Clearly, GNU/Linux has a dominant position in China by this measure. With hundreds of millions soon to gain access to IT in China, GNU/Linux has a bright future.
Floating around the Linux kernel mailing list information is some new data about the evolution of the Linux kernel's size. Obviously, it's getting larger.
Jérôme Pinot took the size of every Linux kernel (the .tar.bz2 package) since Linux 1.0 and through the recent Linux 3.1 kernel release and plotted it out. It's comparing the size of the kernel versus the release number (not against the time). His findings are that "Impressive, it's mostly exponential. If dev keeps same pace, we should break the 100MB at linux 3.19."
This blog post isn’t only directed to ThinkPad owners as most notebook Linux users with Intel Core Duo 1/2 and i3/i5/i7 processors have been affected by this bug if not all. And yes, this problem is present on latest Debian Unstable and Ubuntu 11.10.
Many Phoronix readers have written in asking about the news this week concerning HTC joining the Open Invention Network. In particular, many Phoronix readers are interested in HTC joining OIN due to their acquisition of S3 Graphics earlier in the year and the accumulated graphics IP portfolio.
The Fedora Project recently released Fedora 16 (“Verne”), featuring GNOME 3.2, as well as virtualization and cloud enhancements including Aeolus and OpenStack integration. Fedora 16 upgrades to Linux 3.1, the GRUB2 bootloader finally shows up, and Firefox 7.0.1, while offering improved system settings, plus enhanced contact and document management apps.
Clothing retailers better listen up, because Jens Nilsson and his team at Frictional Games have discovered a way to make a good chunk of gamers go out and buy a new, unsoiled pair of trousers. The indie developer’s previous effort, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, is regarded by some as one of the scariest games of all time, and the Penumbra trilogy that preceded it shares its innovative control scheme and focus on realism and physics-driven puzzles. Spurred by Amnesia’s unexpected success, the team is already hard at work on their next project, and the next iteration of their “HPL” engine.
I almost didn’t manage to speak to Jens at our arranged time on Tuesday; I had issues with our Internet connection and wasn’t able to keep our Skype appointment, and it was merely by the stroke of luck that I managed to get his telephone number and call him at his home in Helsinborg, Sweden. He’s currently the CEO of the eight-person team, handling both audio and scripting for their games’ development process, as well as “all the boring stuff with the company”, like administration and so on. He’s one of the team’s two original founders, and his passion for video games is obvious.
For some time, I have been noticing that KDE Display Manager (KDM) slows down after every version bump. I was of the idea that this was because KDE was becoming bloated. However, CPU usage of KDE had started declining after version 4.4. So, I was sure that KDE was actually not getting hung up in the background any more. However, till 4.7 the KDM load time kept increasing. As a matter of fact, after the recent update, KDM became so slow that I had to restart my system twice before actually getting to KDM. In fact, during the first two restarts, I was thinking that my installation was broken after the update.
In fact the feature was finished some weeks ago with a complete transition to KWin. Unfortunately it turned out that there is one possible situation for a race condition which could lead to a desktop being unlocked in the worst case if KWin crashes. Of course it would not be possible to trigger a crash when the screen is locked, but KWin relies and integrates libraries which are out of our own control (e.g. think of drivers).
With this release, there is a DVD and a CD installation image. The CD image contains very few applications, while the DVD image is relatively loaded. This review is based on test installations of the DVD image on real hardware and in a virtual environment.
Directly from our "Breaking Stuff" dept., three new Sabayon 7 releases have seen the light! These releases all go under the "Experimental" umbrella, not that because
* LXDE is a minimal, CD-sized flavour geared towards low-end computers, shipping the LXDE Desktop Environment. * E17 is a minimal, CD-sized flavour made for people wanting to showcase the magic of Enlightenment 17. * Awesome is a first timer here, thanks to Brian Tomlinson efforts, Sabayon has now an Awesome WM flavour as well.
Parted Magic lead developer Patrick J. Verner has announced the release of version 11.11.11 of his open source, multi-platform partitioning tool. Based on the Linux 3.1 kernel, the new release introduces a new versioning system (the previous version was 6.7) and upgrades a number of the included applications.
You can download SoaS v6 via bittorrent or direct downloads by heading over to this page. The accompanying installation instructions for various operating systems are available here.
As you can see from the screenshot above I gave SoaS a spin around the block using VirtualBox on my Windows 7 laptop and it worked like a charm. As I have access to XOs I personally don't need SoaS that often but I do use it occassionally to show off Sugar during presentations or talks I give.
