at Dispelling Subversion FUD. Slashdot had a discussion when Subversion 1.0 was announced. Kernel traffic posted a summary of a technical discussion about BitKeeper. Brad Appleton has collected lots of interesting SCM links. jemfinch has some interesting essays about SCMs (he uses the term VCS), including why he thinks the approach to branches used by Darcs, Arch, and Bazaar-ng is a poor one. A brief overview of SCM systems that can run on Linux is available."

There are lots of OSS/FS software configuration management (SCM) tools. CVS, Subversion (SVN), and GNU arch get lots of press, but there are many others such as Aegis, CVSNT, Darcs, FastCST, OpenCM, Vesta, Codeville, Bazaar and Bazaar-NG.

You might also take a peek at my paper Software Configuration Management (SCM) Security.

Last time I checked I still required SCSI-emulation in my kernel to get K3B or CDRecord working. There is the "dev=ATAPI:x,y,z" option, but I never got that working correctly.

Well, there is no such thing as scsi emulation.

From cdrecord's READMEs:

The ATAPI standard describes method of sending SCSI commands over IDE
transport with some small limitations to the "real" SCSI standard.
SCSI commands are send via IDE transport using the 'ATA packet'
command. There is no SCSI emulation - ATAPI drives include native
SCSI command support.

--png

5) copy / paste, and, to a lesser extent, drag and drop work across all applications
WFM, what is your problem?

There's MPY SVN Stats.

Save anyone else the trouble:

Feather Linux

(Posted anonymously to avoid karma whoring.)

If you want to test the IBM API, but you don't have a Trusted Platform Module, you can try using the kernel module emulator at http://tpm-emulator.berlios.de/index.html

Those interested in zoomable interface might want to have a look at Flexlay, it is basically a collection of OpenGL based layers and objects that can be placed and edited on an almost unlimited large workspace (as much as a float can hold). Its currently mainly usefull as a simple editor for 2d games (SuperTux, netPanzer), but also comes with a drawing component that allows todo simple paint operations (like Gimps brushtool) on an unlimited and non-pixel based canvas. Beside zooming and panning it also has support for rotating the drawing area in realtime, which give it quite a natural paper-like feel. There is support for graphic tablets too.

Those interested in it should check out the latest SVN version, since the last release doesn't contain any of the more interesting features.

PS: This is blunt self-advertisment, hope you can forgive me, but it kind of fitted here and might be interesting for some people. And by the way its GPL.

• You could get a Linux maintainer, or you could attempt to use the compile features at Slashdot, they have many different types of boxes and operating systems for you to choose from. If you want to support all Linux versions, definitely see about getting a helpful maintainer to keep the source working and be able to compile something that works for a majority of the distributions out there.
• SourceForge is the largest community, but BerliOS is nice as well as it has SVN, CVS, and most of the other nice features that SourceForge has. Admittedly, the community is much smaller so you'll receive less traffic if you go there (but that didn't stop me from signing up my project).
• Make an AUTHORS file in the root of the source code and give them credit for what they did. You could also have a credits option in your game and list contributors.
• Someone else mentioned the meanings of the different terms so I won't go into that. You can however, have as much leeway as you wish when it comes to numbering conventions. Just be consistant!
• Wikis can be useful for OS projects as BZFlag will show you.
• If you have legal questions, first look through the licenses at the Open Source Initiative to see what they have to offer. It's a good idea to use your common sense for most things, but if you have really pressing issues you might be able to ask the folks at the FSF (they have some very brilliant minds at work there), or you may have to find and befriend a lawyer. ;-)

• You could get a Linux maintainer, or you could attempt to use the compile features at Slashdot, they have many different types of boxes and operating systems for you to choose from. If you want to support all Linux versions, definitely see about getting a helpful maintainer to keep the source working and be able to compile something that works for a majority of the distributions out there.
• SourceForge is the largest community, but BerliOS is nice as well as it has SVN, CVS, and most of the other nice features that SourceForge has. Admittedly, the community is much smaller so you'll receive less traffic if you go there (but that didn't stop me from signing up my project).
• Make an AUTHORS file in the root of the source code and give them credit for what they did. You could also have a credits option in your game and list contributors.
• Someone else mentioned the meanings of the different terms so I won't go into that. You can however, have as much leeway as you wish when it comes to numbering conventions. Just be consistant!
• Wikis can be useful for OS projects as BZFlag will show you.
• If you have legal questions, first look through the licenses at the Open Source Initiative to see what they have to offer. It's a good idea to use your common sense for most things, but if you have really pressing issues you might be able to ask the folks at the FSF (they have some very brilliant minds at work there), or you may have to find and befriend a lawyer. ;-)

Had trouble finding them before, but here are some screenshots showing the progress...

