Showing headlines posted by brideoflinux

The OSVR project points out that it isn’t in direct competition with Oculus or other VR headsets. Instead, it’s purpose is to give the community access to its developer kit to lower the price on future VR gaming products. In addition, the site offers a 3D blueprint for technically inclined people who want to build their own set of VR glasses. Information or guidelines for using or contributing to its source code can be found on the project’s GitHub page.

And the folks being given the “opportunity” to upgrade? They have no idea the fraud that is being perpetuated against them. Yeah, yeah…EULA this and EULA that. Like my 75 year old neighbor is going to read that frickin’ lawyer-ese. Like you did as well.

Back in the days when the PC and the Internet were starting to change how work is done in Latin America, I was a project manager in small business finance. Even though I’m an industrial engineer by training, because I’m tech oriented I was asked questions about network security, wireless, storage, what sort of program we could use at the office…stuff like that. My conclusion? We were either going to have to buy expensive software licenses and new hardware or find another way.

The deal created a river of money flowing into Mozilla’s coffers — $138 million in 2011 alone — allowing rapid development of Firefox, proper maintenance of Thunderbird and Bugzilla, and the creation of Firefox OS. Although there was a bit of grumbling from some FOSSers who would’ve preferred a default search engine that was more respectful of user privacy rights, the deal was generally seen as a good thing for the free and open source community.

But with some Raspberry Pi hi-fidelity add-ons mentioned in the article, including Class-D power amplifiers “delivering tens of watts,” you could make a better-than-adequate sound system. It sounds like a potential weekend project for those audiophiles out there.

The protests have brought out some prominent people from the FOSS world as well, such as Tor­sten Grote with Free Soft­ware Found­a­tion Europe who said, “Most people are still worried about the NSA. We can’t reform the NSA, but we can do something about the BND.”

Expanding Linux Venues In the South (or ELVIS): A FOSS event fit for The King, this one would be held in Memphis, as close to Graceland as possible. Everyone would be required to wear blue suede shoes. We could have Elvis impersonators demonstrating various Linux distros and FOSS programs. Heck, we could have Linus impersonators doing the same thing. And Stallman impersonators doing the same thing. And Jon ‘maddog’ Hall impersonators…you get the idea. This is definitely something worth planning, and I’m so far from Memphis. Is someone closer that could take the reins? Uh, thankyouverymuch.

The bean counters at Time Warner and Comcast lost their friggin’ minds, not just in Kansas City but in Austin as well. Time Warner began rolling out plans that automatically doubled a residential customer’s speeds, with absolutely no cost to the consumer. Not only was Time Warner promising this in Austin, even little Podunk towns like Taylor, fifty miles away, were getting the deal.

Things are looking up for those of us who think we might like using a tablet if only we could find one with a real honest-to-goodness operating system like good ol’ GNU/Linux. There are a couple of Linux based tablets in the pipeline now — with one already taking preorders for a second-round limited production run.

At first, the browser had us scratching our collective heads and wondering why, since early versions weren’t much more than rebranded versions of Firefox. The “why” question was answered with haste, however, as Chrome quickly morphed into a browser with deep hooks into Google’s ecosystem. To be sure, the browser offers many things to like in the way of convenience, but the privacy issues that come with Chrome sometimes make using it seem like something of a deal with you-know-whom. The public evidently doesn’t care, as it’s the world’s most used browser.

Although some have been trying to sound the alarm, many of us have been lulled into complacency brought by a belief that Microsoft is no longer a real threat and that we are now free to concentrate all of our energies on growing Linux and FOSS, which is basically all we’ve wanted to do.

The 13th annual Ohio LinuxFest will be held Oct. 2-3 at the Greater Columbus Convention Center in downtown Columbus. Hosting authoritative speakers in a large expo hall, the OLF welcomes all free and open source software professionals, enthusiasts, and everyone interested in learning more about free and open source software.

It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for. Fact is, I wasn’t exactly looking for the thing I found. I smiled, as I knew that Fate could be a wicked bitch. Her smile is often deceiving, but what the hell. She wanted to play? Great. Let’s play. I clicked “contact us” at the bottom of the website for a German and American Linux Enthusiasts club in Bamberg.

The good guys and gals at Linux Mint are on a roll, with three long-term support (LTS) releases in a row. It all started back in May of last year, with the release of 17.0, called Qiana, followed in January by 17.1, Rebecca. At that point it looked as if we’d hit the jackpot and could sit back and relax for at least a couple of years until the next LTS release, but the Mint folks had other plans and introduced yet another LTS, 17.2, Rafaela, this summer.

Finally freed from the shackles of an eternity of other digital projects, Matt Hartley announced this week that “Freedom Penguin is just days away from being 100 percent ready.”

The usual suspects were in attendance this year, plus some I had never seen before. Conspicuously missing were my friends at ThinkPenguin. They were more than generous in giving us perks for our last fund raiser and I was a bit bummed I wouldn’t have a chance to see them in person again this year. The Ubuntu table was busy as always and the focus, at least for those visiting the exhibit, was the Ubuntu phone. No matter who I heard introducing themselves, the main topic or questions asked was about the Ubuntu phone. Many of us might have thought that the interest in the Ubuntu slabs was exaggerated or astroturfed, but from what I could tell the Ubuntu Phone most certainly is on the minds of many Ubuntu users.

In case you weren’t paying attention, there’s a new Linux file system on the horizon, thanks to a former Google engineer.

That engineer in question, namely Kent Overstreet, posted a message on LKML.org last week promoting the progress of Bcache File System, or Bcachefs, the first Linux file system written specifically for solid state disks. The purpose of the new file system is to ramp up the speed in the way Linux stores data on servers.

Many of you may remember that in 2005, Sony tried a similar method of stopping music “theft” by including a back door or rootkit via music CDs released under the Sony/BMG label. The main reason for planting this nefarious code on your computer was so it could phone home to Sony and report your proclivity for sharing certain Sony/BMG label CDs. It was also supposed to stop the copying of CDs, although Linux ignored the sneaky bytes and copied CDs anyway. When caught, Sony had the absolute and pure audacity to claim they had every right to insure the security on their investment by planting a rootkit on your computer.

In 2014 and 2015, Linux became home to a list of popular commercial titles such as the popular Borderlands, Witcher, Dead Island, and Counter Strike series of games. While this is exciting news, what of the gamer on a budget? Commercial titles are good, but even better are free-to-play alternatives made by developers who know what players like.

Out-of-the-box, Bodhi installs hardly any software, only just enough to get the user up and running. At first boot, there’s a lightweight browser (Midori), a file manager (PCManFM), a text editor (ePad), an image viewer (Ephoto) and little else. This is in keeping with the Bodhi team’s minimalist philosophy, based on a belief that users should make their own software choices and not have them made for them.