Twitter
Home Blog Page 193

A NES Motherboard For The Open Source Generation

By
Swapnil Bhartiya
-

As the original hardware from the golden era of 8-bit computer gaming becomes a bit long in the tooth, keeping it alive has become something of a concern for enthusiasts. There have been a succession of remanufactured parts for many of the major platforms of the day, and now thanks to [Redherring32] it’s the turn of the NES console.

The OpenTendo is a completely open-source replacement for an original front-loading Nintendo Entertainment System motherboard, using both original or after-market Nintendo CPU and PPU chips, and other still readily available components. It doesn’t incorporate Nintendo’s CIC lockout chip — Drew Littrell wrote a great article on how that security feature worked — but if you really need the authenticity there is also the NullCIC project that can simulate that component.

[Source: Hackaday]

Postgres is Open Source Software at its Best

By
Linux.com Editorial Staff
-

Contributed By Bruce Momjian, co-founder of the PostgreSQL Global Development Group and senior database architect

Ubiquity and Democracy are the two words that best describe the open source PostgreSQL (Postgres) database management system. And, much like Linux, both are great examples of “open source at its best”.

In terms of its ubiquity, Postgres has been around more than 30 years and today is seemingly everywhere running on-premise or available as a hosted service (cloud) worldwide from dozens of providers. We often hear it is the “go-to” API most often selected by developers. Ask developers which database technologies they most love, and Postgres comes in second only to Redis, according to the Stack Overflow survey.

And, in terms of democracy, the software project is governed by The PostgreSQL Global Development Group who are developers and volunteers from around the world. The software project has more than 500 contributors. No one company is responsible, dominates or has control of the project and software development, so there is no danger of dependence on any one individual or entity. Furthermore, it’s not possible for anyone to “take over” Postgres. The PostgreSQL Global Development Group remains committed to making PostgreSQL available as free and open source software in perpetuity. There are no plans to change the PostgreSQL License or release PostgreSQL under a different license.

In 2018 and 2017, Postgres was named “Database of the Year” by DB-Engines for gaining more popularity than any of the other 343 monitored systems. DB-Engines wrote: Postgres is at the peak of its popularity, showing no signs of aging with a very active community. PostgreSQL serves modern DBMS requirements very well in various ways. Based on its solid RDBMS implementation, it extended its scope by supporting JSON data types and operators, thus providing an attractive choice for projects that would otherwise have turned to a document store. More recently, in its latest release, it focused on further improving performance.

Ubiquity and Democracy = Freedom

There has been a lot of debate about open source, especially data management technologies, and adoption by cloud providers – especially Amazon Web Services (AWS). To defend their turf, companies like MongoDB have changed their licensing terms to ward off the likes of AWS.

In the case of Postgres, that wouldn’t be possible given the open democracy that governs the project. The democracy that governs Postgres and its ubiquity amounts to Freedom for everyone involved. Users can choose the open source PostgreSQL, or an enterprise version of Postgres to run either in their data center or with whatever cloud provider they choose. There are no limits – and that is what makes Postgres different from just about everything else.

Google Cloud Next ’20: Digital Connect Has Been Postponed Indefinitely

By
Swapnil Bhartiya
-

Coronavirus continues to wreak havoc for businesses all over the world! After scrapping its Cloud Next event (its largest annual conference with around 30,000 attendees) in favor of an online version, Google has now indefinitely postponed even the digital-version Google Cloud Next ‘20: Digital Connect in light of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Originally, Google’s Cloud Next conference was scheduled to take place from April 6th to April 8th in San Francisco. Like many other companies, Google later announced plans to make it into a “digital-first” event citing coronavirus concerns.

[Source: TFiR]

Top 11 beautiful Linux Distros with best UI (User interface)

By
Swapnil Bhartiya
-

Linux is the open platform, and you can choose the best distro by considering every single element of the distribution. Furthermore, you can also change a number of useful elements within your Linux distribution, which is yet another cool aspect of using a Linux distro. But, if your first priority of getting a Linux distribution with best and beautiful UI (user interface), there are a handful of Linux distributions that you can choose from.

At the core, every single distribution is running the Linux kernel, and thus, even if you switch from one distro to the other, you will always feel at home, as everything else, other than the user interface is the same. Instead of switching to a new distro altogether, you can also install another desktop environment and start enjoying a different flavour of Linux. But, I will talk about the top Linux distributions with the best user interfaces that you can start using now.

