Here's a cool illustration from the Linux Foundation, which aims to promote the open source operating system by highlighting the number of jobs there are for Linux professionals.
In this episode: Linux Mint 12 has been released and it includes an innovative new take on Gnome Shell. Also, lots of smartphones could be running a rootkit-like piece of software and we discover things, read your views and discuss whether a Computer Science degree is worth the investment.
Optimised assembler code paths accelerate SHA1 and speed up the Blowfish and Twofish encryption algorithms. The next scheduled Linux kernel release avoids a cache problem found in AMD's latest processors and includes new and extended drivers for Intel CPUs.
Linus Torvalds is known to make a few colorful remarks from time to time. Today he's become frustrated once again with the Linux DRM layer and has rejected a pull request for the Linux 3.2 kernel.
If there’s one thing which must really piss off Bill Gates to no end, it must be the enduring popularity of Linux and other free software, as it undercuts his “if you want good software, you have to pay for it” attitude. As Linux has shown, it is indeed possible to produce good software and a good operating system, then give it away for nothing to anyone that wants to use it.
What’s the big deal? There are a couple of things really. First, GPUs tend to be really different beasts from other devices. There are huge variations from generation to generation within a single vendor, and even more when considering the disparate architectures from different vendors. They have all the complexity and more of CPUs, but with none of the convenient compatibilities. If you are programming for an x86 CPU, you target the same set of instructions regardless of the supplying vendor or underlying microarchitecture. With GPUs, it is precisely the microarchitecture that gets exposed. In addition, as part of the system software rather than application software, GPU drivers – as well as those for other devices – are expected to be “trusted”. They should follow the principle of “first, do no harm”. Graphics is possibly the subsystem in which this principle has been violated the most. With graphics, the principle is more one of “first, do not be slow”; the pixel might be “blue enough” if its value can be computed in three-quarters of the time of the correct value. The issue is where the speed-ups come from. One possibility is an algorithmic shortcut, but drivers also play fast and loose with buffer mappings, granting direct access to potentially protected device memory in order to ensure that the fastest path to pixels is taken. There is potential here for real evil, particularly if that device memory is adjacent to, say, a piece of your file system. The advent of hardware memory management units has alleviated much of this sort of concern, but it is certainly possible for a poorly written driver stack to trash a perfectly good system.
To The Moon is the latest project from Freebird Games, an indie studio headed by Canadian designer and composer Kan "Reives" Gao. Its resemblance to SNES-era role-playing games (Final Fantasy VI, in particular) and unique plot—about a medical procedure that allows a dying man to relive his life and fulfill a single wish—have generated it a bit of buzz recently.
It's only been a few weeks since id Software released the Doom 3 source-code (id Tech 4 engine) and the ioDoom 3 project was established, but there's already some interesting work going on for this newly opened GPL game engine.
Signal Ops is an upcoming Linux game featuring innovative multi view point gameplay. The game draws inspiration from classic games such as Commandos, Syndicate, and Deus Ex.
Linux game The Platform Shooter has been updated to version 0.2.0 alpha. The Platform Shooter is a platformer style third person shooter with built-in level editor. It features a classic platformer style single player game where you must collect power cells and make your way to exit as well as multiplayer mode where can you fight against you friends online.
3D real time strategy game MegaGlest has been updated to new version bringing in new features, fixes and performance improvements.
If you were hoping to play Frozenbyte's new game, Trine 2, under Linux this year, you're out of luck. Frozenbyte has announced that the Linux client of Trine 2 has been pushed back into 2012 while the Mac OS X and Windows versions will ship today and the console ports before year's end.
My main grievance against GNOME 3 and Unity is the elimination of all except a few applets. Both grudgingly allow some basic applets, such as a clock, but each lacks the ecosystem of applets that made GNOME so configurable.
You only have to look at the rich assortment of applets in KDE -- which calls them widgets -- to see what GNOME and Unity are missing. If anything, KDE's widgets are even richer than GNOME 2's applets, with dozens of small pieces of functionality that range from the serious to the trivial and the basic to the expert and obscure, including everything from hardware indicators and system configuration tools to desktop enhancements and toys and educational software.
