Even the most hardcore Linux fan would admit that their favorite OS has not captured more than a very small market share on personal computers. And that would include us here at Pingdom: all of our engineers and 50% of or our developers are, in fact, running Linux.
There are some fundamental things that every person who turns on a Linux box should be familiar with before proceeding. Some of these things are often overlooked or never learned by new Linux users. It’s a shame, actually. Knowledge of the fundamentals can create a great foundation for further advancement later on down the road. If you’re going to learn something, learn it right.
There are several reasons that I love using Linux. Ubuntu to be more specific. It’s definitely not for everyone, but if you can get by without the latest and greatest games, it’s generally a great operating system. Sure, there are some annoyances, but name one operating system that doesn’t have any. Want to know some really great things about Linux that make it number one in my book? I’ll tell you…
The prototype of the National Software Platform (NSP) – the Russian operating system that is intended to replace Windows on computers in public agencies and schools – has been approved by the Ministry for Telecommunications. Instead of providing a single NSP distribution, the developer – PingWin software – is suggesting four, one from each major Russian Linux developer.
When Linus Torvalds says he is going to work on a side project he doesn't think small and he doesn’t work slowly.
When he created “Git,” the software source control and collaboration system that runs Linux kernel development, he started writing code on a Sunday (April 3, 2005) and emerged just a few days later with a new revision control system that today is regarded as one of the best pieces of software ever written (second, at least, to Linux, of course).
Christian König of AMD has shared his plans for completing work on the VDPAU state tracker for Gallium3D. This Gallium3D state tracker allows for NVIDIA VDPAU video acceleration using GPU shaders on open-source hardware drivers such as Radeon and Nouveau.
Christian published a new, lengthy patch-set that adds most of the missing functionality to the VDPAU state tracker. One of the missing items that has been filled in is support for bit-map surfaces.
Earlier this month I published an article with benchmarks of the Gaming/Graphics Performance On Unity, GNOME, KDE, Xfce. Now, however, there's a much larger comparison, including results from OpenBox, Lubuntu, GNOME classic, and other desktop alternatives.
An independent Phoronix Test Suite user has been uploading large amounts of test results to OpenBenchmarking.org of different desktop / graphics driver options and their impact on graphics tests. Here's the latest results including runs from GNOME classic, GNOME 3, GNOME + Openbox, Lubuntu, Openbox, Unity, Unity 2D, KDE Plasma, Xfce, and other software configurations. The tests from this user not affiliated with Phoronix.com was running from a NVIDIA Quadro NVS 160M graphics card. The user also tested Ubuntu 11.10 and the current Ubuntu 12.04 state.
While some indie Linux game sales have generated more than two million dollars in two weeks, that isn't the case for all indie Linux games. One example of a Linux game struggling is the latest title from Kot In Action, the well-known game studio behind the Steel Storm series.
The release schedule for KDE SC 4.9 has been made official, which targets an early August release of this next software package compilation for the KDE desktop.
Clementine isn't perfect. It doesn't read Internet radio tags, there's no podcast management tool, and it doesn't have a workable sync feature. But it does have an impressive list of expected features, and what it lacks I can live without. It will likely have a strong appeal for anyone who fondly remembers old-school Amarok.
The KDE front-end for the LightDM log-in manager is reaching a point that's ready for more wide-scale testing.
The first beta of GNOME 3.4 came out at the tail end of last week, which means that we are roughly on track for a final release at the end of March. The beta also marks the beginning of the UI freeze for this cycle, so now seems like a good time to check out the cool stuff that’s coming in 3.4.
I've been writing 2 articles listing some nice conky configs that I found on gnome look and devianart and got a lot of visitors for these two articles so I guess linux users are always interested in conky. Today I just checked gnome look again and found 4 new beautiful conky that just have been submitted in January and February this year. If you are a fan of conky, you should take a look at these conky configs.
