Showing all newswire headlines

As I have written in Phoronix articles many times before, my particular recommendation for those HTPC users or anyone just watching many movies/videos on their Linux desktop is to use NVIDIA GeForce GPUs with the proprietary driver. NVIDIA VDPAU is widely-supported and tends to "just work" on any modern Linux distribution, the binary driver, and all popular Linux multimedia software like XBMC, VLC, and MPlayer. NVIDIA's Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix does a very good job at offloading the video decode work to the graphics hardware rather than the CPU. Even a very low-end GeForce GPU can get the job done.

So the next instalment of the Steam hardware survey has landed and it's looking good for Linux so far!

If you ever find yourself in a situation in which your computer doesn’t start, and you’ve already tried the “Last Known Good Configuration” option and it doesn’t work, what else can you do? SystemDiscs has a solution that might actually take you away from your frustrations with an automatic repair application called Easy Recovery Essentials (EasyRE, in short). This is a great software that allows you to repair your Windows and backup your files even if you can’t boot into Windows, and we have a giveaway too. Read on for more detail.

MapBox has launched an alpha version of the new web-based map editor for the OpenStreetMap collaborative mapping project. The new editor is called the iD editor and is built using JavaScript and the D3.js data visualisation library. Development was funded as part of a grant by the Knight Foundation, announced in September, to develop new tools for the OpenStreetMap project. iD will eventually replace the OpenStreetMap project's current editor, Potlatch 2. In contrast to its predecessor, iD does not depend on Flash to run. The new editor was developed in conjunction with Richard Fairhurst, the original author of Potlatch 2.

Looking for a fee fully featured VLC remote control for iphone and ipad that works perfectly with Ubuntu as host, with no advertising? The Remote Control for VLC by Sybu Data does exactly that. The design philosophy was to create an application that is easy to use with a simplistic yet functional User Interface, that is free and does not serve advertisements.

Say hello to Chromebook in the corporate office as multi-billion dollar technology services company CDW offers Chromebooks and Chromebook support and management to its corporate customers.

Awesome Window Manager offers three simple themes for users that need a change. Here you can get a brief look at the default themes, along with instructions to sample them for yourself. Although style choices may be limited, this is one of the most efficient window managers available.

Dot Categories: KDE Official NewsThe KDE Community is proud to announce the 4.10 releases of KDE Plasma Workspaces, Applications and Development Platform. This release combines the latest technologies along with many improvements to bring users the premier collection of Free Software for home and professional use. Special thanks to the KDE Quality Team for managing a comprehensive testing program for this release. Their work greatly assisted developers and played a key role in maintaining quality and stability. The highlights of the release are presented below.

Recently, I’ve been frustrated... sad... angry. Just over a year ago, a friend and fellow member of the free culture community, Ilya Zhitomirskiy, committed suicide. He was 22. Just one week ago, an acquaintance, a friend of many close friends, and—really—a role model, just one year older than myself and networked with many institutions and individuals I have come to work with and/or admire (such as MIT, the Berkman Center, the EFF, Creative Commons; frankly, there are too many individual people to list) committed suicide. Aaron Swartz was admired for his bravery to stand up for his ideals, and the work he put into the world demonstrated no less than exactly those ideals. I followed his actions with awe and complete understanding.

Groovy is one of the most-interesting JVM languages, but its longtime performance issues kept it confined to narrow niches. However, a series of important upgrades look like they might push the language into the mainstream. There's the conundrum.

Six years after the launch of the IcedTea project, developer Andrew John Hughes feels that it's time to take stock. Questions were previously raised over the role of the project, which aims to make it possible to use OpenJDK using only free software build tools for GNU/Linux platforms, when OpenJDK 7 was released.

I received an email from Piriform, makers of CCleaner, asking me to remove a feature from BleachBit that allows individual BleachBit users to use winapp2.ini files created by the community of users. I don't see how the terms of use apply, but I am checking into it.

Last week I heard it not once, not twice but three times in three different conversations with three different people that building KDE software and getting involved was mysterious and perceived as difficult. We have documentation on the KDE wikis for this, but I admit that it can take time to read through everything and find the shortest path from point A (e.g. a machine with Linux installed) to point B (building software from git.kde.org).

So doing it's rounds right now is news about John Carmack of id software chiming on on Wine gaming, here are his thoughts and my thoughts.

Livalink the awesome new FPS made in Unity on Desura that was highlighted thanks to Hamish's post on GOL has got an update!

This tutorial shows how to combine four single storage servers (running Ubuntu 12.10) to a distributed replicated storage with GlusterFS. Nodes 1 and 2 (replication1) as well as 3 and 4 (replication2) will mirror each other, and replication1 and replication2 will be combined to one larger storage server (distribution). Basically, this is RAID10 over network. If you lose one server from replication1 and one from replication2, the distributed volume continues to work. The client system (Ubuntu 12.10 as well) will be able to access the storage as if it was a local filesystem. GlusterFS is a clustered file-system capable of scaling to several peta-bytes. It aggregates various storage bricks over Infiniband RDMA or TCP/IP interconnect into one large parallel network file system. Storage bricks can be made of any commodity hardware such as x86_64 servers with SATA-II RAID and Infiniband HBA.

For the first time, Chrome and Firefox can “talk” to each other via WebRTC. WebRTC is a new set of technologies that brings clear crisp voice, sharp high-definition (HD) video and low-delay communication to the web browser.

You just think that's a Chromebook beckoning you with an open source OS, easier upgradeability and fast connections to the cloud. All those qualities could make it a Linux netbook in disguise -- or at least what the netbooks of a few years ago promised before they all started selling preloaded with Windows. The key? More manufacturers buying into the flexibility of the Linux kernel in the Chrome OS.

Last week I mentioned that I was going to do a live cast on Google Hangout .. and I did. It went well enough to consider doing it again, in fact. Having learned the ropes a bit in the process and played with a few tools over the weekend, I'm going to try to make it a weekly adventure. Yes, my weekly live vidcast is back after it sat lonely and scared in my closet for several years! ;)

The transaction will be financed through a combination of cash and equity contributed by Mr. Dell, cash funded by investment funds affiliated with Silver Lake, cash invested by MSD Capital, L.P., a $2 billion loan from Microsoft, rollover of existing debt, as well as debt financing that has been committed by BofA Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Credit Suisse and RBC Capital Markets (in alphabetical order), and cash on hand. There is no financing condition.