Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

This is strictly a matter of taste, but I think that Linux Mint 10 may be the prettiest Linux I’ve seen. Now, I know that isn’t a great reason to pick a distribution — but out of the box, it helps. Especially for those of us who want to convince Windows XP refugees to switch to Linux instead of Windows 7 or Mac OS X. If you’re going to be staring at a system for a few hours — or all day, you want it to look good. Good is relative, and what looks spiffy to an expert user who spends much time at the command line is probably going to be slightly different than what looks good to novice Linux users. Suffice it to say, they’ve done good.

Most people think “graphical interfaces” when they think of surfing the Web. And, under X11, there are lots of great programs, like Firefox or Chrome. But, the console isn't the wasteland it might seem. Lots of utilities are available for surfing the Web and also for downloading or uploading content.

Earlier this year there was the "Humble Indie Bundle" where anyone could purchase a set of four Indie computer games (that are Linux compatible) for any price they wanted. The games included World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru, and Penumbra Overture. This ended up being such a success with the game developers that they ended up open-sourcing the games after raising quite a bit of money off this bundled deal. Now it appears the developers are working on a second Humble Indie Bundle.

Recently I have caught myself deep into discussions on the extent of copyright applied to Free Software and how the copyleft effect plays a role in Software Freedom. On an Identi.ca message I said: Free Software is NOT about the freedom to choose the license under which software made by others can be redistributed. Let me expand a bit on copyleft compatibylity.

With the next kernel version, Ext4 will reach new levels of performance and use a trick to increase its storage media formatting speed. Other new features include a discard function that is interesting for slow-trimming SSDs, the "Rados Block Device" for cluster devices, bug fixes and optimisations to Btrfs.

KDE 4.6 will be slightly more ambitious than the last couple of releases. Judging from the recently-announced first beta, it will include the usual behind-the-scene enhancements, and additions of interest to developers. But it will also include some concrete improvements to the desktop, especially with the changes to the Dolphin file manager and the so-called re-introduction of Activities.

Thankfully, Google has started the release process for their latest and greatest Android version -- Gingerbread. I'm looking forward to installing CyanogenMod's spin of 2.3 as soon as it's available. The big frustration for me, however, is that Gingerbread turned out not to be the tablet killing OS we all hoped for. Oh sure, there are some Android tablets available, but until Google allows regular access to the Marketplace, tablets running Android are going to be a kludge.

The Linux Foundation (LF) announced that nine major Linux distros have been certified to Linux Standard Base 4.0 (LSB 4.0), said to confer application portability. While announcing LBS 4.0 registrations for Canonical, Kylin, Linpus, Mandriva, Neoshine, Novell, Oracle, Red Flag, and Red Hat, the LF The LF also released a beta of LSB 4.1.

Part of the big hype over the release of KDE 4 was its new and improved eye candy, mostly due to the Plasma workspace. Those who liked the changes, loved the new KDE from the beginning. Those who did not are still complaining about it. But like any good desktop environment, you are by no means stuck with the default look. In fact, KDE offers more easily customizable features than any other. What follows are 7 ways to get the desktop look you dreamed about when you were a child.

Optimisation only makes sense if the code in question is used a lot – this seems to be the philosophy followed by the compilers of the latest incarnation of Google's free V8 JavaScript Engine. The new "Crankshaft" compilation infrastructure for V8 uses runtime information to see which parts of the code would benefit the most from optimisation. The developers say that the technique is mainly useful in large JavaScript programs; short scripts, such as those used by the SunSpider benchmark, do not benefit much.

You know the basics of how to find out what an errant process is doing. But what do you do when the basics aren't enough? But sometimes those methods aren't enough. What if the failed process is on a server, or a minimal system like a sheevaplug, and you don't have tools like gdb and strace installed? Or what if the runaway process is in Python, so your gdb stack trace isn't any help? What are your options then?

Because Chrome OS is open source, it has been available for people to explore for some time, which means that it's not really possible for any elements of it to be a surprise, rather deflating any attempt to launch it in the traditional sense. But in yesterday's, er, confirmation, there were a number of new announcements separate from the underlying operating system.

In an unexpected move, Matt Asay, Chief Operating Officer (COO) for Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux, will be leaving Ubuntu. In an e-mail to me, Asay, former VP of Business Development at Alfresco, the open-source enterprise Content Management System (CMS), told me that the news of his departure from Canonical would be be announced internally at Canonical today, December 8th.

Whether it was the uncertainty of openSUSE's future or in spite of it, there seems to have been a fire lit under openSUSE lately. On several fronts, the often controversial project has kicked into high gear.

The KDE community has announced that the KOffice project will in future be known as the Calligra Suite. According to the announcement, "The new name reflects the wider value of the KOffice technology platform beyond just desktop office applications".

When Chrome launched their web store earlier today, the main question on a lot of minds was: "How are these apps any different from bookmarks?" Here's a look at five of our favorite exclusive apps for Chrome that stand out.

The long-awaited Chrome OS is finally here, and the first Chrome notebooks are winging their way to happy beta testers as you read this. So is it the operating system reinvented, or just a nifty way to squeeze more speed out of laptops? Here's what you need to know about Google's Chrome OS.

Google announced more details about its web-centric Chrome OS operating system, including a new 12.1-inch "Cr-48" reference notebook that will be provided to beta testers. The first commercial Chrome OS notebooks will ship in mid-2011 from Acer and Samsung, and will be available with free cellular connectivity provided by Verizon, the company added.

Let's forget the last few years ever happened — the last five, at least. Possibly 10. In the 1980s Sun Microsystems was on fire. Founded in 1982, Sun raked in so much money that it broke the psychologically important $1bn sales barrier in six years. It took Microsoft 15 years to hit $1bn — six if your starting point is the date Microsoft was incorporated. Oracle — up the road from Sun — took 14 years. Sun was the fastest growing US company between 1985 and 1989, according to Forbes, and supplied the entire US government with more than half its workstations nine years after starting.

Oracle is planning to take over the world. Or, at the very least, the server OS world. That's the logical conclusion to reach after hearing the recent comments of Larry Ellison, Oracle's bombastic CEO. "Solaris is clearly the No. 1 Unix, and we're working very hard at making Oracle Enterprise Linux the number one Linux," InfoWorld reported he said at a company event last week.