I originally got interested in checking out the Chakra project because it was based on Arch Linux. As I mentioned before, the super customizability doesn’t appeal to me. I don’t have time for that – perhaps if Arch had existed when I was in high school or college I might have enjoyed it. What I do like is that they tend to have the latest packages and they tend to keep the distro as simple as possible – with very few customizations. When I went to do my pre-review research, I found out that while Chakra WAS based on Arch, they’ve now split off into their own proper distro. (Kinda like Fuduntu and Fedora) While they still use Pacman and other Arch-y things, they’re slowly changing to their own products.
"Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth", said Archimedes. Can Chakra Linux move the Linux World? At the very least, it is a clear example of how a young project can grow and improve fast, becoming more interesting release after release. Let€´s have a look at its latest release, Chakra 2012.02 "Archimedes" MEETING ARCHIMEDES This last Chakra release is one of the first distros to incorporate KDE SC 4.8. This already is a plus and a good reason to try Archimedes, for KDE SC 4.8 is awesome, but there is a lot more to this release than that. Here's a brief list of features: - KDE SC 4.8.0 - Linux 3.2.2 (2.6.35.14 optional) - Qt 4.8 - DVD image, including all locales and a nice selections of apps - minimal CD image you can build your desktop on - tomoyo-tools 2.5 added to a default install, for more security options - wqy-microhei became the new default font for Chinese/Japanese/Korean - QtWebkit 2.2.1 - Boost 1.48, switch to GRUB2
The iso file of SliTaz 4 RC1 is barely 34 Mb, so I downloaded it and gave this release a try.
Bill Reynolds, the founder of and main developer for PCLinuxOS, is the very heart and soul of the distribution. Users who were clamoring for his custom Mandrake packages encouraged him to start his own distribution. It is Texstar's touch that makes the distribution rock-solid dependable and stable. His devotion to quality and stability has been evident ever since he first created PCLinuxOS. As regular users, we owe a lot to Texstar. I will take dependability and reliability over bleeding edge any day of the week.
The Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee has clarified their stance on how the Fedora Project should view software forks. In particular, forks with much talk these like the Cinnamon and Mate desktop environments.
A ticket was filed this weekend for FESCo, the engineering committee for the Fedora project, to clarify their position on forks like Muffin, Mate, and Cinnamon (i.e. the GNOME desktop forks).
Fedora 17, which is codenamed the Beefy Miracle, is now up to its alpha milestone with many new features for this exciting Red Hat sponsored release.
Dennis Gilmore wrote the Fedora 17 Alpha announcement entitle Meat the Beefy Miracle. "Hot dog! The Fedora 17 "Beefy Miracle" Alpha Release is available! This release offers a preview of some of the best and meatiest free and open source technology currently under development. Relish in a glimpse of the future."
Dennis Gilmore, Release Engineer at Red Hat for Fedora, today announced the kick-off of the run-up to Fedora 17 with Alpha 1. He said, "Hot dog! The Fedora 17 "Beefy Miracle" Alpha Release is available! This release offers a preview of some of the best and meatiest free and open source technology currently under development. Relish in a glimpse of the future:"
The first alpha milestone of the Fedora Linux 17 release is now available.
As usual Fedora always brings the latest development open-source software to its releases, also comes with variety of options depending on the the user usage if the user will use it as an “end user”, “system administrator”, “Developer”, or “Virtualizing purposes”. Fedora 17 Alpha comes with many up to date softwares and several changes to the desktop environments “Fedora Spins”, which has been updated to the latest upstream releases such as Gnome 3.4, KDE 4.8 and Sugar 0.96 desktop.
While most x86 hardware shipping in the past few years has been x86_64-capable, Canonical has continued recommending the 32-bit version of Ubuntu Linux over the 64-bit version. With Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" this will hopefully change where the 64-bit version becomes recommended as the default spin. In this article are some updated benchmarks showing the performance of the 32-bit versus 64-bit versions of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.
Third-party Unity tweaking tool MyUnity has received new features and a whole new look in its latest release.
Now sporting a linear layout with tabs at the top, MyUnity looks and feels that bit more consistent when in use on the Ubuntu desktop.
Referring to Ubuntu's emphasis on usability, Mark Shuttleworth described making Unity the default desktop environment as "the biggest leap forward in that mission that Ubuntu has ever taken . . . . We brought something new to the very core of the user experience."
