GNOME 3.16 promises to be one of the best releases made so far and numerous changes have been already announced. The new notification system is one of them and it's definitely something to look forward to.

Vagrant is an highly efficient tool for managing virtual machines via CLI. This increases your and your team's productivity and flexibility. This tutorial will cover the installation of Vagrant on Ubuntu 14.10, explain the basics of this great virtualisation tool and will guide you trough the creation of your first Vagrant instance.

KaOS is very proud to announce the availability of the February release of a new stable ISO image. This release brings the end of KDE 4 as the default Desktop Environment for KaOS. Almost ten months ago work started to fully migrate to Frameworks 5, Plasma 5-based distribution and with the release of Plasma 5.2.1 this migration is now deemed ready to bring a better user experience then KDE 4. From the unset of this migration there was never a plan to mix the two environments. What you will see on this ISO is a pure Plasma 5-based environment. As many might have noted KDE Applications 14.12 did not contain more then a handful of Plasma 5 applications. Just about all applications that users have become used to seeing in a KDE 4 version are available as a Plasma 5 port. A few are not ready yet, and those will be missing from the KaOS repositories until their ports are ready for daily use.

My two biggest dreams growing up were to be either a firefighter or a space explorer. Though I didn’t get to do either of those things, I satisfy the former via being a volunteer in prevention with Cal Fire, California’s state fire department, and the latter by reading everything I can get my hands on about space—both fiction and non-fiction. read more

The world of databases is no stranger to open source. In fact, many of the world's top companies, projects, and websites run various open source databases behind the scenes.

The highly anticipated Mobile World Congress (MWC) event will take place between March 2-5 in Barcelona, Spain, and as expected, Canonical will be present to showcase its latest Ubuntu technologies, including the Ubuntu convergence of the upcoming Unity 8 interface and the first Ubuntu-powered phones, the BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition and Meizu MX4.

I love Python, and I’ve been learning it for a while now. Some time ago, I wrote a Python script where I needed to resize a bunch of images while at the same time keeping the aspect ratio (the proportions) intact. So I looked around and found the PIL (Python Imaging Library). read more

Many hands make light work, as they say. More importantly, though – many hands come with many minds. An FOSS project consists of a lot more than just the source code that powers your application. Most successful projects consist of at least the following: Website Documentation User Support Application(s)

The “RideOn” project for augmented reality ski goggles has won its Indiegogo funding. It runs Android on a 1.2GHz ARM CPU, and offers hands-free control. The need for high-tech, Android-based snow goggles like RideOn and Recon’s Snow2 is hard to fathom for skiers like us, who expend every last Joule of mental energy on staying […]

On January 23 this year, the Santa Clara High Tech Law Journal had their annual symposium on open source in the legal field at Santa Clara University. Prominent practitioners in the open source community spoke on topics ranging from licensing and compliance to healthcare and entertainment law. For anyone newly learning about open source licensing, this is a great look at some of the issues today. This is my account of the symposium. read more

We just accomplished something very important together. Today, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission voted for strong net neutrality protections. This happened because millions of people — including many hundreds of thousands in Mozilla’s community — joined together as citizens of … Continue reading

LXLE is a great example of how a respin can add value to an underlying base distribution with great visual elements, better navigation and a complete set of packages.

GCompris, an educational software suite providing fun activities for kids aged 2 to 10, has been upgraded to version 15.02 and is now available for download.

This week we are joined by Simon Phipps and Patrick Masson to talk about the Open Source Initiative (OSI). The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is a global non-profit that supports and promotes the open source movement. Among other things, the OSI maintains the Open Source Definition, and a list of licenses that comply with that definition.

In recent years, there has been a trend in which data centers have been opting for commodity hardware and software over proprietary solutions. Why shouldn't they? It offers extremely low costs and the flexibility to build an ecosystem the way it is preferred. The only limitation is the extent of the administrator's imagination.

Aaeon launched a transportation-focused “NanoCOM-BT” COM Express Type 10 Mini module based on Atom E3800 SoCs, with optional industrial temperature support. The Linux-friendly NanoCOM-BT supports a variety of automation, medical, ticketing, kiosk, surveillance, and communications applications, but is primarily being promoted for use in public transportation devices. The 84 x 55mm COM Express Type 10 […]

Those who’re new to Linux want the best distro out there for new users, which means simple things like ease of use, productivity, speed, and security. But which distros are the best for new users? Actually, there is probably no “best,” but there are many distros that are designed keeping the needs of the inexperienced Linux user in mind.

Tails, The Amnesic Incognito Live System, version 1.3, is out. This release fixes numerous security issues and all users must upgrade as soon as possible.

Juniper Networks and Canonical, the lead commercial sponsor of Ubuntu Linux, are partnering for a new Network Function Virtualization cloud platform, based on OpenStack and the Contrail Software Defined Networking (SDN) controller.

In today's open source roundup: Valve's impact on Linux gaming. Plus: Why a tech journalist dumped Apple, Microsoft and Google for open source. And four music players for Linux.

Two months after first announcing Machine, Swarm and Compose, Docker rolls out the three orchestration tools. -

Internet activists scored a landmark victory on Thursday as the top US telecommunications regulator approved a plan to govern broadband internet like a public utility. FCC says ‘we listened and we learned’, and passes strict broadband rules that represent ‘a red-letter day for internet freedom’

As we've reported earlier, Canonical is preparing to announce the immediate availability for download and testing of the first Beta release for its Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME, Ubuntu Kylin, Kubuntu, as well as Ubuntu MATE, which became an official release this week.

Net Neutrality is a problem, not a solution, and it won’t take long before we’re told that even more extensive and intrusive government control of Internet service is necessary to address all the “unintended consequences” it produces.

Meizu has finally confirmed that it plans to use an MX4 device to present the Ubuntu system at Mobile World Congress 2015 in Barcelona, and it will also be the platform that will launch internationally with Ubuntu.

SparkFun Electronics was founded in 2003 as a source for engineers, inventors, prototypers and DIY enthusiasts to find the gear and tools they need to make their electronics projects possible. More than a decade later, SparkFun is still a leader in the world of open source hardware. In this interview, I sat down with founder and CEO Nathan Seidle to talk a bit about what drives SparkFun’s open source hardware model. read more

eOsFree Linux RC 1 is available. eOsFree Linux is a re-spin of the elementary OS distribution with a customized desktop.

Reversian is a simple text processor tool useful for generating some unicode-based text transformations.

Graphics card powerhouse Nvidia hasn't been having very much fun lately. First, the company took an Internet wide beating from gamers after selling a 4 GB graphics card (the GTX 970) that wasn't really a 4 GB graphics card, resulting in the $300+ purchase choking on high-end resolutions (or when using, say, Oculus Rift)...

Perhaps a bigger deal was Nvidia's December decision to roll out mobile graphics card drivers that prevented paying customers from overclocking the cards they own. The ability for consumers to do as they see fit with their own hardware, Nvidia claimed at the time, was a bug in the company's driver software that needed to be removed for the safety of the consumer,,,

I guess I had better announce this or the flurry of emails about it will never stop! Chivalry: Medieval Warfare is now fully out for Linux, and so you may draw your swords. It's also 66% off right now!