Tuxkart (before, after)

Pingus (screenshots, improvement not as drastic as supertuxcart, but still)

Supertux (screenshots, you can see the progress just by scrolling down).

Alright, so these are all variations on a theme (linux motifs combined with older popular titles: Mariokart, Lemmings, Super Mario Bros) but if the artwork is any indication, it's pretty impressive what they've come up with so far.

There are several - I usually go to http://www.linux.org/dist/index.html and select the "LiveCD" Category. This suggests a range of options, each with different advantages. I try out a new one every few months, just to get some variety.

One I tried recently, which is close to your needs is FeatherLinux (http://featherlinux.berlios.de/). I'm not sure about XL/Powerpoint in the default install, but it can install OpenOffice if you wish.

You can use a hard drive (not ntfs) or usb stick. Check out klik for an easy way to install apps into your user directory(katonix has the client preinstalled). APT-GET doesn't necessarily install into your persistent user dir.

I so agree with this statement! I use Konqueror more then I use FF or Mozilla, and I find it an exceedingly good browser. I really miss it when I work on windows machines

:quote: Linux can go for about a month at a stretch, before Konq and Moz are just crashing all the time, and Open Office starts to sporadically refuse to open. :endquote:

I don't agree with this statement. While I agree FF is a bit less stable then I'd like, I'm finding that a kdeinit daemon starts to get wonky on one of my machines, and has to be manually kill -15 about every 20-25 days or so, but no reboots have been necessary on my machines in months. I've only got an uptime of 16 days on my network because a power outage two weeks ago. I should invest in a UPS.

I'm surprised you arent running fluxbox or icewm on that machine, it'd be far 'snappier' in its response, and still be able to launch kde apps.

:quote: And let's not compare installing software, that's just not fair.... :endquote:

I agree, apt-get install foo-bar is far far faster and neater then anything in the windows world.

Have you checked out klik http://klik.berlios.de/ yet? point-and click installation from a user account. It's at the early stages of development, but a great program.

Windows 2000 is the best os Microsoft ever made IMO, but linux is better, faster, more stable then windows ever was.

jaz

1. Darcs is must less strict: For example, it doesn't have a built-in concept of branches/versions (which is necessary in Arch because of the patch ordering/application constraints).
   
2. All working directories are repositories themselves. This can be very useful (for example, it makes it trivial to manage /etc using darcs), but also somewhat dangerous.
   
3. Interactive approval of every recorded diff chunk (change). This may not sound like a big deal, but if you have spurious changes in a tree which you'd rather not record(*) in a given changeset, interactive prompting makes it a a lot easier to achieve clean changesets which only touch one "aspect" of the source at a time.
   

There is nothing special about OS *drivers* for wlan cards. My Netgear MA101 runs fine on linux with the at76c503a driver, which is under the GPL. But the *firmware* is closed source.

Needless to say that the chip manufacturers put all the interesting stuff into the firmware, so the driver isn't really much worth (don't get me wrong - I'm actually happy about it. Otherwise wlan on Linux would be even more complicated)

I have found wxMusic to be a nice player.

The only problem I have is that it needs some kind of runtime sound compression or auto-level.

Would be interesting to know exactly what stuff do these machines do? Maybe they would even be able to share some code so that people can fiddle around with it optimizing


I don't know about the VT cluster specifically, but here's a couple of typical supercomputer applications that happen to be open source:

ABINIT, a DFT code.

CP2K, another DFT code, focused more on Car-Parinello MD.

Gromacs, a molecular dynamics program.


(should be fun)


Well, if optimizing 200 000 line Fortran programs parallelized using MPI sounds like fun to you, jump right in! ;-)

Note: Above applies to abinit and cp2k only, I don't know anything about gromacs except that it's written in C, not Fortran (though inner loops are in Fortran for speed).

Oh, and then there's MM5, a weather prediction code which I think is also open source. I don't know anything about it, though.

Compare that C code with this C file. I'd guess it's a small rpm installer, just in case you are not using a rpm based system.

A similar product has just released a new version as well. Check out Feather Linux

gpsd: serve up realtime GPS data

here

gpstrans: download/upload Garmin data here

gpsbabel: up/download & convert GPS data here

v.in.garmin + GRASS GIS 5.7: download GPS directly into serious mapping & analysis software here here

There is an interesting writeup about opensource music apps over at News Forge today. Just installed wxMusic and it looks excellent for large music collections.

Before anyone asks, yes there is a DC client for Linux, dcgui-qt. Expect to be banned or refused by about 60% of DC hubs because you are not using the Windows-only DC++ client.

