Free application Portable Ubuntu for Windows runs an entire Linux operating system as a Windows application. As if that weren’t cool enough, it’s portable, so you can carry it on your thumb drive
Everybody uses email as one of its primary communication means; Free Software desktop users are no exception. In this regard, email clients play a central role in the way we work and generally live in the Internet. These last years have seen some relative decline in the usage of email clients. The use of standard, more mature web technologies such
There are some scarily depressing parallels between the once-dominant SGI and Sun Microsystems. The big question is what Sun will be worth in bankruptcy. Read this blog post by Dave Rosenberg on Software, Interrupted.
Ars Technica has a first look at the latest beta release from the Fedora universe and it has several new shiny-bits including kernel modesetting, ext4, and faster boot times. “Fedora 11, which is codenamed Leonidas, is scheduled for final release at the end of May. It will include several new features and noteworthy improvements, such as RPM 4.7, which will reduce the memory consumption of complex package activity, tighter integration of PackageKit, faster boot time with a target goal of 20 seconds, and reduced power consumption thanks to a major tuning effort. This version of Fedora will ship with the latest version of many popular open source software programs, including GNOME 2.26, KDE 4.2, and Xfce 4.6. This will also be the first Fedora release — and possibly the first mainstream distro release — to use the new Ext4 filesystem by default.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Engadget is reporting that Envizions, maker of the EVO Linux game console, has finally announced final specs and opened the doors to pre-orders. All bets are off till users actually see the hardware, but it would be nice to see a new player in the market. Of course this assumes they put some time into a little polish that is usually expected from the gaming community (that website, yikes) and some effort into a killer game library. “Envizions say that the console will run a modified, quick-boot distro of Fedora called Mirrors (which can be upgraded to a beefier build named Mirrors Evolution X), and will feature a “cloud” service stacked with Amiga (!) games and an Akimbo-based video service. Beyond that, proper titles will be sold online and on SD cards for around .” I’m sure they wont forget to send Slashdot a beta review copy with a couple of games.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Matt Asay points out a recent update to VLC as they narrow in on a 1.0 release. Already a favorite of many, the open source project has made great strides in recent history towards really solidifying the position as best-in-class. This update, 0.9.9, fixes several display bugs and sees some definite performance improvements. “If you’ve yet to try VLC, do so. Whether you just want to play media files or also want to convert them, VLC can handle just about anything you throw at it. When all other media players fail, whether on Windows, Linux, or the Mac, VLC will almost always deliver. You can download VLC media player 0.9.9 here. It’s open source, but that’s not why you’ll want to keep using it. You’ll use it because it’s better than its proprietary peers–by a long stretch.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Envizions announced that it is taking orders for an open-source Linux gaming system, and will start shipping beta units to game developers, resellers, and software partners on April 10. The EVO Smart Console is based on a 2.4GHz Athlon, and includes a Fedora-based Linux distro.
An anonymous reader writes “Keir Thomas berates the fact that the world of Linux almost entirely lacks critics. In fact, he says, Linux people tend to see genuine critical evaluation as a bad thing. FTA: “The problem with this anti-criticism approach is that it’s damning Linux to an eternity of navel gazing. Nothing can ever get any better. The best hope we have are the instances where a few bright sparks, with their heads screwed on the right way, get together and make something cool (as happened with, say, Firefox back in the day). But that’s rare and can’t be relied upon.””
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
In August 2008, the Fedora team noticed irregularities on its server. Project leader Paul W. Frields has now released a detailed report of the break-in. Paul Frields’s Update and Report on Fedora August 2008 Intrusion on the fedora-announce-list reads like a detective novel. It all started on August 12, 2008, when a cron job on a Fedora host repo
Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin says that Microsoft is hostile to open technologies and that product makers should ditch the company’s patent-encumbered FAT filesystem.
