Utilities. They’re what help make computing a lot easier and more convenient, no matter what operating system you use.
Equinox GTK Theme + Faenza Icon Sets are probably the best combination of themes I have ever found for my Ubuntu. Last day, I was doing my regular repository update when I noticed some new Equinox packages. Two new themes were introduced by Equinox team and the whole package keeps getting better.
A couple weeks back I noticed the Wine-Doors project was down and on their front page they have a message "Very very broken and I don't have time to fix it" So what should users who have been using Wine-Doors, or any of the other closed projects do in the future to configure and run their favorite Windows Applications and Games on Linux or Mac?
One option is to use Vanilla Wine from winehq and configure and set everything up yourself. This takes some knowledge of how Wine works and some time to test each small change to see if its helping or hurting your Application or Games. You will also need to be familiar with running regedit and editing the user and system registry in Wine.
A month ago we reported that the Amnesia game was getting ready for a Linux release and now the Swedish developers behind this game, known properly as "Amnesia: The Dark Descent" have released a demo of the game. Frictional Games has released this demo for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X gamers.
Today Frictional Games, the makers of the Penumbra series, has released a demo for their upcoming first person survival horror “Amnesia: The Dark Descent”. Players with Windows, Mac or Linux all get a chance to experience a small slice of the dread and terror contained in the full game.
Alright, so we've seen "showings" of Duke Nukem Forever before--new screenshots and videos that seemingly promised that the game's launch date was just around the corner. That's how the game was saved from becoming 100-percent vaporware--by offering fans a taste of actual gameplay.
But all that came crashing down when 3D Realms disbanded last year. The game went under lock and key, entering development limbo after residing in the hands of its creators for over ten years. It was uncertain if the infamous "project" would ever see the light of day again.
It is a while now since Akademy 2010, KDE's annual conference, came to a close. There were a huge number of blogs and articles about what happened and it is safe to say that the latest conference was a success. Many attendees noted how smoothly everything ran, thanks to the KDE organizers and the local team. The local team did an awesome job, not only during the conference itself but also during the many months of thought and hard work before Akademy. The Dot managed to catch up with some key players in the local team to get their take on the KDE invasion of Tampere and find out what it is like to organize such a large event.
Blacklisting stuff from being logged, has been a feature in Zeitgeist for a long time now. Yet we never came to develop a UI for it.
So upon popular demand we started to mockup this feature.
Clonezilla is a bootable CDROM designed for partition backup and restoration. Unlike SystemRescueCD, Clonezilla Live doesn't contain an array of utilities, rather, it is a single, focused tool. However, if you're interested in simply backing up or restoring whole partitions to or from files, or copying one partition onto another, Clonezilla might be just what you're looking for.
It’s been a while, but it’s here. I know that the last time I said the next release most probably will be the stable one, but because again there are some major changes to Kongoni, I would prefer to call this one also an Release Candidate and in this case RC2.
Furthermore, with regard to the desktop, Mandriva's own Control Center (which is also found in PCLinuxOS) is present and works very well. The KDE main menu is done in the KDE 3.5-style (with Mandriva's theme present) as in PCLinuxOS, but it looks a lot better because it looks less cluttered, the choices for favorite applications make more sense (e.g. Firefox and OpenOffice.org as opposed to drakX and other configuration tools), and hovering over the menu items reveal alt-text that helpfully describes the application's purpose (as opposed to simply repeating the (sometimes not very intuitive) application name, as in PCLinuxOS).
It just looks so great — it's the kind of thing I could see actually working and getting new users.
But possibly the biggest change in the Software Center isn't the interface: it's the inclusion of the "For Purchase" software section. As of the beta there's still no actual software to buy, but the interface is beginning to take shape. Unfortunately, in my testing, I was unable to login to Launchpad to even see the purchase screen. Eventually, the plan is for commercial Linux software to be purchased and installed right alongside the familiar free options, but for the beta, things are still a bit rough around the edges.
I've been fond of Mint for years, but my affection for it never quite reached the point where I wanted to use it on a daily basis: Until now. It's not that Mint, an Ubuntu-based Linux desktop distribution, has made a great strides forward, it's that the distro has continued to get better and better with each release.
Direct Insight announced a SODIMM-sized COM (computer on module) based on TI's Sitara AM3703 or DM3730, with ARM Cortex-A8 cores clocked at up to 1GHz. The SwiftModule-DM offers up to 256MB of RAM and 256MB of flash storage, and a touchscreen interface supporting up to 2048 x 2048 pixels, and is compatible with both Linux and Android.