The Kickoff application launcher is your main source for action when using the KDE desktop environment. Kickoff is designed to give quick access to everything your system has to offer. All of your applications and important locations on your system are stored in the Kickoff menu. As of the release of version 4.7 of the Plasma desktop a breadcrumbs feature has also been added. This allows you to track your movement in the menu, and quickly move to previous menus.
As you might have heard in many other places a bunch of GNOME and WebKit hackers have met in rainy Coruña for the 3rd WebKitGTK+ hackfest. Many things have been discussed, but today I’m going to give a sneak preview of the new design for Epiphany and its rebirth as the core GNOME Web application.
GNOME 3 continues to improve. One impressive step forward is the GNOME 3 Extension site. Jack Wallen happened upon this and was quite impressed. See if you are equally impressed with what Jack saw.
The GNOME Montréal Summit was held a month ago now, and not only was it lots of fun, but also a very productive time. Marina held a session about the outreach in GNOME, and we spent time discussing different ways to improve welcoming and attracting people in GNOME. Let me share some of the points we raised, supplemented by my own personnal opinions, that do not reflect those of my employer, when I’ll have a job.
I'm still getting acclimated to the changes in Gnome 3. So far, some things that initially irritated me ended up being easy to get used to. Others, still bug me on a daily basis. I still want to take more time to collect my thoughts on the matter, but one thing really stood out today: Gnome System Settings has some rather drastic feature regressions compared to the system-config-* applications that Fedora used to ship.
If you are using Gnome 3 you should find out how to get the most out of your activities menu. The activities window is where all of your applications and open windows can be found. Though totally re-designed, things are still relatively easy to figure out. After logging in you will have a pretty empty desktop with only one panel at the top of the screen. In the top left corner of the panel you will find the activities menu. The currently highlighted window will also be displayed in the top panel as well menus for that window will also be found in the top panel. Here are a few other ways of launching applications using the new Gnome shell.
"Never buy low serial numbers." Easy advice to give, but hard to follow. Witness the modern-day genius of pre-marketing: every time a neat new hi-tech gadget gets announced, a virtual army of unsuspecting consumers turns out to pay for the privilege of becoming beta-testers. Egging them on are "reviewers" (possibly hired shills), who write glowing reviews of the as-yet unmanufactured product in question. Occasionally, we are treated to videos of consumers camping out overnight in front of an electronics store for the privilege of being first in line to purchase a shiny new experimental gizmo that the manufacturer needs to get rid of before a greatly-improved version 2.0 is launched a few months later.
When I test drive (or do more) with a new Linux distro, I’m usually exposed to some software that might not normally look at. And that’s what happened when I recently switched back to Xubuntu. I started using four small applications that I probably wouldn’t have normally taken a look at otherwise.
The holiday season is here again and so are the distros.The top Linux Distro releases that you should be looking forward to this month are…
The PCLinuxOS Magazine staff is pleased to announce the release of the December 2011 issue of the PCLinuxOS Magazine. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is a product of the PCLinuxOS community, published by volunteers from the community. The magazine is lead by Paul Arnote, Chief Editor, and Assistant Editor Meemaw. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license, and some rights are reserved.
Up on the PCLinuxOS forums, a member shared with everyone a recent Windows computer repair expereince. Dragynn (His forum name) allowed me to share his comments.
“Just had a horrible run in with windoze 7. And it was truly a moment where I realized how grateful I should be.
The JDLL took place in Lyon, France on the 18th and 19th of November. Mageia was there.
Red Hat has updated its flagship operating system, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, with new technologies designed to cut the cost and improve performance of enterprise storage, the company announced Tuesday.
The enterprise distribution's second update of its sixth edition offers numerous optimisations for virtualisation, resource management and filesystems. New and improved drivers and a major X Server update enhance the distribution's hardware support.
I'm uploading a first approach of Bitcoin software for Fedora (15) v0.5.0. Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer electronic crypto-currency cash system.
The members of the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo), who decide on the technical development aspects of Fedora, have accepted a range of new features proposed by developers for version 17 of the Linux distribution. As things currently stand, the project plans to make another attempt to switch to using Btrfs as its default file system in this version, scheduled for release in May 2012. Such a move had been discussed for Fedora 16, but was later postponed because the file system didn't meet several criteria essential to allow the switch. For example, an improved tool is needed for checking and repairing Btrfs drives; such a tool continues to be a requirement, and its unavailability may cause Fedora to further postpone the switch.
