01.16.14
Posted in News Roundup at 6:50 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Stories from across the globe about pollution, weather, environmental issues, and wildlife
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MPs accused the government of seeking to bribe local councils to grant planning permission for controversial fracking projects today, just as new figures showed Britain’s shale gas regulator has only six staff dedicated to fracking full time.
They fear that the shale gas industry could be allowed to balloon without proper scrutiny and are especially concerned because, in only a fortnight, the regulator will be required to issue new fracking permits within two weeks, compared to the current 13-week wait.
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In at least four states that have nurtured the nation’s energy boom, hundreds of complaints have been made about well-water contamination from oil or gas drilling, and pollution was confirmed in a number of them, according to a review that casts doubt on industry suggestions that such problems rarely happen.
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On Wednesday, TEPCO stopped operating all 3 ALPS systems at the facility. The company officials say the system may take a long time to restart.
The container where the radioactive substances are stored has to be replaced when it fills up.
TEPCO, the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, crippled in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, said that the company plans to decontaminate all radioactive water stored in the tanks by March 2015, NHK reported.
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Parts of the US are braced for potentially record-breaking low temperatures as a “polar vortex” brings more freezing weather.
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This cold front is no joke, people. For the first time in 17 years, Minnesota called off school Monday for the entire state. “A person not properly dressed could die easily in those conditions,” warned National Weather Service meteorologist Scott Truett in St. Louis, describing the expected wind chill in Missouri tomorrow morning. The National Weather Service has described the wind chill as “life-threatening.”
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Government researchers have that monitor where the animals are. When a tagged shark is about half a mile away from a beach, it triggers a computer alert, which tweets out a message on the . The tweet notes the shark’s size, breed and approximate location.
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In five years, bicycling will be so common that it’s boring, says author Elly Blue
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01.15.14
Posted in News Roundup, Ubuntu at 11:16 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: News from the past couple of weeks, touching on the different parts or projects at Canonical
Server
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At November’s OpenStack Summit in Hong Kong, members of the OpenStack Foundation made clear that many IT departments are either already experimenting with the open cloud computing platform, or will do so this year. The foundation’s OpenStack Survey involved 387 OpenStack cloud deployments across 56 countries, and determined that OpenStack is very high on the list of technologies to work with at enterprises in 2014.
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Ubuntu Server 14.04 is set to include Nginx Web server as standard, along with the old favorite Apache
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The next version of Ubuntu Server is expected to include Nginx in the main archive, meaning it will “sit alongside Apache in 14.04 with full security updates over the life of the release,” Canonical employee Jorge Castro wrote today.
Financials
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The financial result for the Ubuntu maker is out. The company posted a loss of $21.3 million in fiscal year 2013, a straight fall of $10.2 million from the loss posted in fiscal year 2012, which was $11.1 million. The revenue earned in 2013 however, was $65.7 million, up from $56.8 million reported a year earlier.
Desktop/Tablets/Other
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A few days before the announcement for the end of life of Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail), Canonical has released the last major update of its soon to be unsupported Ubuntu operating system, fixing no more than nine vulnerabilities discovered by various developers in the upstream kernel packages.
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The UK government now says that Ubuntu 12.04 is the safest operating system available, way ahead of Windows 8 and Mac OS X.
The Communications-Electronics Security Group (CESG) is the UK National Technical Authority for information assurance and they’ve done a series of tests to find out what is the most secure operating system available for the governmental apparatus.
The security assessment made by CESG included the following categories: VPN, Disk Encryption, Authentication, Secure Boot, Platform Integrity and Application Sandboxing, Application Whitelisting, Malicious Code Detection and Prevention, Security Policy Enforcement, External Interface Protection, Device Update Policy, Event Collection for Enterprise Analysis, and Incident Response.
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Tech Republic has five reasons why an Ubuntu tablet could do quite well in 2014.
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You won’t see an Ubuntu Edge at CES this week. Ubuntu’s parent company, Canonical, raised $12.8-million on Indiegogo to develop and build this Ubuntu Linux/Android-powered Ubuntu Edge combination smartphone and PC, but it still fell far short of its $32 million goal. So what?
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In an interview with PCpro that it was revealed by Mark Shuttleworth that Canonical is now leading the race for full convergence across all devices and architectures. There is also a possibility of shifting over from bi-annual releases to semi-rolling releases as mobile users are accustomed to updates being released ‘whenever’ they’re ready by the maintainers.
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Canonical has confirmed that the next point release of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) will be available on February 6.
The company has postponed by two weeks the release of the fourth maintenance build, but now the release date has been confirmed and set in stone.