Philips and Samsung have both announced Android 2.1-based, 3.2-inch portable media players (PMPs), primed to compete with Apple's newly upgraded iPod Touch. Philips' GoGear Connect reportedly includes Wi-Fi, GPS, and Android Market access, while Samsung's Galaxy Player 50 offers both a videocam and two-megapixel camera in addition to its multimedia capabilities.
The Neofonie WeTab gained grabbed a lot of headlines when the company first introduced it a few months ago. And why not? The tablet is kind of everything the Apple iPad is not. It has a nice big 11.6 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel HD capacitive toushcreen display. It supports HDMI output, has 2 USB ports, and a 1.3MP camera. It also packs 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 2.1.
Toshiba Europe announced a 10.1-inch Android 2.2 media tablet, due for a fourth quarter release in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The Folio 100 runs Android 2.2 on an Nvidia Tegra 2 processor and offers a 10.1-inch, WSVGA display, but it lacks both GPS and Android Market access.
Toshiba has announced its own entrant into the tablet market with the Folio 100, which will run on the Android 2.2 operating system. Sporting a screen just over 10 inches, the device will be larger than other early competitors to Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPad tablet computer, such as the Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) Streak.
Beijing-based international online reseller LightInTheBox.com announced it has had two months of surprisingly strong sales of a seven-inch, $140 Android tablet. The aPad Android Tablet runs Android 1.6 -- with Android Market support -- on Samsung's ARM11-based 667MHz S3C6410, and offers 1GB of flash, an SD slot, Wi-Fi, and an 800 x 480-pixel screen, says the company.
Samsung's Galaxy Tab got a lot of the attention Thursday, but Toshiba had an Android tablet of its own to debut here at the IFA electronics show: the Folio 100.
Unlike the smaller Tab, the Folio bears more of an outward resemblance to Apple's iPad, the dominant tablet device on the market today. And where Samsung will sell the Tab only through phone companies as a kind of smartphone on steroids, Toshiba's Folio will like the iPad come in 3G and non-3G models when it goes on sale in Europe in the fourth quarter.
The Folio will cost 399 euros (about $511) for the version with just Wi-Fi networking; the 3G version price jumps to 499 euros (about $639). It's got a 10.1-inch multitouch screen with 1024x600-pixel resolution, an Nvidia Tegra processor, stereo speakers, a 1.3-megapixel Webcam, two USB ports, an SD card slot, an HDMI connector for sending video to other screens, Bluetooth communications, and 16GB of memory.
Topics for this podcast:
*Open source seeding the clouds *Canonical’s cloud subscription pivot *Hypertable steers commercial route for NoSQL database *Implications of Oracle’s Java lawsuit
Some conference organisers will say "we didn't get any submissions from women" to explain the lack of women on their stages. As of two years ago, the Ohio LinuxFest was in that category. With a little outreach effort, and embracing diversity as a core value, the Ohio LinuxFest has successfully recruited more women to share their experience at OLF.
The annual Ohio LinuxFest is a genuine grass-roots community event. It is one of the most fun and most worthwhile Linux fests, and one of the most welcoming-- everyone from brand-new Linux users, people curious about Linux, to wizened gurus and everyone in between are welcome.
The Apache Software Foundation has announced that registration is now open for this year's ApacheCon North America. ApacheCon NA 2010, the official user conference of the Apache Software Foundation, will take place from the 1st to the 5th of November at The Westin Peachtree Plaza in Atlanta, Georgia.
Organizers of the Southern California Linux Expo 9x have announced that the Call for Papers for SCALE 9x opens Wednesday, Sept. 1, with five speaker tracks.
Among the topics to be discussed at this ex-tobacco factory event are whether X drivers should be merged back into the X.Org Server for the 1.10 release, DRM/KMS support on non-Linux platforms, what hardware should continue to be supported and what drivers should be eliminated, a review of the latest DRI2 protocol additions, a development process recap, a multi-touch session, a session on X Gestures, handling input events, board of directors chat, documentation / how to get more individuals involved, EGL in Mesa, and libxkbcommon maintainer-ship. Birds of feather sessions for Xephyr, XCB, and the Wacom support are also planned.
The next major iteration of Mozilla’s open source browser will support 32-bit (x86) platforms exclusively, despite some very promising work from the browser vendor early in the development process for version 4.0.
