All right, time for another Ubuntu review. I am going to test Ubuntu again, on a laptop with some proprietary drivers. This comes after Kubuntu and Xubuntu, both tested running from an external disk connected to my HP Pavilion laptop, equipped with an Nvidia graphics card and Broadcom Wireless. Not the most usual and trivial of setups, especially since it entails several proprietary drivers, which we have not seen in the basic test on the T61 laptop. Ergo, this should be most interesting.

So far, the experience with the 13.04 family was mixed. Some great things, like performance, accompanied with kernel crashes due to bad QA. Overall, somewhat frustrating, as the intermediate releases between LTS editions should be probably be labeled beta, for geeks only. Let's see what gives here.

For technology demos and testing, the "first true Wayland LiveCD" has been released that can start Wayland directly without depending upon an X.Org environment...

Promoted by the Linux Foundation and led by Intel and Samsung, Tizen may emerge as a viable alternative to Android, with the first Tizen-based smartphone made by the Korean giant launching by the end of the year.

Linux Advocate Dietrich Schmitz shares Dedoimedo's review of Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail. Score: 0 out of 10. Read why.

Linux has an ever-expanding library of free games, many of which are released under an open source license. Many titles are still in an early stage of development. Even relatively simple games can take several years to mature especially if there isn't a team of developers on board. However, a game should not be discounted simply because it isn't fully completed.

Canonical's long-term Ubuntu strategy remains focused on convergence -- a single operating system designed for smartphones, tablets and PCs. But here's the thing: Can Ubuntu really achieve mass-market consumer success without a proper multi-million-dollar consumer marketing push? Hmmm...

In preparation for the upcoming release of LLVM 3.3, here is an extensive round of C/C++ benchmarks from GCC 4.8.0, LLVM Clang 3.2, and LLVM Clang 3.3-rc1 to look at the Linux compiler performance. Benchmarks happened from three different systems bearing Intel Core i7 3960X, AMD FX-8350, and Intel Core i3 3217U processors for a diverse look at the performance.

Follow the steps After inserting the XenApp DVD in the Windows 2008 R2 Server you would choose Install XenApp Server.

Linpus Lite is one of those distributions that I’ve always hoped will be done right, considering that it is published by a commercial entity. However, with every release, it manages to fail in taking care of the little things that matter. Almost every desktop distribution suffers from the same problem. They get the big picture, but then it comes to delivering sane and sensible defaults and implementing features that a modern OS should have, they miss the mark.

Rise of the Ravager offers classic arcade action reminiscent of a fast action Missile Command while players blast descending waves of coloured enemies that can only be annihilated by a matching colour bullet (in a similar fashion to Guitar Hero or Ikaruga). Seek the favour of the Old Ones to prevent an ancient god’s avatar from rising, signalling the End of Times.

Alternative Android store now in nearly 200 countries Looking to woo more app publishers to its Android Appstore and away from Google Play, Amazon has announced new tools that allow developers to track user engagement with their apps.…

Days after releasing version 2.1 of the Linux-based Tizen mobile operating system, Samsung confirmed an upcoming GT-I8805 Tizen smartphone, and Intel demonstrated a laptop running Tizen 3.0 in a GNOME shell. Other developments around this week’s Tizen Developers Conference include a Tizen App Challenge and 2013 phone launch promises from NTT DoCoMo and Orange. On [...]

What is Microsoft going to do about this? Threaten to play hardball and make it difficult for HP’s PC division? We think not. Ballmer can hardly afford to do that; the PC market is the only coin in his pocket. Besides, CEO Whitman is probably prepared for that possibility. We wouldn’t be surprised to discover that she and Shuttleworth have already been becoming phone pals–just in case Ballmer decides to shoot himself in the foot.

Today it became clear that I wouldn't be writing for Linux Advocates after all. I've learned a lot in the past week and I've come to the conclusion that this is for the best.

If you’ve been vising our site for awhile now (thanks, by the way), you’ve certainly noticed that things have been looking a little less…terrible, as of late. We’ve been working on turning “The Powerbase” into a more modern and aesthetically pleasing site, and the recent change of theme is a major step in that direction.

