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Fuduntu 14.8-2 has been released this morning as an update for existing Fuduntu users bringing improvements to several aspects of the desktop experience.

We have extolled the virtues of open source software in many of our previous articles. The debate between open source and closed source software has often centered on factors such as freedom, reliability, interoperability and open standards, support, and philosophy.

Returned from your holidays with thousands of photos? Here are five tools to make organising and editing your photos more fun.

Mozilla Firefox 4.0 will feature GPU hardware acceleration using OpenGL (or Direct2D/Direct3D under Microsoft Windows) acceleration for WebGL content and even HTML5. This support is there for Windows and Mac OS X, but for Firefox 4.0 the Linux support has been disabled and WebGL is also blacklisted for most drivers. Why? It's the problematic GPU drivers, of course.

Download all the videos of an youtube user, using terminal, to your harddrive for offline viewing. The download is via shell script as there are no browser plugins or other solutions that seem to do the job.

Starry Hope Uploader allows you to batch upload photos to Facebook by simply dragging them unto the uploader, choosing an album and clicking the upload button.

Firefox 4 Beta 9 has been released today. This guide describes how to install the browser in 5 easy steps, and also covers symbolic links, updates, uninstallation, ...

Last week at CES, Microsoft announced their answer to the iPad with their tablet strategy. Computerworld says, “Microsoft has decided not to follow the Apple and Google route of putting its mobile operating system on tablets. Instead, Microsoft has chosen a more deliberate method where it will migrate its client OS onto tablets.” Microsoft also announced it will wait until its port of Windows 7 to ARM chips is complete. Pundits have criticized this strategy as being out-dated in today’s fast moving tablet market.

It seems as if most UNIX and Linux users honestly believe that they are secure from day one of installation/purchase. This is simply not true. Any network connected system stands the risk of attack, and beyond that any data transfer from an outside source to a non-network machine is also a risk. Beyond that, there are always exploits than can be done from the physical location. Preventing these attacks is not always easy or convenient, but in an increasingly risky metaverse-like world it is necessary. After all, your entire existence is verified through a computer database somewhere.

Back in October there was the very controversial news that Canonical would be replacing the GNOME Shell with their own Unity project as the default desktop shell for Ubuntu 11.04 and going forward. The original version and specification for Ubuntu Unity (and as found in Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook) required 3D acceleration and would use Compiz as its compositing window manager. For those without the necessary graphics drivers to support the functionality, Canonical's plan for Ubuntu was to have it fall-back to the traditional GNOME desktop and inform the user of their sad graphics support. However, now Canonical's developing a 2D version of Unity for such scenarios.

IBM showed off its Linux-based Watson supercomputer in an exhibition "Human vs. Machine" game of Jeopardy, while discussing potential practical uses of its natural-language AI in the IT industry, especially in health care and tech support. Watson beat two human challengers in this practice round, but the real winner will be proven in a televised competition in February.

It is not an overstatement that the Motorola Atrix smartphone was one of the bright stars of CES 2011. An often-mentioned, breakthrough feature of the Atrix is its modularity, namely that it can be placed into a netbook dock which gives it work-time (and battery recharge) and a desktop-like work environment (Linux based).

Lutris is a new gaming platform for Linux that aims at providing easy game installation, configuration and launching system for games. It is different from other services like PlayOnLinux as it integrates a large number of games from a number of different systems that includes console emulators also.

Debian 6.0 Sqeeze RC1 is released, this release candidate includes a new SpaceFun artwork, adds support for the Lao and Sinhala languages, support for new computer systems, fixes for Finnish keyboard support, and the Linux kernel used by the installer has been updated to the latest version of 2.6.32.

The open source Lustre technology is a parallel file system that is often found in high performance computing (HPC) environments. Users of the file system will soon get community Lustre distribution, thanks to the leadership of startup Whamcloud.

Awhile back I did a posting about useful/interesting Gnome Panel Applets. Of the late I've been featuring the Enlightenment desktop more and more so I figured it was only fitting that I do a post highlighting some of my favorite Enlightenment Modules.

The official features that Red Hat has added to the revised Enterprise Linux 5.6 include the Ext4 file system. Other innovations include fresher versions of Bind and PHP, along with a number of revised drivers to improve support for current hardware.

While it seems every Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in recent memory has some theme that never really panned out (see 3-D TV), you might want to rethink the trend when it comes to Android. Google's Android attack was in full force at this year's edition with a vengeance. From smart phones to tablet devices of all sizes to Google TV, you couldn't travel the exhibit floor very far without bumping into something Android. For some companies, like Motorola, Android has fueled impressive comebacks. For others, like Sony, it's new territory.

"Does Natty's Unity require proprietary graphics card drivers?" was a question posted on AskUbuntu and who better to answer this question then Mark Suttleworth himself (who apparently is quite an active AskUbuntu user)?

Announced in Debian News: The new Squeeze installer is now out of beta and into Release Candidate 1 status. It's another milestone on the march to Stable for Debian's current Testing distribution.