Showing all newswire headlines

With the end of another year talks of the year of the Linux desktop is emerging once again. Compared to last years there is much improvement in the chances. But there is also one big problem..

Senator Franken issued this press release making public the responses from carriers (AT&T, and Sprint) and manufacturers (Samsung and HTC) regarding the Carrier IQ privacy issue. No response yet from T-Mobile and Motorola.

Pear OS is a new Linux desktop distribution based on Ubuntu. Development started in early August 2011, and Pear OS 1.0, the first version marked “stable,” was released on August 15 2011. The newest release is Pear OS Linux Panther 3. I tend not to pay too much attention to Ubuntu-based distributions especially when there is no feature or features that truly distinguishes them from their parent distribution, but Pear OS appears to be different. In fact, it looks to be better than any other Ubuntu-based distribution. Perhaps even better than Ubuntu itself.

SkypeTab-NG (NG stands for Next Generation) is a tool that adds tabs to Skype for Linux. Besides providing a tabbed chat window, the SkypeTab-NG also embeds both the conversation and the main Skype windows in a single window.

The PDF import function for LibreOffice Draw in Debian Squeeze, if you're using the libreoffice-pdfimport package from Debian Backports, is broken. Doesn't work. LO wants to open PDFs as text files in LO Writer, not as editable PDFs in LO Draw. So how do you fix this?

Ah, sweet revenge! After winning its court battle to lift the ban on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia, Samsung is making the most of the fondleslab injunction saga.

WebOS the once coveted proprietary software that cost HP 1.2 Billion to acquire, is now Open Source software, after tablets running on WebOS failed miserably. Analysts ponder if WebOS entry, as free licensed software, will disrupt the just –consolidating-phase of Android OS.

A friend of mine asked this question few days ago which I thought was just basic stuff(both of us were using Android 2.3.3 powered Samsung Galaxy S2 smartphone). I eventually came to realize that there is no easy way to do this. Following is what I did to put files on Android homescreen without much hiccup. Read on.

A reinterpretation of Don McClean's"American Pie"

Based on its slowness, cryptic errors, and difficulty in installing some applications, this is probably better for intermediate users, but that seems to be the target audience, so VectorLinux does a fine job.

Mojang the creators behind the super indie hit Minecraft are publishing (and helping to develop now too) a game called Cobalt and have posted an update on it.

Amarok 2.5.0 is here after few months of hard work, bringing major features, such as a re-written USB Mass Storage, improved iPod support and an integrated Amazon MP3 store, as well as lots of bugfixes and small improvements.

The reason copyright laws were designed as a civil matter, is that otherwise the heavy (and politicized) hand of government would become an over-bearing force on our Free Market system.

Sebastien Bacher posted a call for contributors on a mailing list and I got some indication of Gubuntu there. He was calling for contributors -- package maintainers, hackers (on softwares or tools), documentation writers, bug triagers, tester, etc. to help the Ubuntu team.

(Sacramento, CA, USA: December 15, 2011) The Linux Professional Institute (LPI), the world's premier Linux certification organization (http://www.lpi.org), announced the appointment of Ross Brunson as Director of Member Services for LPI. Mr. Brunson has over 15 years experience as a Linux trainer and is author of the popular book "LPIC-1 Exam Cram 2" (QUE Publishing).

Well, it's not exactly brand new, but I am taking my first real look at Ubuntu Studio 11.04 (based on Ubuntu "Natty Narwhal"). This is what we decided to put on our "guest" computer when Debian "Wheezy" proved not to be so easy, and it gives us an opportunity to step out of our rut and look at a new GNU/Linux distribution.

I've never seen this kind of thing before: I noticed that the Flash plugin that Debian installs from the flashplugin-nonfree package hasn't updated in quite some time. I've been stuck at Adobe Flash 10.2 for a long while.

Weeks ago (sorry for the delay) CodeWeavers has released a maintenance update for CrossOver Games (10.2.0 version).

A popular Dutch weblog has uncovered piracy at that a collection society, Buma/Stemra. They scanned the IP range of Buma/Stemra's HQ and found pirated material. The tool only covers about 4 to 6% of what's available on the networks it tracks, so it's possible that there's a lot more evil piracy going on from their offices as well. Despite pirates among their own ranks, organizations like Buma/Stemra feel that the Dutch policy of downloading from unauthorized sources for personal use being legal should be altered.

Everyone likes personal cloud services, like Apple’s iCloud, Google Music, and Dropbox. But, many of aren’t crazy about the fact that our files, music, and whatever are sitting on someone else’s servers without our control. That’s where ownCloud comes in.