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LXer Feature: 16-Jun-2011

Lately there has been some uproar about the 'dumbing down of interfaces'..KDE4 didn't offer the settings 3 did, Gnome dumbs everything down, and maybe Apple did the same the last decade. I couldn't tell because I never touch anything Apple, and the only time I did the software crashed and all this dumbing down for the sake of usability! However in my opinion, they are wrong. They confuse 'usability' with 'approachability'. Which leads to software which many times is not user friendly.

A small but useful feature for the CD ISOs of Fedora, openSUSE, MeeGo, and many other Linux distributions is that they are spun as hybrid ISOs. Hybrid ISOs allow the same CD ISO to be copied directly to a USB storage device (i.e. flash drive) without needing to rely upon any external utilities. Ubuntu ISOs have not supported this feature, but they do have their easy-to-use start-up disk creator to take care of this task. However, the daily ISOs for the Ubuntu Oneiric development cycle and all official Ubuntu CD releases going forward for i386 and x86_64 platforms will be now spun as hybrid ISOs...

By most accounts, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss middleware are both solid successes. But can two newer initiatives -- namely, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and OpenShift -- also gain widespread success, particularly among cloud customers? Here are some early answers.

Even though I never really warmed to Unity, I did like the way Ubuntu integrated controls for music players right into the interface. And now, thanks to a Gnome Extension from ycDref, you can have this functionality inside Gnome 3 too.

A controversial push to establish clear-cut rules for contributing to open source projects is nearing completion. Project Harmony – no, not that Project Harmony – has spent a year collecting feedback on how to refine terms governing contributors to open source projects, and it's scheduled to wrap up this effort on June 23. Shortly thereafter, version 1.0 of the Project Harmony rules will be officially released. The idea, organizers say, is to make participation in open source projects easier.

LibreOffice is up to version 3.3.2 and is much faster, slicker and feels less heavy - to use words that a layman would - when compared to OpenOffice.org.

Back in April we reported on the ambitious project by a lone, independent developer to write a GLSL IR to TGSI translator for Mesa that wouldn't involve using Mesa's crufty IR. This work would also be a stepping-stone to GLSL 1.30 support in Mesa, which is needed for OpenGL 3.0 support in this critical free software project. Today the developer is reporting that he believes this translator is ready to be merged into Mesa...

Imagination Technologies announced it is licensing a new version of its Meta core IP for Linux- and Android-based mobile devices. The Metaflow family of processors combines the Linux-ready Meta Series2 processor IP with the company's Ensigma UCCP IP for Wi-Fi, mobile TV, and analog and digital TV and radio, says the company....

Should I stay with Linux Mint 9 LTS "Isadora", or switch to #! (or Pinguy OS, or the newest Linux Mint, or something else Linux or BSD entirely)?

Non-relational databases are an alternative to SQL databases and would rather call themselves ‘big data DBs’, say the pros in the industry. Calling non-relational mongodb_logodatabases as ‘No SQL’ is in a way misleading as this a ‘dynamic’ database platform. The most remarkable amongst the free structured data DB’s is MongoDB.

Procedure following bellow set up spicevmc channel support on KVM Server Ubuntu Natty. It also instructs how to setup spice-vdagent on Natty installed as KVM guest at any KVM Server Ubuntu 11.04 or F15. In other words it contains build debian package spice-vdagent via source for Ubuntu 11.04 ( Natty).

IHS iSuppli published the results of a teardown of the 3G version of Samsung's Chrome OS-based Series 5 Chromebook -- which began shpping today for $500 -- and estimates the solidly-built notebook cost $334.32 to build. Meanwhile, an eWEEK review of the Wi-Fi only Series 5 was similarly impressed with the hardware, but questioned whether Chrome OS would find many takers.

OpenClonk is the successor of the shareware game series Clonk and thus inherits many features of it. The project is developed by a community of Clonk enthusiasts and former Clonk developers.In 2009, RedWolf Design agreed to put the game engine's source code under an open source license, the ISC license. Since then, OpenClonk has introduced many new features like 3D Models, improved controls, zooming camera, revamped HUD etc.

If you use Linux on the desktop then odds are you know that getting support from big name companies that produce software is typically difficult at best. They tell us we don't have enough market share, they tell us we have too many different configurations, they tell us there is too much fragmentation to create software for us...

All good things must come to an end, even on the Linux Planet. This past week we were alerted to the demise of Google's Linux search after years of activity. While one Linux asset is now gone, the future of Linux in the form of Linux 3.0, KDE and Btrfs continue to move forward.

After the overview of 20 best KDE applications, it’s time to have a look at what GNOME has to offer, right? This article overviews 20 of the GNOME applications which are, in my opinion, the best in their category. Only a single application from each category is included, and screenshots are attached. The list is put up in no particular order and at the end of the article I put noteworthy alternatives for each category (only GTK alternative applications).

In word processors, users generally settle for an appearance that is good enough. By contrast, in a design application like Scribus, you have the tools to adjust the layout until it is exactly the way you want.

Adobe doesn't see "the year of the Linux desktop" happening, so they've decided to kill off the Linux desktop client for their AIR run-time. Adobe AIR 2.7 was recently released for creating rich Internet applications, but the Linux desktop client wasn't updated. This wasn't an oversight or delay in development, but Adobe is dropping the Linux desktop client so they can focus on mobile platforms such as Android and Apple iOS...

In this tutorial I will describe how to configure HttpGzipModule on an nginx web server (on Debian Squeeze). HttpGzipModule allows nginx to compress files and deliver them to clients (e.g. browsers) that can handle compressed content which most modern browsers do. With HttpGzipModule, you can compress HTML, CSS, Javascript, text or XML files to approx. 20 - 30% of their original sizes, thus saving you server traffic and making your modem users happier.

I didn’t include here applications like GIMP or Krita since they are full-fledged image manipulation applications, not just simple painting programs, nor Scribus or Inkscape since they serve different purposes. This article overviews 7 simple drawing applications for both KDE and GNOME.