That was ten months ago. Since then, many distributions have shown an unmistakable lack of enthusiasm for adding Unity to their repositories.
For instance, a small group of Debian developers is packaging Unity, but their work remains incomplete, with the preparation of one package blocked by a dependency problem. Moreover, to judge from seventeen months of light traffic on the mailing list, the project seems a low priority.
In fact, the enthusiasm for Unity is decidedly subdued in many quarters. On the LinuxQuestions' Members Choice Awards for 2011, Ubuntu remains the favorite desktop distribution, but less than five percent of voters were using Unity.
I have recently discovered the delights of Garam Masala in my Anglo-Indian fusion curry adventures. It adds just the right note of warm, spicy afterglow to the Perfect Curry.
At Kids on Computers, we’ve spent a lot of time and energy getting computers to kids that have no access to technology. Many of these places (rural Mexico, Africa, India) have cell phones before they have phone lines or even power. (The second time you blow the power for an entire school trying to set up a couple of computers, you realize how much we take power for granted in developing countries.)
After months of anticipation, the tiny $25 computer known as Raspberry Pi is available for purchase. Earlier today, the project Website featured a full-page static announcement of the long awaited news.
The Raspberry Pi is here at last —now what can you do with it? Here is our pick of the project ideas that you can try with your Pi.
Note that not all of these are going to work straight of the bat. The Raspberry Pi is brand new and will require some fiddling to get working properly. Give it a week or so however, and we reckon there will be several pre-packaged installers available for you to use if you lack the skills or time to try these yourself.
The mobile world has been good to Linux, whose Android derivative has enjoyed a success that few could have predicted just a few short years ago.
Android users will not have to look at the ugly slot in their cars which can't dock their device. Android leader Samsung is working with Toyota to create Samsung Car Mode Application an in-car solution that connects Samsung smartphones to Toyota's In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) system.
We tech bloggers spend a lot of time talking about the struggle between iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7. It seems like every week a new survey comes out proving that one is beating the others, with iOS and Android trading places as the "winner."
I like Android a lot, but I think both its greatest weakness and its greatest strength is the wide variety of hardware that it's available on. For true Android geeks this vast selection of handsets is amazing, but for the average consumer who just wants a new phone it can be quite daunting.
Google hasn’t been giving us much information about Android here at Mobile World Congress, but then their keynote isn’t for a few more hours. However, a Google Exec has shared a few details and might have just put those “Summer release” rumors to rest regarding Android 5.0 Jelly Bean. Read on for more details and his quotes below.
We knew Panasonic was coming to Mobile World Congress to unveil something special but the details were rather slim. Their first break for the European market came way of the Panasonic Eluga and now they've unveiled the Panasonic Eluga Power.
One of the things I love most about the open source communities I’m a part of is that when I ask a question, I just don’t get the answer, I get taught how to find the answer.
Google is dropping out of the Pwn2Own security competition and offering up to a million dollar in prizes to hackers who can crack the Chrome Web browser on Windows 7.
Since its creation over a decade ago, Mozilla has never had its own complete operating system. That's now about to change as Mozilla is ramping up its Boot to Gecko effort, which will enable Mozilla Firefox-powered phones. Gecko is the underlying rendering framework behind Firefox.
Today Mozilla announced that leading service providers, including Telefonica and Deutsche Telekom, are now supporting the Boot to Gecko (B2G) effort. Additionally, mobile chip vendor Qualcomm is collaborating in the effort, which is all about opening up the mobile web.
When I first went to the dark side, I lamented that I was trading my noble teaching role for that of a dark overlord administrator. Much of the time, this characterization remains true. But as I mature as an educational leader, I find that I am in a more complicated teaching role--not only retaining my former group of students, but also expanding my responsibilities to include teaching teachers.
The HandBrake developers have released version 0.9.6 of the open source, cross-platform video transcoder software. The new version brings many improvements to the video and audio libraries used for both decoding and encoding.
