Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Appindicator was first introduced in Ubuntu karmic as a replacement for the Gnome panel applet. It is a small applet to display information from various applications consistently in the panel. It can also be used as a access point to access (and control) the application without having to open the application. if you are running Ubuntu Lucid or Maverick, you should see the messaging menu (the applet that contains Empathy, Evolution and Gwibber icons), which is a good example of an appindicator.

This morning we reported on the soft announcement that TransGaming would be replacing Cedega with something known as GameTree Linux. Not much information was available at the time, just that it was built upon Cedega technology, would replace the subscription-based Cedega Gaming Service, and would be distributed as a free program. Now though a few more details have come to light.

Broadcom has become the newest member of the Linux Foundation. In September 2010, Broadcom released its brcm80211 wireless driver for Linux, suitable for the BCM4313, BCM43224 and BCM43225 802.11n wireless chips, under a GPL2-compatible license. Broadcom also says that it plans to continue working with the Linux Driver Project, which is aimed at creating and maintaining open source Linux kernel drivers for a variety of devices.

Linux has managed to carve a little slice of success for itself in nearly every industry. Well, with the exception of broadcast media that is. While I’ve found some limited Linux presence in the broadcast radio industry, I've found that in the broadcast TV market, Linux software appears to be completely absent. It's almost like the broadcast media establishment doesn't realize that Linux exists as a viable alternative for many functions within a TV studio.

Following a challenging week for Intel's Sandy Bridge Linux support in other publications getting the open-source graphics drivers working, Intel came forward to supply us with a Sandy Bridge processor so we can carry out the tests using the needed Linux Kernel / Mesa / DDX / libva Git code. We don't even need to wait for Intel to send out any hardware, as it was hand-delivered today during a meeting with them.

The Puppy Linux developers have released version 5.2 of their independent Linux distribution known as "Lupu". Puppy Linux is a popular small release that is usually just over 100 MB in size, focuses on ease of use and can run entirely from RAM.

In the wake of the news that open source online conferencing and collaboration provider Dimdim is being swallowed up by cloud CRM provider Salesforce, one conclusion seems clear: Many long-standing open source applications are low hanging fruit for powerful proprietary software companies to acquire and metamorphosize for their own purposes. It's easy to be lulled into thinking that this is happening at the same rate that it used to, but the rate at which well-known open source technologies are being flipped under the wing of proprietary software companies is in fact picking up pace exponentially. In Dimdim's case, there are positive and negative aspects of the buyout.

If you ever find yourself wishing that other applications had Vim-keybindings, I have good news for you. At least, if you're a Firefox user. The news? Vimperator. It's a great add-on for Firefox that brings the power of Vim to Firefox. Have some time this weekend? You can be an expert with Vimperator by Monday.

One of the points that Linux users commonly say in lobbying hardware vendors to provide open-source drivers and/or documentation -- particularly for GPU drivers -- is that the open-source community will take the released code or documents and from there develop it into a reliable, working open-source Linux driver. However, that isn't exactly true.

This year’s CES featured more tablets than Michael Jackson’s bathroom cabinet, and they’re pretty much what you’d expect: flat glass slates with few buttons and a strong resemblance to a certain Apple product. Despite manufacturers’ best efforts the interesting tech isn’t the hardware: it’s the software, and Google software in particular. Honeycomb, Android 3.0, is the star of CES so far.

We’ve talked a lot about the rise of Linux in embedded devices lately: from our embedded Linux training classes to the Yocto and Meego projects, to a new Linux Foundation fellow. But what about the end users, the people who are deploying Linux in their products?

After about eleven weeks of development, Linus Torvalds has released the Linux kernel 2.6.37. The new version of the main development line has many improvements. Advances in the Ext4 file system mean it should be able to compete with XFS on larger systems and new discard functions can inform slow SSDs of vacant areas, without negatively affecting performance.

For those of you who don’t follow tech news, here’s a brief summary: OpenOffice, supported by Sun, has long been known as a excellent free alternative to MS Office. When Oracle bought Sun, many feared that Oracle’s control might not necessarily be a good thing for the project. Some members of the OpenOffice team decided to create The Document Foundation as a central place for the work to continue in an open community fashion, and even invited Oracle along in the hopes that “we can all just get along”. Well Oracle declined, and the result is that The Document Foundation will soon release LibreOffice, a community-based fork of OpenOffice which has already received backing from the likes of Canonical, Red Hat, and Google. While the final release is not yet available, we can get our hands on the release candidate which should tell us what kind of changes we’re in for.

For those that were hoping that VIA Technologies would pull through in providing their open-source graphics driver support like they had promised with kernel mode-setting, a Gallium3D driver, and being Linux friendly, kiss those thoughts goodbye as they've been basically thrown out the window. Sadly, it's not happening. I had a very productive conversation with VIA's Stewart Haston, who is their international marketing specialist, and their Linux outlook is extremely dark.

Learn to shut down or reboot your Linux system, warn users that the system is going down, and switch to a more or less restrictive runlevel. You can use the material in this article to study for the LPI 101 exam for Linux system administrator certification, or just to learn about shutting down, rebooting, and changing runlevels.

Dell announced a seven-inch Android 2.2 tablet called the Streak 7, featuring a dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, dual cameras, and compatibility with T-Mobile's 4G-like HSPA+ network. The company also announced an unlocked, GSM-ready "Dell Venue" smartphone that runs Android 2.2 on a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, with a 4.1-inch AMOLED display and eight-megapixel camera.

Google released a video overview of Android 3.0 ("Honeycomb"), confirming that it is designed for tablets while hinting at exclusivity for tablets. Honeycomb enhancements include a revamped, "virtual and holographic user interface," improved multitasking, drag and drop widgets, video chat with Google Talk, Google eBooks integration, and tablet-oriented overhauls for the browser, Gmail, and YouTube.

Why are you using Linux on your desktop? Before answering this question, consider the advantages and disadvantages and then come back full circle to your own motivation for using Linux. Nearly every week, I find my news feeds filled with the usual generic articles describing rather vanilla reasons for using Linux on the desktop. Why do I have a problem with this? Perhaps because the reasons often being shared are just echoes of other opinions that clearly aren't that of the author. Instead, we are reading the thoughts and ideas of many articles since past.

Linus Torvalds is starting 2011 off with a bang with the release of the 2.6.37 Linux kernel. The new kernel is the first release since 2.6.36 debuted in October. The goal of the new 2.6.37 kernel is to provide developers with improved Linux performance, security and scalability.

It's official: Phoronix Test Suite 3.0 "Iveland" and OpenBenchmarking.org will be launching next month at the Southern California Linux Expo in Los Angeles, California. In the talk entitled Making More Informed Linux Hardware Choices by Matthew Tippett and myself, Phoronix Test Suite 3.0 and OpenBenchmarking.org will be officially unveiled and launched.