Some desktops are featured because of their widgets, while others because they’re full of useful data. This week’s featured desktop, from Lifehacker Chookstar, gets the nod because it’s simple, elegant, and uses smart GNOME tweaking to bring everything together neatly.
Tis the season for college graduations, and that means there are countless fresh grads out there looking for their first real, professional jobs.
Those in IT would be hard-pressed to come up with a better area to focus on than Linux, which is consistently shown to offer higher salaries and more opportunities than do other parts of IT. There's tremendous demand for Linux skills today, so those who possess them are in a nice position as they enter the job market.
Last week I had announced in the LXer forums that I would be a contributing author to Linux Advocates. That was followed by a post on the site announcing that I would be joining their team. I was honestly excited about this. I felt that writing for Linux Advocates would add credibility to my stories and bring me back some of the wider audience I had when I wrote for O'Reilly Media. The additional exposure would help me market my consulting business which brings Linux and FOSS solutions to businesses and organizations looking to reduce IT costs and enhance the reliability, stability and security of their IT infrastructure.
Today it became clear that I wouldn't be writing for Linux Advocates after all. I've learned a lot in the past week and I've come to the conclusion that this is for the best.
First, a number of prominent writers and developers in the Linux community tried to get me to reconsider. The big issue for them was what they saw as heavy handed moderation by Dietrich Schmitz, including banning a number of them from the site entirely. I've argued that website owners have the right to moderate and control the content on their sites. I've made clear that such editorial control is most definitely not censorship as some have claimed. The dispute between Mr. Schmitz and those who felt they were unfairly treated, including several former Linux Advocates writers, spilled over into five different threads in the LXer forums and several Google+ pages and included a great deal of rather heated language.
[...]
Mr. Schmitz' response was direct and to the point. If I can't accommodate how he chooses to run his site then I should go elsewhere. Once again, he was getting writing from me on a voluntary basis on a website were he is currently begging for money to make ends meet. This is a Linux advocacy site. You'd think he'd be the one to accommodate an aversion to proprietary tools that aren't in any way necessary for him to publish my writing. I guess not.
So.. no, sorry, Mr. Schmitz, I won't be accommodating you. I'll find ways to bring traffic to my blog which don't require sacrificing my security, privacy or principles. I still have other outlets who would like me to write for them as well.
Welcome to the club of refugees from some tyrant on an ego-trip, Caitlyn. You and others might be more comfortable at GNU/Linux Advocates.
While IDC had counted GNU/Linux as 3% of desktop PCs back around 2003, StatCounter today showed that level on USA daily webstats:
LTSI Kernel Maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman has released the latest version of LTSI Kernel (3.0.79-LTSI and 3.4.46-LTSI) on May 21.
The open-source AMD RadeonSI Gallium3D driver is beginning to work when it comes to running simple OpenCL programs on the Radeon HD 7000 series graphics cards.
The open-source AMD OpenCL support is in even worse shape than the lacking and not-always-fast OpenGL support, but in the past few months for the HD 5000/6000 series hardware with the R600g driver it's begun to work for simple and small OpenCL programs, including open-source Bit Coin mining. Now the RadeonSI Gallium3D OpenCL support is beginning to run small OpenCL exercises too, and the ability to run "bfgminer" for those into open-source currency mining.
Following a period in the relative wilderness, the Tracktion DAW got new ownership and a welcome version 4 update for PC and Mac earlier this year.
I found clcal by accident the other day, while trying to track down something called lcal, which may or may not exist as an independent project.
Looking to woo more app publishers to its Android Appstore and away from Google Play, Amazon has announced new tools that allow developers to track user engagement with their apps.
The new Engagement Reports announced on Friday provide a variety of metrics, including daily and monthly average revenue per device, average revenue per paid user for in-app purchases, user retention rates, number of active devices and sessions, and daily app installs and uninstalls.
Wine 1.5.31 has been released as the latest bi-weekly development milestone.
Wine 1.5.31 isn't too exciting for Linux users with most of the noted work being on the Mac OS X support. However, Wine 1.5.31 does update its built-in Gecko rendering engine to what's found in Mozilla Firefox 21.
Tripwire the developers behind Killing Floor had an email chat with me recently about the possibilities of Red Orchestra 2 and Rising Storm coming to Linux and why it currently won't. It gives us a small bit of info on Unreal Engine 2+3.
Even though there are many top-quality open source games available for Linux, the operating system is still vastly underrated as a gaming platform. Encouragingly, we have seen developers of some of the most popular commercial gaming titles embrace Linux. The welcoming hand that Valve has extended, developing a Linux native version of their Steam client and porting their back catalogue, should accelerate takeup of Linux as a real gaming platform. But it is important that Linux developers do not neglect what has made it a success; high quality open source software.
