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LXer Feature: 13-Jun-2010

Today’s topic of conversation is something I feel fairly strongly about. It is something I have seen happen countless times, both in person and posted various places around the internet. Some semi-tech head (or Windows system admin) downloads this “Linux” thing and decides they are going to boot it up. They don’t look up their hardware online for compatibility, they just pop the disc in and expect everything to work...

I must agree, there aren’t many native strategy games for Linux, especially not those who can usually match the commercial ones for Linux. Actually they are so rare, they could probably be counted on the fingers of one hand. I could include here games such as the very popular Glest, Spring or Tribal Trouble.

It was just over 100 days ago that OpenBenchmarking.org and Phoronix Test Suite 3.0-Iveland launched from the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) in Los Angeles. Now that these major releases have been available to the public for over three months, and Phoronix Test Suite 3.2-Grimstad will be released in just a couple of days, here's some overview statistics of where our open and collaborative testing platform is at today.

LXer Feature: 12-Jun-2011

For the LXWR this week we have the parting of Linux and Mono, a FOSS hacker reverse-engineers Skype, Larry The Free Software Guy gives us his top 10 Linux Lists as well as our own Carla Schroder talks about Ubuntu's contributions to Linux. And last but not least we have yet another doozy of a piece by Ken Hess that Caitlyn Martin just couldn't stop herself from responding too. Enjoy!

It's never easy for me to manage multiple tasks. I've never, ever been any good at it. Interrupt me to do something while I'm doing something else and I find it hard to restrain my full range of verbal expression.

Recently, I had to install Ubuntu 11.04 in a Core 2 Duo Lenovo laptop with Intel Mobile 4 Series Chipset. I had previously installed Ubuntu 10.10 in it and it worked flawlessly. But that was not the case when I installed the latest Ubuntu. Though installation went smooth, Ubuntu 11.04 just won't boot after restart and instead a blank screen appears with a blinking cursor. After some amount of browsing, I think I have just found out how to fix the blank screen issue.

Gnac is a graphical audio converter for GNOME with support for encoding/decoding to and from various formats, including the free formats FLAC and Ogg, WAV, MP3, M4A or SPX.

This article explains how to create and embed different types of either 2D or 3D interactive maps in our Moodle courses. The creation of these maps will be done using resources available in the Web 2.0 as well as the free and open source software. Thanks to these amazing tools, we can design and display interactive maps in our Moodle courses.

In this article, we will cover:

* Creating maps with sceneries and Drawing regions within a map * Drawing 3D maps using Bing Maps and 3DVIA Shape for Maps * Using Google maps to locate European bridges * Displaying interactive information about the solar system * Working with constellation maps and Embedding a map of Mars * Labeling the moon and Watching the universe

How can you be stylish and support a great project that gets Linux-based computer labs in low-income schools? Larry the Free Software Guy says, "Stick it in your ear," and check out these Ubuntu earrings.

The following Linux-based operating systems have been announced last week: SystemRescueCd 2.2.0, Zorin OS 5 and Peppermint OS Two. In other news: The Ubuntu Manual team finally announced the official release of the Ubuntu 10.10 Manual; the Google developers released the Google Chrome 12 web browser for Linux; Canonical announced that Ubuntu 11.10 will have a new login manager; the KDE developers announced the release of KDE Software Compilation 4.6.4. For this week we've also prepared an helpful tutorial with tips and tricks for the Unity interface of the Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) operating system. The weekly ends with the video clip of the week, the new and updated Linux distributions, and the development releases.

Disclaimer

This post is a bona fide rant. It tells how a hardcore Linux user (me) decided to abandon Linux as a desktop platform and the reasons behind this decision. It might provoke some controversy, but I frankly don’t care. I’m generally known as one of the biggest supporters of GNU/Linux, I’ve taught courses on Linux administration, I’ve spoken at Linux conferences and I naturally use Linux as my primary desktop on all my machines. Well, that last part is not so true anymore. Here the story begins…

We have already discussed in length about Lenses, one of the key new feature brought about by Ubuntu's new Unity desktop. Lenses for 'Applications' and 'Files & Folders' are default in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal and then there are these awesome, still-in-development Lenses that you can install and experiment right now. Now, how do you actually remove the Lenses you don't want from Unity Launcher? Here is what you need to do.

Those of you who are using Kubuntu are already familiar with Dolphin, the default file manager shipped in most KDE distributions. There are several very good file managers for KDE, and I must include here Konqueror or Krusader, however Dolphin’s goal is to offer as much as possible functionality while also keeping lightweight and fast. And yes, it does it perfectly well, offering powerful features and a clean interface at the same time.

Been waiting for Google Cloud Print to finally come to linux?

The wait is over!

If you are in charge of some services probably you have set up some monitoring system to notify you if something go wrong (email, sms or a Tweet), and so you can fix it quickly. But do you really want to be always available 24×7 every day of the year ? I’m not for sure, so let’s see Monit, a fantastic tool that can manage some problems for you and let you enjoy your free time.

This week, the Commit Digest includes a featured article about Kst, the fastest real-time large-dataset viewing and plotting tool. Also in this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Work on C++0x support in KDevelop, including support for variadic template parameters in the parser, new browser-like tabs, and many bugfixes throughout KDevPlatform In Plasma, suspend/hibernate services added to the powermanagement dataengine, battery applet replaced with QML port from Plasma-Mobile, and many bugfixes read more

Charlie, an Indie game developer from UK, makes fun score oriented arcade shooters. Under the name of Charlie's Games, he has released some nice games for Linux, two of them are now available in software center - Irukandji and Bullet Candy Perfect. These are quite addictive shoot 'em up games, perfect for netbooks.

Wineskin Pro 2.3 has file associations fixed, bug fixes for Custom Engines, confirm quit dialog option, bug fixes for the menubar, a small bug fix for the Advanced window. A full change log is provided in the new features section. This release also has a custom built Xquartz X11 server that Microsoft Windows Games require to run in full screen mode. We also provide binary Wine builds as well as binary CodeWeavers CrossOver builds from their public source code. Wineskin Pro also comes with Graphical tools to assist you in installing and configuring Wine as well as building your own custom Wine builds from source.

I and a relative whose computer now runs Linux Mint (thanks to yours truly) are both more familiar with GUIs, yet the easiest way for me to support this relative was through CLI instructions.

Not long ago Mozilla changed the release cycle of Firefox, so that major new versions (Firefox 5, 6 and so on) will be released every 2-3 months. Currently, the latest alpha release is Firefox 6 Aurora, while the latest beta development version is Firefox Beta 5, which has made it into the Firefox Next PPA already. Installing this version should be very easy if you follow the next steps.