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Ubuntu is the “Marmite” operating system within the Linux community. You either love it or hate it.
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Adam Conrad has announced earlier today, January 7, that the Ubuntu 13.04 Linux operating system, also known as Raring Ringtail among its fans, will reach end of life (EOL) on Monday, January 27, 2014, as Canonical will no longer provide security/critical fixes and software updates for it.
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Torrent search would be added to Ubuntu’s Dash, a central tool that lets users search files and applications on their desktop as well as online sources like Amazon or Wikipedia. The search tool prototype uses the Pirate Bay as a data source. It may be modified to filter out pirated content, but users can change the filters to suit their desires. It’s also possible that a future version could use a different data source.
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2013 was a phenomenal year for Ubuntu. It is difficult to believe that it was just a year ago today that we announced Ubuntu for phones. Since then we have built and released the first version of Ubuntu for phones complete with core apps, delivered Mir in production on the phone, built a vastly simplified and more powerful new app delivery platform complete with full security sand-boxing, created a powerful smart scopes service to bring the power of native search and online content to devices, delivered a new SDK with support for QML, HTML5, and Scopes, built an entirely new developer.ubuntu.com, created extensive CI and testing infrastructure to ensure quality as we evolve our platform, shipped two desktop releases, extended the charm store, delivered Juju Gui, spun up multiple clouds with Juju, and much more.
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Back in June, we were ready to announce the immediate availability for download of a new Linux distribution, called Unity-for-Arch, which used Ubuntu’s Unity user interface on a basic Arch Linux Live CD.
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The popular Linux distribution Ubuntu will enable TRIM support for SSDs by default in its upcoming Ubuntu 14.04 Long Term Support (LTS) release. For those unfamiliar with what TRIM is, it is a command the OS instructs to the drive to wipe invalid flash blocks when they are no longer needed.
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Mobile
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Ubuntu Phones should be released in 2014, according to Canonical community manager Jono Bacon.
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Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth is no stranger to exploring rarefied territory. The man has, after all, been to space.
His interest in new frontiers means Ubuntu, the Linux distro he created, is also poised to make a great leap – to go where no Linux has gone before.
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He may have stepped back from the CEO role at Canonical, but Mark Shuttleworth is still very much the public face of Ubuntu.
He suffered a setback earlier this year when the crowdfunded Ubuntu Edge project – in which he invested a lot of personal capital, if not actual money – failed to get anywhere near its ambitious investment target. However, he tells us the project wasn’t a total failure, and may even be aped by the best-known smartphone maker of them all.
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Just before the holiday season sets in, Canonical has a surprise gift for all Ubuntu mobile fans. A new Ubuntu Touch image has been released and this is claimed to be the most stable release so far. Along with that, this release boasts a new way to dual boot with Android. This is a giant new step and will be specially welcome by enthusiasts who would like to experiment Ubuntu on their phones, leaving existing Android system untouched.
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Ubuntu for Android seems still far away but in the meantime Canonical is working on dual boot capability, allowing users to either boot into Ubuntu or Android.
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Canonical, creators of Ubuntu and more specifically Ubuntu Touch, have some potentially upsetting news. While in the process of developing Ubuntu Touch, the team has decided to narrow down hardware support to better focus on the operating system itself. They have officially dropped support for the Nexus 7 2012, Nexus 10, and Galaxy Nexus.
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Wi-Fi and Security
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My colleague, Silviu Stahie, wrote an interesting article earlier today, regarding the “ability” of the Ubuntu Linux operating system to store Wi-Fi passwords in plain text, “thanks” to the default design of the NetworkManager application, initially developed by Red Hat.
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Ubuntu operating systems are storing the Wi-Fi profiles, including the clear text passwords, outside the home folder, making them a lot more accessible.
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Posted in News Roundup at 11:02 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Android and Steam, CyanogenMod Gallery, BlackBerry potential, developer interest, and growing interest from Intel
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If you are looking to stream your Steam games directly to any Android device, this one goes out to you. A new app called Limelight brings the PC game streaming functionality of the Nvidia Shield to any Android device of your choice.
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Huawei is set to enter the console wars with its own Android-based mini-console. The Chinese company unveiled the “Tron” this week at the Consumer Electronics Show and it could hit the market in May for a mere $120 or less.
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BlackBerry is placing its last hopes on Android, though not in the way you think. Instead of incorporating Android into its smartphones, the company’s forthcoming 10.2.1 update to its BlackBerry operating system will support native Android apps.
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Intel has been making code contributions to the 64-bit version of Android 4.4 code-named KitKat. Intel has completed the kernel work, which will ensure the OS is compatible with smartphones, said an Intel spokeswoman at the International CES expo in Las Vegas.