The OpenOffice.org community has released a MySQL connector for OpenOffice. This allows you to edit the table in any MySQL installation from any desktop installation of OpenOffice.
In the last couple months I have posted my disgust about two different online education systems that are being used at various colleges around the United States. My dislike for these systems stems from the fact that even though they are web based, they do not adhere to Web Standards. This means that they are not fully accessible on FOS operating systems as they should be.
[...]
So if you are an educator looking for a platform to teach your online class through (or an administrator at a school that make the decision for many) I implore you to choose LiveText or another system that supports all operating systems (Not just those paying a Windows Tax).
Version 1.0 of Mongrel2, a language agnostic web server initiated by Zed Shaw, has been released. Shaw announced the release on his blog of the project which began development only three months ago. "I love this project" said Shaw, "Even if it doesn't go anywhere and nobody uses it I am so happy I got to work on another cool idea nobody's really done before". Mongrel2 uses a simple backend protocol to allow Ruby, Python, C++, .Net and other languages make use of it's ability to handle not just HTTP but Flash XMLSockets, WebSockets or Long Polling, and it's event based I/O system.
The uTorrent Server application provides a state-of-the-art implementation of the popular BitTorrent protocol and a full-featured WebUI (web-based user interface).
Graphics processing units (GPUs) have, for many years, powered the display of images and motion on computer displays. GPUs are now powerful enough to do more than just move images across the screen. They are capable of performing high-end computations that are the staple of many engineering activities.
Benchmarks that focus on floating point arithmetic, those most often used in these engineering computations, show that GPUs can perform such computations much faster than the traditional central processing units (CPUs) used in today’s workstations—sometimes as much as 20 times faster, depending on the computation.
Fresh fears about drilling in the Gulf of Mexico were raised today when fire forced workers to abandon an oil and gas platform, just six months after the BP explosion that created an environmental disaster in the region.
Like generations of Tibetan nomads before him, Phuntsok Dorje makes a living raising yaks and other livestock on the vast alpine grasslands that provide a thatch on the roof of the world.
But in recent years the vegetation around his home, the Tibetan plateau, has been destroyed by rising temperatures, excess livestock and plagues of insects and rodents.
Afghan authorities today attempted to prevent a potentially catastrophic run on the country's biggest bank after allegations of corruption and mismanagement led regulators to replace two of its top executives.
The revolution at the top of Kabul Bank, which is responsible for paying the salaries of nearly all the country's policemen and soldiers, has caused shock in the capital amid fears of a collapse in confidence in Afghanistan's ramshackle and corrupt financial system.
Andy Coulson, the No 10 communications chief, found himself in the direct line of fire in the News of the World phone hacking scandal tonight when a former colleague alleged that he issued direct orders to journalists to carry out the illegal practice.
Major League Baseball is taking a guillotine to Phillie royalty. Well, a flying stuffed rendition of Phillie royalty.
A Flugtag team that spent $3,000 and 400 hours building a flying machine topped with a replica of one of Major League Baseball’s favorite mascots was told two days before the local competition that the Phanatic can’t fly.
He also mentions that he's got some plans in place for how he's going to embrace things like BitTorrent and run some interesting experiments. He points out that they're experiments, and there's no guarantee they'll work, but he wants to step forward and at least try to embrace it. This is great to hear, and I look forward to seeing what kind of experiments he runs.
That said... while I appreciate getting rid of "the war on copying," I do think there are some serious problems with a proposal like this. Copyright levies tend to have serious unintended consequences. They create large bureaucracies, where money collection and distribution is not always done fairly. In fact, they often tend to favor bigger name artists over smaller artists, and just having the bureaucracy creates overhead that goes to the bureaucracy, rather than the artists. On top of that, it takes away incentive for consumers to support artists directly through other creative business models, because they feel that they "already paid," via the levy.
Please read and share this article by Knowledge Ecology International's James Love, sign our anti-ACTA petition, and call on Obama to publish the treaty text.
Two weeks ago, we delivered over 4,000 of your signatures on our ACTA petition to negotiators meeting in Washington, D.C.
There’s a major battle brewing between the French government and the French ISPs. A line is being drawn and it’s about the money. While this was foreseeable thanks to our earlier reports, it will be very interesting to see how far the battle will escalate. One report suggests that ISPs may even opt to not honor their end of the anti-piracy effort.
It's a Unix system