Ruby on Rails, a popular Web development framework based on the Ruby programming language, makes it easy to access your database, but it does not always do so efficiently. Learn more about common performance problems with Rails, including N+1 query, and discover how you can fix them.
The Cloud’s Possible Impact on Hosting Firms
The rush to the clouds will result in an industry shakeout for all of today’s hosting companies.
Read more at internetnews.com
Oracle Shuts Down Open Source Test Servers
Here’s a report on iTnews saying that Oracle has abruptly shut down a set of servers used to perform quality assurance on PostgreSQL releases. “Sun Microsystems – and for a short time its new owner Oracle – had provided three member servers to ensure PostgreSQL was stable on the Solaris operating system. The development of PostgreSQL had been supported by Sun – which contributed DTrace support…
Read more at LWN
Nokia Goes After Opera Mini
It’ll have you in interstitials
Nokia has unveiled a knock-off of Opera’s Mini phone browser, intended for use on its low-end handsets in emerging markets. It’s the first manifestation of Nokia’s own ad engine.…
Read more at The Register
The Key To An Open Source Social Network Is Still People
At last week’s OSCON conference, the big topic on the minds of open sourcers was whether or not an open source social networking offering can break down the walled gardens of popular services such as Facebook, and win. The conversation already prompted our post “Why Does FOSS Development Lag the Innovation Curve?” Despite some fist-pumping at the conference, though, there isn’t any clear open source platform that appears to have a chance of toppling the Facebooks and the Twitters of the world at this point. And the problem is people.
People are key to what makes social networks strong, and Facebook is now 500 million people strong–enough users that if it were a country it would be the third largest in the world. When people thought MySpace was cool, it was strong. When they didn’t, it became weak.
Read more at Ostatic
Dell, HP to Resell Oracle’s Operating Systems
Oracle said Thursday that rival hardware vendors Dell and Hewlett-Packard intend to certify and resell its Solaris and Enterprise Linux operating systems as well as Oracle VM on their x86 servers.
Read more at ComputerWorld
.NET for Android Prepares to Get Probed
Port from Windows help
Microsoft’s .NET for Android – dubbed MonoDroid – has come a step closer.…
Read more at The Register
LG’s Optimus Z Rears its Square Head, as Android Tablet is Referred to Again
That mysterious Optimus Z phone from the other week has been formally introduced by LG, but for now it’s only getting a release in the land of kimchi and soju—Korea. A global release is expected later, however.
Read more at Gizmodo
Eclipse 4.0 SDK Released for Early Adopters
The official release of Eclipse 4.0 SDK, which reworks the underlying platform of the IDE, is now available for early adopters. Production users will have to wait for tools to be updated to feel the benefit
Read more at The H
GNOME 3.0 Slips to 2011
During GUADEC 2010, the GNOME Release Team met and decided to hold the GNOME 3.0 release for the March 2011 release instead of September 2010. Even though it means an additional six months to GNOME 3.0 is officially released, it could be a good thing.
So, why is GNOME 3.0 slipping? That was the first question I had for GNOME’s Executive Director and GNOME developer Vincent Untz when they contacted me earlier this week. The simple answer is that the GNOME Release Team evaluated the components that make up GNOME 3.0 and decided that they’re not ready to go gold. GNOME 3.0 is more ambitious than the average GNOME release.
Understanding GNOME Releases
GNOME releases come out every six months like clockwork. OK, it’d be a very slow clock, but that’s the idea — GNOME is released on a predictable schedule because it’s consumed by a lot of downstream projects like Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, Ubuntu, and others. Those projects have release schedules that they’re aiming to hit, and they have an easier time planning their releases when the core components of the distribution have set release schedules.
The way to hit these release dates is to have a schedule with set deadlines for feature freeze, etc. GNOME developers will work towards features that are on the roadmap for usual releases, but if they’re not done in time for those deadlines, they’re held for the next release. This way GNOME can have a predictable release cycle with quality releases. Trying to force features in that aren’t quite ready isn’t a good answer, because it would degrade the user and/or developer experience around GNOME — and nobody wants that.
Delaying releases is also undesirable because it would mean throwing a monkey wrench in the schedules of downstream projects. So, when features aren’t ready they simply get pushed back.
GNOME 3.0 is a bit different, because the 3.0 denotes specific features and plans for the platform like GNOME Shell, GTK 3.0, accessibility for 3.0, and the documentation and materials that will accompany them. The release team felt that while it would be possible to ship GNOME 3.0 in September, it would be of better quality and more complete with an additional six months.
Ship When It’s Time
The project will still have a release in September, but it will be GNOME 2.32 and not 3.0. Users will still see bugfixes, performance improvements, and new features. GNOME will have also have a preview release of GNOME 3.0 in September. I’ve been using GNOME Shell, for instance, on my Fedora 13 machine already. It’s stable enough to use for day to day work, just not quite as feature-complete as the team would like.
One of the benefits of open source is that projects like GNOME have few incentives to ship software before it’s ready. GNOME has no sales targets to make; shipping 2.32 instead of 3.0 in September doesn’t impact the “bottom line” because there isn’t one.
What about GNOME downstreams, like the Linux vendors that ship GNOME? Again, being an open source project has its advantages. The vendors who depend on GNOME are also the ones who employ the majority of GNOME contributors and ensure that GNOME moves forward. The downstream stakeholders have as much say as anyone in delaying a release. The downstream community for GNOME will have a release to use in September, but it will be the 2.32 release instead.
That’s not going to disrupt any of the distributions too badly. Fedora will likely ship another 3.0 preview alongside 2.32. The next Ubuntu release was already planned around GNOME 2.3x technologies. For example, Ubuntu wasn’t set to include GNOME Shell in 10.10, so this will be a very minimal disruption. openSUSE’s next release isn’t set to pop until March 2011, so they have plenty of time to adjust (and maybe even slip slightly to include GNOME 3.0…).
That’s not to say there’s no downside to the slip. Plenty of users are excited about GNOME 3.0. It will contain a lot of improvements for end users and developers. But experienced users know how they can get their hands on preview releases and enjoy pretty much the same code that they’d have had if we called it GNOME 3.0 anyway.
That’s a nice thing about free software — the development is out there to see the whole time. Nobody has to wait for GNOME to officially dub it 3.0 to dig in. Whether you’re a GNOME enthusiast, or if you want to jump in and and contribute you can do so with no barriers.
So, the bad news is GNOME 3.0 isn’t arriving until March 2011. The good news is that it’s here now and you can start using it right away; it’s just not “official” yet.