PCLinuxOS has been around since 2003. It started off as a set of RPM packages to improve Mandrake (now Mandriva) Linux. Eventually it grew and changed and became a standalone distro in it’s own right.
PCLinuxOS uses APT-RPM as it’s package management system. Basically, it uses APT and Synaptic, but on RPM packages instead of DEB. It’s used a variety of desktop environments in it’s time, but currently (version 2011.09), KDE is the only desktop environment available officially.
Jared Smith has been associated with the Fedora Project for several years and currently is the Project Leader. In an exclusive interview with devworx, he spoke on Fedora 16, the btrfs filesystem, other Linux projects and more! Jared said his role is all about bridging the gap between the Fedora user community, developers and Red Hat. To Red Hat as a company, he represents the Fedora community, while to the Fedora community, he represents Red Hat. That way, the bridges of communication always stay open in the community side as well as the corporate side.
I admit, my brief tryst with Fedora 16 the other night has been stuck in my mind. It was good. Really good. I guess I had a few preconceptions going in. When you go with IBM, when you date that FBI agent, or that covert military assassin, you just expect some kind of perfection. They’ve got to have hard-core discipline, they had to work everything out well in advance. A downright ruthless execution in the name of perfection.
So, I also updated and here are my impressions :-D XFCE live cd works like a breeze, installation went smooth. I even got wifi (broadcomm) working out of box (suspend works for me too, btw.)! GRUB 2 seems nice, although it associated detected kernels with the newly installed Fedora. Still better than nothing from grub 1 >:-D Now for the system itself. GDM suck. It sucks hard. As soon as I installed some of gnome as deps it started putting gnome instead of xfce to session. It also does not seem to allow for keyboard and language selection. I need to switch to LXDM or try out LightDM soon… XFCE works as expected, after copying old configuration and installing apps I use, almost everything seems to work.
For those who wonder "what updates are already pushed out", there aren't that many updates for Fedora 16, which I suppose is a good indicator of its stability at release. My update was 55MB, and took only a few minutes while I did other things.
Commodore OS Vision stands on the shoulders of giants, with a lineage that traces back to fantastic linux operating system distributions such as Debian, Ubuntu and Mint, which you might also be interested in installing on our machines. Commodore OS Vision auto-installs a graphical operating system boot menu facilitating this further, making your new Commodore machine a technology tinkerers delight.
Canonical is in a hurry. After the successful release of Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot, it's time to plan for next, more important, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS release. Ubuntu 12.04 is codenamed "Precise Pangolin" and following are the important changes in the upcoming Ubuntu 12.04 release, as decided upon during recently concluded Ubuntu Developer Summit.
Do you want to know if your computer will work with Ubuntu? Head to Ubuntu Friendly to quickly find out. It’s an ever-growing database of computers known to work flawlessly with everyone’s favorite Linux-based operating system. Do you want to help make that website useful? Run the system test on your computer running Ubuntu right now. You will run tests on your wireless card, your sound and more.
I am looking to hire a new member for my team (the Community Team) here at Canonical. I am looking for a bright, motivated, and experienced person to build, maintain and develop a cohesive, productive and effective Ubuntu QA community. I am looking for someone with solid QA experience particular in the areas of testing and defect management.
Earlier preview added by LinuxMint shows quite the same new features mentioned on the release notes of Linux Mint 12 RC Lisa. Linux Mint 12 based on Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot, It comes with Gnome 3 and Mint Gnome Shell Extension. MGSE featuring with the new bottom panel, applications menu, window list, visible system tray icons and a task-centric desktop allows you to easily switch with between running applications using Alt+Tab.
Clement Lefebvre, father of the Linux Mint project, announced a few days ago that the upcoming Linux Mint 12 (Lisa) operating system will feature a new desktop interface built on top of the GNOME 3 desktop environment.
So, we've downloaded a development version of the Linux Mint 12 distribution and took it for a test drive, to see that amazing new interface everyone is talking about, that Unity killer.
To our surprise, it appears that Linux Mint 12's new interface, called MGSE (Mint Gnime Shell Extensions) is actually a small modification of the GNOME 3's GNOME Shell interface.
I like Mint… it is not the distro I run on my own system, that is Ubuntu, but I am VERY impressed with Mint. This new version looks very cool. Time to play!
