Showing headlines posted by DeviceGuru

How many of us leave our PCs running all day long, even when we’re not using them? Despite the fact that today’s desktop and laptop PCs and their OSes provide extensive power management functions, most PC users don’t bother to use them to shrink their systems' carbon footprints. Here are 10 easy ways to cut your PC's energy consumption.

With 90+ percent of my desktop computing conducted from within Firefox, and half the Internet services I use supplied by Google, the opportunity to test Google’s new 'Chrome' browser was irresistible. Here are my first impressions.

I've long been a sucker for small-footprint Linux distributions. So naturally, I thought it would be interesting to explore the latest version of "Ubuntulite." From what I've seen so far, I'm impressed!

Intel offered a sneak peek of the next-generation of its Classmate PC design at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco today. The new design features a tablet, touchscreen, and motion-sensing user interface, and is powered by — you guessed it — an Atom processor. It runs a choice of Linux or Windows XP Pro.

Lenny (aka 'testing') appears poised to displace Etch as the popular Linux distribution's "stable" branch next month. To see how Lenny was coming along, I loaded the latest preview (beta 2) of its KDE system image onto an available Thinkpad, and took it for a spin.

The Linux OS, in the form of Moblin, LiMo, and Maemo, looks ready to take the lion’s share of the Mobile Internet Devices (MID) market and is set to capture unit volumes of 50 millions units per annum in 2013, reports market analyst ABI Research. The MID market is likely to be the first real example of a greenfield situation in which all mobile operating systems start on the same equal footing, without the baggage of previous histories such as existed in the smartphone market, ABI explains.

Learning that KDE 4.1.0 had been released by the KDE Community, I hastened to download and install this latest, greatest Linux desktop on the Ubuntu-powered Black Tower. Put generously, the results were highly disappointing!

A panel of embedded Linux specialists will discuss the pros and cons of commercial vs. do-it-yourself (DIY) embedded Linux implementations, at next week’s LinuxWorld conference. The session is part of the conference’s Mobile and Embedded Linux track. Moderated by DeviceGuru.com blogger Rick Lehrbaum, the hour-long session will explore the advantages and disadvantages of using embedded Linux distributions and tools from vendors such as MontaVista, Wind River, TimeSys. This approach will be contrasted with the alternative of creating customized embedded Linux platforms based on freely downloadable source code from silicon vendors, board vendors, or community repositories such as kernel.org or the Ubuntu or Fedora projects.

An effort to rapidly reverse global warming is leveraging the collaborative methods of Linux and other open source software. Cquestrate aims to develop a cost-effective, "open" way to produce and introduce lime into the sea, where it will efficiently sequester dissolved CO2.

The mobile phone operating system world was rocked recently by the announcement that Nokia had acquired all of the shares of Symbian that it didn't already own, and that it planned to transition the OS to an open-source licensing model. How significant is this move?

Netflix and Roku today jointly announced a tiny set-top box (STB) said to offer unlimited streaming of DVDs and TV episodes on Netflix members’ TVs. The $100 “Netflix Player by Roku” is rumored to run a customized version of Linux along with robust DRM technology.

Call me old fashioned, but one complaint I have about Kubuntu 8.04 — aka Hardy Heron — is the lack of a traditional desktop trash icon on its KDE desktop. Fortunately, this is easy to fix!

Last time I wrote about the “Black Tower,” I had just installed Vista and Kubuntu 7.10 in a dual-boot setup. When version 8.04 of Kubuntu (”Hardy Heron”) hit the Web last week, I wasted no time upgrading to it.

Ampro will begin distributing a Ubuntu Linux derivative with its x86-compatible single-board computers this month, it said. "Ampro Embedded Linux" (AEL) combines a choice of standard or real-time kernel.org Linux with a standard Ubuntu 7.10 filesystem, giving customers a well-tested open-source leg up on evaluation and development, the company suggests.

Developers thinking of using Linux as an embedded operating system won’t want to miss the annual Embedded Linux Conference coming to Silicon Valley next month. The event boasts enlightening keynote talks by embedded Linux luminaries Andrew Morton, Tim Bird, and Henry Kingman, plus numerous technical sessions.

NXP Semiconductor and Purple Labs have announced a reference design aimed at enabling the manufacture of 3G Linux feature phones that could be sold to mobile operators at under $100. Touted features of the “Purple Magic” phone include video telephony, music playback, high-speed Internet browsing, and video streaming.

Trolltech, the originator of Qt, which forms the basis of the Linux KDE desktop environment, is being acquired by Nokia, the world’s number-one mobile phone vendor. Nokia expects its acquisition of Trolltech to accelerate its cross-platform software strategy for mobile devices and desktop applications, and to enhance its Internet services business.

Flash filesystem (FFS) specialist Datalight Inc. will soon release a commercial Linux FFS claimed to provide 400 percent faster write performance and 500 percent faster mount speed compared to JFFS2. The new FFS will target Linux-based mobile phones, set-top boxes, and other embedded devices.

DeviceVM demonstrated a Linux-powered PC preboot application environment lets users instantly run several Internet-based applications, including Web browsing and Skype messaging, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week. 'Splashtop' integrates with the PC’s BIOS and is launched prior to operating system boot-up.

DeviceGuru has published an open letter to Ubuntu Linux project founder Mark Shuttleworth suggesting that the mainstream flavors of Ubuntu (i.e. Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, etc.) be rebranded as various "Editions" of Ubuntu. So, for example, "Kubuntu" would become "Ubuntu KDE Edition." Read the complete open letter here.