Showing all newswire headlines

"It really seems that OS designers in general, and window manager designers especially, have forgotten what an OS is for: to allow me to get work done," said Slashdot blogger Gerhard Mack. "Fancy 3D spinning cubes to change virtual desktops might amaze other people, but they are actually SLOWER than just having the desktop switcher on the bar. Xfce seems to get this."

Stop! If you are just beginning to learn the Python programming language, do not buy this book! This book was written for intermediate to advanced Python programmers who want to be able to put their hands on the Python standard library of modules. This is not a book that will teach you the first steps in programming in Python.

Fedora 16 is more than two months away from final, stable release, but pre-Alpha installation ISO images have been floating around. News from the Fedora camp have already indicated that btrfs will be the default file system on Fedora 16, joining the ranks of MeeGo, the first (Linux) distribution to use btrfs as the default file system. With several articles already written about Fedora and btrfs, I downloaded a pre-Alpha image just to see what the new partitioning scheme will be on Anaconda, the Fedora system installation program, with btrfs. If btrfs is to be the default, a file system with a built-in volume management system, what will happen to LVM?

Zimperium will soon release a penetration-testing app called Android Network Toolkit (Anti), ready to sniff our Wi-Fi vulnerabilities for good or evil, says Forbes. The software was shown at the DefCon hacking conference in Las Vegas, following a Black Hat security conference that featured presentations on a new DARPA Cyber-Fast Track project, the Shady RAT cyber-attack, and Facebook facial-recognition tools....

One question we get a lot: What are the best community server distributions? That question isn't as simple as it sounds. What makes a distro "the best"? Why community distributions, specifically? It's not a simple question — but read on and we'll point you to six distros that will help you reach a satisfying answer.

Boudewijn Rempt shows off Krita For the second full day at the Desktop Summit, the organizers played a little trick on us by starting talks at 9:00 a.m. Those who were awake enough after the dinners and chat of the previous night were treated to talks on Calligra (the KDE creativity and productivity suite), suggestions about blending the web and the desktop, color management and the build process for GNOME. Those who were still in bed will have to wait for the videos and slides to be posted online in the next few days. The hallways and courtyard were again busy with small, lively discussions. As the morning went on the attendance at talks increased noticeably. Sunday was also the day of the press conference, where key figures from GNOME, KDE and the cross-community organizing team met with the press to answer their questions about the event and the future of free software. read more

Battle of the, um, CONFIG.SYS A lawsuit has accused Apple of violating a patent describing a means of "quickly booting a computer system".…

We have spent literally hundreds of hours searching for Wine related news and facts not to mention the countless hours spent on testing the applications, games, and tools posted here.

Blue Sky has begun taking pre-orders for the & I'mWatch,& an Android 1.6-based gadget that offers a 1.5-inch screen and audio jack, interacting with smartphones via Bluetooth to display alerts. The device follows last week's WIMM One wearable Android watch, as well as an Android-based watch platform from Motorola called the MotoActive that popped up recently on the web....

While it originally appeared that Fedora 16 would be the first major distribution (besides possibly counting MeeGo) to switch to Btrfs as the default Linux file-system, that's not going to happen. Fedora 16 will continue defaulting to EXT4 and it will not be until Fedora 17 now that Btrfs will be the Fedora file-system default...

HTTPS Everywhere is an initiative by the Electronic Frontier Foundation that boosts the security of Firefox with a clever plugin that will automatically encrypt your communications with a number of web services that support HTTPS. This provides an automated way to move users from the insecure HTTP protocol, which is the default for many web sites (like Google and Facebook), even though they may also support HTTPS. I personally applaud the initiative on a technical level, and if I was a Firefox user, I would install the extension in a heart beat. But, on a fundamental level, the extension will fail to make any real improvement in the security of the web for one simple reason – users are the biggest weakness in any security system, and there is no patch for users.

This week’s edition of The Linux Week in Review maintains a focus on one of the core principles of success: keeping it simple and stupid. Every situation does not call for us to have a PhD in computer science, or Bill Gates’ bank account. Often times, simple is better. Libreoffice can perform what most businesses need at a great price: free. NASA recently decided to, in the vernacular of the streets, keep it real by ditching expensive proprietary solutions, coming back to Earth, and embracing free software. Asus decided to leave ostentatious excess behind, and instead introduced its low-profile, but elegant, X101.

AMD announced an updated SDK (software development kit) allowing programmers to tap into the GPUs (graphics processing units) of its A-Series (& Llano& ) processors. Meanwhile, the Khronos Group released version 4.2 of its OpenGL specification, and AMD and Nvidia have both pledged support for it.

First we had the KDE 3.5 to KDE 4.0 debacle. ... Many people were so upset about radical and broken changes to KDE during this period they left KDE swearing never to return.

Expected to be released in about two months, the next kernel version will offer optimised virtualisation, add bad block management components to the software RAID code and include an extended Nouveau driver for NVIDIA's Fermi graphics chips. Several developers have been criticised for their clumsy use of Git in this development cycle.

The popularity of smartphones and media tablets will mean worldwide mobile connections will reach 5.6 billion by the end of this year, up 11 percent from 2010, according to Gartner. While related revenue will be up a higher 22 percent, providers will still struggle to recoup their costs, the research firm adds....

The good news: Khronos has published version 4.2 of the OpenGL specification in conjunction with the GL Shading Language version 4.20 specification. The bad news? The open-source Linux graphics drivers are falling hopelessly behind in keeping up-to-date with the latest upstream OpenGL releases and what is supported by the proprietary drivers and those for other operating systems...

One question we get a lot: What are the best community server distributions? That question isn't as simple as it sounds. What makes a distro "the best"? Why community distributions, specifically? It's not a simple question — but read on and we'll point you to six distros that will help you reach a satisfying answer.

Linus Torvalds officially released the Linux 3.1-rc1 kernel on Sunday afternoon, following the 3.1 merge window being open for more than two weeks.

Ubuntu Software Center is getting a complete makeover in its GTK3 avatar and first tech preview of this whole new look landed today in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot. Being just a tech preview as of now, the current Software Center is still there by default. The new interface features a carousel at top for banners and featured items. Software categories have been moved over to the left with New and Top Rated apps section at the center of the main home page. Many sub-categories have their own top rated section now. The current sidebar in Ubuntu Software has been removed completely and a new new toolbar with drop down categories have been added at the top, giving a much cleaner look.