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The first public milestone of the Xfce 4.8 Linux desktop is now out, giving Linux users the first taste of this powerful, yet minimal interface. With Xfce 4.8 developers have incorporated a long list of changes. Among the biggest items that I see in this new release (so far) is the replacement of the ThunarVFS with GIO.

Hello Interwebs! The rumors are true… starting today, we’re offering access to an early version of RockMelt, a new browser designed around you and how you use the Web. RockMelt does more than just navigate Web pages. It makes it easy for you to do the things you do every single day on the Web: share and keep up with your friends, stay up-to-date on news and information, and search. And of course, RockMelt is fast, secure, and stable because it’s built on Chromium, the open source project behind Google’s Chrome browser. It’s your browser – re-imagined and built for how you use the Web.

Inventec may be preparing to ship 60-70 thousand ARM Powered laptops running the Chrome OS laptop starting later this month according to Taiwan based rumor and fact website Digitimes.com. This may be the absolute demonstration of the shifting trend to come in laptops, where Intel and Microsoft will not be needed anymore and laptops can run ARM Cortex processors with fast I/O, good RAM, flash based storage, very thin and light form factors with very long battery runtime and instant boot, all running full Chrome web browser OS, one that loads all websites at full speed and provides fast web browsing.

LLVM 2.8 was released last month with the Clang compiler having feature-complete C++ support, enhancements to the DragonEgg GCC plug-in, a near feature-complete alternative to libstdc++, a drop-in system assembler, ARM code-generation improvements, and many other changes. With there being great interest in the Low-Level Virtual Machine, we have conducted a large LLVM-focused compiler comparison at Phoronix of GCC with versions 4.2.1 through 4.6-20101030, GCC 4.5.1 using the DragonEgg 2.8 plug-in, LLVM-GCC with LLVM 2.8 and GCC 4.2, and lastly with Clang on LLVM 2.8.

A few days ago I theorized that Mark Shuttleworth's move to Unity on Wayland was an effort to focus his operating system more on mobile devices and, ultimately, cloud-based services. Unity's hardware compatibility is limited in range, at least for now, and Wayland is even moreso, again at least for now. But there's one part of the equation I failed to consider. What about the X11-dependent Compiz?

After my controversial Droid post, it's time for me to strike back with another hot topic, namely the Java or C# trap for that matter. The JVM and the .NET CLR are birds of the same feather and they kind of flock together; like it or not.

Maybe today I’ve finally found an acceptable way to listen to web radio. Often I like to work with music, but after listening for the umpteenth time my favorite CD of Nirvana or Foo Fighters I want to switch to a bit of Web Radio, and here is my doubt “how?” You can go to the website of the radio and probably find the link “listen live”, or equivalent that will start a nice flash player, not so easy right?

Find out if those TCP streams on your network are filled with C monsters or if it's smooth sailing for your Internet surfers.

The recent announce at UDS about the fact that the venerable X server & protocols will not be the default choice for Unity and as a consequence Ubuntu was a shock for some, it is clearly a relief for me...

In this article by Bethany Hiitola, author of Inkscape 0.48 Essentials for Web Designers, we will see how you can use Inkscape to create basic design templates that can be used with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), HTML, and HTML5 in the final implementation. CSS are used with the HTML/XML coding to define the look and formatting of an entire website. One style sheet can be created that determines fonts, colors, spacing, placement, and more—reducing complexity and repetition in the coding of the pages themselves.

While the GNOME developers are busy at work on GNOME 3.0 and the KDE developers are busy working on KDE SC 4.6 and changes that may lead to KDE5, the Xfce desktop environment is still out there and being developed...

Unlike Android, Google Chrome OS is open source. Whereas Android is coded behind closed doors – one big-name developer says it's no more open than Apple's iOS – Google's imminent browser-based operating system is built – in large part – where everyone can see it. A portion of the project remains closed – Google's boot-time-boosting firmware work – but like the browser it's based on, Chrome OS is a platform that can serve Google's ad-centric purposes even if its code is set completely free.

MyPaint is a fast and easy open-source graphics application for digital painters. It lets you focus on the art instead of the program. You work on your canvas with minimum distractions, bringing up the interface only when you need it.

Nautilus Easy Union is a Nautilus extension that allows you to create a "union point" which is basically a folder that displays the contents of other (multiple) directories. You can use it for easily accessing all your pictures, music, videos or other files from a single location.

This short, informal opinion column is about the GNU LilyPond project: its team, its world, its community. LilyPond is an open-source music engraving program, devoted to producing the highest-quality sheet music possible. This free software brings the aesthetics of traditionally engraved music to computer printouts.

This document can be a used as a rough guide to installation of CIITIX-VOIP on a persistent media. It also describes the basic usage. CIITIX-VoIP is a carrier grade VoIP server distribution, leveraging upon the great efforts of the open source community. CIITIX-VoIP is based on rock solid Debian Lenny. This distribution comes as a turn-key solution to any company (small, medium to large scale) wishing to deploy a SIP-based presence service à la Skype. Laced with accounting, NAT and DB backend based features, setting up a SIP based setup is a breeze, achievable within 7 minutes.

Download from http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/taskinfo?taskID=2581021 file kernel-6.37-0.1.rc1.git0.xendom0.fc15.src.rpm been built by Michael Young and install it. In mean time following patches :- patch-2.6.37-rc1.bz2, patch-2.6.37-rc1-git5.bz2 should be downloaded from http://kernel.org and copied to /root/rpmbuild/SOURCES folder Update /root/rpmbuild/SPECS/kernel.spec correspondently

A webcam is a video capture device that is either connected to a computer directly (typically by USB) or over a computer network. Many modern netbooks and laptops have a built-in webcam.

After installing Ubuntu 10.10, I had a strange feeling I was seeing something that was already old. Yes, Ubuntu is a fantastic desktop system, and yes it’s better than Windows. But today, in 2010, that’s almost a given. And that’s not enough. The IT world is changing, and PCs themselves as a whole are getting old. The mass is moving towards tablets, mobiles machines, and netbooks. Ubuntu, the way it is today, might be the best choice in a dinosaur world. I can’t read Mark Shuttleworth’s mind, but I can only guess this is exactly what he felt when he decided to switch to Unity (for the UI) and Wayland (for the graphics architecture). Let me explain what all of this means. Read the full article at Freesoftware Magazine.

In Eric Raymond's "The Art of Unix Programming", within the section called "The Basics of Unix Philosophy" there is a rule quoted by Rob Pike: "Rule 5. Data dominates. If you've chosen the right data structures and organized things well, the algorithms will almost always be self-evident. Data structures, not algorithms, are central to programming" At face value Rob's rule number 5 makes sense. But what is Rob actually saying? In complex software systems it might be difficult to track down and identify how the rule of evolving functions to deal with data worked. So why not use a small microscopic example instead. Taking a small program, a passive network scanner, from data structures to operations on the data structures illustrates Rob's rule number 5 perfectly. This is an interesting experience from my perspective as most of the programs and scripts I have written deal with transitionary data. What I mean by transitionary is simply find it, operate on it and/or print it then move on. Not an unusual trait in system administration centric programs. While working on a passive scanner that could also verify a port I witnessed rule number 5 occur right before by fingertips.