You may be a bit confused as to what Calligra Suite is, in fact you may not have ever even heard of it before now. Essentially Calligra Suite is a fork of the KOffice project from back in 2010 and has now become the de facto group of KDE publishing/office applications, as KOffice isn’t really being developed any more. It consists of the following applications:
This year we also have a KDE Paris Dinner on Tuesday evening, at 21h. Location has not been defined but it will be in Paris (of course).
Linpus Lite is a desktop distribution published by Linpus Technologies, Inc., a Linux software solutions provider headquartered in Taiwan. It is based on Fedora, but with a focus towards modern hardware and mobile computing.
The latest edition, Linpus Lite 1.9, was released back in early February of this year, and was updated in the first week of this month. The last edition before this latest round of releases, was Linpus Lite 1.7, which was released in March of 2012, and reviewed here. This article presents a detailed review of this latest release, based on test installations on real hardware and in a virtual environment.
For technology demos and testing, the "first true Wayland LiveCD" has been released that can start Wayland directly without depending upon an X.Org environment.
For those that still hold some nostalgia for Mandriva/Mandrake, there's good news. The OpenMandriva project was able to obtain a lot of the files before their server was scrapped. An archive has been set up by the OpenMandriva gang for all to share.
The distro formerly known as Cinnarch gets a new name and a new direction, but keeps its Arch Linux core
Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced a lineup of keynote speakers featuring executive thought leaders from Accenture, Cisco, HP, IBM and Intel for the ninth annual Red Hat Summit, to be held June 11-14, 2013 in Boston. Red Hat Summit brings together a diverse group of senior business and technical leaders to learn, network and experience open source and to discuss the innovative technologies and best practices organizations are applying to drive innovation and business.
OpenStack has hundreds of backers. But the Red Hat OpenStack distribution, still under development, could emerge as the preferred open source platform for public and private clouds. Here's why.
Fresh on the heels of his talk on achieving total data center victory at Collaboration Summit in April, John Mark Walker, Gluster community leader at Red Hat will show us how to get there at the Gluster Workshop at LinuxCon Japan on Friday, May 31 in Tokyo.
The Debian Project today is mourning the loss of legendary Linux developer Ray Dassen. Ray Dassen served the Linux community and Debian at large for nearly all of Debian’s life, having joined the project in the very beginning working hand-in-hand while the project’s founder, Ian Murdock.
In an interview, community manager Jono Bacon reveals strength -- and risk -- of Canonical's bold challenge to Google and Apple
For those people who have made the switch to a laptop as their primary system, Linux has presented a bit of a problem. Some integrated devices have less than stellar support and even the proprietary binary graphics drivers have left something to be desired. Worse, modern laptops that contain the ‘Optimus’ technology (multiple GPU configurations – NVidia and Intel) either had to be used in one mode or the other (one or the other X Server, but not both). Enter the ‘bumblebee’ project. This project allows you to compile support onto your system to allow you to designate certain applications to use the discrete driver (NVidia) for better video/game performance but did not address the ability to use both video cards for desktop display of multiple monitors. Today, we will address that shortcoming.
Canonical's Kevin Gunn shared a status update for the advancements made by their team this week on the Mir Display Server and next-generation Unity 8 interface.
Pinguy OS 13.04 (based on Ubuntu 13.04) beta has been released recently, this being basically the final 13.04 version because Pinguy has decided to keep the 6 month releases as betas and only the LTS will be considered stable.
If you can't communicate to your BBB from Browser, Use Google Chrome Browser. There is Some Problem with Firefox. Never use Internet Explorer.
Days after releasing version 2.1 of the Linux-based Tizen mobile operating system, Samsung confirmed an upcoming GT-I8805 Tizen smartphone, and Intel demonstrated a laptop running Tizen 3.0 in a GNOME shell. Other developments around this week’s Tizen Developers Conference include a Tizen App Challenge and 2013 phone launch promises from NTT DoCoMo and Orange.
This guest column by BeagleBoard.org co-founder Jason Kridner introduces the BeagleBone Black’s cutting-edge Linux 3.8 kernel, up from the original BeagleBone’s 3.2 kernel. The new kernel incorporates a new Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) display driver architecture, as well as full support for the Device Tree data structure introduced in Linux 3.7 in order to streamline ARM Linux development and hardware support.
Epiq Solutions announced a handheld software defined radio (SDR) device with an RF transceiver that tunes from 300MHz to 3.8GHz, plus a built-in 1PPS GPS. The Matchstiq Z1 is built around a Linux-ready iVeia Atlas-I-Z7e computer-on-module equipped with a Xilinx Zynq Z-7020 SoC, which integrates dual ARM Cortex-A9 cores along with FPGA circuitry.
