Learn About Linux

Open Innovation - The Passion Behind the Civic Commons Community

From the beginning, Civic Commons has been a dynamic community initiative. What began in January 2010 as a simple wiki of open government policies and practices (originally called “OpenMuni”, domains for which were simultaneously and independently obtained by Code for America and OpenPlans), grew into a partnership between the two organizations to support...

Read more at OpenSource.com

NASA Calls for Vendors to "Open Source" NASA.gov

NASA is looking to open source as part of its revamp of nasa.gov and has put out a "Request For Information" looking for vendors who can take on the challenge...

NASA is looking to open source as part of its revamp of nasa.gov and has put out a "Request For Information" looking for vendors who can take on the challenge

Read more at The H

Ubuntu for Android to Star at Mobile World Congress

According to Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical is moving quickly ahead with its plans to bring Ubuntu to platforms going well beyond just desktop computers. In his latest blog post, Shuttleworth notes: "We’ll show Ubuntu neatly integrated into Android at Mobile World Congress next week. Carry just the phone, and connect it to any monitor to get a full Ubuntu desktop with all the native apps you want, running on the same device at the same time as Android. Magic. Everything important is shared across the desktop and the phone in real time."

Read more at Ostatic

First official release of Eclipse Code Recommenders

The project developers plan to provide intelligent code prediction for the Eclipse development environment as an "IDE 2.0" effort...

The project developers plan to provide intelligent code prediction for the Eclipse development environment as an "IDE 2.0" effort

Read more at The H

Mageia 2 Enters Beta Testing

Aimed at developers and testers, the first of two planned betas for version 2 of the Mandriva Linux community fork brings updates to the Linux kernel and included desktops, as well as various package udpates...

Read more at The H

Fade In Pro

When I switched from Windows to Linux, I found software to replace almost everything I had been doing in Windows. Most of the software I needed was in the repos, although I did pay for a couple commercial programs. more>>

WebKit Browsers Learn to Calculate with CSS

The developers behind the open source WebKit engine, used in browsers such as Chrome and Safari, have added support for the calc function specified in CSS3...

The developers behind the open source WebKit engine, used in browsers such as Chrome and Safari, have added support for the calc function specified in CSS3

Read more at The H

Apache HTTP Server 2.4.1 Released

Version 2.4.1 of the Apache HTTP server - the first release in the 2.4 series - is now available. There are plenty of new features, including runtime-loadable processing modules, better asynchronous I/O support, more logging configuration options, a new general-purpose expression parser, a dozen or so new modules, and more.

Proposals To Split KMS & GPU Drivers, 2D Kernel API

Following a "Kernel Display and Video API Consolidation" mini-summit held at the Emebedded Linux Conference (ELC 2012) last week, Linaro and other mobile/embedded Linux stakeholders have come up with several graphics-related action items for the Linux kernel. One of the proposals is to split KMS and GPU drivers in the...

Read more at Phoronix

Will KDE Drop Support for Older Graphics Chips?

KWin's lead developer is considering dropping support for graphics hardware that is only capable of OpenGL 1.x if alternatives prove to perform well enough...

KWin's lead developer is considering dropping support for graphics hardware that is only capable of OpenGL 1.x if alternatives prove to perform well enough

Read more at The H

TryStack Offers a Free OpenStack Sandbox

OpenStack community members are providing "156 cores, 1040GB memory and 59.1TB of disk storage" so that developers can get a feel for the OpenStack platform at no cost...

OpenStack community members are providing "156 cores, 1040GB memory and 59.1TB of disk storage" so that developers can get a feel for the OpenStack platform at no cost

Read more at The H

New Package Format in Tiny Core Linux 4.3

"Self Contained Mountable applications" (SCMs) can now be used to mount extensions for the lightweight distribution...

"Self Contained Mountable applications" (SCMs) can now be used to mount extensions for the lightweight distribution

Read more at The H

Booktype Makes Book Collaboration Web-Based and Simple

If you've ever tried to collaborate with other authors and editors and the many other people who work to make a book successful, you know it's not easy. Even if your experience stops at trying to incorporate three comments with changes tracked in word processing software, you get the idea. Last week at the O'Reilly Tools of Change conference, a new platform called Booktype was announced. It was created to help you collaborate on editing content and getting it ready for publishing.

Read more at OpenSource.com

OpenJFX gets JavaFX Testing Framework

JavaFX's open source version, OpenJFX, now has a functional testing framework in the form of JemmyFX...

JavaFX's open source version, OpenJFX, now has a functional testing framework in the form of JemmyFX

Read more at The H

Debian Project Announces a Patent Policy

The free software project has put together an official position on patents and how the Debian community should handle patent related issues...

The free software project has put together an official position on patents and how the Debian community should handle patent related issues

Read more at The H

HijackThis Now Open Source

Trend Micro's malware analysis tool is now available as open source, but the company will continue to maintain the Visual Basic application...

