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Plasma 5, released last week, is a major redesign of the Unix KDE desktop environment and underlying frameworks. Perhaps the most notable difference is the visual changes, which see KDE embracing a more streamlined, "flat" interface, but it's also the first version of KDE to be powered by Qt 5 and the recently released KDE Frameworks 5.

The Raspberry Pi is an ideal device for embedded designs, but controlling it away from a keyboard and monitor can be a bit tricky – until now. Designed by a team led by University of Manchester honorary research fellow Dr Andrew Robinson, the PiFace Control & Display does exactly what the name implies: it provides users a means of controlling the Raspberry Pi away from a keyboard and mouse, while also providing a means of displaying its output.

LittleBits launched a tiny $59 ARM9-based “CloudBit” SBC that adds Internet access to the company’s collection of 60+ electronics modules for DIY projects. The tiny, 15 x 10 x 5mm CloudBit single board computer adds Internet connectivity and a modest ARM9 brain to LittleBits Electronics’s popular, Lego-like platform, which is billed as an easier, plug-and-play alternative to Arduino for electronics prototyping. The LittleBits modules are available in $99 (10 modules), $149 (14 modules), and $199 (18 modules) kits, and include actuators, sensors, buzzers, dimmers, LEDs, DC motors, and other gizmos. The devices connect to each other in serial-bus fashion via magnets, enabling rapid project brainstorming without the need for soldering, wiring, or programming.

Is the default image viewer in your desktop environment just not working the way you want? need more features (or maybe something simpler) from an image viewer? Well, you are in luck, as there is no shortage of choices when looking at alternative image viewers in Fedora. This article covers 15 image viewers in Fedora.

I am pleased to announce that Chris Beard has been appointed CEO of Mozilla Corp. The Mozilla board has reviewed many internal and external candidates – and no one we met was a better fit. As you will recall, Chris re-joined Mozilla in April, accepting the role of interim CEO and joining our Board of Directors. Chris first joined Mozilla in 2004, just before we shipped Firefox 1.0 – and he’s been deeply involved in every aspect of Mozilla ever since. During his many years here, he at various times has had responsibility for almost every part of the business, including product, marketing, innovation, communications, community and user engagement.

The second day of GUADEC was also full of interesting talks. Jeff Fortin spoke about the video editor Pitivi. Nathan Willis devoted his keynote to software for automotive and the opportunities for open source software in this area. There have also been a lot of changes in the Web browser and Zeeshan Ali talked on improvements in GNOME Boxes. The biggest news of the day is an announcement of Fleet Commander which should provide tools and infrastructure for large desktop deployments. Something the Linux desktop has been severely lacking.

Last May a group of three Okular developers met for four days at the Blue Systems Barcelona office to hack on the KDE universal document viewer.

From the fourth to the sixth of July, the Calligra team got together in sunny Deventer (Netherlands) for the yearly developer sprint at the same location as the last Krita sprint. Apart from seeing the sights and having our group photo in front of one of the main attractions of this quaint old Dutch town in the province of Overijssel, namely the cheese shop (and much cheese was taken home by the Calligra hackers, as well as stroopwafels from the Saturday market) we spent our time planning the future of Calligra and doing some healthy hacking and bug fixing!

LXer Feature: 27-Jul-2014

In the Roundup this week we have part 2 of 10 Raspberry Pi upgrades, a review of the best Linux browsers of which Pale Moon is my favorite, an "average guy's" review of living witrh Debian for two years and a whole lot more. Enjoy!

The concept of cryptocurrencies has come about in recent years as a sort of reaction to the way standard currencies are controlled. Cryptocurrenices such as Bitcoin are decentralised and not controlled by any one entity. In the past couple of years, Bitcoin has taken off to become a very valuable commodity, with whole Bitcoins becoming worth hundreds of pounds. While you can trade your standard currency for a Bitcoin, you can also mine them with a working computer.

