Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Yesterday we reported on Proof In Steam's Mac Client Of Linux Support as we received the bash launcher used by the closed-beta Steam on Mac OS X that showed support for Linux. Today there are yet more signs of Linux support when studying Valve's Mac OS X client.

The /etc/fstab file gives you control over what filesystems are mounted at startup on your Linux system, including Windows partitions and network shares. You can also use it to control the mount points of removable storage devices like USB sticks and external hard disks. Akkana Peck shows us how.

Songbird, the popular open source cross platform music player, has decided to dump support for Linux. Such a move could be fatal and here's why.

Having watched people advocate the Linux desktop for more than 10 years, it's always surprising to see the same people arguing against the things that will help bring Linux (and software freedom) to a larger audience. But like the fanboys who pine for the days before indie bands went to major labels, there's a loud minority in the Linux community protesting the commercial offerings that come along with success.

There are plenty of reasons for wanting a low-resource distro running on your computer. Maybe you have some ancient hardware that you need to breathe new life into. Perhaps you want something that will fit on a modestly sized memory stick. Or it might be that you want to run 200 virtual machines simultaneously on your desktop. The important things that we'll look at here are the amount of space needed, how much processing power is required to get the distro running at an acceptable level, and the effort required to get it to work.

Who can blame Adobe for being ticked off? They wanted a slice of the lucrative Apple iPad/iPhone application business, but Apple won't let Adobe applications, or even Flash, on either platform. First Adobe responded by cussing Apple out, then thinking about suing Apple; now, they're talking about abandoning the iPad/iPhone platforms. That's lame. Apple's already told Adobe that they're not welcome. I have a better idea. Adobe, forget about Apple; go Linux instead. Mike Chambers, the principal product manager for developer relations for Adobe's Flash, has already suggested that Flash developers start working Google's Linux-based Android operating system. "The iPhone isn't the only game in town," said Chambers.

As Ubuntu Lucid is preparing for its grand launch on 29th April 2010, I am sure you should have already known what to expect in this release. The next usual question is: “what should I install after installing Lucid?” We have done plenty of “what to install after installing Ubuntu” articles previously, but this time round, I am going to save you all the trouble and introduce you to a script that can automate plenty of stuffs for you.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt shed some light on the company's plans for Chrome OS in tablets and mobile devices at the Atmosphere Cloud Computing Summit. Cloud computing is the cornerstone of Chrome OS, as the platform runs entirely on cloud servers and all user data is automatically backed up to the same remote server network.

Twitter is preparing to launch several impressive new features, including a new streaming API that will give desktop client applications real-time access to the user's message timeline. The new streaming API was announced last week at Twitter's Chirp conference, where it was made available to conference attendees on-site for some preliminary experimentation. Twitter opened it up to the broader third-party developer community on Monday so that programmers can begin testing it to offer informed feedback.

Linux vendor Red Hat today released the first public beta of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (RHEL 6), giving observers a look at what's to come in the next version of its flagship operating system platform. The new release takes advantage of a long list of new Linux kernel improvements for performance and scalability while also providing new technologies for security, management, and virtualization.

T-Mobile and Garmin-Asus announced a navigation-oriented smartphone that will run Android and include multi-touch capabilities. The "Garminfone" includes a 600MHz Qualcomm processor, 4GB of flash storage, a three megapixel camera, and GPS capabilities that work with or without cellular connectivity, according to the companies.

A new cloud-focused Linux flavor launched recently; known as Peppermint, the operating system is currently a small, private beta and will open up to more testers over the next two to four weeks.

Google has released version 4.1.249.1059 of Chrome for Windows, a security update that addresses four high risk vulnerabilities in its WebKit-based browser. These vulnerabilities are; a memory corruption issue in Chrome's V8 JavaScript Engine, type confusion errors with forums, cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities on the Chrome downloads page and HTTP request errors that could lead to possible cross-site request forgeries (XSRF).

San Francisco's rogue sysadmin Terry Childs, who refused to reveal passwords when he was sacked, could learn his fate later today. The jury has started deliberating on whether Childs is guilty of locking the city out of its own network. He faces up to five years in prison if found guilty. Childs refused to hand over passwords when he was sacked in 2008.

SAN FRANCISCO – APRIL 20, 2010 – MuleSoft, the Web Middleware Company, today announced that it has partnered with Canonical, the number one Ubuntu services provider. Through this partnership, MuleSoft, is working with Canonical to improve the Apache Tomcat package for Ubuntu and Debian. These contributions, focused on improving “out-of-the-box” usability of Tomcat with these distributions of Linux, will appear in the upcoming Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and Debian Squeeze (6.0) releases.

Oracle has imposed a fee of US$90 per user on a plug-in for Microsoft Office that was available at no cost under Sun Microsystems' ownership. The tool allows Word, Excel and PowerPoint users to read, edit and save documents in the ODF (Open Document Format), which is used by the competing OpenOffice productivity suite.

Those who have been following Gluon closely over the last months know that at the developer sprint in Munich in October 2009 the foundations were laid down for the Gluon vision. Put simply, Gluon provides a new way for game creators to make games and distribute them to the players of games. The development of the new Gluon vision has led to a lot of refactoring of the Gluon codebase and structure. Now, after months of work, the Gluon team is able to release a first Alpha, Gluon 0.70, using the new structure. Read on to find out more about Gluon and how you can help.

So you've got to cut costs, but you're not a manager. You're a software developer, or a power user, or just someone who needs to keep the bottom line healthy enough to support your salary. These are ideal situations for introducing open source software solutions into your environment. That might sound like you'll spend the next three weeks learning to program or write makefiles, but it's just not so. Read on and see how open source is a flexible, usable approach to efficiency in your work environment.

While Ubuntu has always emphasized usability, Fedora's focus has been innovation. Now in current beta, Fedora 13 (codenamed Goddard) is no exception. However, at first Fedora 13 may seem to lack many innovations unique to the distribution as opposed to its component applications. In fact, with many of the improvements and innovations either working behind the scenes or available only if you are specifically aware of them, many of Fedora 13's enhancements risk being invisible to the average user or even administrator.

Browser-obsessed netbooks running Google's Chrome operating system will be the freshest thing to hit computing in two decades, Eric Schmidt claims. Speaking at the Atmosphere Cloud Computing Forum the Google CEO heralded the coming of "completely disposable" mobile devices running Chrome OS that will will boot up in two seconds and incorporate web-based storage, HTML5 for security, and combine input, communication, and data-sharing capabilities.