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In this roundup of Today in Open Source: Is Android better than iOS? Plus: How to run Linux on your Windows computer, and a Pennsylvania school district embraces open source solutions

Simple DirectMedia Layer is a cross-platform development library designed to provide low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, and graphics hardware via OpenGL and Direct3D.

The Red Hat-sponsored community Linux distribution maps a new path forward that could help it provide more targeted solutions for desktop, cloud and server users. Members of the open-source Fedora Linux Project gathered at the new Flock conference in Charleston, S.C., from Aug. 9 to 12 to discuss the future of their Linux distribution.

I often wonder why Linux desktops are the way they are. You know, why stuff that’s supposed to work out of the box, don’t and why some of the better features of the desktop environments and applications are buried or not enabled by default. I could go on and on about default settings like these, but I think the point I’m trying to make is clear. If a feature that has the potential to make a system better is not enabled out of the box, to most users, especially new users, it might as well not exist.

Adlink unveiled a rugged x86-based PC/104 SBC with shock and vibration resistance, extended temperature support, and legacy ISA bus support. The 3.6 x 3.8-inch CoreModule1-86DX2 is equipped with a DMP 1GHz Vortex86DX2 system-on-chip, and features I/O including graphics, Ethernet, SATA, USB, serial, and A/D, and offers mini-PCIe and modular PC/104 expansion.

Life at a gaming company isn’t always fun-and-games. It’s also a demanding IT environment with a huge amount of data to manage. Using various Hadoop open source tools, the gaming company behind League of Legends supported hypergrowth and delivered more timely analytics.

Microsoft will unleash Windows 8.1 for world+dog to download in October, it's claimed, a year after it released the touchscreen-friendly, tile-tastic Windows 8. The software giant is preparing to release version 8.1 of its operating system to computer makers later this month, but it has been reported the public will get the upgrade for their PCs in October.

The Linux kernel is large with numerous features that can be configured and there are still many more features that can be configured.The next kernel feature that can be configured is a x86 random number generator (x86 architectural random number generator (ARCH_RANDOM)).

The graphics stack in Linux comprises a number of distinct projects, and in this article we'll take a look at the current development of X.org, Wayland, and Cairo. Linux graphics have undergone a major evolution over the past decade in two respects. First has been a shift from 2D system rendering, to today's hardware-accelerated 3D system compositing.

On Linux systems, numerous users often come across a program or process that locks up. The user will usually kill the software if the system does not do it first. Users may be familiar with some of the kill commands and signals, but does anyone understand all of them? There are four common kill commands and a total of 64 kill signals.

Sabayon Linux 13.08, a desktop distribution based on Gentoo following a rolling release model and providing multiple desktops, was released today.

Mozilla is now out with its Firefox 24 browser as a beta release, providing developers and early adopters with a preview of technologies that will become generally available for consumers in the next six weeks.

You awake from the cold chill of your cryo-tube to discover cybernetic implants grafted to your flesh and the crew of the starship Von Braun slaughtered. The infected roam the halls, their screams and moans beckoning you to join them as the rogue artificial intelligence known as SHODAN taunts and ridicules your feeble attempt to unravel the horrifying mystery of the derelict starship Von Braun.

The architect Alstair Parvin shared is this TED Talk—it's a fascinating view of how open source thinking can transform architecture and multiply its benefits to society at large.

Asking yourself howto merge and enhance your internal IT with public- and/or private Cloud resources such as Amazon EC2 or Eucalyptus Instances? Please find the answer in the following detailed openQRM Use-Case with focus on Amazon EC2 Public Cloud.

Advantech has breathed new life into its Linux-friendly AMD-based PC/104 single board computer family with a fanless, ruggedized PC/104 model built around an AMD G-Series APU. The PCM-3356 offers up to 4GB of DDR3 RAM, features dual gigabit Ethernet ports, SATA, four USB ports, three serial ports, and two Mini-PCie sockets, and supports -40 to 85°C extended temperature operation.

Nmap is popular network scanner software that can actively probe a particular host or a network to infer in-depth information about them. While Nmap itself is a command-line utility, you can run it along with its GUI front-end called Zenmap. This tutorial talks about how to scan particular hosts or networks by using Nmap GUI.

Few would deny that the rise of GitHub as a popular hosting service for software projects is one of the most significant developments to affect open source during the past five years. GitHub's extraordinary success is necessary context for understanding the criticism leveled at it during the past year from some within or close to the open source world. This criticism has focused on licensing, or rather the lack of it: it is claimed that GitHub hosts an enormous amount of code with no explicit software license. Some critics have suggested that this situation results from a combination of the ignorance of younger developers about legal matters and willful inaction by GitHub's management. In a followup article I will discuss the measures recently taken by GitHub to address these concerns; this article explores aspects of the complaint itself.

When Mark Shuttleworth founded Canonical in 2004, he made a promise to his staff: "You can count on me for two years." The idea was "to get the team to relax" and focus on the newly created Ubuntu operating system. Shuttleworth wanted to eliminate the pressure of becoming a blockbuster business overnight.

He issued no ultimatums. And although Shuttleworth wanted Canonical to be self-sustaining, he didn't threaten to abandon Ubuntu if it lost money. "When we started, I told the team two years," he recently told Ars. "I didn't say, 'till it's profitable.' I said, 'You can count on me for two years. What I want to really see is evidence of a clear path to success and really interesting disruption.'"

The Xen Project User Summit comes to New Orleans on September 18. Talks include Greg Kroah-Hartman's "Free yourself from the tyranny of your cloud provider!", information on how to run whatever kernel you want on your Xen VM, regardless of what your hosting company provides.