Back in March, the digital games distribution site GOG.com (which, believe it or not, is owned by Poland's CD Projekt RED) announced it would be adding support for Linux. This week, ahead of schedule, 50 games were released on the site with support for Ubuntu and Linux Mint. Most of the games on the list were already released with Linux support, but a few notables are out on Linux for the first time.

Since Google Reader was discontinued a few months ago, uers have been looking for a replacement. While some people have turned to commercial services such as Digg Reader and Feedly, the best solution is to create your own, customisable feed reader hosted entirely on your own computer or home server.

When celebrated computer hacker Barnaby Jack died suddenly a year ago at the age of 35, headlines around the world touted the Steve Jobs-style pizazz he brought to cyber-security conferences and his show-stopping stunts such as breaking into ATMs and pacemakers. In hacker circles, he was known as the life of the party.

The special election for FESCo (the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee) has concluded. New FESCo members are Josh Boyer, Kalev Lember, and Tomas Hozza. Since these seats are filling various vacancies, they aren’t for the normal two-release term. Since Josh lead the results, he will fill the spot which goes through next spring’s Fedora 22 release, and the others through this fall’s F21. Congratulations and welcome to Josh, Kalev, and Tomas; and thanks to outgoing members Bill Nottingham, Toshio Kurotami, and Peter Jones for all of your hard work on FESCo.

It seems today that the naysayers were wrong: tablets have become ubiquitous. But has open source made its reach into the tablet world to the same extent it has to other areas of technology?

The latest TOP500 List of the fastest supercomputers in the world helped many in the technology community understand what open-source aficionados have known for years: Linux has quickly become the operating system of choice in the high-performance computing (HPC) market, growing from relative obscurity 15 years ago to powering 97 percent of the fastest computers in the world. But its appeal is found in more than cost or choice. Here are a few of the main reasons Linux has grown to own the lion's share of the fastest supercomputers in the world. Although the United States remains the top country in terms of overall systems, with 233, this is down from 265 on the November 2013 list. The number of Chinese systems on the list rose from 63 to 76, giving the Asian nation nearly as many supercomputers as the United Kingdom, with 30; France, with 27; and Germany, with 23—combined. Japan also increased its showing, up to 30 from 28 on the previous list. HP has the lead in systems and now has 182 systems (36 percent), compared to IBM, with 176 systems (35 percent). HP had 196 systems (39 percent) six months ago, and IBM had 164 systems (33 percent) six months ago. In the system category, Cray remains third with 10 percent (50 systems).

Choosing the best Linux browser for your needs requires just a bit of homework: Web browsers for the Linux desktop have evolved over the years, just as they have for other popular desktop platforms. With this evolution, both good and bad revelations have been discovered. Revelations from new functionality, to broken extensions, and so forth. In this article, I'll serve as your guide through these murky waters to help you discover the best in Linux browsers.

Mozilla is proving the Web is a powerful gaming platform by creating new technologies and developer tools that enable game creators to port their popular titles to the Web. One of the trailblazers using these technologies is Trendy Entertainment, which is leveraging Emscripten and asm.js to bring its highly popular Dungeon Defenders title to the Web. Trendy announced today it will release a version of Dungeon Defenders Eternity featuring the same visuals and gameplay as the native desktop version, but available on the Web at near native speeds. Later today, the full game will be available to buy on Steam.

Google Drive is two years old now and Google’s cloud storage solution seems to be still going strong thanks to its integration with Google Docs and Gmail. There’s one thing still missing though: a lack of an official Linux client. Apparently Google has had one floating around their offices for a while now, however it’s not seen the light of day on any Linux system.

Our own Jason Hibbets and Jen Wike are live blogging from OSCON 2014! This year's O'Reilly Open Source Conference already has all of the exciting vibes and makings of a great event. Keynotes started this morning at 9:00am PCT (live stream) in Portland at the Oregon Convention Center.