For mobile app creators in the Tizen community, blinkx has developed an open source HTML5 video player to help developers incorporate a fully functional video player into their applications. The lightweight and easy-to-use code allows developers to build a single- or multi-video player experience with their own videos in multiple formats. As a result, creators of new and existing Tizen apps will be able to easily incorporate a video player with customisable playlists and configurable settings.
Tizen is a Linux-based operating system that’s backed by Samsung and which is expected to ship on Samsung smartphones this year. But the OS isn’t just for mobile devices like phones and tablets.
Tizen, the mobile operating system that has yet to see a device launched with it, is already widening its reach to laptops. Tizen, a Linux Foundation project with Intel and Samsung collaborating on development, is due to appear on smartphones in the latter part of the year with Tizen 2.1, which uses a Linux base layer with a user interface built using Enlightenment libraries to run HTML5-based apps. At the Tizen Developers Conference held this week though, Intel showed an early version of what will become part of Tizen 3.0 later in the year. Tizen Experts recorded a video of the Intel Tizen variant running on an i7 Ultrabook.
ou could be forgiven for thinking there's not much going on with Tizen, the Linux Foundation's open source mobile OS. It's been two years since the project was launched and there still are no Tizen devices on the market. But that's about to change – and there has been a lot happening behind the scenes, as well.
HTC may follow Samsung's lead and produce a "Google Edition" of its latest flagship smartphone running stock Android. According to sources that spoke to Russell Holly at Geek, work on a version of the HTC One without its Sense software customizations is underway, with a US launch said to be "imminent." Holly previously leaked accurate information on the Galaxy S4 Google Edition ahead of its announcement at the I/O conference.
How does Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) CEO Meg Whitman feel about Windows 8 vs. emerging Google Android and Chrome OS tablet and notebook alternatives? The answers emerged indirectly amid HP's Q2 2013 earnings call yesterday.
The open source community offers a wide array of options to assist you, whether you're tracking your personal bank accounts, managing your small business, setting up an online shop or monitoring finances for a large enterprise.
Like much of the software industry, financial software is in the midst of great change. While many consumers and companies still use traditional software that they have installed on their PCs and/or servers, many are turning to cloud-based solutions. In addition, many users are looking for solutions that include mobile capabilities.
At the time of its creation, I had thought that it would competitive with Sourceforge (which it was), but as it turns out Sourceforge will now get the last laugh.
Google has released a beta version of Chrome 28 that introduces a number of new developer features and performance improvements. The increased page rendering speed is, Google says, due to a new threaded HTML parser that is part of its WebKit fork Blink. The company claims the new parser improves page loading times by ten per cent, mostly through pipelining DOM content. The parser also has to stop less during parsing which also reduces load time.
If you have upgraded the Firefox web browser to version 21, the most recent version at the time of writing, you may have noticed that it is missing the All Tabs preview feature that was included in previous versions of the browser.
There are lots of people in the U.S. gearing up for a long Memorial Day weekend, and if you happen to have extra time on your hands this weekend you may want to consider entering Mozilla's Firefox Flicks contest. It's a global video contest designed to give budding filmmakers the opportunity to create and submit short videos about letting people discover "the power of the web on mobile devices." (We covered it when it launched.)
You may remember that back on March 22, Christine Hall penned an article here on FOSS Force concerning worries expressed by Alex Limi, a project design strategist at Mozilla, over configuration issues with Firefox. It seems that Mr. Limi expressed concerns on his blog over the fact that was possible for a user to “render the browser unusable to most people, right in the main settings.”
Mention the words "open source" to IT pros interested in adopting cloud computing, and their ears likely will perk up. Open source software offers a solution to the vendor lock-in concerns many enterprises have with committing to a cloud platform. And cloud platforms like the OpenStack Foundation, which fosters 'coopitition' among seeming competitors in the hot cloud computing market, give companies the option to build interoperable open source clouds. But what options do enterprises have when seeking open source PaaS?
Big Data is becoming a big deal beyond the United States, and it's time for the international channel to pay attention. The latest evidence: DataStax, which provides enterprise database management services based on open-source software. The company is making an aggressive push into the European market in what may be the first move toward a greater presence throughout the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) region as a whole.
OpenStack is a cloud software stack designed to run on commodity hardware, such as x86 and ARM. It has no proprietary hardware or software requirements, and it integrates legacy systems and third-party products. In other words you can adopt it into your existing tech infrastructure without disruption.
San Francisco-based company Cloudscaling is the latest small company focused on the open source OpenStack cloud computing platform to score some meaningful venture capital. The company has raised $10 million in Series B funding from partners including Trinity Ventures, Juniper Networks and Seagate. That's some pretty solid backing, and Cloudscaling--which provides infrastructure-as-a-service support--is just the latest Northern California company to get solid funding.