But 64-bit Android could reach tablets first. Intel said 64-bit Android tablets powered by its Atom processor code-named Bay Trail will become available in the first half of this year. The tablets are expected to sell for as low as $150.
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Owners of the international version of Samsung’s Galaxy Note 3 should expect Android 4.4.2 KitKat to flavor their phablets before too long.
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Posted in News Roundup at 10:57 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Recent news of interest, showing how Android is gaining on desktops, not just phones and tablets
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In late December, rumors were going around to the effect that PCs running both Android and Windows would debut at the Consumer Electronics Show, as I covered in a post. Actually, OStatic covered the basic concept of Android being married with other platforms at the very beginning of last year, in a post called “Should Microsoft Embrace Both Android and Firefox OS?”
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The DA223 HQL is the newest Android all-in-one computer announced at the just-concluded 2014 edition of the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada.
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The Transformer Book Duet TD 300 is one of the major product announcements from ASUS at the ongoing International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada.
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Perhaps more significantly, three touch-enabled, Android-only AiOs debuted at CES 2014 this past week from major vendors:
Acer TA272 HUL — Thanks to its Nvidia Tegra 4 processor, this $1,100, 27-inch AiO is one of the highest resolution Android devices around, with 2560 x 1440 pixels (WQHD). It runs only Android 4.2, but Windows 8 users can plug in to use it as a touchscreen monitor.
HP Slate21 Pro — The $335 Slate21 Pro AiO runs Android 4.3 on a Tegra 4, and features a 21.5-inch HD IPS touchscreen. It’s aimed at the enterprise, with features like Kingsoft Office Suite, Citrix Receiver, and its Security Enhancements for Android.
Lenovo N308– Yet another Tegra 4 based AiO, the N308 is designed for both enterprise and consumer users. The 19.5-inch Android 4.2.2 computer offers an HD+ touchscreen and a 500GB hard drive. You can detach the screen and use it for three hours as a huge Android tablet.
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Posted in GNU/Linux, News Roundup at 10:49 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Recent news headlines (with excepts) that show the growth of GNU/Linux in the market
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Whether it is a tech-savvy hero saving us from terrorist attacks by hacking into computer networks; or a skinny, bespectacled software programmer punching the night away on the keyboard, coding up the next big social network… well, chance are you will be shown arcane lines of code scrolling on the computer screen. Lot of cryptic commands, symbols and jargon that makes no sense to anyone but the protagonist. Luckily, for us mere mortals, such melodrama usually ends with big flashing text that say stuff like “Access Granted” or “Nuclear Launch Aborted” or “Virus Contained” or “Kejriwal for PM”.
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I was scanning the news the other day, and someone on Hacker News mentioned that half the items above the fold on StreetEYE were about Bitcoin. And I said to myself, I haven’t seen the neckbeards this excited since the early days of Linux.
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Linux has been a part of the enterprise back end for a long time and is becoming more prevalent in the office-side of businesses, from small businesses to major enterprises. So, what are the best Linux applications for IT managers and business owners to use in the enterprise? These five apps will expand the business’s IT infrastructure and functionality while reducing the overall cost of maintaining an efficient, reliable business.
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LINUX has bloomed over the last few years into a modern, stable, secure and user-friendly operating system that can go head-to-head with any of its commercial counterparts, but you wouldn’t know it from a visit to a typical PC retailer in the Philippines.
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Another interesting fact is that now I can buy laptops with Linux preinstalled here. Well, they only do Ubuntu, but it’s refreshing… The world is changing.
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I did miss the terminal console and many other Linux features while in Windows 8.1. It was a quick trip to Windows land and back, but I am glad I am back.
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4. Linux pros.
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I winked at Nick. We crawled out from behind the desk and he sat at the computer to turn it on. His dad stood right beside him, making sure “Lumpis” wasn’t anywhere in the vicinity. Taking a cue from Nick, I had grabbed a ZorinOS machine that was ready to go. With a bit of cosmetic magic and the renaming of a few shortcuts, anybody would be hard pressed to tell it was Linux…at first glance anyway.
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I received an email from a student working on a case study, looking for reasons why a University should put Linux on its desktop PCs.
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01.14.14
Posted in News Roundup at 11:01 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Kernel Space
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The Allwinner A10 ARM SoC is now supported by Coreboot along with the A10-based Cubieboard.
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Linus Torvalds has announced Linux 3.13-rc7 noting that even though the things are calming down, he will release rc8 before releasing the final one.
