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Clement Lefebvre proudly announced a minutes ago, December 10, the immediate availability for download of the OEM installation images of the recently released Linux Mint 14 operating system.

The GNOME 3/Cinnamon edition is still too unstable. The MATE edition is much better than in version 13 LTS "Maya", and I can now recommend it as much as I was past editions of Linux Mint with GNOME 2.

Overall, I’ve developed a preference for using open source tools and components whenever it’s feasible. Here are some of the reasons why I prefer to develop with open source code.

After posting a rapid personal rebuff to Richard Stallman's criticism of Ubuntu's Amazon Lens and its search servers, Jono Bacon has apologised for calling Stallman's position "childish"

Dropbox has announced that Python creator Guido van Rossum will be joining the company. Dropbox has been built using Python from the beginning and its design was influenced by the language's design philosophy

Among major computer hardware makers, Dell continues to show growing signs of having a cohesive, far-reaching strategy surrounding open source. We've reported on the company's work with Canonical to bring Ubuntu-based systems to both India and China, including an expansion of this effort. Dell also recently announced its Ubuntu laptop, part of its "Project Sputnik" effort, targeted at developers. And, Dell is offering new laptops with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) pre-loaded. According to the latest reports, we're going to see more open source-friendly moves from Dell going forward.

XFCE is a lightweight desktop environment. For Linux Mint 13, the was an XFCE edition in addition to the Cinnamon and Mate editions, but for Linux Mint 14, there isn't. This short guide explains how to install XFCE on your Linux Mint 14 desktop.

The Raspberry Pi can be the affordable route to teaching schoolchildren the lost idea that computer programming can be fun

You win some, you lose some," as the old saying goes, but rarely do the two occur nearly simultaneously. Sure enough, however, that's just what happened to open source software in Germany recently: It was being celebrated in Munich even as it was dumped in Freiburg.

When you use CPU intensive, multithreaded software tools on your multicore-processor such as 'pigz' or 'pbzip2' (for example), the OS loses its responsiveness (more or less) and it will slow down other running tasks, and it is something that should be expected too.

However, when running such applications while performing your other daily computer related tasks, the degraded OS responsiveness can become an issue.

Patents icon In a brief submitted to a US Court of Appeals, various major internet and IT companies have stated that the combination of an abstract idea and a computer should not be eligible for patent protection. "Many computer-related patent claims just describe an abstract idea at a high level of generality and say to perform it on a computer or over the internet", said the brief that was submitted by companies such as Google and Facebook on Friday. Other signatories include Dell, Intuit, Homeaway, Rackspace, Red Hat and Zynga.

Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Google Inc. have joined forces to offer more than $500 million to buy Eastman Kodak Co. (EKDKQ)’s patents out of bankruptcy, said people familiar with the situation.

The two companies, competing for dominance of the smartphone market, have partnered after leading two separate groups this summer to buy some of Kodak’s 1,100 imaging patents, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the process is private.

Takeaway: It’s taken quite some time, but Netflix streaming video has finally arrived on the Ubuntu Linux desktop. In this easy, step-by-step, Jack Wallen shows you how.

Mac Linux USB Loader is a tool that allows you to take an ISO of a Linux distribution and make it boot using EFI on Mac.

The Linux-based GPU cluster runs the Virtual OpenCL cluster platform, which allows the graphics cards to function as if they were running on a single desktop computer. ocl-Hashcat Plus, a freely available password-cracking suite optimized for GPU computing, runs on top, allowing the machine to tackle at least 44 other algorithms at near-unprecedented speeds. In addition to brute-force attacks, the cluster can bring that speed to cracks that use a variety of other techniques, including dictionary attacks containing millions of words.

A moment of inattention has allowed the ITU’s proposed deep packet inspection (DPI) standard to escape. The slip-up happened when an Australian CryptoParty activist Asher Wolf put out a public call on Twitter asking for a copy of the text. The ITU duly sent it by e-mail – only later realising its mistake and asking her to treat it as for her eyes only.

After last year discovering a major Linux kernel power regression that was widely debated until the Phoronix test automation software bisected the problem to get to the bottom of the situation, there's more active power regressions today on the Linux desktop. As I've mentioned on Twitter and in other articles in weeks prior there's a few regressions, but one of them for at least some notebooks is causing a very significant increase in power consumption. This situation that remains unresolved as of the Linux 3.7 kernel can cause the system to be going through about 20% more power.

The Video Game Awards happened on Friday night in California. During the event, Gabe Newell of Valve commented a bit more on their next-generation console / living room PC plans. To no surprise, Linux plays a big role...

Corsix-TH the open source engine to run Theme Hospital has hit 0.11 (well they did a while ago actually) and soon 0.20 will be out as well it seems.

LXer Feature: 09-Dec-2012

The latest installment of the Weekly Roundup. Enjoy!