GNU/Linux at Google: Android, ChromeOS, Chromebooks, and Chrome News
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-03-18 18:24:00 UTC
- Modified: 2014-03-18 18:24:00 UTC
Android Gaming
Do we really need another Android console? Apparently so, as evidence suggests that Asus is jumping on that very bandwagon, possibly looking to score where a few of the current solutions have failed to hit. The device will be called Game Box, and the specs have appeared on AnTuTu while the controller struts its stuff all over the Bluetooth Special Interest Group website.
Ouya was the first to show the world that Android can be easily taken out from mobiles and tablets and put into a dedicated gaming console, which in turn opened up quite a lot of games waiting to be played, already available on the Play Store. Although Ouya didn’t perform as it expected to, other players in the field took note of the action.
Android TV
It will be controlled with an Android smartphone.
In this hands-on mini review, we take a quick look at the Ugoos UT2, a TV-centric mini-PC based on a 1.6GHz quad-core RK3188 SoC, and running Android 4.2.2.
Android Wearables
Google has plans to release an Android developer software development kit (SDK) in the next two weeks specifically designed for wearable devices. Sundar Pichai, Google’s SVP of Android, Apps and Chrome, shared at SXSW that the search giant will lay out a “vision for developers of how we see this market working” as part of the SDK.
Google has plans to release an Android developer software development kit (SDK) in the next two weeks specifically designed for wearable devices. Sundar Pichai, Google’s SVP of Android, Apps and Chrome, shared at SXSW that the search giant will lay out a “vision for developers of how we see this market working” as part of the SDK.
Android/Chromecast Software
We have just published the overview of the libraries and modules that various developers use in they Android mobile phone applications.
Android in Cars
-
He reminded the audience of Volkswagon's recent talks with Google, with Audi in particular committing to working with the firm on in-car technology based on Android. But he said that he wanted to see more collaboration from technology firms in other countries. "It would no doubt be a good thing if German and European IT companies would put themselves forward as partners too," he said.
Laptops and Android
-
Google is the one not keen on the idea of a dual-boot Windows-Android tablet-laptop, according to a fresh report from Asia and a CNET source.
CyanogenMod
-
OnePlus, the upstart making a CyanogenMod-powered phone, has revealed a few details about the device that the company says will be cheaper and better than big brand phones and definitely won't include a heart-rate monitor.
-
Koushik Dutta, the famed developer of CyanogenMOD has added DLNA support to his AllCast Android app. Ever since Google opened Chromcast to 3rd party developers Koush is on roll. He has, in fact, been toying with Chromecast the day it was released and created some stir in the free software community when Google changed the preview APIs for Chromecast which broke his app.
Statistics
-
Android tablet sales jumped to 120.9 million in 2013 to snag a global market share of 61.9 percent, up from sales of 53.3 million and a 45.8 percent share in 2012. Over the same time, iPad sales grew to 70.4 million from 61.4 million. But Apple's share of the tablet market dropped to 36 percent from 52.8 percent.
Tablets
-
HP has added a 7.85ââ¬Â³ unit to compliment its line-up of 7ââ¬Â³ and 8ââ¬Â³ tablets. The HP 8 1401 is a quad-core tablet that runs Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean. “It’s got responsiveness that delivers entertainment where you want it. Sleek and smart with technology you can trust, the HP 8 is big on performance, slim in style, and small on price,” claims the company.
Google/Chrome OS/Chromebook
-
Phoronix is reporting that running Windows applications in Chrome OS via Wine seems very unlikely to happen. And it got me wondering about how many people really want to run Windows applications in Chrome OS
-
As usual, Mobile World Congress was packed with cool new SoCs, most of which are destined for Android phones and tablets. Some will see wider usage in the broader world of embedded Linux and Android devices.The big news was the invasion of 64-bit ARMv8 and x86 SoCs, including Qualcomm's Snapdragon 615 and Intel's Atom Z34xx. The ARM models are built on the ARMv8 Cortex-A53 design. Eventually, we'll see the -A53 used in Big.Little hybrids along with the similarly 64-bit, server-class Cortex-A57.
-
Beast is fine. It’s old, but still kicking. It boots. It edits. It searches. It networks. Beast’s CPU is way over-sized for what I do and I do a lot. 99% of the time it idles. Every few weeks I open it up to full throttle to build the next Linux-3.10.x kernel, but what’s the rush? If it took twice or thrice as long I would still be happy.
