Taipei, TAIWAN — (press release excerpt) — Core logic and graphics chipset supplier SiS today announced that its integrated-chipset based PC architecture platform has accomplished an important milestone: it has become the first BIOS-free, diskless, single-flash-device PC architecture platform in the world. (more…)

The KDE Team today announced the release of KDE 2.0 RC2, the second and (barring any unforeseen problems) final release candidate for Kopernicus (KDE 2.0), KDE's next-generation, powerful, modular desktop. The KDE team has previously released five Beta versions — the first on May 10 of this year — publicly; the sole prior release candidate was released internally only. (more…)

Names convey meanings; our choice of names determines the meaning of what we say. An inappropriate name gives people the wrong idea. A rose by any name would smell as sweet — but if you call it a pen, people will be rather disappointed when they try to write with it. And if you call pens “roses,” people may not realize what they are good for. (more…)

Kansas City, MO — (press release) — Arcom has announced a development kit for Embedded Linux that includes a working configuration of the operating system and all necessary drivers. The new SBC-MediaGX dev kit saves time and money by eliminating the need for the embedded systems developer to create their own flavor of Embedded Linux and purchase drivers from a third-party supplier. (more…)

Want to win a free development board with the Axis ETRAX system-on-chip and a full port of embedded Linux? Axis has announced a contest which will award five of their “developer boards” to “the five best, most creative, weirdest, or coolest [project] suggestions”. By the way, be sure to read the Contest FAQ, below — it's rather entertaining ;) (more…)

ZDNet's Evan Leibovitch takes a look at Red Hat's new version 7 distribution, and comments that it is so forward-looking that it doesn't play nicely with the other distributions out there — or even older versions of Red Hat, for that matter. Leibovitch writes . . . (more…)

Michelle Head, editor of LinuxNews, interviewed some folks at the Jim Henson Creature Shop about their use of Linux in the Henson Performance Control System (HPCS) that they are developing. It seems the Creature Shop is funding the development of some interesting GUI and real-time Linux technologies which will, of course, end up being contributed back to the open source software pool. (more…)

Introduction

Tolstoy opens Anna Karenina with a famous quote: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Similarly: reliable real-time systems are all alike; every unreliable real-time system is unreliable in its own way. (more…)

Lindon, UT — (press release) — Lineo today announced the release of BusyBox 0.47, an upgrade to the so-called “Swiss army knife” of freely available open source embedded Linux utilities and tools. BusyBox 0.47 makes customizing embedded systems convenient and demonstrates the possibility of putting open source Linux software on the smallest electronic devices. (more…)

Montclair, NJ; York, ENGLAND – Vita Nuova today announced the opening of its first office in the United States. The Montclair, NJ, location will serve as a gateway to the U.S. market, enabling Vita Nuova to better service its growing user base in the United States, Canada and worldwide. (more…)

Coventive Technologies offers a family of embedded Linux based software solutions that supports a broad range of international languages including English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, simplified and traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai and Vietnamese. (more…)

At the Microprocessor Forum today, STMicroelectronics unveiled the next generation of its highly integrated “STPC” family of x86 PC-compatible System-on-Chip (SOC) devices. Known as the STPC Galaxy, the new family will achieve both higher integration and higher performance, along with lower power dissipation, relative to the latest products in the STPC SOC family. (more…)

San Jose, CA — (press release excerpt) — Coventive Technologies, one of Asia's leading open source software providers, announced today that it is pursuing its international vision by establishing a new organization to serve North American customers and partners. Coventive's US office will focus on developing and expanding strategic business alliances with North American companies in the areas of open… (more…)

San Jose, CA — (press release excerpt) — Rise Technology Company (Rise) today demonstrated the ultra low power feature of Rise's iDragon mP6 processor core. As the industry's lowest power consuming and best multimedia performing X86 processor core, Rise iDragon mP6 processor can playback VCD movie titles with only a single off-the-shelf AA battery. (more…)

This technical whitepaper by Kevin Dankwardt goes into considerable detail on some of the alternative approaches to adding real-time capabilities to Linux. Dankwardt covers both “internal” Linux enhancements (such as scheduling improvements) and external enhancements (such as RTLinux and RTAI), and provides a comparison summary that indicates that no single product offers an all-inclusive set of real-time… (more…)