In my last post, I talked about not being happy with the new Ubuntu. Short term, I rolled that desktop down to Mint 11. Mint is now more popular than Ubuntu, so I am not the only one unhappy with the Ubuntu design and attitude. More on that in a bit.
Mint 11 is a great version of Linux. If it were not for the fact that I want a more current version of Evolution, I would just stay there. However, upstream in Evolution there is something called Evolution-EWS, and that is a plug-in to the more upstream version of Evolution that can access MS Exchange without a DavMail proxy.
This release cycle I am the Test Day Coordinator. That means it is my job to help you, my fellow Fedorians, to set up test days for your packages/projects. We have about two and a half months until Alpha release (1). The sooner I receive test day proposals, the easier my life will be, and we all know that making my life easier is a Good Thing. The test day schedule can be found here.
In a post on its security announce mailing list, the Debian Project development team has reminded users that version 5.0 of its Debian Linux distribution, also known as "Lenny", will reach its end of life (EOL) on 6 February 2012. From that date, no further updates, including security updates and critical fixes, will be released.
Just a few years ago, I watched as a growing number of new Linux distributions were being built around Debian. It made sense at the time, as Debian does have a lot going for it, both with its available packages and the option of choosing from a stable code base down to the code that's still considered "testing."
During this time, a new distribution came about, backed by a founder with more money than most of us will ever see in our lifetimes. The result of this was a new distribution known as Ubuntu.
But where does this leave those distributions that chose to embrace a pure Debian base instead? In this article, I will explore two very different distributions that decided to look to Debian for the future and did so with immense style.
A new picture was posted recently on Reddit showing one of the displays at HMV store in UK using Ubuntu. The interactive touchscreen display was being used to give information about Wii.
The One Hundred Paper Cuts project is back for the Ubuntu 12.04 development cycle, to make 12.04 LTS the most bug-free, precise and pixel-perfect Ubuntu release ever!
Last week I delivered a keynote at the Qt Developer Days 2011 event in San Francisco. I have not seen a video of the keynote online yet, but I am assured it should be online soon. Rick Spencer gave a keynote at the Munich event shortly before UDS in October.
The latest buzz around Canonical may be about extending the Ubuntu Linux platform to TVs, phones and other mobile devices and selling PCs in Asia and Europe. But that hasn’t stopped the company from continuing to market Ubuntu aggressively as a solution for corporate desktops. Here’s a look at its latest effort — an ebook recently released — and what it says about Canonical’s strategy for the big-business market going forward.
Mint, which just released its latest version (Linux Mint 12 Lisa), has become the most popular Linux distribution on DistroWatch. Seizing the top spot from Ubuntu, the GNOME 3-based distro has evolved from a mere spin to a serious competitor to Canonical’s flagship product. As Mint continues to dominate DistroWatch, some journalists have already come to a conclusion that Ubuntu is no longer the most popular distro around. How true is that claim? Is Ubuntu’s popularity really declining? The answer to both these questions is Yes and No.
Remember the good old days of Ubuntu, way before Unity and Gnome 3 were the norm? Everything seemed to work just fine in those days. I finally did it. I took a major step back. I am now using Ubuntu 10.04 as my default Ubuntu Desktop.
As promised in my previous post about my Unity Phone Mockups, here’s a look at the TV mockups I’ve been playing with over the last week, along with the reasons behind some of the designs. Links to the source files for these mockups, as well as the mockups by other community contributors, can be found on this wiki page.
Although it’s not without passionate supporters, Unity, Ubuntu 11.10ââ¬Â²s new default user interface, has generated lots of controversy and consternation among faithful Ubuntu users. For those who prefer a traditional Gnome desktop, this post provides a straightforward method of setting up and configuring a Ubuntu 11.10 desktop based on Gnome 3ââ¬Â²s “Fallback” mode.
I really am a BIG FAN of Linux Mint. For the most part, this system has been a breath of fresh air compared to Windows. I've had few problems with Mint EXCEPT in one case: when I go to upgrade it from one version to the next. At that point, all hell breaks loose!!