Who says open source is all about code and hackathons have to stick to computer hacking? Code Across America is a different kind of open source community, and it came together on February 25, 2012. This effort was part of civic innovation week (February 24-March 4), where over a dozen cities in the United States have citizens organizing to improve their cities and communities. Simultaneous events included hackathons, unconferences, meet-ups, and Code for America ’brigades’ deploying existing open source applications. This is a story about building community knowledge the open source way, using the open source platform LocalWiki.
With economic problems lingering, many people remain in need of employment and that's true across the technology sector. Now, a group called DirectEmployers Association has announced a new foundation--DirectEmployers Foundation--that will purportedly leverage open source principles and technology to deliver improved job search and career marketing tools. In addition to standalone tools, the foundation will also focus on APIs and components that can be shared, delivering job search tools and listing to many online sites.
The designs should become available in May via Facebook-spinoff the Open Compute Project, the company confirmed to ZDNet UK on Friday. The move will come a year after it started publishing the design specifications of its own ultra-efficient servers.
At the beginning of the year I wrote about how Genode OS had an ambitious road-map for this year after coming up with plans for their own general purpose operating system. Today marks the first release since that point with the release of Genode OS Framework 12.02.
One of the fundamental shifts in Genode's development that happened this cycle is moving to an open development cycle rather than within the confines of Genode Labs. Genode is now being developed in the open on GitHub.
OPEC currently supplies the world with 32% of its oil. The rest is supplied by Non-OPEC producers. One of the most important distinctions between the two is that OPEC oil largely comes from state-run oil companies. Saudi Aramco in Saudi Arabia, PDVSA in Venezuela, and the National Oil Company of Iran, for example. Meanwhile, in Non-OPEC, production flows from countries mostly through private enterprise: United States, Canada, UK, for example. What has surprised the global oil market over the past 7 years is that this majority segment of world oil production has also remained trapped below a ceiling, despite the price revolution which took oil from under $40 to above $100 a barrel. Free markets are supposed to create more supply, when price rises. New supply has indeed come online in Non-OPEC over the past decade. However, geology has trumped investment. It is geology that determines flow rates.
Wall Street workers and union hands may seem like total opposites, but employees at an iconic investment bank are countering those preconceived notions.
That's right, some Goldman Sachs workers in Japan are unionizing, according to the Japan Times (h/t Dealbook). The workers made the decision after the bank allegedly attempted to convince certain employees to voluntarily resign in order to get around Japanese labor laws that make laying off workers difficult.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s great Firefox HTTPS Everywhere browser security extension has been improved and there’s now a beta version available for Google Chrome Web browser users.
John Bennett draws our attention to Public Knowledge (.org). They "preserve... the openness of the Internet and the public's access to knowledge; promote... creativity through balanced copyright; and uphold.. and protect... the rights of consumers to use innovative technology lawfully". In the wake of SOPA/PIPA they have started the internet blueprint an effort to crowdsource legislative proposals to protect internet freedoms.
The European Parliament may be adopting a strong political line on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), despite the EU Commission's attempt to buy time and defuse the debate. Due to the referral of ACTA to the EU Court of Justice, the final vote paving the way for its ratification will be delayed. This will give the EU Parliament time to build up a clear stance on the issues raised by this dangerous trade agreement, do in-depth research and impact assessments, and hopefully define guidelines for a better and fair copyright regime. Citizens must remain mobilized, as they will have many opportunities to weigh in this open process.
A lobby group pushing for ACTA is ICC BASCAP. I remember Cecile Arns(?) as a representative at the first stakeholder meeting, in particular because of her arguing style. That’s my point of interest here. They are kind of hammering these short emotive phrases, you always find a little lighthouse in a sentence. Very professional from a midterm lobbying perspective.
He previously mentioned Pedro Velasco-Martins was leading the WTO TRIPS Council delegation. He is the current Mr. ACTA at the Commission. Arrogance is part of their administrative culture at DG Trade.
At the European Parliament STOA meeting for instance he spoke of China as a “very old, traditional country” while MEP Ruebig was spreading stupid nonsense. They are professional trade negotiators. Skilled persons which get screwed and screw other nations up. You cannot expect them to respond to “suggestions” from Parliament as it would be usual. More than 50 written questions from Parliament to the Commission. Any other Commission initiative would be dead and gone by then.