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I am pleased to announce that the 'Legacy' branch of Descent|OS has been updated to version 3.0.2. Since the main focus of the Ubuntu-based edition is stability, the main upgrades were big fixes. I have fixed the driver install issue, and also fixed the audio applet issue. Here is a list of the full changelog: PulseAudio is officially default, Mate-media-pulse is much more well-implemented than its GStreamer sibling, so I have implemented it to maintain consistency and make it easier for people to change their audio settings; MATE is updated to 1.4, this is actually a huge milestone, because MATE 1.4 is a stable, well-implemented version, and works better with everything in Descent|OS; Lubuntu Software Center is included.

In the week ending 26 January - Mozilla releases an update to Firefox 18, Vert.x heads to the Eclipse Foundation, Wikipedia moves to new servers, a controversial study surfaces, features coming in Linux 3.8 and Mega's security analysed

Now Macmillan, another one of the “Big Six” publishers, announced Thursday its new plan for selling e-books to American public libraries. Macmillan now says its titles will cost $25 (by comparison, some of its same bestselling titles in the Kindle store go for $8 to $12)—and once acquired by a library, each will be available for two years or 52 check-outs, whichever comes first.

The two previous batches of regulations, issued in 2006 and 2010, respectively, granted users permission to unlock their phones in order to switch wireless carriers. But in the wake of a 2010 decision holding that software is licensed rather than sold, the Library reversed itself and declared phone unlocking illegal once again. The Librarian was also influenced by claims that there are more unlocked phones on the market than there were three years ago.

X3:Reunion previously an LGP title (it's been re-ported) is now available on Steam and playable on Linux, not yet listed under Linux in the official Steam store but it is installable and playable now!

Last week-end, just before leaving for some travel, I became aware that gnome-panel was being forked into consort-panel (btw, I commented on that post, but I guess it was a bit too late since it's stuck in the moderation queue).

We are a bit past the midpoint of the development cycle for GNOME 3.8. That seems like a nice time to take a look at what new things are coming – most new features are visible at least in rudimentary form at this point.

Shortly after releasing CrossOver 12, Codeweavers, the company behind CrossOver and Wine, has released a new version of CrossOver. CrossOver is an emulation software for running Windows applications on Linux. Although Steam for Linux has been in public beta for a while now, a lot of Windows applications will probably not be ported to Linux soon.

Three years ago today we flipped the switch on at opensource.com. Technically, we removed the htaccess file to allow anyone to access the site. Since that point, we've been steadily providing stories that highlight how open source is having a positive impact on the world and building a community around that mission.

Last week I pointed out how Google is contributing a lot to Coreboot since they are enjoying this open-source BIOS/UEFI because they can ship it on Chrome OS devices for allowing very fast boot times, great customization possibilities, and good security with having full source access. In this article are some development statistics surrounding Coreboot to show the most prolific contributors, the pace of development, and other traits for this open-source project formerly known as LinuxBIOS.

Cinnarch is a desktop Linux distribution based on Arch Linux and using the Cinnamon as the default and only supported desktop environment. Like Arch, it follows a rolling-release development model.

Each year we invite our readers to share their thoughts with us about opensource.com in our annual reader survey. This is our fourth year offering the survey and we encourage you to help us better understand what works, what doesn't, what you would like to see more of, and how we can continue to involve you in our community.

One of the more difficult issues the author of a self-published book faces is whether to pay others to help promote their book. Is it money well spent, or just dollars down the loo?

This tutorial explains the installation of a Samba fileserver on Fedora 18 and how to configure it to share files over the SMB protocol as well as how to add users. Samba is configured as a standalone server, not as a domain controller. In the resulting setup, every user has his own home directory accessible via the SMB protocol and all users have a shared directory with read-/write access.

Valve has released next title of the company, after Team Fortress 2, on Steam for Linux - Half-Life. The first part of the series appeared in 1998, it won over 50 Game of the Year awards and is undoubtedly one of the most successful video games of all time.

The Microsoft translator provides an API that you can use for automated translation. It currently supports about 39 languages. True to the nature of open source I found that someone had already written a python wrapper to the API. I extended the wrapper to use the requests and pofile packages.

This week, an IT pro confronts his cloud fears, why the programming profession isn't getting replaced by robots and soft skills every IT pro should know.

I think that’s more power than any other device of its type that I’ve come across. With it, you can turn any TV with the right connectivity into an Android device or TV.

Designed to fit somewhere between Fedora and Ubuntu, this fork of Fedora is a fully functional and easy to use distribution

So Half-Life is now Beta and with it came a little suprise, Counter Strike 1.6 beta is there also!