ZFTool is an utility module for maintaining modular Zend Framework 2 applications. It runs from the command line and can be installed as ZF2 module or as PHAR.

LinuxCertified Inc, a leading provider of Linux training and services, announced its next Hands On Embedded Linux Development class to be held in San Francisco Bay Area from June 19th - 20th, 2013.

Microsoft has released a new version of Skype, its popular VoIP program, for Linux.

OpenStack, the open source cloud platform, has hundreds of backers. But like Linux, multiple OpenStack distributions may emerge on the market. That could trigger customer confusion and indecision. Enter Red Hat (NYSE:RHT), the leading provider of corporate Linux solutions. I'm betting Red Hat will gradually repeat that success with OpenStack. Here's why.

Epiq Solutions announced a handheld software defined radio (SDR) device with an RF transceiver that tunes from 300MHz to 3.8GHz, plus a built-in 1PPS GPS. The Matchstiq Z1 is built around a Linux-ready iVeia Atlas-I-Z7e computer-on-module equipped with a Xilinx Zynq Z-7020 SoC, which integrates dual ARM Cortex-A9 cores along with FPGA circuitry. The Matchstiq [...]

This week we look at the 7 best open source projects for newbies, why a bad app could be worse than no app and programming languages you should skip.

I got bitten at camp this weekend, but indifference would have been the only relevant repellant and thankfully, I'm allergic to that. Here's what I learned as a first-time camper. Transparency Camp is not for the faint of heart. It requires you to dig in deep. If you are a tech expert, like Northeast Ohio's own Jeff Schuler, you look for how to apply everything you know to figuring out ways to free data.

Google Code got started back in 2006 as an alternative open source code hosting repository and google codecollaborative development site. At the time of its creation, I had thought that it would competitive with Sourceforge (which it was), but as it turns out Sourceforge will now get the last laugh.

Bash is a commonly used scripting language for shell scripts. A script is a small list of instructions for the computer to follow. A scripting language is a programming language used in a script. Shell scripts are scripts written in a shell language, and a shell language is a programming language used within a terminal. In BASH scripts (shell scripts written in BASH) users can use more than just BASH to write the script. There are commands that allow users to embed other scripting languages into a BASH script. This article will explain how to embed several languages into one script.

Not everyone has a computer. And, not all schools have access to the types of technology that are second nature to many of us at our workplace. It is also true that many people in the general public don't know about open source and the free alternatives that are available to them, like LibreOffice instead of Micrsoft Word.

Mixxx is a DJ tool that allows for the playback and mixing of digital music (MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC and Wave).The basic requirements for Mixxx are a desktop computer or laptop with a reasonable amount of storage space on the hard drive for your music, at least 1 audio card for outputting the sound and a way of controlling the software either by mouse, keyboard or hardware DJ Controller.

How does Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) CEO Meg Whitman feel about Windows 8 vs. emerging Google Android and Chrome OS tablet and notebook alternatives? The answers emerged indirectly amid HP's Q2 2013 earnings call. Here's the scorecard.

In the Star Trek Book of Management, there are two approaches to big data decision making: The Kirk way and the Spock way. Which type are you?

The Neptune team is proud to announce the release of Neptune 3.1. We worked hard and spend a lot of effort in creating this service release for Neptune 3.0. This release features the Linux kernel 3.9.2 and is exclusively meant to run on 64-bit CPUs. The Debian base system was updated to the released version 7.0 to provide a stable user experience. The KDE Plasma Desktop ships with version 4.10.3. Chromium was updated to version 26, Kdenlive 0.9.6, Amarok 2.7.1 and LibreOffice to version 4.0.3. We ship with the latest and greatest multimedia codecs pre-installed, as well as the Flash player.

In the last week of classes, since finished all of my assignments, I have had a little time to do some distribution reviews before starting to prepare for final exams. The second such review is of the KDE edition of Korora 18 "Flo". I have reviewed Korora before. Back then it was called Kororaa (with an extra 'a'), so I guess the name was shortened in a manner similar to that of Facebook (from "TheFacebook"). It's a distribution that essentially offers a bunch of niceties on top of Fedora with GNOME or KDE. This time I tried just the KDE version.