-
The Samsung Chromebook 2 11.6-inch and Chromebook 2 13.3-inch models are the company’s latest additions to its line of Chromebook computers. And they are powered by the Exynos 5 Octa processor.
Chrome Security
At Google, there continue to be big cash bounties available for talented hackers. We've reported before on the bug bounty program that Google has been running for several years now, focused on rewarding hackers and security researchers with cash for discovering meaningful bugs in the Chrome browser. The company just participated in the annual Pwnium and Pwn2own events, where hackers and researchers are challenged to uncover bugs in browsers, and Google has already patched a number of significant bugs that were uncovered.
Google officials said this week that the company will reward developers of Chrome packaged apps by letting them give users free trials and in-app purchases, marking an expansion of Google's focus on fostering a robust ecosystem of applications. The company is also going to allow developers of browser extensions to charge for them for the first time. The Google Developers Blog makes clear that the company is very focused on monetization options for app creators, which has been a key point of focus for Apple as it has sought to attract iOS app developers.
Chrome Aura/GTK/Graphics
We aim to launch the Aura graphics stack on Linux in M35. Aura is a cross-platform graphics system, and the Aura frontend will replace the current GTK+ frontend.
-
Due to notorious Linux graphics drivers, Google developers working on Chrome/Chromium aren't looking to enable hardware video acceleration by default anytime soon. The problem ultimately comes down to poor Linux graphics drivers.
Chrome Voice
-
According to a post on the official Google Chrome Blog, the search and mobile OS giant has added a new version to the latest beta of the desktop-oriented Chrome Browser. The company calls it “Hands-Free Google Voice Search,” which, as the name implies, allows you to perform a search query simply by speaking up and activating the feature with a spoken command.
Ballnux Android (Microsoft-Taxed)
The large 5.9-inch phone expands to some big Asian markets like Indonesia and Singapore, but LG Electronics still won't commit to North American or European sales.
Samsung’s Galaxy devices could have a built-in security error that could allow for “remote access to data,” claim the developers of Replicant–an Android OS based on CyanogenMod. The security flaw discovered in certain Samsung Galaxy phones and tablets allows for access “to read, write, and delete files on the phone’s storage.”
On Wednesday, the Free Software Foundation reported that a back door was found in the Samsung Galaxy.
Misc.
-
The new $189 "Privacy Phone" comes with VPN, 128-bit encryption, and other tricks aimed at keeping you safe and anonymous.
-
Rich Miner strolls the halls of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, pausing every few minutes to check out the latest gadgets on display. As one of the co-founders of Android, he is walking through a world that has been all but conquered by the operating system he helped create. Now, as a general partner at Google Ventures, he’s tasked with finding and investing the search giant’s billions in the next big thing.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Rust's "Memory Safety" Talking Point Ought to be Discarded in Light of Fil-C
- new memory-safe C/C++ compiler
- IBM May Well Be Laying Off Over 13,500 and Up to 27,000 Staff This Week When It Says "Single-Digit Percentage of Our Global Workforce"
- It's not yet possible to know how many people IBM gets rid of
- Early Unverified Figures About Scale of Latest IBM Layoffs
- the real scale of the RAs will remain elusive
- How Techrights Search Works
- Hopefully bots won't use it
- Techrights Became a Lot More Productive as a Result of Attacks on It
- By default, it's safe to assume anything on the Web is garbage, especially in social control media
- Unverified Rumours: IBM Cuts Will Continue Another ~10 Days, Managers Will Invite Those Impacted for 1-on-1 Meetings
- Right now IBM likes diversity because with adoption of low-paid demographies it gets to pay workers less for the same work
-
- IBM Isn't Hiring Based on Age Groups. It Still Hires Based on Salary Expectations.
