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.

Big Data is becoming a big deal beyond the United States, and it's time for the international software market to pay attention. The latest evidence: DataStax, which provides enterprise database management services based on open-source software. The company is making an aggressive push into the European market in what may be the first move toward a greater presence throughout the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) region as a whole.

From the 'Good Things Come in Small Packages' files:

You can now add another Linux distro to the list that will run on the Raspberry Pi. The core distro for the small device is the Debian based Raspian and there is also an Arch based Linux for the Pi too.

And now once again, we've got a Fedora Remix for the Raspberry Pi as well.

Even though there are many top-quality open source games available for Linux, the operating system is still vastly underrated as a gaming platform. Encouragingly, we have seen developers of some of the most popular commercial gaming titles embrace Linux. The welcoming hand that Valve has extended, developing a Linux native version of their Steam client and porting their back catalogue, should accelerate takeup of Linux as a real gaming platform. But it is important that Linux developers do not neglect what has made it a success; high quality open source software.

Most of you agreed with Ms. Hall, if the results of the “Firefox Configuration Poll” we conducted alongside her article is any indication. The poll asked the question, “Do you think the Firefox browser offers too many configuration choices for most users?”

LXer Feature: 24-May-2013

Recently I've been trying to 'minimize' some big 'legacy' MS Word files. When using MS Office to export to HTML (unfiltered), I've found out they're so big because they have EMZ (gzipped EMF) and WMZ (gzipped WMF) files in them, accompanied by large "msoledata-thingies". These WMZ's / EMZ's are (zipped) "container" formats, and some of them contain vector graphics, a bit like SVG - but sadly Microsoft doesn't seem to support SVG in MS Office. These EMF / WMG-graphics may contain vector images: That's text, fonts and lines - which has to remain readable of course. I found out replacing this EMZ / WMZ files by PNG files in the Word-documents dramatically reduces size.

The Debian Project today is mourning the loss of legendary Linux developer Ray Dassen. Ray Dassen served the Linux community and Debian at large for nearly all of Debian’s life, having joined the project in the very beginning working hand-in-hand while the project’s founder, Ian Murdock.

This guest column, BeagleBoard.org co-founder Jason Kridner introduces the BeagleBone Black’s cutting-edge Linux 3.8 kernel, up from the original BeagleBone’s 3.2 kernel. The 3.8 kernel gives the BeagleBone Black access to a new Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) display driver architecture, as well as full support for the Device Tree data structure introduced in Linux 3.7 [...]

HTML5 seen as key to open source smartphone success TDC2013 You could be forgiven for thinking there's not much going on with Tizen, the Linux Foundation's open source mobile OS. It's been two years since the project was launched and there still are no Tizen devices on the market. But that's about to change – and there has been a lot happening behind the scenes, as well.…

Who says you need a few million bucks to build a supercomputer? Joshua Kiepert put together a Linux-powered Beowulf cluster with Raspberry Pi computers for less than $2,000.

If you're walking down the street in Russia and somebody yells out "Pidora", they might not be referring to the newly released distro for the Raspberry Pi.

Linux Advocate Dietrich Schmitz today accepted an offer to write weekly feature stories for ECT News Network.

BeagleBoard.org has begun shipping its faster, cheaper “BeagleBone Black” SBC with a Linux 3.8 kernel, supporting Device Tree technology for more streamlined ARM development. The $45 BeagleBone Black runs Linux or Android on a 1GHz TI Sitara AM3359 SOC, doubles the RAM to 512MB, and adds a micro-HDMI port. A month after BeagleBoard.org announced its [...]

Digia launched a technology preview of Boot to Qt, a commercial offering that provides "a fully-integrated solution for the creation of slick user interfaces on embedded devices." The current version of Boot to Qt is built on top of an Android kernel base layer, and includes support for the Nexus 7, BeagleBoard-xM, SABRE Lite, and x86 hardware.

Tripwire the developers behind Killing Floor had an email chat with me recently about the possibilities of Red Orchestra 2 and Rising Storm coming to Linux and why they currently won't. It gives us a small bit of info on Unreal Engine 2+3.

Pre-release version of Zorin OS 7 Core available for testing, the RC including Linux Kernel 3.8 and an overhauled graphical interface

bc utility is surely one of the underdogs when it comes to calculations on command line. It’s a feature rich utility that has its own fan base but needs time to get comfortable with. Here, in this article, structured in form of Q&A, let’s get comfortable with bc utility by discussing both basic and advanced features of this command line calculator.

(Sacramento, CA, USA: May 23, 2013) The Linux Professional Institute (LPI: http://www.lpi.org), the world's premier Linux certification organization, announced promotional exam labs for their Linux Professional Institute Certification (LPIC) at the SouthEast LinuxFest (SELF: http://www.southeastlinuxfest.org/) at 11:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m., June 9th at the Blake Hotel in Charlotte, NC. In addition, during SELF, Darrell Flewell, LPI CFO, will deliver a presentation on "Preparing For A Fantastic Career In Linux and Open Source" at 2:45 p.m., Saturday, June 8th in the Linode room of the Blake Hotel.

ProjectLibre is an open source project management solution ready to give Microsoft Project a run for their money.

Fedora and the Seneca Centre for Development of Open Technology released an optimized Fedora 18 Remix for the Raspberry Pi, and unveiled a new name for the remix. “Pidora 18,” based on a new build of Fedora optimized for ARMv6, features speedier performance and includes packages from the Fedora 18 package set, says the Pidora project team.

In many scientific disciplines, the research you may be doing is completely new. It may be so new that there isn't even any instrumentation available to make your experimental measurements. In those cases, you have no choice but to design and build your own measuring devices.

FreeRADIUS is the most popular open source RADIUS server and the most widely deployed RADIUS server in the world. It supports all common authentication protocols. It is the basis for many commercial RADIUS products and services, such as embedded systems, RADIUS appliances that support Network Access Control, and WiMAX

For me, the release of Mageia 3 was one of the most anticipated releases of the first half in 2013, after Debian Wheezy and Ubuntu Raring Ringtail. The release announcement of Mageia 3 promises of absolutely the very latest version of Linux kernel and applications, another reason for me to test Mageia's to ascertain it's stability.

It's time for another weekly roundup of all the bundles and sales involving Linux games, it's time to gather around... The Cheapskate's Corner!

You can do calculation stuffs easily with bash on the command line, however it isnt very intuitive. Bash still works well with some simple calculations but in case you want to perform more complicated calculations, this may become a real hassle. And that is why bc is a better tool for you to perform calculating on the command line. The tool bc can do much more than bash for you and its syntax is ways easier.

The team behind OpenRA has published a new official release of their game, which includes mods that 'recreate' Tiberian Dawn, Red Alert 1 and Dune 2000.

If I was the type to have heroes, Richard Stallman would be near the top of my list, not far below John Lennon and Abbie Hoffman, and way out ahead of Tom Hayden or the several-times-over reinvented Bob Dylan, though the freewheeling Bob Dylan who took it down Highway 61 will always be near the top of the list.

How-To secure SFTP using chroot with AD authentication restricting by Group as well as having a public area for users.

Linux Advocate Dietrich Schmitz reviews the newest piece of technology to come out of Google I/O 2013, Google Voice Search. Available today in Chrome 27.