Showing all newswire headlines

Perusing the open source news today I came across this piece by “DarkDuck” titled "Top 5 Free Suites to Replace Microsoft Office”. It strikes me as odd that still, towards the end of 2012, the open source community is still interested in replacing the bloated corpse of Microsoft Office. In my mind, we now have so many other options available.

Fancy giving Linux a whirl? Here are all the factors that you should look for when choosing from the wide range of available Linux distributions.

Dream Studio 12.04.1 has been officially released. New features include: upgraded base system, based on the Ubuntu 12.04.1 install disc; many upgraded packages, such as Ardour, Blender, and GIMP; the Dream Studio audio indicator by default, instead of QJackctl; the addition of a hardware-specific software installer for some audio hardware; the addition of all the KXStudio repositories; the addition of slowmovideo by default, as well as a new graphics repository; many, many, small tweaks and performance upgrades. This is the latest release in the 12.04 series for Dream Studio. Any current 12.04 users will be upgraded automatically.

Back in July, we covered Verizon's argument that network neutrality regulations violated the firm's First Amendment rights. In Verizon's view, slowing or blocking packets on a broadband network is little different from a newspaper editor choosing which articles to publish, and should enjoy the same constitutional protection. Plenty of folks disagree with Verizon's view. On Thursday a number of public interest groups, academics, and former commissioners of the Federal Communications Commission filed amicus briefs taking issue with Verizon's constitutional argument. Verizon, they argued, was ignoring the fundamental distinction between Verizon's own speech and its role as a conduit for the speech of others.

A (well, now former) coworker let me know about a problem he was having with a Lenovo Thinkcentre M92p. It booted Fedora UEFI install media fine, but after an apparently successful installation refused to boot. UEFI installs on Windows worked perfectly. Secure Boot was quickly ruled out, but this could still have been a number of things. The most interesting observation was that the Fedora boot option didn't appear in the firmware boot menu at all, but Windows did.

Two years ago, after Jay Bradner made a remarkable breakthrough—the discovery of a molecule that, in mice, appeared to trick certain cancer cells into becoming normal cells—he did something unusual. Instead of huddling with lawyers to file for a patent on the molecule, Bradner simply gave his work away. Hoping to get the discovery into the hands of any scientist who could advance it, he published the structure of the compound (called JQ1) and mailed samples to labs around the world. The move, he says, felt like “the more efficient way to do science—and maybe the more honorable way.”

The release of a first alpha of PHP 5.5 marks the official beginning of the 5.5.0 release cycle for the scripting language's next major version. PHP 5.5 also marks the end of support for Windows XP and Windows 2003.

Many educators might have been hesitant in the past regarding embracing open source software. But not any more as the number that has taken to open source software (OSS) has increased significantly over the years. As more teachers as well as institutions are now engaging with organizations such as Open Source Schools, SchoolForge among others. Consequently, these educators have begun to realize the potential inherent in OSS that can help transform education in many ways.

FOSDEM is one of the largest gatherings of Free Software contributors in the world and happens each February in Brussels (This year on the 2nd & 3rd of February). It’s one of the few community-centered conferences in Europe, and the largest volunteer-run Free Software event in Europe as well. Proposals are now invited for talks on KDE, KDE software and general desktop topics. KDE will be in the Cross Desktop Developer Room (devroom), along with Enlightenment, Gnome, Razor, Unity and XFCE. This is a unique opportunity to share KDE with a wide audience of developers.

This week, 10 steps to secure cloud services, why the little things matter when it comes to developing apps and tablets are kicking laptops to curb.

The Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo Wii are nearing their end. As powerful as they have been in the living room, gamers want more. They want better graphics, new user experiences, and more mobility, as much as those things can be at odds with one another. A new wave of game consoles is rising to meet some of those challenges, but perhaps not all: the Nintendo Wii U doesn’t seem to be that much more powerful than an Xbox 360, and the next Xbox and PlayStation are rumored to use what amounts to mid-range PC hardware in order to save costs.

The OpenStreetMap community has announced that it will host its second global "mapathon" during the weekend of 23–25 November; this time, the event is code-named "Operation Cowboy" and will focus on the US. Concentrating on "armchair mapping", aerial images will be surveyed at local meetings, as well as from home. Based on these surveys, the project will then complement its map material for the US. The campaign has its own official Twitter account and hash tag: #OPC2012.

More than any other program, Samba allows Linux desktops to exist in the world of Windows. In fact, Samba historically has allowed Linux to live secretly in the server room as well. It's possible to emulate a Primary Domain Controller from your Linux server, and Windows machines can't tell the difference. The problem is that Microsoft no longer uses PDCs and has turned to Active Directory.

It's on the way. Developers are working on packages based on a Windows version of Firefox through Wine.

A bike share program that was supposed to be launched last summer in New York City has come to a halt due to software related issues. I can't help but think that if the software was open source, these problems would have been easily resolved, elimating worrisome delays.

If you looking for an alternative to public IM and VOIP services like Skype and want to create a private secure IM / VOIP network, this guide is for you.

Steam is a great source for any gamer. It is a place that will allow you to try out and enjoy many of the more popular video games that are available on the market today. Steam Greenlight will allow you to vote on games that you would like to see become available. It is a great system for gamers; they do not have to drop $50 to purchase every game off the shelf. They can simply join Steam and enjoy the most popular ones at a reduced price.

On November 15, Francesco Muriana has the pleasure of announcing the immediate availability for download of the Ubuntu Builder 2.3.1 open source application.

Following last month's Btrfs file-system tuning benchmarks, in this article are a similar set of tests when stressing the EXT4 file-system with its various performance-related mount options. Here are a number of EXT4 benchmarks from Ubuntu 12.10 with different mount option configurations.

Great news! 5 games have been added to the Humble Bundle for Android #4!