Feather Linux 64 megabytes total install (I've run it on a 300mghz with 64 megs RAM, and my regular box with a 200PP at 224 ram) It's a knoppix/debian live CD that is hard drive installable, or can run from a 64 meg flashdrive, etc, that's what it's designed for really, but cool for older systems with minimum resources

Vector Linux A slackware-ish effort: this is from their requirements page, note, I never tried it: VL 4.3 Hardware Requirements

The minimum hardware requirements to run VectorLinux 4.3 are a 166 MHz Pentium class processor with 32 MB of RAM memory, and just 850 MB of hard disc space (*).

To have a more comfortable experience with VectorLinux 4.3 we would recommend a 233 MHz (MMX) processor with 64 MB of memory as a minimum.

(*) 835 MB of space for the installation plus 64 MB of swap space is the very minimum.
Extra space would be required for additional applications and / or your personal files.

I run FC2 on my machine, and in my experience, yes, ram is more important than processor speed

Of course, I still got my old mac 512k, runs a GUI environment from a floppy......

Basically, you get what you want and pay for, want a zillion programs and a lot of multitasking and full GUI, you need moah powah, regardless of OS.

Absolutely, in fact, TW-Light not only runs on Windows and Linux, it's also Open-Source. It's a lot of fun, you should check it out! :-)

TW-Light's Homepage: http://tw-light.berlios.de/

(Disclaimer: I'm a developer on the TW-Light project)

Absolutely, in fact, TW-Light not only runs on Windows and Linux, it's also Open-Source. It's a lot of fun, you should check it out! :-)

TW-Light's Homepage: http://tw-light.berlios.de/

(Disclaimer: I'm a developer on the TW-Light project)

Actually, at least three of the entries have Linux versions available: the two you mentioned, and TW-Light.

In fact, TW-Light is also Open-Source, and it runs on Windows, Linux, and historically, Mac and BeOS. It's a lot of fun, you should check it out! :-)

TW-Light's Homepage: http://tw-light.berlios.de/

(Disclaimer: I'm a developer on the TW-Light project)

Actually, at least three of the entries have Linux versions available: the two you mentioned, and TW-Light.

In fact, TW-Light is also Open-Source, and it runs on Windows, Linux, and historically, Mac and BeOS. It's a lot of fun, you should check it out! :-)

TW-Light's Homepage: http://tw-light.berlios.de/

(Disclaimer: I'm a developer on the TW-Light project)

I have a 4 year old AMD K6II @ 450MHz, with a Voodoo 3 in it, and it serves my purposes well as a Windows box to check websites in over VNC from my Mac and for troubleshooting friends virus/spyware/printing etc problems.

I also have a 5 year old G3 Mac Powerbook @ 333MHz, which I still occaisionally use for some applications and retro games that never got ported to OSX (I'm now considering installing Linux on it with the WMI lightweight keyboard oriented WM on it).

These computers still have very good use to them, and I sometimes think it's a shame that people throw away old computers when they have a lot of potential for a good few people.

Your stereotype is all wrong. Most OSS developers are 20-30 and are either university students or full-time IT professionals. Here's just one survey that I dug up quickly.

OSS developers survey

Nigel Cunningham of the Software Suspend project. I've been using this on my laptop for a long time now, and it works great. He's kept development active and is very helpful. definitely makes my laptop more useable. kudos to Nigel!

Russ

Errr... Done.

Next?

When I got my DVD writer I had already been using xcdroast (and implicitly cdrtools) for a long time with CD's. It seemed the simplest to just get cdrecord-prodvd for this setup.

It amounted to downloading one (1) binary file, placing it as executable in the xcdroast bin dir and a copy/paste operation of the license key from a README found at the same place as the binary.

It worked right away, took a couple of minutes not counting the download and now I can use xcdroast with DVD's as well as CD's without any headache at all.

True, the license is only for home and personal use and will expire after about a year, but really, for a home user that's all I need.

I like my DVD/CD writing graphical, so there. By comparison with xcdroast, K3B always seemed like a kitchen sink to me. I've tried it several times but couldn't get used to it. Since so many people seem to be very happy with K3B I must be the odd one out.

When I got my DVD writer I had already been using xcdroast (and implicitly cdrtools) for a long time with CD's. It seemed the simplest to just get cdrecord-prodvd for this setup.

It amounted to downloading one (1) binary file, placing it as executable in the xcdroast bin dir and a copy/paste operation of the license key from a README found at the same place as the binary.

It worked right away, took a couple of minutes not counting the download and now I can use xcdroast with DVD's as well as CD's without any headache at all.

True, the license is only for home and personal use and will expire after about a year, but really, for a home user that's all I need.