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Chris Mason intends to update the btrfs-progs user-space utilities for the Btrfs file-system in conjunction with new stable Linux kernel releases.
The lead Btrfs developer, who is now being employed by Facebook along with other Btrfs developers, quietly announced the release policy change a few weeks ago on the developers’ mailing list.
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With the addition just last week of the Google-led Open Automotive Alliance, nearly every automaker in the world is choosing Linux for technology integration and innovation in the car. This reminds me a lot of the early days of Linux in the enterprise or Linux in mobile. Is starts small and accelerates at an exponential rate. It’s one of the unique attributes of Linux.
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The Volatile Ranges feature for the Linux kernel is now in its third year of being developed and a new set of sixteen patches were published today but there’s still no sign that the code is ready for merging in the near-term.
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AnthraX, a kernel used by some for their mobile Android devices as an alternative to the stock kernels or those from other open-source Android projects for reportedly offering better performance and functionality, is still refusing to release the kernel’s source-code even though it’s based on the Linux kernel and subject to the terms of the GPL.
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The last 3.13 release candidate for 2013 came out on December 29th. This 3.13-rc6 is small with just 81 commits to infiniband, gpu, cpufreq, libata, and block drivers in addition to a few small filesystem fixes, and ARM SoC related changes. Please read the 3.13-rc6 release announcement.
Right before Christmas on December 22nd, 3.13-rc5 came out. Changes in this rc include drivers, architecture, filesystems, scheduler, and mm (numa) fixes. One important news in this release announcement is about the 3.14 merge window will start after Linus Torvalds gets back from attending the Linux Conference in Australia. Please find the full text for the 3.13-rc5 release announcement.
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Thomas Hellstrom of VMware sent in their first pull request today of “vmwgfx” driver changes for the Linux 3.14 kernel, but it looks like the best is yet to come.
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In continuation from last month’s Intel Haswell Linux Performance Improved A Lot In 2013, here are benchmarks of Intel “Ivy Bridge” HD Graphics 4000 when comparing the performance over the past year.
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Subsurface is a diving log software written by none other than Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel. Linus is also the creator of version control system Git which is the most popular version control system of the world.
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Graphics Stack
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Sysadmins have a few days to patch libXfont to remove a newly discovered, 22-year-old privilege-escalation bug in the code before any tiresome users whip out an exploit. The flaw allows someone logged into a vulnerable machine to crash the X server, or possibly execute injected code as a superuser.
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The Tegra changes for the Linux 3.14 kernel are rather large with 121 commits in this latest pull just for the open-source graphics driver. There’s initial DRM panel support, initial support for registering DSI hosts and peripherals, Tegra114 DSI host support, host1x/display support for the Tegra124 (Tegra 4), and there’s a very simple PRIME implementation.
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Besides publishing their Haswell hardware documentation, coming out of Intel’s Open-Source Technology Center today is the latest Intel 3.0 X.Org driver development release.
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The Ozone-Wayland sub-project for Google Chromium support on the next-generation Linux display server continues to be pushed ahead with improved and new features by Intel open-source developers.
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Benchmarks
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For some quick benchmarks to start off another week of open-source and Linux benchmarking at Phoronix are new results comparing the Linux 3.13-rc7 kernel against the latest stable 3.11/3.12 kernels: 3.11.10 and 3.12.6, respectively. These benchmarks were done from the ASUS Zenbook Prime UX32 Intel ultrabook that’s been featured in several Phoronix articles in recent weeks.
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01.13.14
Posted in News Roundup at 2:02 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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Today in Open Source: Is the Steam Controller too different to succeed? Plus: Korora 20 released, and the Darling Project rises from the ashes
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Steam Machines is being positioned to be important, not only for the Linux Foundation, but for PC hardware manufacturers.
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AssaultCube is a free, open-source shooter based on the Cube engine and taking place in realistic environments. It includes single and multi-player, as well as various modes which can be played over a wide range of maps. The game is very lightweight and runs well on old hardware.
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Posted in News Roundup at 1:58 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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It’s been a while since last having anything to report on with the planned patch-set for Wine that provides significant Direct3D performance improvements via work on the D3D command stream. Fortunately, the patches have been updated and now offer better support as well.
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The free download for CrashPlan is a tarball archive. Uncompressing the package creates a folder with several text files explaining the process of installing the software. This method frees the user from having to select a version matching a particular Linux distro, but it also makes the product less accessible to inexperienced Linux users, who might abhor the command line and the terminal window.
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New life has been breathed into a project to make Apple OS X programs run on Linux-based operating systems.
The Darling project is beginning to see new activity on GitHub after months of dormancy and the website has moved to a new address DarlingHQ.org.
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