Showing all newswire headlines

Mandriva S.A., through Charles Schulz, posted a very interesting announcement on their blog, asking users to vote for the new name of the Mandriva Linux distribution.

Mandriva is in the final stages of launching the community edition of Mandriva Linux. And they are asking for your input – to help choose a name for that community edition. What do you need to do?

Patrick Verner announced yesterday, July 5th, that yet another maintenance release of his Parted Magic Linux operating system for partitioning tasks is available for download.

Several international civil liberties organisations have put their weight behind a Declaration of Internet Freedom. The first signatories included the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Center for Digital Democracy, and Mozilla. Both individuals and organisations can sign the declaration..

Ubuntu daddy Mark Shuttleworth has defended Canonical’s decision to play ball with Microsoft's Windows 8 security policy that could stop “unauthorised” Linux builds from booting on new PCs and tablets. Manufacturers must enable a feature called Secure Boot in their products' UEFI firmware in order to be officially labelled Windows 8 compatible. This mechanism will only start operating systems that have been signed with a digital key recognised by the motherboard's firmware.

The GNOME Project have released the third update to the development cycle heading for GNOME 3.6. This is a testing release not suitable for stable environments.

The U.S. judge who tossed out one of the biggest court cases in Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) smartphone technology battle is questioning whether patents should cover software or most other industries at all. Richard Posner, a prolific jurist who sits on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, told Reuters this week that the technology industry's high profits and volatility made patent litigation attractive for companies looking to wound competitors. "It's a constant struggle for survival," he said in his courthouse chambers, which have a sparkling view of Monroe Harbor on Lake Michigan. "As in any jungle, the animals will use all the means at their disposal, all their teeth and claws that are permitted by the ecosystem."

iOS and OS X users are experiencing crashes due to corrupted binaries pushed out by Apple's servers over the Fourth of July holiday, according to Instapaper developer Marco Arment. The problem appears to be linked to Apple's FairPlay DRM scheme, which is added to apps downloaded via the iOS App Store or Mac App Store. While Apple appears to be working to correct the issue, the problem is ongoing as of Thursday.

How to change the default system text editor in Linux Mint / Ubuntu

Emperor Tewodros II of Ethiopia created a modern Ethiopia during the 19th century using the sheer force of his considerable will. He set out to modernize and unify Ethiopia, as Google, Red Hat, Mozilla, Microsoft, and other companies seek to unify the Web today.

When the firmware update (which also applied to the EA4500 and EA2700 router models) rolled out, attempting to connect to the browser's internal administrative Web interface brings the user instead to a signup page for the “Cisco Connect Cloud,"... In exchange for the convenience of Connect Cloud, you have to agree to some pretty onerous terms. In short, Cisco would really hate it if you use the Web to view porn or download copyrighted files without paying for them.

UPDATE: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/07/cisco-backpedals-afte...

The FOSS community is understandably upset with both Red Hat and Ubuntu for their planned ways of implementing UEFI Secure Boot. Indeed, both companies plans are unacceptable for a variety of reasons. Free software isn’t free if it requires permission from an outside source before it can be loaded onto a new or used computer. This is true even if the permission comes from a well-meaning bureaucratic regulatory agency. It’s doubly true if that permission must come from a self-serving monopoly with an anti-FOSS history, like Microsoft.

Transmission 2.60, the open source cross-platform BitTorrent client that strives to be as simple as possible, has been released last evening, July 5th.

Since I want to get this out of my system: here's a set of proposals to fix (okay, replace) the current failing patent system. No lengthy diatribe or introduction, just a raw list. Let me begin by saying that I, by no means, am claiming this set of proposals is perfect, watertight, coherent, legally feasible, or workable. It's just a number of of things that I, as a layman, think will benefit society and progress.

Frank Reininghaus, the new maintainer of KDE's Dolphin file manager has put out a call for contributors to the project. The original creator of Dolphin, Peter Penz, stepped down from leadership of the project last month and Reininghaus sees involving new developers with the project as one of his most important tasks.

Whether or not you are going on a vacation this summer, it is always good to take a break. And if you are using Linux, what is better than playing video games under the sun? (Except going out, of course.) So, in continuation with Travis’ work, let me present you five more games to distract yourself during the summer. From action to reflection, and through racing, these games are assured to bring you the fun that you deserve. And to add to the cocktail, all of them are completely free!

For an alpha release, it's incredibly good, and it already does basically everything that I want it to do. Color me impressed!

If you use Gnome, Shotwell will be one of your favorite photo viewer. This simple, minimalistic application that has the ability to do all you want is soon going to get a face detection tool, thanks to a developer working on it as his Google Summer of Code Project.

Version 4.0 of the online groupware solution adds support for the CardDAV protocol, allows users to search the contents of files, and has under-the-hood changes that should make future development faster

Since last year when spotting a major Linux kernel power regression and subsequently finding the cause of the power problem that affected a large number of mobile Linux users, plus other regressions, it's been fun to look at the Linux power performance situation. How though is the latest Ubuntu Linux code performing when it comes to power efficiency? Here are some early tests of Ubuntu 12.10.