Showing all newswire headlines

Valve Corporation has today rolled out their Steam Mac OS X client to the general public and confirmed something we have been reporting for two years: the Steam content delivery platform and Source Engine are coming to Linux. This news is coming days after we discovered proof in Steam's Mac OS X Client of Linux support and subsequently found more Linux references and even the unreleased Steam Linux client. The day has finally come and Linux gamers around the world have a reason to rejoice, as this is the biggest news for the Linux gaming community that sees very few tier-one titles.

As long as I can remember I had been using the Netscape web browser which evolved to Mozilla and now Firefox. I still use Firefox and have grown so comfortable with it that I don’t really desire to move onto anything else. Needless to say, Mozilla’s products are not perfect and there is always room for additional features and what I believe to be necessities in order to function in today’s world of computing.

Ubuntu gets a new, fast desktop interface. For some time now Ubuntu chief Mark Shuttleworth has been pushing developers to speed up boot times in the Linux operating system. Now he has revealed Unity, a new interface that is aimed at netbooks users. He's also announced Ubuntu Light, a fast, light, version of Ubuntu that will offer almost instant-on boot times

Did you know your drive was SMART? Actually: Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology. It can be used to gather information about your hard drives and offers some additional information about the status of your storage devices. It can also be used with other tools to help predict drive failure.

Cherrypal announced its first two netbooks to run Android. The Cherrypal Asia is available in seven-inch ($99) and 10.1-inch ($148) models, both of which run Android 1.6 on an ARM9-based Via VT 8505 processor clocked at 533MHz, and offer 256MB of RAM, 2GB of flash storage, Ethernet, WiFi, and USB connectivity, says the company.

This tutorial shows how you can set up an Ubuntu Studio 10.04 desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge.

In March, we announced a set of labels for use by people creating KDE software, to demonstrate their association with KDE. We chose three options: Powered by KDE, Built on the KDE Platform and Part of the KDE Family and asked for artwork for badges and banners to illustrate these terms.

The Bordeaux Technology Group released Bordeaux 2.0.4 for Linux today. Bordeaux 2.0.4 is a maintenance release that fixes a number of small bugs. With this release we have changed the Bordeux UI from a GTKDialog to a GTKWindow, the "OK" button has also been re-named to "Install". We have upgraded our Wine bundle from 1.1.36 to 1.1.41, updated to the latest winetricks release, added support for the new Steam UI, and changed the progress bar back to Zenity.

Linux has no shortage of music players, and even KDE has at least two: JuK and Amarok. The one you decide to use is truly a matter of preference, and it would be pointless for me to attempt to convince you to choose Amarok. It is, however, my music player of choice. I mostly use it solely for the purpose of playing music, ignoring any additional features, but once I started exploring the latest version, I noticed that Amarok has several extraordinary widgets.

Learn how to install, upgrade and manage packages on your Linux® system. This article focuses on the Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) developed by Red Hat, as well as the Yellowdog Updater Modified (YUM) originally developed to manage Red Hat Linux systems at Duke University's Physics department. You can use the material in this article to study for the LPI 101 exam for Linux system administrator certification, or just to explore the best ways to add new software and keep your system current.

If you ever have had doubts about the accuracy of all of those predictions about the future of computing being up in the clouds, consider this: according to a new report from IDC, in 2010 the amount of all the digital information produced on Earth will grow to 1.2 zettabytes, a convenient unit of data measurement that equals a staggering 1.2 trillion gigabytes of information. The same report estimates that in 2009, nearly 35 percent of the digital information created could not be stored, because there simply was not enough storage media available on the planet. If that figure were applied to the estimated amount of 2010 data, that means that 420 billion gigabytes of data will never get permanently stored.

I love software — really I do. I love to create stuff. Some of my favorite words to hear are: "Would it be possible to…?" The answer to this oft-spoken query is usually something between: "Why would you want to do that?" and "Of course, let’s see it in action." I love the "Get it done" aspect to writing software. Creating proto-types to test out an idea is arguably my favorite thing to do professionally. Production code is OK — if you can make a living writing it. It tends to get boring very quickly. If the code can be written well, that is great too. And if the code is easily maintained over time, that is even better. And usually, my code is. Except for the spurious comment that just says: // punt

The Asus's T91MT is a fantastic device for many reasons, but one thing I dislike about the device is that it ships by default with only Windows 7. I firmly believe a computer is a terrible thing to waste, so as such the first thing I did was to install Linux on it.

Mozilla's John Lilly has announced that, after nearly 5 years at Mozilla, he will be stepping down as CEO and leaving the company later this year. Lilly says that he is "incredibly proud of the work we’ve done over the last several years, and very optimistic about what the future holds," adding that he still intends to stay involved with the non-profit organisation and on the Board of Directors. After leaving Mozilla he says that he will be joining Greylock Partners as a venture partner.

Okay so if you have been reading my blog regularly you will have noticed that I love free, open source software, which in many cases is an alternative to popular, expensive and worst of all closed-source software. Here is my list of 5 Lightweight Alternatives to Popular Applications (with a brief introduction and explanation of the contents, of course)

LinuxCertified, Inc. announces "Linux Fundamentals" Bootcamp for busy IT professionals - http://www.linuxcertified.com/class_schedule.html">May20th - 21st, 2010. All attendees get a free Linux laptop.

I don't think much about copying machines. I just make my copies, print what I need to print, fax what I need to fax, and scan what I need to scan. What I didn't realize is that since about 2002, commercial copying machines have been built with hard drives that store as images everything you have ever copied on your machine.

Learn how to install, upgrade, and manage packages on your Linux® system. This article focuses on the Advanced Packaging Tool, or APT, which is the package management system used by Debian and distributions derived from Debian, such as Ubuntu. You can use the material in this article to study for the LPI 101 exam for Linux system administrator certification, or just to explore the best ways to add new software and keep your system current.

Intel has a new 48-core experimental processor. I want to discuss the technology, but first I need to rant a bit. The PR contrived headline calls it a “Single-chip Cloud Computer.” Arrgh, they are even using an acronym calling it the SCC chip. Where to begin? First, when this project was started, I doubt the hardware engineers at Intel said, “Hey let’s build a processor for the cloud. You know that nebulous concept that is years away.” Second, I am sure they have good technical reasons for designing this chip, but sorry Intel PR geniuses I doubt it was for “The Cloud.” Yes, “The Cloud,” that vague but ever so trendy name for timeshare/grid/Internet-computing that gets tacked on to every technology news story I read.

Just about everyone loves a good looking abstract desktop background, but not everyone agrees on exactly what defines “good looking”. There are dozens of websites that specialize in these types of images, but you have to sift through hundreds, sometimes thousands, to find one you really like. Sometimes, after all the searching, the one you like is not in the right size or has a huge watermark or other such problems. Wouldn’t it be great if you could quickly and easily create your own image, with your own color scheme, at whatever size you choose, all in about 5 minutes? You can, and as usual, it’s Gimp to the rescue.