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When edgy, risque, and retro all come together in a video game, smart people stay off the street. Off the streets of New Arcadia, circa 1922, that is, because that's where evil seems to thrive in Episode 1 of On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, a newly released game from Hothead Games and Penny Arcade. We first wrote about it last fall, and the game has just been released for Linux, Mac, Windows, and Xbox platforms. Now that we finally have Episode 1 in hand, here's our review.

Stubbornly, OpenOffice.org continues to ship with only a handful of templates. Despite the efforts of several sub-projects and individuals to change the situation, the standard OpenOffice.org download includes only a couple of slide show presentations and a few templates to accompany the wizards available in the file menu. This lack of templates is a serious handicap for many users, and often leaves a poor impression on new users who are accustomed to the selection of templates found in other office suites.

Canonical has finally “branded” its Internet-centric device strategy for Ubuntu. The company says “Ubuntu Netbook Remix” devices will emerge as affordable, power-efficient, small screen devices driven by Intel’s Atom processor. But which PC companies and device makers will back Ubuntu on netbooks? Here are some thoughts, plus four key questions facing Canonical’s netbook strategy.

I thought I'd share with everyone who uses this resource what the future of Wine-Review entails. I also want to thank everyone for your support over the short period of time Wine-Review has been in existence. Nicolas Koch and I have been working a lot behind the scenes with Codeweavers posting bug reports for betas as well as testing a lot of things in the up and coming CrossOver Office Linux and Mac. Believe me when I tell you that so much work is being done to this release and it will yield amazing results. Look forward to this release and support Wine by purchasing CrossOver Office and get CrossOver Games for free!

Courtesy of groklaw a great research paper (pdf) from the University of Washington dissecting under which assumptions DMCA copyrights infringement takedown notices are in fact generated for BitTorrent users(1). The conclusions of the paper are most troubling and show that a number of current enforcement practices lead to poor, inconclusive identifications.

In the Windows world file system fragmentation is usually handled by periodically using a defragmenting utility on the affected file system. UNIX vigorously attempts to prevent fragmentation from ever happening in the first place. In this respect Windows and UNIX are two completely different worlds. Those coming to UNIX from a Windows background often wonder where the defragmenting tool is.

Software-as-a-service provider Etelos announced a new addition to its offerings over the weekend: hosted installations of some major open source projects. This is yet another twist on the perennial problem of making money from open source: supporting software that other people write. Is there really a market here?

I have been a Microsoft user for a majority of my life. I started out with a 66 megahertz computer running MS-DOS on a very fancy black and green monitor. However, I recently became a self-proclaimed Linux lover. For those of you who might not know, Linux is an open source operating system that competes with Microsoft Windows and Apple’s OS X. My first experience with Linux left me with a bad taste in my mouth, but the distribution of Linux known as Ubuntu 7.10 (aka “Gutsy Gibbon”), the version prior to the current version of Ubuntu, has impressed me enough to convince me to completely switch my personal computer to Linux. It has been a fascinating adventure, and I’ve learned a lot about the inner workings of my computer.

[A great review written from the perspective of someone new to Linux, but not new to computers. - Scott]

A gradual shift that has been under way for years may now be on the verge of moving the embedded-tool industry from proprietary to open-source architectures. Recent product announcements and new project initiatives indicate that the Eclipse Framework is spilling over from its IT origins to become a dominant factor in the embedded space. It may still take a few years to solidify its position, but Eclipse appears to be on the way to overshadowing proprietary embedded tool chains.

While you probably won't run Vista as a virtual machine on your cell phone, there are many viable use cases of virtualization for embedded applications. The most simplest, cheapest, feature rich is using Linux and KVM. Servers and desktops are not alone, virtualization is also a perfect fit for embedded devices too.

My granddaughter has been sitting on my lap at the computer since before she could even hold herself up. She was only a few months old when she became interested in the mouse and began learning to place the cursor on the screen. A friend of mine laughed at us and stated that I'd "have her compiling kernels by the time she was three." Well, she's three years old now, and though she's not compiling kernels yet, she is having hours of fun on her own thanks to Tuxpaint.

The Canonical OEM team has been approached by a number of OEM’s who want to sell netbooks (small, low-cost laptops with an emphasis on the web) based on Ubuntu. Almost universally, they’ve asked for standard Ubuntu packages and updates, with an app launcher that’s more suited to new users and has the feeling of a “device” more than a PC.

As geeks become chic in all levels of society, an unlikely subset is starting to roar. Meet the Nerd Girls: they're smart, they're techie and they're hot.

[It appears to becoming a more common thing: geeky girls. It is also interesting to note that Cathy Malmrose of ZaReason is mentioned in the article itself. - thenixedreport]

Most free software projects encourage contributors—it is the rare project that has an overabundance—but contributions vary greatly in quality. Encouraging good submissions, or those likely to lead to useful contributions down the road, is an important part of any project. But it is a delicate balance. It can be difficult to determine the kinds of tasks suitable for new contributors that will lead to more important contributions later.

Roadrunner running on Linux, breaks a modest threshold of 1,000 trillion calculations per second on Monday.

Although the last release of Norton Commander, the famous file manager for DOS, was a decade ago, its legacy lives on in dozens of clones on every operating system imaginable. On GNU/Linux, one of the most popular clones is Beesoft Commander (BSC). Although designed for the desktop and built with a recent version of the Qt libraries, BSC, like Norton Commander, remains a file manager built mainly for the keyboard. As a centralized tool for file operations, it offers a degree of convenience that makes it worth learning, especially if most of your work involves source code, HTML, or other plain text files.

I used this player for about three years and I love it more and more, with each new release. Statistics show around 60% of the Linux users prefer Amarok over any other audio player. 60%! That's huge. This article lists 7 reasons for which I think this is the most loved audio player. I preferred to leave out the more technical ones, and just focus on the highlights.

Need a multilingual dictionary tool that allows you to quickly translate words and expressions without leaving the convenience of OpenOffice.org? Drop in the EuroOffice.org Dictionary (EOD) extension. Using EOD is dead easy. Since it's just a regular OpenOffice.org extension, you can install it by using the Extension Manager (Tools -> Extension manager). Once installed, the EOD adds a dictionary toolbar that gives you access to all dictionary features. Select the source and target languages from the drop-down list to the left, type the word you want to look up in the Word to Translate field, and the translation immediately appears in the Translation field. Both fields also act as drop-down lists.

The intent behind Delphi for PHP from CodeGear, last month acquired by Embarcadero Technologies, is clear: to provide an integrated development environment for PHP that matches the speed of development regular Delphi offers for Windows applications. First released in February 2007, the initial version fell far short of the goal, being buggy and under-documented. I've had a chance to get to grips with Version 2.0, and while CodeGear has added some refinements there remains a ways to go.

I know the frustration... Being so, so close to success...only the smallest of obstacles in front of you. It would seem just a simple maneuver would complete the mission. One simple thing to be accomplished and the whole thing falls together. And then it stalls...and stalls. Until the opportunity passes. Days, months and in this case, years of effort and sweat pass, only to go straight into the crapper. No, I'm not talking about anything we've done. This isn't going to be about anything I or HeliOS Solutions has done. This isn't about us. And as given to hyperbole as I can be...I am serving you notice now, It stands in the best interest of the entire Linux Effort to pay attention here.