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The Wine team is proud to announce that the stable release Wine 1.2 is now available. This release represents two years of development effort and over 23,000 changes. The main highlights are the support for 64-bit applications, and the new graphics based on the Tango standard.

Say you've got yourself a nice computer, be it tower, notebook, or whatever, and it has a dual core 64 bit chip. It's a pretty cool system and it came with Windows 7. After much hounding and friendly ribbing from your Linux-pushing friend, you decide you're going to load up Ubuntu. So you wander over to the Ubuntu desktop site to download your desktop Linux ISO where it tells you that the 64 bit edition isn't recommended for desktop use. You're confused. After all, your computer came with a 64 bit version of Windows. Isn't 64 bits better than 32? Why can't Linux run a 64 bit desktop?

How many times have you mistyped sl instead of ls? plenty huh? Here is a small program that will add a little fun to your oft misspelled ls.

The Bordeaux Technology Group is proud to announce a one month sale on Bordeaux for Linux, Mac, FreeBSD, PCBSD and OpenSolaris. With the release of Wine 1.2 it marks the first stable Wine release in nearly two years.

Many of your Android applications will need to interact with Internet data, which comes in a variety of formats. In this article, build an Android application that works with two popular data formats—XML and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)—as well as the more exotic protocol buffers format from Google. You'll learn about the performance and coding trade-offs associated with each format.

PHP is coming to Google's Android phones for those averse to programming in Java or going native. The PHP for Android (PFA) site says here that its goal is to make PHP development in Android "not only possible but also feasible providing tools and documentation."

GUI debuggers are the norm these days, however, I still feel the urge to do a little printf-debugging now and then. It might be wrong, it might be silly but it works. I like to develop the odd graphical application and I like use Qt. For Qt, the nice Norwegian Trolls have provided the qDebug function.

Currently, Linux systems take the very high end machines (any machine more powerful than a fully tricked out MacPro {read supercomputers and mainframes}), and the very low end machines (phones, routers, palm-tops, PVRs). In both cases, someone is missing. Microsoft. I do not hate Microsoft. Many people would think that I did (being a Linux fan, and to a lesser extent an Apple fan), but I really don't. I just think that they have failed to adapt to a changing market place, and I feel that they are stifling the progress of IT. Apple, on the other hand, has been aiding. Apple didn't reinvent the phone. Apple showed the a Blackberry/Palm styled phone could be made for the average person. They made it, and they sold it rather well. The iPad has shown that tablets actually are in demand, and for once someone has proven that Windows is not a requirement for consumer computers. The reality is that most people think of a computer operating system as inseparable from the computer itself. So, where are we headed?

With the introduction of Intel's Poulsbo (GMA 500) chipset it marked a point at which Intel's Linux graphics support was no longer stellar, but as they had outsourced the graphics IP from Imagination Technologies, they could not provide an open-source driver stack like they do with their in-house IGPs. Not only was this Intel Poulsbo Linux driver closed-source, but the level of support was appalling and it was a bloody mess of a situation. The overall situation since has only become worse and even MeeGo (their own Linux OS) will be shipping without Intel's EMGD driver.

Frustrated by what they consider poor treatment and lack of interest from Oracle, members of the OpenSolaris Governing Board are essentially delivering an ultimatum to the vendor, asking that it appoint a liaison to the group by no later than Aug. 16, or else the board will be disbanded.

The last time OpenSUSE users enjoyed a stable release was in November 2009 making today’s release of OpenSUSE 11.3 a pretty big deal. This is the first release in the new eight month release schedule for OpenSUSE. Here are some screenshots of the OpenSUSE 11.3 install, KDE and GNOME desktops, and details about some of the popular new features in this release.

8. In terms of spending less - what about migrating the whole of government (the NHS, Education etc) from Microsoft products to Linux and open source software like Openoffice.

Firefox 4.0 beta 2 pre is now available in silverwave PPA and it is devoid of any kind of errors, which is unfortunately the case with ubuntu-mozilla-daily PPA currently. Silverwave PPA will give you only monthly updates and so instead of getting swamped by daily updates, you will get the latest Firefox 4.0 releases every month.

Most of you probably haven't heard about Clementine before. But every linux music enthusiast must be aware of Amarok 1.4, which for many like me, was the best open source music player for Linux. Even though it was KDE app, I used it as my default music player in Ubuntu Gnome. It was that good. But everything changed once KDE developers decided to rewrite Amarok.

digiKam is undoubtedly a powerful application for processing and managing your photos, but there are situations when you need something lighter.

Do you think Red Hat Linux is just awesome as a server? It isn't. Is awesome as your everything. Red Hat Enterprise Linux now comes with built-in virtualization (KVM) but is Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) about to go to the virtual mat with VMware? If you look at their RHEL video, you'll come away with a resounding 'Yes' to that question. Red Hat purchased Qumranet in 2008 to acquire their KVM-based virtualization solution and SolidICE product based on the SPICE protocol. What does RHEL mean for consumers?

Motorola marched out its newest smartphone the Droid X, which features a 4.3-inch display and a 1Ghz Snapdragon processor, but there's one major caveat to the phone: a new security measure designed to disable the phone entirely if it's tampered with. Called eFuse, the security measure corrupts the phone's boot process should the phone be hacked, tampered with, or rooted. And while this won't be a big deal to many consumers, power users should take heed before they wind up owning a $200 paperweight.

Mandriva S.A. issued a press release to announce the restructuring of its core business organization. While specifics were still not given, the main message did come through: Mandriva will survive, in some fashion, for a while anyway.

The growing success of open source software has naturally spurred on others to apply its lessons elsewhere. Open content is perhaps the most famous translation, notably through the widely-used Creative Commons licences. But one of the most challenging domains to come up with something equivalent to the Open Source Definition (OSD) is hardware – not surprisingly, perhaps, since hardware is analogue, not digital, and hence very different in nature.

Some of you may know the commercial Flexnet Licencing Application (©Macrovision). It's a client-server based solution for managing the usage of socalled Flexnet-enabled applications. You can hold licenses of more than one product on one license-server. As you typically have to buy licenses and licenses can be expensive it would be nice to have a monitoring solution to see the utilization of the precious licenses, whether they are underutilized (so money is wasted) or are always fully utilized (so that you can suspect that sometimes people cannot do their work, or only delayed) which is also a waste of resources. As far as I know there are commercial applications for performing such reports, but again you have to spend money. Why not build a simple system yourself, which shows the actual and past usage in an "MRTG style"?