The last time I did an upgrade, I lost all my data and files because -- for unknown reasons -- the new versions simply couldn't read any of the backed up files. It was maddening.
Though it isn’t the recommended approach, I have ended up upgrading to Linux Mint 12 from Linux Mint 11 using an in situ route. Having attempted this before with a VirtualBox hosted installation, I am well aware of the possibility of things going wrong. Then, a full re-installation was needed to remedy the situation. With that in mind, I made a number of backups in the case of an emergency fresh installation of the latest release of Linux Mint. Apache and VirtualBox configuration files together with MySQL backups were put where they could be retrieved should that be required. The same applied to the list of installed packages on my system. So far, I haven’t needed to use these but there is no point in taking too many chances.
I lied. I said I would never again test another Gnome 3 distro, and here I am, testing another Gnome 3 distro. What more, I will do the same thing I did with openSUSE, I will write two separate reviews, performed on two ends of the computing modernity spectrum, with an olden but golden T60p 32-bit machine on the low end and a shiny new HP with an i5 processor and Nvidia 320M GT card on the high end. Today, we will begin with the weak machine.
Glenn Cady proudly announced a few minutes ago, December 6th, that the highly anticipated Ultimate Edition 3.0 operating system has been released and it's available for download on mirrors worldwide.
This is not surprising, considering that most people who move to GNU/Linux are Windows refugees. And one needs some points of similarity in order to ease the transition.
So I’ve been running Linux Mint LXDE on my laptop at home for eight months or so. Having posted a review/opinion piece previously I wanted to add a few words – a warning if you will.
eBay’s Ql.io could make e-commerce web applications faster to develop – and use
The Ada Initiative isn't quite one year old, but with the project embarking on a new fundraiser and as 2011 draws to a close, it seems like a good time to check in on the project. Much of the focus in 2011 has been on bootstrapping, but 2012 is looking like a very good year for the Ada Initiative.
Well, here we are, another year almost done for. Time to look back and take stock of the year that was. You know what? It turns out that 2011 was a banner year for open source projects. So much so, that picking the 10 most important was pretty difficult.
So what do I mean by "important," anyway? Clearly, it's not just projects that are widely used. That list would be just too long to even contemplate. You'd have to include Apache, GCC, X.org, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, Linux Mint, not to mention a bazillion and one libraries and utilities that we depend on every day.
So to judge importance, I looked at projects that are influential, gaining in popularity, and/or technical standouts in new areas. In other words, projects that are even more noteworthy than the other noteworthy projects. This means that many projects that are crucial didn't make the list. And now, in no particular order, the 10 most important projects of 2011.
Its core business products such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) operating system and JBoss middleware remain key components of Red Hat's growth strategy, as the open source vendor looks to strengthen its presence in Asia-Pacific, particularly Southeast Asia, even as it makes "exploratory moves into cloud".
DARPA is looking to solve the problem of runaway defense systems projects by reinventing how complex systems are developed and manufactured. They aim to do this by borrowing from the playbooks of integrated circuit developers and open-source software projects. And in the process, the agency's Adaptive Vehicle Make project may reinvent manufacturing itself, and seed the workforce with a new generation of engineers who can "compile" innovations into new inventions without having to be tied to a manufacturing plant.
Open source has opened minds and provided a great amount of freedom of choice not just to organisations but to our government as well. In my view, open source has brought about a change in the way we view and adapt to technology. We are seeing a paradigm shift from packaged software to open source standards not just within organisations, but also at the government level. A significant amount of government administration processes have been simplified by employing various open source tools. In the last five years, there has been a sudden rise in open source developers being hired. There is a huge untapped potential for developers in the open source domain. However, it remains to be seen what measures the government is taking at the central and the state levels to implement this technology and how it is addressing the challenges associated with migrating to open source.
The connection between a user and his or her DNS service can now be locked down with an encrypted session to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks, spoofing, or sniffing: OpenDNS has written an open-source tool to secure that traditionally exposed link.
I’ve noticed recently how badly disorganised some organisations seem to be when it comes to making their artwork easy accessible to people who wish to promote their work. Organisations, projects and groups all want their newest release covered, or what they’ve just announced is going to happen, unfortunately it’s hard to write about something when you’re missing their logo.