[Source: H2S Media]

Engineers share designs for DIY ventilators online as coronavirus pandemic spreads

By
Swapnil Bhartiya
-

With ventilators in dangerously short supply during the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of DIY groups have begun working on open source designs that could be made at home. Julian Botta, a third year resident in emergency medicine at Johns Hopkins, created a Google Doc listing some of the basic specifications for a ventilator and how a do-it-yourself version might be assembled.

The doc, called ‘Specifications for simple open source mechanical ventilator,’ is not affiliated in any way with Johns Hopkins, and is instead a purely personal pursuit for Botta. The idea came to him after he saw several similar projects spread across Github but was concerned that many of the designs were closer to CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machines than ventilators, according to a report in Vice.

[Source: Daily Mail]

Open Source Goes Mainstream – How Sharing Is Shaping The Future Of Music

By
Swapnil Bhartiya
-

Open source developments in music are leading the industry in a new direction. An increasing number of creators, for example, are building custom instruments and software, then choosing to make the products open source, or sharable in source code format, which allows other creators to produce derivative works free of charge for non-commercial use.

“While open sourcing has been happening on a small scale among academics for some time, it converted over the past few years and is now growing mainstream,” says Ajay Kapur, professor and director of music technology at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), pointing to a new movement of electronic artists seeking to create unique sounds and names for themselves on social media. “It’s been really amazing, there has been so much open source stuff happening in the industry driven by the maker movement.”

[Source: Forbes]

Linux Mint Debian Edition 4 Released – Finally Supports SecureBoot, Home Encryption

By
Swapnil Bhartiya
-

The Linux Mint crew has released LMDE 4 “Debbie” as their hedge against anything dramatic happening to Ubuntu that would limit their ability to offer Linux Mint and for those preferring the upstream Debian base. Linux Mint Debian Edition 4 is re-based against Debian 10 “Buster” and besides the updated packages has a number of other improvements to this second-class Linux Mint version.

With Linux Mint Debian Edition 4 there is finally UEFI SecureBoot support, automated partitioning support for LVM and full-disk encryption, home directory encryption is also supported, and other installation improvements.

[Source: Phoronix]

Open-source project spins up 3D-printed ventilator validation prototype in just one week

By
Swapnil Bhartiya
-

In a great example of what can happen when smart, technically-oriented people come together in a time of need, an open-source hardware project started by a group including Irish entrepreneur Colin Keogh and Breeze Automation CEO and co-founder Gui Calavanti has produced a prototype ventilator using 3D-printed parts and readily available, inexpensive material.

The ventilator prototype was designed and produced in just seven days, after the project spun up on Facebook and attracted participation from over 300 engineers, medical professionals and researchers. The prototype will now enter into a validation process by the Irish Health Services Executive (HSE), the country’s health regulatory body.

[Source: TechCrunch]

Top 5 Open Source Serverless Security Tools

By
Swapnil Bhartiya
-

The growing popularity of serverless architecture has led to its massive adoption. My organization has jumped on the serverless bandwagon and it lives up to expectations. The advantages have been tremendous—we have more time to focus on the development, marketing and deployment of the software now that we need not spend much time on infrastructure maintenance.

But with that, I’ve always been somewhat concerned about security. As soon as we made the transition to serverless, I began researching ways to ensure maximum security. The numbers were unbelievable when it came to cyberthreats, from DDoS attacks and data injections to business logic manipulations. Just refer to the OWASP list of top 10 threats and you’ll know how much ground there is to cover. That is the reason why we turned to numerous tools and resources in the market—especially open source—to help in our security. They can save a lot of time on manual maintenance of the system.

[Source: Security Boulevard]

Meet The Innovative Linux OS That’s Easier To Use Than Windows 10 and MacOS

By
Swapnil Bhartiya
-

As I approach my third year using it as my daily driver for working and playing, I’m still amazed at how frequently Linux surprises me. I approach Linux as an endless rabbit hole of new discoveries. Endless OS, then, is like an oversized amusement park full of intersecting rabbit holes and winding mazes of knowledge you’re happy to get lost in. I never envisioned having this much fun with a Linux operating system … Read more at Forbes.

[Source: Forbes]

1...192193194...10,742Page 193 of 10,742