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Linux in Exile gets his Linux Install zapped by Windows. Not sure how Windows kills itself, but Linux continues to work fine. I'm reminded how Windows killed my laptop, under different circumstances.

This week we look at why the Facebook API sucks, practical IT cost-cutting measures and advice for beginner mobile app developers.

The KDE team has just announced a few minutes ago (June 10th) the fourth maintenance release for KDE Software Compilation 4.6. This is a minor update, focusing on bug fixing and translation updates.

How to install and configure "GameTree Linux"! GameTree Linux is the natural prosecution of a project called "Cedega" which is a linux gaming platform, supporting officially a restricted number of games. Actually, GameTree Linux is, as today, Cedega itself, being the same program with another name. Transgaming team promised to improve the client, but they are now concentrated on improving their GameTree TV system.

Happy Chrome 12 to 160 million users world-wide. Google releases Chrome 12 stable that claims to be more secure and flashy. Let’s see what improvements they have got this time in the browser after their six-week effort!

Packages from PPA Spice-Gtk-0.6 on Ubuntu 11.04 have been rebuilt and installed on Ubuntu Oneiric Alpha 1 + (apt-get update; apt-get upgrade) as of 06/10/2011.

Yesterday we shared that Fedora 16 may use the Btrfs file-system by default on new installations. Beyond switching from EXT4 to Btrfs, there are also many other changes planned for this next release of the Red Hat sponsored Linux distribution...

So often lately, I hear of the cloud and the wonderful things it will do for the world. I increasingly hear that any software effort that is not directed toward the cloud is going to fail. So much, I hear that desktops and laptops are antiquated due to the superiority of cloud-utilizing dumb terminals. I completely disagree, and should the cloud be the true future of computing, I think I may just have to find a new interest.

Xfce 4.8 is a major upgrade to the popular lightweight desktop environment. 4.8 was released in January 2011, replacing 4.6. Xfce 4.8 is available in Debian Testing, Ubuntu Natty Narwhal, Fedora 15, and probably other Linux distributions. There is more to Xfce than meets the eye; let's dig under the hood and uncover some of its hidden goodies. Xfce is broken up into several dozen packages, so you have a lot of control over which components you install. In Debian and Natty you can install the Xfce4 meta-package to get a complete desktop environment with niceties like Network Manager, themes, a top panel, a dock, system menu, and a nice logout dialog with a complete set of actions: log out, shut down, restart, suspend, hibernate, and save session. Figure 1 shows how it looks in Natty.

Cleaning up the cable mess behind your computer.

One of the controversial decisions made by the Gnome 3 developers was to do away with applets. For the most part I agree that applets were not very useful, but one applet I did use was the system monitor. To be able to see at a glance if the cpu or memory was being overloaded was a great convenience, and one that is sorely missed in Gnome 3. The good news is that this new system monitor extension from paradoxxxzero brings back most of the functionality of the old Gnome 2 system monitor applet.

Thomas Thwaite, designer and technologist, will be a featured keynote speaker at this summer's Desktop Summit 2011 in Berlin. Thomas is perhaps best known through his Toaster Project. The Toaster Project was an attempt to build a toaster from raw, self-mined materials. The project exposed the complexity of seemingly simple and everyday technology. It leaves us to wonder how technology will change our lives in the future, and shows how we all need others to get even simple products. William Carlson contacted Thomas to ask him about his projects, his views on technology and what makes him tick. Read the full interview on the Desktop Summit website.

I guess this has been around for some time, however I was not aware of it. I bumped into it in a thread on UbuntuForums, and decided to give it a try. From the add-on page description, Flash-Aid is a Firefox 4 and 3.5 (and maybe 5 Beta too) add-on which was built to “Remove conflicting flash plugins from Ubuntu/Debian Linux systems, install the appropriate version according to system architecture and apply some tweaks to improve performance and fix common issues.”

The Debian Project is so non-commercial, they don't sell T-shirts, although some are available ... in Europe ... at conferences. But true to the Debian way, the art needed to make your own shirt is open source and generally available. So I decided to make my own Debian Squeeze Space Fun (the theme for this release) T-shirt.

Looks like Ubuntu 11.04 has its share of fans as well. We featured Natty Narwhal inspired Android skins few days ago. Now, here is another theme, this time for Nokia smartphones, again inspired by Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal. Theme is called Natty Ubuntu.

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop reminds of a modern day Don Quixote taking on giants like Google and Apple while trying to keep his company relevant before he releases phones running Windows Phone 7 later this year.

Gmediafinder is a GTK application that lets you search, view and download videos from sites like YouTube. Gmediafinder is a very good alternative to Minitube in Ubuntu. Gmediafinder PPA for Ubuntu is also available which makes its installation even easier.

A Just-in-Time compiler promises to provide fast network packet filtering. The Wi-Fi stack now supports the Wake-on-Wireless-LAN standard, and unprivileged users are allowed to "ping". New and improved drivers enhance the kernel's support of network components by Ralink and Realtek.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp suffered a defeat on Thursday when the Supreme Court upheld a record $290 million jury verdict against the software giant for infringing a small Canadian company's patent. The justices unanimously agreed with a U.S. appeals court ruling that went against the world's largest software company in its legal battle with Toronto-based i4i.

The United States Supreme Court has ruled against Microsoft in a $290 million patent infringement case related to Microsoft Word.