Free riders, people who contribute nothing to the software they use, are to free and open source software (FOSS) what illegal downloaders are to the Recording Industry Association of America. They're people who are perceived as getting away with something, and are the subject of periodic rants. Really, though, I don't see what the fuss is about.
Mozilla is making an emotional appeal to Firefox users amid declining market share and potential lost revenue thanks to Google.
Mozilla has released a video, called "The Mozilla Story," which explains the organization's roots as a community project and the importance of Firefox as an open-source Web browser backed by a non-profit organization. The video avoids technical nitty-gritty in favor of general statements about putting users' interests first.
Mozilla's Firefox browser has had something of a rough year in 2011, but the past week or so has been particularly unkind.
As pundits ponder the future of Mozilla’s Firefox browser, the non-profit group’s chairwoman is banking on some pretty abstract gambles to help regain the platform’s edge over its rivals.
By one researcher’s count, Firefox last month lost its position as the second most-used browser to Google’s Chrome offering while Microsoft Internet Explorer held it’s lion’s share, although this continues to shrink.
As I stumbled over a note from Mozilla’s developer staff today, I wondered how much impact feature delays in a rapid release process really have and whether delays in a 6-week release cycle matter or not? Firefox could use some good news, but there is not much that could cause some optimism in the near future. Nearly every major feature the browser could use today is delayed and the browser that Mozilla would need today won’t be available until the end of April.
There are not many times when I get my sight out of Linux and look into other free Operating System. Most often these are BSD-based operating systems. Today is such a case. Even more, today I will tell you about two twin brothers from BSD family.
GNU Stow, the GNU utility for managing the installation of software packages, gets its first official release since 2002 after a complete refresh of the code. Stow allows users to manage multiple software packages, keeping their files in separate directories while at the same time presenting the user with a single run-time directory, created using symlinks into those separate directories. Stow is a simpler, database-less version of its inspiration, the Carnegie Mellon Depot application.
The Department of Defense is taking a closer look at open source software, hinting at the potential for new acquisition regulations.
Specifically, DOD will host a public meeting Jan. 12 to "initiate a dialogue with industry regarding the use of open source software in DOD contracts," according to a notice published in the Federal Register Monday.
The Software Freedom Law Center submitted comments yesterday to the U.S. Copyright Office proposing an exemption from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's anti-circumvention provisions. If granted, the exemption would ensure that owners of personal computing devices have the right to install whatever software they choose on their devices.
Whether or not you voted for President Obama, it can’t be said that he hasn’t made intelligent moves in bringing the US government fully into the information age. In fact, his first executive order that he ever signed created a new information portal on the web, Data.gov, to allow web users access to information made available by the Freedom of Information act. Accessing that before was difficult because of the bureaucratic hoops people had to jump through to get the data they sought. Coming fully online in 2009, Data.gov allows web users to access a range of information, such as who has visited the White House, and be able to represent that data using visual charts. This toolset makes it much easier for US citizens to hold their government accountable for its actions.
A few months ago, I became “Director of Engineering” for SourceForge.net. It’s a big job that includes being “Product Owner” for the two development teams, managing support, and helping everybody do what we can to improve the site. We have over a decade of accumulated features, many of which are out of date, and little used. We have lots of technical debt. We have younger competitors with a lot of online buzz.
In this time of magic, who needs to know what an OS is let alone how to code one?
Our College IT has disappeared. I knew this would happen, it’s become invisible to my students. Maybe it simply faded away when we weren’t looking properly. We use computers in class every day, many times a day; my course now utterly relies on Moodle to keep in touch, store our stuff and mark our tests; the World Wide Web is our constant companion whether on the whiteboard, laptop or phone ... but we don’t ‘see’ it anymore.
With the pending release of PHP version 5.4, due early next year, the creators behind the popular Web scripting language are including the best parts of the now-abandoned PHP 6.0 project.
"I guess you could say [PHP 6] was too ambitious," said Zeev Suraski, one of the principal contributors to PHP as well as the chief technology officer and co-founder of PHP software vendor Zend Technologies.