Showing all newswire headlines

Open Recall is a space on The H for those things that are too small to package as news but are worth covering. In this edition: A linuxy gun, Steam fun, Fuduntu, Slax, Samsung source and rekonq.

Has Ubuntu got what it takes to enter the mobile operating system meat-grinder?

I've just uploaded a new Bodhi rootfs.img (which can be gotten from our source forge page here). This image brings a few improvements...

Prior to the start of 2013, it seems fair to say that there hadn't been too many major shakeups in the world of mobile operating systems.

Canonical demonstrated a Galaxy Nexus running Ubuntu's phone interface at the Consumer Electronics Show, but product manager Richard Collins explained that the company isn't quite ready to let us use it. "We're just doing all of the driving for the demos for now simply because we understand how the experience works," Collins told me when I asked if I could test it out. In other words: No touching!

We do expect to be getting a hands-on experience within a few weeks, because Canonical says it will be releasing a version that can be installed by anyone on a Nexus. Today, Ars reporter Andrew Cunningham and I settled for the controlled demo and an interview, with Andrew taking pictures. Canonical's wireless Internet on the CES expo floor wasn't working, but we could get a sense of the phone's basic functionality.

In 1998, Amartya Sen was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics. The lecture he gave, titled "The Possibility of Social Choice," succinctly captured both the subject of his work (generalizing economic theory to cover social groups of disparate actors rather than just individuals or corporations) and his irrepressible sense of humor (because the generalization applied to Arrow's Impossibility Theorem). Sen's crucial insight (for me) is this (emphasis mine):

How to customize the font and color of the panel clock in Linux Mint Mate

A joint statement from Red Hat and VMware sets out to allay fears over the future of the vert.x project. Options such as forking or moving to a foundation are still on the table as discussions continue

Content companies used to getting their way on Capitol Hill got humbled last January when an unprecedented wave of public protest shut down the SOPA and PIPA proposals that would have regulated online copyright. Now that the public has been awakened to the issue, those interested in a more balanced copyright system are thinking over their strategy.

"Everything is on the table, including copyright terms," said Gigi Sohn, the president of Public Knowledge, speaking at a panel at CES 2013. "Let's put it to those who want greater, longer, stronger CR enforcement... why shouldn't we have some balance? Let's turn the clock back and think about the original need for copyright." This year, says Sohn, will be the year "we push our own, affirmative, agenda."

Unifying the most basic bits of our stack is unlikely to be ever complete, but at least we’d like to unify the most boring bits where there’s really no point at all in being different.

When navigating the Linux file system you are sure to encounter different file types. The most used and obvious file types are regular files and directories. However, the Linux operating system has more to offer in terms of file types as it also includes another 5 file types. This short article will help you to recognize all the 7 different file types within the Linux operating system.

In an on-line meeting of Fedora developers today, the unanimous decision was reached to approve "Release Candidate 4" as the final Fedora 18 ("Spherical Cow").

A hackable new Linux robot will be ready to roll late this summer, not to mention walk, crawl, and slither. The Lego Mindstorms EV3 is the first major revamp of the Lego Group's programmable robot kit since 2006, and the first to run embedded Linux.

Nitro is simple, fast and powerful. It can synchronize your appointments on the cloud with Ubuntu One and Dropbox, so you can access them from any computer, not lose any of your tasks and you’ll never get a conflicted copy. Nitro also creates a todo.txt file so you can see or embed your tasks in plain text. Nitro is available for a variety of platforms such as Linux, Mac and as extension of Google Chrome / Chromium. And the development team is working on mobile versions and so they’ll be available in the future.

Today we are pleased to announce the release of OS4 OpenDesktop 13.2. This release brings a long-awaited update to our next-generation desktop operating system platform. With this release we have also refreshed our pre-installed hardware line. Some of the advancements brought to OpenDesktop 13.2 are: Linux kernel 3.2, the 3.5 kernel is still available in the repositories; Thunar 1.6.3; Fogger for creating we-based desktop applications; parental controls; support for Kindle Fire, Kindle Fire HD and Nook-based tablets; a new system profiler and benchmark utility. It also brings updates to applications and device drivers as well as bug fixes in the kernel itself.

It takes way too many cues from Apple's Mac OS X, which puts me off a bit, but I feel like a lot of other people would like that. Plus, it is put together extremely well.

I was proudly wearing one of my Salt Stack shirts the other day when my daughter asked me, "What is Salt Stack?" I began by explaining the problem it solved. If you have multiple servers and want to do things to those servers, you would need to log in to each one and do those things one at a time on each one. They could be fairly simple tasks like restarting them or checking how long they have been running. Or, you might want to do more complicated things like installing software and then configuring that software based upon your own specific criteria. You also might want to add users and configure permissions for them.

The One Laptop Per Child Association (OLPCA) has announced the next generation of its Linux-based XO laptop and a new XO Tablet design at CES in Las Vegas. According to a report on The Verge, chip manufacturer Marvell demonstrated the XO 4.0 Touch laptop at the conference but did not show the XO Tablet which is being developed by Sakar International.

New kernel, a number of application tweaks and quite a few packages updated for security fixes. Also made better use of a battery monitor for laptop use, automatically triggers a system shutdown when power gets low enough... gives user 60 seconds to cancel if they need more time to finish up. Fun is fun, but who really needs crashes and file corruption, anyway?

Yes, it's true. I hate touchpads and so I always plug in an external mouse. Unfortunately, the touchpad wasn't recognized as a touchpad, making it impossible to turn off via desktop tools. Here's how I exterminated it using the Linux shell.