From the mind of a 19-year-old to the world’s most popular content management system (CMS) — WordPress has done some serious growing up in 10 years. Used by major publishing houses such as CNN and the New York Times and influential blogs like TechCrunch, the CMS has making publishing easy for a decade.
Not everyone has a computer. And, not all schools have access to the types of technology that are second nature to many of us at our workplace. It is also true that many people in the general public don't know about open source and the free alternatives that are available to them, like LibreOffice instead of Micrsoft Word.
The Kramden Institute is doing something about it by refurbishing computers and installing Ubermix on them, which is an open source operating system preloaded with over 60 educational, science, and learning applications for students.
What if I told you could work on open source projects full-time and make a living from that? You would get to do what you love and make money for it. That’s what Chad Whitacre is looking to accomplish with Gittip. The site, which uses the tag line: inspiring generosity, is doing just that. With over 1,110 active community members on Gittip in under a year, they are currently exchanging over $3,000 every week. While it’s not necessarily at the point where you would be able to quit your job and work on open source projects full-time, the site has been continually growing.
Josh Smith has announced the initial launch of the PC-BSD hardware store. This resource is meant to make it easier to find hardware that has been tested to work on PC-BSD.
I've just uploaded GNUBatch 1.8
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the guest blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions profileof the Sunlight Foundation or any employee thereof. Sunlight Foundation is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information within the guest blog.
Estrin talks about how this is a big departure from traditional medical research. "Instead of relying on federal grants or venture capital, we want to bring rapid prototyping to this field, innovating on modular software methods so that clinicians can borrow, blend and adapt mobile tools to transform chronic disease management."
Will Cornell Tech work at reinventing CS grad school? Will Estrin's Open mHealth project bring open source down to the cellular level? It is certainly worth watching both efforts to see her progress.
I got bitten at camp this weekend, but indifference would have been the only relevant repellant and thankfully, I'm allergic to that. Here's what I learned as a first-time camper.
The release of LLVM 3.3 along with its sub-projects like the Clang C/C++ compiler front-end and Compiler-RT is imminent. A second release candidate was posted just prior to the weekend to usher in some last minute testing.
Facebook's popularity is slumping in the UK as users become fed up with being bombarded with advertising, a YouGov survey has revealed.
In a report examining social media use among web-savvy Brits, the market research firm found a 9 per cent drop in Facebook usage since April 2012.
No, I’m not referring to the army of ‘Bielbers’ with posters of the singer hanging in their bedroom. I mean ‘bots’ or fake Twitter accounts. Of the international pop sensation’s 37.3 million followers on Twitter, 53% are so called ‘bots’. And he’s not alone. Recent news has exposed many celebrities with a significant percentage of their Twitter followers coming from inactive or automated accounts. This doesn’t stem solely from Hollywood either. Supposedly, President Obama’s Twitter audience is made up of around 70% inactive or fake profiles, totaling over 21 million. That’s more than the population of the state of New York (which has 29 electoral votes!).
The Scripps Howard News Service recently reported on a data leak it had found which exposed the sensitive information of up to 170,000 phone company customers who had applied for discounted phone lines. But instead of a statement from the data's owners, the authors got a cease and desist.
Google will update its certificate infrastructure and has, as a precaution, warned of potential problems. Starting in August, the company will replace its SSL certificates to implement new, longer keys. The change will also affect the root certificate that Google uses to sign all its own certificates.
We could believe that Goldman Sachs is now taking on new ethical standards if they even mentioned how they would change the old unethical standards used before the financial crisis. When a bank does not have to even admit wrongdoing, why in the world would they stop doing wrong ? The whole effort by Goldman is really a public relations exercise that investors will probably believe but we don't.
Truly disgraceful behaviour by the Swiss authorities.
I was not among those who believed the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision would open the floodgates of corporate money to influence elections and public policy. While the decision enables corporations to call for the election or defeat of federal candidates, those expenditures have to be reported and few corporations will take the risk of losing customers by getting involved in politics so publically.
Police fired volleys of rubber bullets at striking South African miners at a mine owned by Lanxess Chrome Mining Ltd on Tuesday, near the city of Rustenburg. Some 500 miners had assembled at daybreak, taking action without union approval. At least 10 miners were hospitalized, and police forces subsequently took control of the mine.
This article was first published by PRwatch.org on December 31, 2012, while we were writing our report "Dissent or Terror: How the Nation's Counter Terrorism Apparatus, in Partnership with Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street," published by DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy in May 2013. We re-release it now as part of a PRwatch series on the new report.