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Months after Hewlett-Packard originally announced the open source version of webOS, the beta version of the platform is on its way out the door. Friday's release includes two environments for developers. The first is the desktop build, which is boasted to provide "the ideal development environment" for designing the webOS user experience with more features and integrating other open source technologies on the Ubuntu desktop.

Not to be outdone by Local Motors and their open source Rally Fighter vehicle, the team at MakerPlane is hard at work on version 1.0 of their open source aircraft. While they are still at least 2 years away from a working prototype, things are moving along briskly and the team is ready to show off some of their results.

"Release early, release often" is a popular mantra in the open source world. Unfortunately, some developers don't pay enough attention to it – and contribute to the reputation that Linux offers bad support for current hardware.

With the rise of NoSQL, it's easy to assume that old-school relational databases are simply living out their dinosaur dreams for legacy applications. But a funny thing happened on the way to the SQL cemetery: PostgreSQL became cool again. Yes, PostegreSQL.

In a tweet just hours ago from @TrentOster of BioWare, the first indication of a new Baldur’s Gate for Linux was revealed. The tweet reveals plans to bring Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition to Linux.

If you're a regular reader of this column, you may remember that I recently took a look at Cloud TV's HD Widgets, an app for creating your own elegant, translucent widgets to replace ugly stock widgets that appear to permeate today's Android phones -- Motorola, I'm referring to you mainly.

SUSE has announced the introduction of SUSE Cloud, the company's own distribution of OpenStack. The Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offering enables organisations to set up their own local cloud instance that behaves similarly to public cloud services such as Amazon EC2.

According to a blog posting by Sean Michael Kerner, Linus Torvalds has declared his intention to jump the version number of the Linux kernel up to 4.0 when the second version number of the current branch gets close to reaching "the 30s". At the current kernel development speed, Linux 3.29 would be released in the autumn of 2016.

Better management of memory and updates highlight the latest release of the Mozilla Foundation's Web browser, Firefox 15. Firefox's development team has steadily improved the browser's memory management over recent months, but with this release of the program, it's targeting a major contributor to the software's piggish memory ways: add-on applications.

Blender is such a highly specialized and powerful rendering app that at least two Linux distros are built around it. This cross-platform 3D graphics application matches features and performance of the leading commercial equivalent software packages. Professional-strength rendering software is not a tool for tinkerers.

As someone who's been working as a system administrator for a number of years, it's easy to take tools for granted that I've used for a long time and assume everyone has heard of them. Of course, new sysadmins get into the field every day, and even seasoned sysadmins don't all use the same tools. With that in mind, I decided to write a few columns where I highlight some common-but-easy-to-overlook tools that make life as a sysadmin (and really, any Linux user) easier. I start the series with a classic troubleshooting tool: sar.

We wrap up our investigation of vector graphics editors with a look at Adobe's Illustrator, along with a selection of more specialist applications, including Microsoft's Visio and the free, open-source LibreOffice Draw.

When it comes to solving Maths equation in Linux, we have previously discussed GeoGebra, a software for geometry and 2D graphs. However, if you are looking for a more powerful tools, you should give Sage a try. We’ve all heard of Matlab or Magma, but Sage offers an open source alternative to those two, and is, to my opinion, simpler to use.

I have confirmed with NVIDIA that the current 304.xx Linux graphics driver series is "the last release branch for some cards, including GeForce 6/7." NVIDIA has previously said that their 306 Windows graphics driver will remove support for the GeForce 6 and GeForce 7 series graphics processors. With the largely shared code-base between Windows and Linux/Solaris/BSD, it could be presumed that they would be removing the support for all platforms. NVIDIA's Hardy Doelfel confirmed to me today that it's indeed the case.

We are proud to announce the release of GNU Health 1.6.3, the Free Health and Hospital Information System. This version brings major improvements in the hospital information system, both from the administrative and patient management. Here is a quick summary of the main changes ..

Robert Rosario, the developer behind the open source document management tool Mayan EDMS, has pulled the development code of the software from public repositories he says it's being pinched by folks who use it in ways not allowed by the GNU Public Licence. In a Google+ post, Rosario says he works hard to make the software, happily releases it for free but uses the GPL but reserves the right to retain property rights to the code. That's perfectly fair, he argues, given that the code is free to download and use.

They say it's a small world after all, but in the Magic Kingdom, it appears to be a FUD-filled world as well. How else to explain a recent episode of "Shake It Up" on the Disney Channel? Asked to diagnose a misbehaving PC, a stereotypically geeky character asks, "Did you use open source code to save time and the virus was hidden in it?" Much canned laughter ensued, of course -- as did widespread outrage.

One of the interesting Google Summer of Code projects this year was bringing OpenGL ES 2.0 support to the Blender Game Engine and also at the same time to port the game engine for this open-source modelling software to Android. Alexandr Kuznetsov is the student developer that took on this GLES / Android porting for a GSoC 2012 project, which for the most part turned out to be a success. His stated targets were making the OpenGL portion of the Blender game engine compatible with OpenGL ES, extending the Android support, and making a small game chooser / packager. He also carries a long-term goal of making all of Blender compatible with OpenGL ES.

The proposal, as part of JSR 355, to combine the previously separate Executive Committee (EC) for Java SE (Standard Edition) and Java EE (Enterprise Edition) and the Java ME (Micro Edition) Committee has now received the approval of the Java Community Process. There were no opposing votes to the plan, one abstention (Google) and one, Goldman Sachs, who did not vote on the Java SE/EE EC; AT&T and RIM, who sit on the Java ME EC, did not vote, but that was in accordance with the processes of JCP 2.8.

LXer Feature: 26-Aug-2012

The latest installment of the LXer Weekly Roundup for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!