| News Archive (1999-2012) | | | 2013-current at LinuxGizmos | | | Current Tech News Portal | | | About |
Red Hat released Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.1 to select customers at this week's Red Hat Summit, in which the Linux market leader promoted a greater tolerance for open-ended hybrid platforms. The event featured announcements of a “Red Hat CloudForms” cloud-computing initiative plus a related “OpenShift” platform as a service for open source cloud developers, among other news.
Smartphone sales were up nearly 80 percent during the first quarter of 2011, which saw 99.6 million units shipped, says IDC. As choices migrated from mostly high-end units to more mid-range and entry-level offerings, Samsung — whose offerings span the market — grew the fastest, the research firm added.
Kontron announced a PCI/104-Express SBC (single board computer) with Intel's single-core Atom D425 or dual-core D525. The Microspace MSM-LP includes up to 4GB of DDR3 memory, one IDE port and two SATA ports, LVDS and VGA video, four serial ports, six USB 2.0 ports, and two gigabit Ethernet ports, the company says.
Sony Ericsson has upgraded its Xperia Mini and slider keyboard-equipped Xperia Mini Pro phones with faster 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processors, larger three-inch screens, and Android 2.3. Claimed to be the smallest smartphones available that can play and record 720p video, the phones include all the wireless features of a big-screen phone, plus a five-megapixel camera and new Facebook integration features.
Logic PD announced what it claims are the industry's smallest embedded modules at less than one square inch, available with Android, Linux, and Windows CE BSPs. The DM3730 and AM3703 Torpedo SOMs are based on the Texas Instruments DM3730 DaVinci and AM3703 Sitara processors, respectively, and the larger DM3730 SOM-LV and AM3703 SOM-LV modules add features including Ethernet, CompactFlash, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth.
Novell's new Spacewalk-based SUSE Manager 1.2 deserves points for its support of both SUSE and Red Hat enterprise Linux flavors, says this eWEEK review. But, author Jason Brooks adds, while the server management tool makes sense for users coming from a Linux perspective, it suffers from some configuration hiccups, due in part to the challenge of integrating two different distributions.
Intel's new 3-D transistor technology will enable the giant chip maker to continue extending Moore's Law in PCs and servers for at least the next few years. Nonetheless, say analysts, ARM Holdings and its many licensees will continue to dominate the mobile space — and a new IDC report claims ARM will have 15 percent of the “PC processors” market by 2015.
Motorola Mobility and Sprint announced two enterprise-focused Android smartphones with 3.1-inch touchscreens, exposed QWERTY keyboards, and five-megapixel cameras. The Motorola Xprt is a 1GHz Android 2.2 phone with enterprise security features and international roaming, and the ruggedized, Android 2.1-based Motorola Titanium makes use of Sprint's Nextel Direct Connect Push-to-Talk network, says Sprint.
After completing its acquisition of Novell, Attachmate has laid off hundreds of U.S.-based employees — including members of Novell's Mono project — and re-established Nuremberg, Germany as the headquarters for the SUSE business unit, say an industry report. Meanwhile, a U.S. appeals court reversed a summary judgment that could revive Novell/Attachmate's anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft.
Intel announced what it's describing as the world's first 3-D transistors, set to be included in its 2012 “Ivy Bridge” Core processors. The “Tri-Gate” design will ensure that “Moore's Law,” dictating that transistor density doubles every two years, will keep moving along.
Iomega announced a StorCenter PX Series of SMB-focused NAS (network attached storage) devices, supporting hot-swappable solid-state disks as well as Iomega's Personal Cloud. The Linux-based devices include the px4-300d and px6-300d — desktop models with a a dual-core 1.8GHz Intel Atom D525 and respective capacities of 12TB and 18TB — and the rackmount, 12TB px4-300r, using a dual-core 2.2GHz Celeron E1500.
Eurotech announced a PC/104-Plus module that's based on a 600MHz Vortex86DX SoC (system on chip), tolerates up to 158 deg. F, and uses less than four Watts. The CPU-1440 includes 128MB of RAM, support for VGA or composite video output, four Ethernet ports and four serial ports, a parallel port, plus both PCI and ISA bus expansion, the company says.
With the release of GNOME 3.0 and Ubuntu 11.04, the face of the Linux desktop environment is changing. This eWEEK review finds there's a lot to like in both the GNOME Shell and Ubuntu Unity desktop environments, although both will take some getting used to.
A day after celebrating its 30th anniversary, Wind River announced the availability of Wind River Linux Secure — said to be the first commercial embedded Linux platform to achieve EAL4+ certification using the GP-OSPP profile. Wind River also announced version 4.6 of its multicore-oriented Wind River Simics virtualization and simulation software, adding new debugging, collaboration, and target system visualization features.
WinSystems announced an EPIC-format single board computer (SBC) that operates in temperatures of -40 to 158 deg. F (-40 to 70 deg C). Offered with a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 or dual-core D510, the EPX-C380 ships with up to 2GB DDR2 SDRAM, plus CompactFlash, SATA, PC-104-Plus, Mini PCI Express, gigabit Ethernet, USB, serial, and GPIO connectivity, says the company.