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The mission: use GNOME Shell as the primary desktop for an entire week. Do I choose to accept it? Yes. It's easy enough to try something for a short time and discard it in a negative manner, which has been the case for me with GNOME Shell in the past, but perhaps it can be fun to challenge yourself to try something properly and for a longer time. Or perhaps you're a masochist! Either way, feel free to join me...

Parker Higgins has a troubling story over at Medium about how he received a bogus copyright takedown on a recording of the famous "Houston, we have a problem" audio snippet from the Apollo 13 mission, which Higgins had uploaded to his Soundcloud page. As Higgins notes, the audio is clearly, without any doubt, in the public domain and free from any and all copyright restrictions -- yet it was still taken down. This is particularly stupid on a variety of levels...

Perhaps more annoying, as Higgins notes, is that the reasons that Soundcloud gives for disputing the takedown... don't apply in this situation, because they all assume copyright... As Higgins notes this shows the rather nasty assumptions of "permission" culture that everything must have a copyright and everything must be licensed:

Linux Mint 17 Xfce was released today. Let's look at what it offer to the user. This is not going to be a full-blown review, rather a quick screenshot tour.

I received a bogus copyright takedown notice for using public domain audio on SoundCloud yesterday. The sound in question—the famous “Houston, we have a problem” snippet of the Apollo 13 mission—is incontrovertibly available to all, for any use, without copyright restrictions. The fact that it’s been yanked from my SoundCloud page, though, is a sad demonstration of how completely many online services have swallowed the fallacy that “unauthorized” means “unacceptable”...

... So I was disheartened when I got the takedown, and even more so when I looked through the guidelines for disputing an automatic match and found that I faced a presumption of guilt. There’s no option for “The work in question is not restricted by copyright,” or even “I am making a fair use.” Instead, the “valid reasons” offered are variations on the theme that I actually have permission—not that I never needed it in the first place.

Motorola Solutions unveiled a rugged, enterprise handheld that runs Android 4.1, 1D or 2D scanning, and offers a choice of brick, gun, or turret styles. When Motorola split into Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions back in 2011, Motorola Mobility was supposed to be the Android company and Motorola Solutions the Windows company. Yet, the latter, […]

The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 17 “Qiana” Xfce.

Linux Mint 17 is a long term support release which will be supported until 2019. It comes with updated software and brings refinements and many new features to make your desktop even more comfortable to use.

Two factor authentication with OTP using privacyIDEA and FreeRADIUS on CentOS In this howto we will show, how you can set up a the two factor authentication and management system privacyIDEA on Cent OS 6.5. privacyIDEA is a system that can manage authentication devices - especially OTP tokens of any kind. We will set up the system to be served via Apache2, store the token information in a MySQL database and provide authentication via FreeRADIUS server, thus being able to add two factor authentication to all services accessible via RADIUS like SSL VPNs and pam_radius.

Amptek is prepping a uClinux- and Cortex-M3 based “iCon” SBC for IoT, equipped with WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, USB, and CAN, and running on under half a Watt. uClinux on a microcontroller represents the simplest expression of the Linux operating system, sort of the flipside to Android or Ubuntu on the high end. Despite this platform’s limitations, however, it draws only a smidgin of electricity, and provides a capable wireless platform while also supplying numerous industrial interfaces. All these attributes are showcased by the iCon single board computer (SBC), which probably deserves more than being stuck in the doldrums on Kickstarter, with nine days left to go.

While not yet officially announced Mount & Blade: Warbound is out for Linux, downloadable and might even be playable for you.

If you saw last issue you might remember the DoodleBorg, a massive remote-controlled tank of a vehicle designed and built by PiBorg, makers of add-ons for the Raspberry Pi. This month we’re looking at their XLoBorg, a board designed to help you measure movement and determine direction, among other things. At under £10/$16, it’s a bargain too, because as well as featuring a three- axis accelerometer, it’s also kitted out with a three-axis magnetometer (digital compass). In this tutorial we’ll be using the accelerometer to turn our Pi into a tilt controller and mock up a simple demo to show how you could integrate it into your Pygame-powered games…

The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 17 'Qiana' Xfce. Linux Mint 17 is a long term support release which will be supported until 2019. It comes with updated software and brings refinements and many new features to make your desktop even more comfortable to use. The Update Manager was hugely improved. It shows more information, it looks better, it feels faster, and it gets less in your way. It no longer needs to reload itself in root mode when you click on it. It no longer checks for an Internet connection or waits for the network manager and it no longer locks the APT cache at session startup. Linux Mint 17 features Xfce 4.10, MDM 1.6, a Linux kernel 3.13 and an Ubuntu 14.04 package base.

In today's open source roundup: Chrome OS is getting Android apps. Plus: Get great Linux games on sale at Steam, and Makulu Linux KDE 6.0 released.

Can Google's Rebel Alliance of Android and Chrome OS finally dent Microsoft's Windows Evil Empire? I expect we'll see this desktop operating system war start in late 2014.

David Herrmann wanted to disable the virtual terminal subsystem in order to save space on a kernel that didn't need a VT. But, he still wanted to see kernel oops output for debugging purposes. The problem was that only the VT subsystem would display oops output—and he'd just disabled it.

If you're a big-time open source fanatic like me, you probably get questions about open source alternatives to proprietary tools rather frequently. From the 'Alternatives to Microsoft® Visio®' department, here are three tips that should help designers who use Visio in an open source environment. If you need an open source option for opening Visio files, a revived open source application for creating diagrams, or a lesser-known open source tool for converting Visio® stencils, these tips are for you. read more

The Asus 1015E isn't great hardware...at all. But Linux makes it workable for a great price. The larger question is, why didn't netbooks catch on?

Torchlight already exists on Linux but it cannot be found anywhere but the Ubuntu Software Centre! What about those of us who do not use Ubuntu? Why is this charming hack and slash action roleplaying game being withheld from our willing wallets?

Get to grips with yEd, one of the best flowcharting tools for communicating information about how processes work

The other day I heard the phrase every open source educator hates to hear: "Well, you get what you pay for..." So, this time in my talk to the group, instead of explaining that 'free' means 'free as in freedom' not 'free of cost', I changed it up. I replied, "You're right you do." read more

This guide explains how to install and configure Samba server in Debian 7 with anonymous and secured samba servers. Samba is an Open Source/Free Software suite that provides seamless file and print services to SMB/CIFS clients. Samba is freely available, unlike other SMB/CIFS implementations, and allows for interoperability between Linux/Unix servers and Windows-based clients.