I like my DVD/CD writing graphical, so there. By comparison with xcdroast, K3B always seemed like a kitchen sink to me. I've tried it several times but couldn't get used to it. Since so many people seem to be very happy with K3B I must be the odd one out.

wow. who would've thought of such an idea?
im suprised somebody hasnt already
..erm they have. http://slax.linux-live.org/
not to mention many other distros, many of which are made for just such a feat..
http://featherlinux.berlios.de/ but in all regaurds, atleast its now "cool"
to have a usb key drive, with a top 5 distro on it.
(top 5, rh, suse, mandrake, slackware, debian)

who knows where this will take us. but i invision a future where we'll all cary this little chip around,
with all our personal information in it, personal files, etc. ("big brother's dream")
so that we can be more "productive & efficent"
lord knows where the personal privacy will sease and "common good" begins.
/end rant

http://openfacts.berlios.de/index-en.phtml?title=l xdvdrip This above link is where you can find the software. This link below is how you can use it to perfection. Lxdvdrip is quite literally configurable to a 1 click dvd backup software. You can set it up to where all you do is click an icon and you're done as it does everything else for you (if configured right and with a dvd r/w and a seperate dvd rom to read from unless you want to switch dvd's in the middle of the process). http://pcpitstop.ibforums.com/index.php?showtopic= 59445&hl=lxdvdrip Read this thread here and you'll find out how to configure it to work for you as well as delete all the temp files when done.

To burn a DVD I just do:

growisofs -Z /dev/burner -R -J /path/to/data

A very good option for doing all this very easily is to get K3b which is part of the KDE distribution.

For authoring DVDs I recently discovered Qdvdauthor, and it works like a charm!, I was able to create my own DVDs with menus with custom backgrounds, sound, etc.

Also check my homepage for help about video conversions: http ://dvdripping-guid.berlios.de

hibernation on my toshiba tecra 8100 with kernel 2.6.8.1 works perfectly, with latest kernel patches. I use debian so a line in /etc/apt/sources.list :

deb http://cp.yi.org/apt/hibernate ./

makes sure I have latest hibernate scripts.

I just assigned 'sudo /sbin/hibernate' to "sleep" button in my session manager. I also had set up sleepd to hibernate when battery drops to 5% (which is usually 2 hours).
And, yes - there is a glitch - if I hibernate with blender or glxgears running, then after restore the 3d acceleration gets screwed up, and sooner or later I want to restart Xserver anyway (graphic card is s3 savage).

I have a digital video receiver now. It's called mldonkey

I know that Windows and Macintosh definently have these features. I do not have enough experiance with Linux to know weather or not it also has them built in, but a very quick Google search turns up: http://softwaresuspend.berlios.de/

1. A dedicated QA staff. You should have as many testers as you have developers.
2. Tools for the QA staff to create their own automation. They don't like doing manual testing much, either, so they'll have incentive to use the tools. :-) I'll talk about the tools we use in a bit.
3. Training for the QA staff on the tools. Hire QA people capable of at least a little shell programming. And the tools they use should be not much harder than writing shell scripts.
4. A good SCM (source code management) system that provides atomic commits, so that when you fix a bug, you can tell your testers exactly what revision number it's fixed in, and they can get exactly that revision verify it in the same system you had when you fixed it.
5. A bug tracker. It doesn't have to integrate with the SCM, but if it doesn't, you should make it a hard policy that your commit log messages should say what bug number they are a fix for, and when you resolve a bug, you must say what revision the fix went into. I can't even estimate how much time this policy saves.
6. Automated rebuilds of every revision of the software. Spend a lot of time on this, it's key. It lets your testers test things the minute you fix them. That means, if you failed to fix it correctly, you'll find out SOON while the fix is still fresh in your mind, and you'll save even more time by not having to get back into the mindset of that bug. You will need special software to do it, so read on.

1. For us, our project has had 1-2 developers working full time (me, plus one additional deveoper at various times). We've also had 1-2 testers working full time. That sounds like a small project, but after two years of dev it is a lot of code, and all that code needs testing. The fulltime test staff available right from the start was absolutely not money wasted.
2. The development is done in Python, with Twisted, and so we used a combination of unit tests written by the developers and black box tests written by the testers. Because our app is primarily web, I developed my own web test system (having found no others that were suitable for use by non-programmers). This system is PBP, which is a shell-like scriptable web browser.
3. Our main tester had a little bit of C in school (she actually had forgotten most of it ;-) and a little bit of unix command line experience. This was more than enough to be able to design and build tests with PBP. Then I spent about one full day showing her how to use it and brainstorming testmaking strategies with her.
4. Subversion.
5. We've been successful with Bugzilla. If I had to start over, I probably would have used Trac, with which I've had good experiences on other projects.
6. I built a completely automatic build system using Buildbot to trigger the builds after each commit and A-A-P to script the build process.

Nice article since I'm working on an implementation of ASP.NETs webforms in PHP.

Check it out: http://dotweb.berlios.de/