Occasionally, if you get stuck on a difficult word, there’s always the big fat dictionary waiting to be dusted off. But what if you find that process a tad old-fashioned? Don’t worry, you’re not the only one. These days, more and more people are using online dictionaries instead of the traditional paper-made ones to find synonyms, definitions and antonyms. Also, for looking up words on the go, there are a myriad of apps available for smartphones and tablets. So, if you’re an Android user and are looking for some good dictionary apps to try out, read on as we cover the best ones for the platform.
Naughton made the same claim in March and again in August. It looks like nobody is listening to his dog whistling else he wouldn't be at it for the third time in a calendar year.
Over the next few months, dual-core phones with 720p HD displays will be the new standard by which all high-end Android phones will be judged. And it looks like SONY Ericsson is already at work on a new phone that will allow them to play with the big boys. Pictures, specs and benchmarks for the upcoming SONY Ericsson Nozomi (aka SONY Ericsson XPERIA Arc HD) made an appearance on the web this weekend, giving us a close look at what SE’s next generation handsets will look like.
A leaked picture of a retail box for a Motorola "Corvair" has surfaced, indicating the company is prepping a small tablet/ TV controller. Likely to be tied with Google TV, the 6-inch Android 2.3-powered device is called a "dedicated controller" designed for the "connected TV".
Toys R Us is synonymous with kids, so you shouldn't be surprised to hear they have teamed up with app developers to offer a kid-centric Android tablet. What is surprising is the price. Available for just $199, the Nabi tablet joins Amazon's Kindle Fire as one of the few sub $200 dollar Android tablets available in the market today. While we all love a good price... what exactly are we getting with the Nabi tablet?
Asus announced the first quad-core Android tablet, featuring the newly shipping Nvidia Tegra 3 clocked to 1.3GHz. The Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime is slimmer (0.33 inches) and lighter (1.29 pounds) than the original Transformer, and offers a 10.1-inch display,an eight-megapixel camera, and up to 12 hours of claimed battery life -- or 18 hours when plugged into the optional keyboard dock.
Mozilla has released the first beta of Firefox 9, just days after the release of the eighth build of the popular open source browser.
Just over a year ago the open source Office Suite world was disturbed by indecision, much the same way world stock markets have been upset by uncertainty today. Oracle had purchased Sun Microsystems and with it the “ownership” of the open source office suite OpenOffice.org.
The Free Software Conference and Exhibition 2011 organized by FSF.hu Foundation was held today in Budapest. With more than 500 participants, it was the biggest free software event in Hungary this year. I think it was a great success, there were many good presentations in 4 tracks, and there was also a room for workshops.
I have a fairly simple approach to investing: Start with data and objective evidence to determine the dominant elements driving the market action right now. Figure out what objective reality is beneath all of the noise. Use that information to try to make intelligent investing decisions.
But then, I’m an investor focused on preserving capital and managing risk. I’m not out to win the next election or drive the debate. For those who are, facts and data matter much less than a narrative that supports their interests.
One group has been especially vocal about shaping a new narrative of the credit crisis and economic collapse: those whose bad judgment and failed philosophy helped cause the crisis.
Rather than admit the error of their ways — Repent! — these people are engaged in an active campaign to rewrite history. They are not, of course, exonerated in doing so. And beyond that, they damage the process of repairing what was broken. They muddy the waters when it comes to holding guilty parties responsible. They prevent measures from being put into place to prevent another crisis.
Here is the surprising takeaway: They are winning. Thanks to the endless repetition of the Big Lie.
A Big Lie is so colossal that no one would believe that someone could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. There are many examples: Claims that Earth is not warming, or that evolution is not the best thesis we have for how humans developed. Those opposed to stimulus spending have gone so far as to claim that the infrastructure of the United States is just fine, Grade A (not D, as the we discussed last month), and needs little repair.
Wall Street has its own version: Its Big Lie is that banks and investment houses are merely victims of the crash. You see, the entire boom and bust was caused by misguided government policies. It was not irresponsible lending or derivative or excess leverage or misguided compensation packages, but rather long-standing housing policies that were at fault.
A couple of days ago, the Associated Press reported that the Department of Homeland Security claims not to be “actively monitoring” social media networks like Facebook and Twitter. Lest you worry that status updates that present a threat to national security are going unread, the AP today reports that the Central Intelligence Agency is actively monitoring social media networks.
The story in the earlier article was that our sprawling intelligence and national security apparatus was caught off-guard by social media-fueled uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, and that they were going to take steps to be better prepared in the future.
This is about how over-budgeted media productions historically paid to license things they didn’t need to license, just because they had tons of money and their lawyers preferred to “play it safe” rather than claim Fair Use, which is how Fair Use became the weak pathetic limping layer of pointlessness it is today.