Showing all newswire headlines

The Via Technologies APC project announced the availability of a preview release of Firefox OS for its $99 APC Paper mini-PC and similar $79 APC Rock single-board computer. Both products normally run Android 4.0 on an 800MHz Via WonderMedia Cortex-A9 system-on-chip, and offer 512MB RAM and 4GB flash, along with HDMI, USB, and Ethernet connections.

Valve announced that in 2014 multiple vendors will offer a variety of Steam Machines — living room devices that will play Valve’s Steam game library, and also stream multimedia content, on its newly announced open source Linux SteamOS gaming distribution. Meanwhile, developers can apply for a chance to receive one of 300 Steam Machines prototypes to be sent out later this year.

Here are some points stating Linux's best features and why one should choose Linux Desktop over Windows.

It was nearly one year ago to the week that DRI3 (a.k.a. "DRI3000") was proposed during XDC2012. Now this week during XDC2013, Keith Packard has provided a status update on his pet project...

GNOME is one of the primary open-source desktops in use on Linux desktops . The GNOME project benefits from a large and diverse community of developers who contribute to its success. For the 3.10 release more than 30,000 changes were made by almost 1,000 individual contributors, Matthias Clasen, member of the GNOME release team and supervisor and software engineering at Red Hat, told eWEEK.

ZTE reportedly will introduce a dual-core Firefox OS phone in 2014. The company recently started selling unlocked models of its initial Firefox OS phone, the ZTE Open, on eBay US and UK for $80, following its launch in Spain, Venezuela, and Colombia earlier this year, and reportedly has already moved 100,000 units.

Oracle's (ORCL) In-Memory Database, Cloud and Engineered Systems are on center stage at OpenWorld 2013. But here's an interesting side show: MongoDB, provider of a NoSQL database, has a major presence here at the conference. And Oracle's own NoSQL database is generating some noise. Here's why VARs should pay attention.

Dot Categories: DeveloperA recent Dot article explained changes in the KDE release cycle that will be happening with the upcoming introduction of Frameworks 5. The changes to KDE's libraries are enough to warrant a name change from 'Platform' to 'Frameworks'. This article provides some background, an overview of the changes, and the benefits and improvements that can be expected from KDE Frameworks 5 for the entire Qt community. A later article will address Frameworks 5 benefits for KDE developers.

NetGear is shipping a hybrid IPTV set-top box (STB) that supports terrestrial DVB-T, OTT, broadcast, and VoD HD video. The STB1100 runs Linux 2.6 on Cavium’s ARM 11-based PureVu Celestial CNC1800L STB processor, supports adaptive bitrate (ABR) streaming technology, and offers I/O including WiFi, Ethernet, and USB ports.

300 Beta testers will get their hands on Valve’s prototype Steam Box, with other hardware partners making a variety of Steam Machines for customers. All expected in 2014

Michael Coates, Director of Security Assurance at Mozilla explains how the security process works at the open source browser vendor. -

Version 1.2 is now available from the download page. This release has three main focuses. Stabilizing the installer, Linux gaming and removing the deb-multimedia.org third-party repository. Changes in version 1.2: incorporates a couple of remaining installer bug fixes; Kwheezy Profiler, a new GUI tool to backup and restore user profiles; rekonq browser updated to 2.3.2; Steam client installed by default; PlayOnLinux installed by default; some open-source games (KDE Games, DreamChess) included; deb-multimedia.org packages replaced by official Debian packages, the necessary codecs / decoders included from Kwheezy repository instead; some minor tweaking here and there; version 1.1 installations can be upgraded to 1.2 via Apper or apt-get.

While most developers are focused around new innovations for Wayland (or Mir), there's still life ahead for the X.Org Server in maintaining legacy support and other cases where the xorg-server will not die for years to come. In improving the X.Org Server, Adam Jackson at Red Hat has been working on rewriting the GLX portion of the X.Org Server.

Google leaves Oracle's MySQL and goes running into the arms of MariaDB. Sounds like an open source version of West Side Story, Silicon Valley Style...Maria, I just met a girl named Maria, and suddenly the name will never be the same, again...

So while Valve Software is still working on the Steam Machine, you can download this edition of Sabayon Linux, burn it to a DVD (it’s a 1.4 GB ISO file) or transfer it to a USD stick, boot it from any computer, and enjoy your “Steam Machine.”

Task Coach is a to-do application that lets you set priorities, and organize everything you have to do for that day.

This article is part of an interview series highlighting the speakers of the upcoming All Things Open 2013 conference in Raleigh, NC

Being a bra

“Click to play” means that every time a webpage wants to take advantage of a plugin, the user will have to click to give it permission. Eventually, Google hopes to replace the old architecture with PPAPI or the Pepper Plugin API, which supposedly fixes a lot of NPAPI’s problems, if they can get traction outside of Google which doesn’t seem likely at this juncture. The folks at Mozilla have already said, “Mozilla is not interested in or working on Pepper at this time.” That sounds like a “no” to me.

The Fedora 20 "Heisenbug" alpha release has arrived with a preview of the latest fantastic, free, and open source technology currently under development. The Fedora 20 release coincides nicely with the 10th anniversary of Fedora. The first Fedora release (then called Fedora Core 1) came out on November 6, 2003. Since then, the Fedora Project has become an active and vibrant community that produces nearly a dozen "spins" that are tailor made for desktop users, hardware design, gaming, musicians, artists, and early classroom environments.

This article is part of an interview series highlighting the speakers of the upcoming All Things Open 2013 conference in Raleigh, NC Joanne Rohde is CEO of Axial Exchange, which creates mobile tools to help patients overcome the challenges of living with chronic disease. She believes healthcare must become more consumer driven and transparent, and she doesn’t believe that’s at odds with patient privacy. Previously, she served as COO and Director of Health IT Strategy at Red Hat and CIO of UBS Investment Banking IT. In her talk at the All Things Open conference in October she will expand on the insights she provides in this interview, from the place where healthcare and technology meet, to include why open source is the answer for better healthcare and how it does not compromise privacy and security.