- It is not about the skills available, it's about the expected cost of labour
- Estimating the Scale of IBM's Mass Layoffs This Week
- there is no denying that the IBM layoffs are vast
- Telling Our Story as Victims of Online Abuse
- This post will not mention any names
- Claim That EPO Quotas Brought Corruption and Mischief to Europe's Second-Largest Institution
- Nowadays corruption is the norm at the EPO and there is even rampant substance abuse among the people who run the Office
- Claim That IBM Has Another 8 Days to Lay Off 'Expensive' Staff
- The consensus in comments we see is, IBM is a terrible place to work in, treatment of its workers is appalling, it's utterly foolish to relocate in an effort to retain a job at IBM, and it's foolish to join the company in the first place
- Science Demands Facts, Not Dogma
- Saying that restricted hardware is not secure hardware should be common sense
- Site Anniversary is Tomorrow
- The celebrations might delay our EPO series somewhat
- Launching Techrights Search
- New search interface and locally hosted back end
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, November 05, 2025
- IRC logs for Wednesday, November 05, 2025
- Slopwatch: linuxbsdos.com, Linux Journal, LinuxSecurity, Brian Fagioli, and WebProNews
- Either Google doesn't care about the integrity of Google News or it deems slop to be acceptable
- Gemini Links 05/11/2025: Affirmation, GnuPG, and While Loops
- Links for the day
- Links 05/11/2025: Economic Trouble in France and US Bombing All Over the World Without Declaration of War or Congress Approving
- Links for the day
- Red Hat Staff Also Impacted by Latest IBM Layoffs With Focus on North America and Software, Infrastructure
- After the bluewashing never expect to see news about "Red Hat layoffs", just as "Tivoli layoffs" aren't to be expected
- Coming Soon: Part 4 About the EPO's Substance Abuse (Breaking Laws to Fake 'Production' and Profiting From Unlawful Monopolies)
- Notice how quiet the EPO's management has been lately
- For the Record: We Never Named Staff of the Law Firm That's Attacking Us, Except the One the Firm is Named After!
- Just to affirm and be sure, I've used our new search facility
- Links 05/11/2025: Medicare Privatisation and "Breaker Box Economy"
- Links for the day
- Techrights Search Will Come Early
- Maybe tomorrow
- It Seems Like GNOME/IBM Don't Like Women and When Budget is Limited Only Women Take the Fall
- Seems like a very patriarchal, GAFAM-controlled Foundation
- "Last Day" as in "IBM Sacked Me" (Cruel Euphemisms)
- "The entire design and research technical leadership at IBM was laid off in the past year, including this round"
- analytics.usa.gov: Vista 11 Scarcely Used, GNU/Linux Increasingly Dominant (Microsoft Loses "Goodwill", Depletes Cash Equivalents, and Debt Soars)
- "Total current assets" fell by more than 2 billion dollars in the past 3 months
- Shadow Crew and Ads Disguised as Articles
- That The Register MS runs articles that are paid-for fluff isn't unprecedented
- Vista 11 "Market Share" Has Fallen This Month, Based on statCounter
- The US government's own data shows the same thing this month
- This is How Mainstream Media, Boosted or Parroted by Slopfarms, Spins IBM's Commercial Failure and Mass Layoffs as "AI"
- Some say "software focus", but most just resort to buzzwords and blame-shifting hype
- Resisting Misogynists
- Rianne has already added close to 100,000 pages to this site
- Starting November on a Strong Note
- All in all, this month started well for us as we have good, accurate publications with considerable impact
- Fake Retirements Help IBM Keep the Layoff Figures Down
- Yesterday we read that it was quite cruel how IBM (or Red Hat) compelled staff to pretend to be happily leaving or "retiring" when the reality was, they had been pushed out with some "package"
- Cocaine at the European Patent Office Now a Subject in YouTube, Media Will Revisit the Topic
- "The Cocaine Patent Office" is no joking matter
- Gemini Links 05/11/2025: "Wuthering Heights" and "Winter is Coming"
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 04, 2025
- IRC logs for Tuesday, November 04, 2025
- 2 Days Until Site Anniversary Party, Search Likely to Launch Same Day
- We're now just two days away from the nineteenth anniversary of the site
- Not Only Mass Layoffs at IBM But Complete Shutdowns "Amid A.I. Boom"
- apparently about 10,000 layoffs, not counting those who got pushed out by PIPs and other means
- Richard Stallman's 2005 Article on Why Patents on Software Should be Denied
- If patent law had been applied to novels in the 1880s, great books would not have been written. If the EU applies it to software, every computer user will be restricted, says Richard Stallman
- "Last Day" at IBM and Red Hat as "Stealth Layoffs" (They Force People to Pretend It's Wilful)
- So the real extent of the layoffs is being kept 'undercover'
- Slopwatch: The WebProNews Slopfarm and the Serial Slopper
- The Web is ill
- Links 04/11/2025: Tensions Around Belarus Grow, Turkey’s Hype-inflation Continues
- Links for the day
- Corporate Media That Fails to Report Cocaine at EPO is Totally Failing to Report Mass Layoffs at IBM
- How come nobody anywhere writes about this week's RAs?
