Showing all newswire headlines

Alternative LibreOffice splash screens. If you don't like the default LibreOffice splash screen or if you just want to try something new, here is a collection of 4 LibreOffice splash screens for Ubuntu with installation instructions.

Still bummed about Microsoft buying Skype? Yeah, me too. Looking for a credible open source alternative. Yeah, me too.

Google TV is a flop so far. Consumers don't seem to care, the TV networks don't like it and most big gadget manufacturers haven't started selling it yet.

But Google TV is not dead yet.

Miro is an open source music / video player and converter that features an integrated BitTorrent client, podcast support and many other interesting features. It runs on Linux, Windows and Mac.

The new Fedora 15 is released and people start to really get a feel of the new Gnome shell 3.0. But not the developers as they are working hard on the next major version 3.2 of the redesigned desktop. One of the changes is that there could be a world clock comes to gnome shell. One of the Google summer of coders this year, a person called ‘Stéphane Maniaci’ is working on improving the current incarnation of the clock menu. The new clock is supposedly will have capabilities to display times from different locations.

One of the most exciting technological trends in recent years has been the rise of “3D printing” technologies for rapid prototyping of arbitrary shapes. I’ve written about this before for Free Software Magazine, but this month I finally got to try the technology out for myself — in order to create “study models” (a fancy name for “toys”) for my video project, Lunatics. In this column, I’m going to walk through the complete process, from creating 3D models to receiving the final product in the mail.

Read the howto at Free Software Magazine.

Firewall Builder is a firewall configuration and management GUI that supports configuring a wide range of firewalls from a single application. Supported firewalls include Linux iptables, BSD pf, Cisco ASA/PIX, Cisco router access lists and many more. Import of existing iptables configurations was greatly improved in the recently released Firewall Builder V4.2. Features like object de-duplication and expanded rules recognition make it even easier to get started using Firewall Builder to manage your iptables configurations.

Miro 4 has been released with a long list of new features and fixes. Miro with version 4.0 aims to be a complete media suite and has come a long way from a being podcast/digital content service. Probably the most exciting features are inclusion of Music and App Stores.Miro 4 looks very similar to iTunes and is targeting android user base. It wants to provide same functionality to android users which iTunes is providing to iDevice users: sync music, share music, install apps etc. Miro is completely free, open source project made by non-profit organization. Read on for new features.

There are different Linux distros in the world. Some of them are generic and are suitable for wide range of purposes. Others are created for specific purpose and include specific application out of the box. Of course, there are some distros which account themselves as multimedia-oriented.

This week the Friday 5 looks at the viability of SSD in the enterprise, software testing in the cloud and what exactly the Scrum Master does all day

I've always been slightly annoyed by the fortune cookie type message that appears in the Linux Mint terminal by default. Here I will show you how to get to this option in Linux Mint 11 and turn it off. I also cover how to turn off the fortune messages on Linux Mint 10 which requires a command or two.

The KDE community this morning has announced the first beta for the upcoming major release of KDE Software Compilation 4.7. Many of the KDE packages have received major work during the 4.7 cycle, but in particular there's some prominent changes to KWin, Dolphin, KDM, and Marble...

Each time a new version of Ubuntu is released, a new version of Linux Mint quickly follows. Linux Mint 11 has just been released and it’s probably the best version of Linux Mint ever. If you aren’t familiar with Linux Mint then you’ve missed out on what is arguably one of the best desktop Linux distros available. Linux Mint 11 is based on Ubuntu 11.04 but it takes that distro to a whole new level, as you’ll see in this review.

While the first Phoronix benchmarks of EXT4, Btrfs, and XFS on the Linux 2.6.39 kernel were just published this morning, an interesting change was just made for the next Linux kernel that will affect many of the file-systems living within the kernel. For what will be the Linux 2.6.40 kernel, or rather the Linux 3.0 kernel is the finally-merged support for CleanCache.

Zorin Splash Screen Manager is a nice and simple application to install, change and manage different plymouth themes in Ubuntu. It has got a GUI which is very easy to understand and use. Zorin Splash Screen Manager is available in both 32bit and 64bit versions.

Two months after our 1.0.0 release the Bodhi team and I are proud to announce the availability of Bodhi Linux 1.1.0. This is the first of our quarterly scheduled update releases to keep the software on the Bodhi live CD current.

Let's dispose of a popular BI myth right now, and that is the myth that spending a giant wad of money on fancy BI software will do you any good. It won't. BI software suites are marvelous tools, but like any tool they are no better than the people using them. The most important tools are brains, knowledge, and the time to do the job right. Equally important are good data, so you may need to invest some resources in improving your data collection and organization. Don't skim over this step, because as the brilliant Charles Babbage said:

"On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."

Just how much market share can the Linux Desktop claim? The debate's a familiar one, perhaps even a tired one. But recently Pingdom published a list of the 20 countries in which the Linux desktop enjoys the most popularity. Naturally, that list was quickly criticized from multiple angles. So what's Linux's true penetration? "In the end, I don't think we will ever know," said blogger and developer Jeff Hoogland.

In 2008, Microsoft hired Hamilton “Hammett” Verissimo, the founder of the open-source Castle Project, as a program manager on the Microsoft Extensibility Framework (MEF) team in the company’s Developer Division. On May 17, 2011, Verissimo quit Microsoft. People join and leave Microsoft every day. (In fact, the last of the original Xbox founders submitted his resignation from Microsoft this week.) But I was interested in hearing from Verissimo whether it was a conflict in open/closed source philosophies that led to his decision to go. It turns out many of his frustrations are similar to ones I’ve heard shared by those leaving Microsoft whether or not they were in the open-source camp.

Skype has terminated its partnership with Digium, effectively killing Skype for Asterisk, which integrated Skype's VOIP service with the open source PBX/telephony platform. While some analysts see Microsoft's impending acquisition of Skype as the source of the schism, others argue that Skype has never been an open source supporter, and had already been backing away from the Asterisk product.