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Links 12/6/2011: Steel Storm: Burning Retribution For GNU/Linux, KDE SC 4.6.4



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux

  • Linux (and Windows) on a new HP Pavilion laptop
    Second surprise: copying 13000 files (4 GB) from a DVD to the hard-disk is extremely slow in Windows 7: 10 hours! Well, estimated. I lost patience after 2 hours and rebooted. Doing the same operation on Linux: 7 minutes. Amazing.


  • Applications



  • Desktop Environments



    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • KDE SC 4.6.4 Is Available for Download
        The KDE team has just announced a few minutes ago (June 10th) the fourth maintenance release for KDE Software Compilation 4.6. This is a minor update, focusing on bug fixing and translation updates.








  • Distributions



    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • X.org, wayland and all that awesome low-level stuff
        So, as of today, I am proud to announce that Mandriva 2011 is powered by the latest, shiniest and greatest X.org server 1.10.2 and Mesa 7.10.2, with all the awesomeness which comes with that. I had to write some small patches to fix some Intel Sandy Bridge crashes here and there, but I think that Mandriva today has probably the most up-to-date X.org stack out there.




    • Gentoo Family

      • Review of Sabayon 5.5 Xfce
        Sabayon, despite being in the top ten on Distrowatch, isn’t as publicized as other popular distributions. Xfce is my desktop of choice, so I thought that I would review the Xfce version of Sabayon 5.5, the newest edition.






    • Red Hat Family



      • Fedora

        • Projects I would love to see packaged in Fedora
          I suspect this won’t be my last post like this. I use to just package them up myself but I’m finding that the amount of packages I maintain is increasing and the time I have to actually maintain them is decreasing and I know there’s people that are likely better suited to some of these packages than I am.






    • Debian Family

      • People behind Debian: Philipp Kern, Stable Release Manager
        Philipp is a Debian developer since 2005 and a member of the release team since 2008. Since he took the responsibility of Stable Release Manager, the process has evolved for the best. I asked him to explain how the release team decides what’s fit for stable or not.


      • Derivatives



        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Review: Pinguy OS 11.04 Mini
            Upon the advice of a commenter in one of my previous posts, I am reviewing Pinguy OS 11.04 Mini today. That commenter asked that I test Pinguy OS 11.04, and mentioned the existence of a Mini edition, so I became intrigued, because Pinguy OS is more known for being an "everything-and-the-kitchen-sink" distribution than anything else, so I thought it would be cool to see what the Mini edition would have in store.












Free Software/Open Source



  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org: Missing the Big Picture
      LibreOffice (LO) was forked from the LGPL'ed version of OpenOffice.org some 8 months ago, while also creating a new organization for this: the Document Foundation (TDF). During this time the LibreOffice community has worked on cleaning up the source code, integrating features from another fork, (Go-oo, which was used in most Linux distributions), merging features from subsequent versions of OpenOffice.org and also creating new features themselves. They have a healthy community going with a number of core developers (mostly employed) and a large number of volunteers. There is also work on creating a real foundation much like the KDE e.V in Germany, and they received substantial donations to this goal.




  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • 'Proprietary software keeps users helpless'
      Richard Matthew Stallman started the GNU's Not Unix project in 1983 to create a totally free operating system, and later the General Public License to guarantee its freedom. By 1991 much of GNU was finished, although it was lacking a kernel - that's where Linus Torvalds and his Linux kernel come in.

      Despite the success of GNU/Linux, Stallman hasn't opted for an easy life: he campaigns tirelessly to protect our software freedoms, alerting us to potential threats that new technologies bring.






Reader's Picks





Clip of the Day



Miami Beach Memorial Day Shooting May 30th 2011, cellphone video



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Credit: TinyOgg

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