- Search @ Techrights: Almost There Now (Maybe an Anniversary Gift)
- Just to be very clear, search would not be unprecedented at Techrights
- At IBM, Layoffs Start at 1AM (at Night)
- not a single English-speaking site covers the news about the layoffs
- Links 04/11/2025: Google Cloud Account Engages in Censorship of the Innocent, arXiv Spammed by LLM Slop
- Links for the day
- EPO Cocaine Chronicles: Our Aim Will be to Ensure This Becomes a Mainstream Media Topic, Not a Suppressed Scandal (Which the German State Deems Embarrassing and Detrimental to Its Pan-European Patent Franchise)
- At the EPO, and perhaps in German media as well, people "fall upwards" (they get rewarded for bad things)
- Envy Makes People Do Self-Harming Things (and Harm to Others)
- Online communities that can be deemed successful are built around trust, mutual respect, and collective accomplishment
- Static Site Generators (SSGs) Made Techrights Better, Faster, Easier to Manage
- Consider adopting SSGs if you still use a CMS such as WordPress
- But he Was Born in Manchester! (Origin Stories)
- Borussia Dortmund does not exist!
- What Julian Darley Wrote About the Stallman Talk Regarding "AI" in Oxford (2025)
- From LinkedIn (Microsoft)
- GNU/Linux is American, Not Finnish
- It started in Boston, not in Helsinki
- 'Hacker' 'News' Makes Dumb Assertions Against Smart People
- A logical fallacy
- We Turned Down Every Settlement Offer Because Truths Aren't Determined in Bank Accounts
- Without free press, there won't be free society
- "All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them." -Galileo Galilei
- This site is educational
- Why I'm Always Proud of the Site I've Devoted My Life to
- As a graffiti around the corner from our home says, "be a better person"
- Standing Up or Standing for What's True But Inconvenient
- Bad actors need to be called out
- Many People Have Said That They "Leave" IBM in Recent Days (Ahead of Mass Layoffs)
- So the real extent of layoffs is greater than what's publicly stated (there are silent layoffs) [...] Whatever IBM says about the scope, scale, or magnitude of the "RAs", it doesn't tell the full story
- Media Coverage Regarding IBM is Vapourware and LLM Slop
- With slop images, too
- statCounter Says GNU/Linux Rose to 4% in the Russian Federation
- Adoption of Vista 11 has been embarrassingly weak
- Corruption is Not a Joke
- we'll try to limit our use of humour to avoid misunderstandings or misinterpretations
- The Slopfarm WebProNews is Overwhelming "linux" Results in Google News
- Google News is slop
- The Fall of IBM: What Happened?
- Just like the EPO continues riding some old reputation acquired in the 1970s IBM relies on old myths like, "nobody gets fired for buying IBM."
- IBM's CEO Already Has the Excuse for the Latest Wave of Mass Layoffs
- Only days ago the CEO told a bunch of nonsense
- Links 04/11/2025: Conflicts, Politics, and IPv6 at Home
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 04/11/2025: Entering WiFi Passwords and Programming Rambles
- Links for the day
- Arch Linux Seems Like the New Debian
- Arch users (btw!) are growing in relative and absolute share
- Analytics From US Government Affirm a Trend: Microsoft's "Market Share" in Search is Falling
- the data set is large
- Holding Institutions Such as the EPO Accountable Through Public Information
- Speaking truth to power is never easy
- Techrights Will Contact German Media About the EPO's Substance Abuse
- This scandal won't "go to waste"
- EPO Staff Losing Holidays, as Usual, as the Office Increases Profits by Illegally Granting Invalid Patents While Reducing Salaries
- How much more can the staff endure and generally tolerate?
- Free Software Does Not Always Speak for Itself, It Needs Advocates
- Legal matters that relate to sharing of code will be discussed
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 03, 2025
- IRC logs for Monday, November 03, 2025
- The Register MS Continues Looking for Money in Promotion of the "AI" Ponzi Scheme
- That The Register MS participates in this deceit rather than tackle/debunk it says a lot about The Register MS
- IBM Layoffs in "Software", This Likely Impacts Red Hat as Well
- Many people say "software" people are impacted
- Escaping Proprietary Software, Not Just Escaping Microsoft
- To take control of your life adopt GNU/Linux
- A Lot of Fake News About Microsoft Headcount (Also: Microsoft's Debt Rose by About 24 Billion Dollars in Past 12 Months)
- If you see some headline about Microsoft's CEO making claims about hirings, look away
- Techrights Turns 19 in Three Days
- It would be nice to meet for a chat