Showing all newswire headlines

After two years of development, version 3 of the popular Gallery online album software, code named "Santa Fe", has now been completed. Compared with its predecessor, the new version is said to offer improved performance and stability and require fewer resources. The developers have also drastically trimmed down the program package: instead of the previous 14 Mbytes, the standard installation is now only about 4 Mbytes in size.

The Mono project, which produces an open source implementation of the .NET runtime, has released version 2.8. The update brings full support for version 4.0 of the C# programming language, substantial improvements to the optional LLVM-based Mono backend, and a new garbage collection implementation that is more efficient.

Takashi Iwai of Novell/SuSE has just published a series of 18 patches for the X.Org Synaptics input driver that primarily provides multi-touch support. There's also some fixes and other changes to this Synaptics driver for X, but the primary feature is the addition of multi-touch support under Linux (and other X.Org-using operating systems) for supported hardware.

A Media Access Control address (MAC address) is a unique identifier assigned to network interfaces for communications on the physical network segment. Logically, MAC addresses are used in the Media Access Control protocol sub-layer of the OSI reference model. MAC addresses are most often assigned by the manufacturer of a network interface card (NIC) and are stored in its hardware, the card’s read-only memory, or some other firmware mechanism. If assigned by the manufacturer, a MAC address usually encodes the manufacturer’s registered identification number. It may also be known as an Ethernet hardware address (EHA), hardware address, adapter address, or physical address.

Mozilla announced a beta release of the Firefox 4 for Mobile ("Fennec") web browser, initially supporting Android and Maemo Linux (Nokia N900). The Firefox 4 Beta for Mobile aims to increase performance, adding a new "Layers" technology claimed to streamline scrolling, zooming and animations, but an early review says it still needs to get faster.

If you happen to think, as I do, that Google Chrome is emerging as the very best browser available, it's worth noting a point that we've made many times on OStatic: Chrome's evolution will have everything to do with the ongoing development of Google's upcoming Chrome OS. Chrome OS, Google's first operating system aimed squarely at computing desktops, is an ambitious project for Google, and, from the outset, it's been clear that because the Chrome browser interface--and much of its plumbing--form the UI and guts of Chrome OS, the fate of the operating system and its sibling browser are inextricably tied. As glimpses of version 8 of the Chrome browser appear, this seems more true than ever.

This new type of touch screen, which was demonstrated for the first time at a tech conference in New York this week, uses a small static force to control friction between a user's finger and the touch screen. "It's kind of like a buzzing or a vibration. It has the same effect as a buzz," said Chris Harrison, one of the Disney researchers and a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University. "But if you carefully tune the frequency and the vibration of the panel you can actually create things that feel like sandpaper or rubber or a wall."

[Not FOSS related but very cool. - Scott]

"We see it all the time, someone straying from one distribution or another because you "have to use the command-line". I've even heard that in person, I've heard it too many times. So, I looked around to see what may be causing this impression, and sure enough it didn't take long to fine. Simply browsing Ubuntu Forums I would get the impression that Ubuntu doesn't have any graphical way to configure the system if I didn't know any better."

A group of OpenOffice.org developers has announced the creation of an independent foundation - called the Document Foundation - to guide the further development of the office suite, which is provisionally named LibreOffice. At the heart of this effort is longtime OpenOffice.org developer Michael Meeks. We had the good fortune to discuss the LibreOffice effort with Michael; read on for his comments on this new initiative

In today’s Fedora 14 beta review, Dmitri Popov uncovers a slew of under-the-hood improvements and the inclusion of new development tools that will please power users and developers alike…

Canonical's Ubuntu project announced the release candidate for Ubuntu 10.10 ("Maverick Meerkat"), with the final version ready on 10/10/10. In addition to a revamped Software Centre, a new sound app, and a Netbook Edition overhauled with Canonical's "Unity" UI stack, Meerkat's final will feature new fonts.

Where do all good ideas go? Into the CPU of course. Back in the the day, we used processors that did not have floating point hardware. You may find it hard to believe, but the first micro-processors did not have on-board floating point units. Floating point was possible, but it was done in software. When the Intel 8086 hit the market there was an option to add a math co-processor called the i8087. If you included this co-processor, floating point calculations got much faster, provided you had software that could use it. Almost all systems had an empty socket for the i8087. It could purchased with the system or added later. Back then, processors came in a 40 pin DIP (Dual In-line Package). The trick was to push the rather large chip into a socket without bending or breaking the pins.

GMapCatcher is an offline map viewer utility that allows users to view maps without a need of Internet connection once they are loaded.The utility also allows you to download full maps to your hard disk.

Advanced Find / Replace is a plugin for Gedit for easily search and replace in multiple documents. It currently works with all opened documents and all the files in a directory you select.

The decision to split off LibreOffice has been widely welcomed by the open source community with the likes of Ubuntu, Red Hat and Novell committing to include it in their future releases instead of OpenOffice.org.

Companies that participate in hundreds of standard setting organizations (SSOs) often bemoan the continuing launch of more and more such organizations. Why, they are wont to ask, are so many new ones being formed all the time? And indeed, the aggregate participation costs for such companies in terms of membership dues and personnel are very high.

Google Calendar is a very useful tool, but it can be made even more useful when you learn how to see your agenda or make appointments from the command line.

Firefox is catching up to Internet Explorer in terms of market share, having already passed it in features years ago, but Google Chrome is nipping at its heels. Can Firefox 4 restore its glory?

The economy, as everyone is well aware, stinks. Yet the one factor that isn't being discussed enough in the media is how different technologies will likely evolve due to these new economic conditions. One major change: while the days of costly software and expensive licensing is not likely to come to a complete end, I suspect we will see a sharp decrease in this area.

Canonical announced today, October 7th, the upcoming availability of the new Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) operating system for download on Sunday, October 10th.