Trend Micro's malware analysis tool is now available as open source, but the company will continue to maintain the Visual Basic application

Read more at The H

There's Hope For DMA-BUF With Non-GPL Drivers

There's some resurrected hope for the kernel symbols of the DMA-BUF buffer sharing mechanism to be not restricted to only GPL drivers, which started off as a request by NVIDIA. This could lead to better NVIDIA Optimus support under Linux, among other benefits...

Read more at Phoronix

The Document Foundation Finally Incorporated

The Document Foundation has now been legally established in Germany, with boards of directors and trustees and a management committee...

The Document Foundation has now been legally established in Germany, with boards of directors and trustees and a management committee

Read more at The H

VLC Player 2.0 Released

The Mac OS X version of the popular free video player has a new look. There have also been some major behind the scenes changes...

The Mac OS X version of the popular free video player has a new look. There have also been some major behind the scenes changes

Read more at The H

Mozilla Takes Action Against CAs Issuing Man-in-the-Middle Certificates

Mozilla is asking certification authorities to revoke all subordinate CA certificates issued to third parties that can be used to eavesdrop on encrypted connections...

Mozilla is asking certification authorities to revoke all subordinate CA certificates issued to third parties that can be used to eavesdrop on encrypted connections

Read more at The H

Radeon HyperZ In Open-Source On Older Hardware

Recently there has been a lot of talk about Hierarchical-Z/HyperZ support for R600g since its set to provide a measurable performance benefit the open-source Radeon driver for modern GPUs. This support has still not been mainlined and there are still a few issues to work out, but at least the support is stable for the older "R300g" driver and has been around for quite a while at this point. For those wondering what to expect from HiZ/HyperZ performance boosts, here is a preview.

Read more at Phoronix

Fedora Puts Back Btrfs Deployment Yet Again

Fedora 17 will not, as planned, use Btrfs as its default filesystem, but will stick with ext4...

Fedora 17 will not, as planned, use Btrfs as its default filesystem, but will stick with ext4

Read more at The H

Mozilla's Boot to Gecko OS Is Moving Forward

In the summer of last year, we considered the question, "Could Mozilla Pull Off a Firefox OS?" While Mozilla hasn't traditionally been a player in the operating system space, it's worth remembering what Google has done with Chrome OS in a very short amount of time, and what it has done with Android.

Read more at Ostatic

openSUSE 12.2 Reaches First Milestone

The first milestone of version 12.2 of openSUSE includes version 4.8 of the KDE desktop environment, an upgraded Firefox web browser and updated artwork...

The first milestone of version 12.2 of openSUSE includes version 4.8 of the KDE desktop environment, an upgraded Firefox web browser and updated artwork

Read more at The H

How Much Would Debian Cost to Develop? How about $19 Billion?

The developer version of Debian GNU/Linux ("wheezy") contains 17,141 packages of software, or 419,776,604 lines of code. With that figure, James Bromberger estimates that Debian would cost about $19.1 billion to produce.

Is Your Cloud Over-Provisioned?

In the fairy tale of Goldilocks and the three bears, the heroine was trying to find the solution that was "just right." But when it comes to server provisioning in the cloud, do you often make the wrong choice, picking an instance that ends up being too costly for your needs? Mike Raab at CopperEgg wrote about this situation last fall and it is worth considering. Sponsor Take a look at the current Linux pricing chart from AWS as an example. It shows numerous choices for your EC2 instance, ranging from a few pennies an hour...

Deltacloud becomes an Apache Top Level Project

After incubating since 2010, Deltacloud becomes the second cloud management platform to ascend to the status of Apache Top Level Project...

After incubating since 2010, Deltacloud becomes the second cloud management platform to ascend to the status of Apache Top Level Project

Read more at The H

Android 5.0 'Jelly Bean' Launching in Q2? Eh, Maybe

The often-unreliable Digitimes says the new operating system will be optimized for tablets, and work alongside Windows 8. [Read more]...

The often-unreliable Digitimes says the new operating system will be optimized for tablets, and work alongside Windows 8. [Read more]

Piwik 1.7 Adds New Reports, Improves Security

Version 1.7 of the open source web analytics suite brings performance improvements and adds a number of new features and analytics reports. The major update also improves security, closing security holes and allowing users to force SSL use...

Read more at The H

Astronomy on the Desktop

Many people's initial exposure to science is through astronomy, and they are inspired by that first look through a telescope or their first glimpse of a Hubble image. Several software packages are available for the Linux desktop that allow users to enjoy their love of the stars. I look at several packages in this article that should be available for most distributions. more>>

Citrix's Open Source CloudStack 3.0 Platform to Challenge Amazon, VMware

Last year, stepping up what is already fierce competition in the race to provide cloud computing platform infrastructure, Citrix Systems announced that it had completed the acquisition of Cloud.com. Cloud.com had many notable customers who favored its cloud stack infrastructure, which is centered on OpenStack, including GoDaddy and Zynga.

Read more at Ostatic

Java SE Updates Fix Critical Security Holes

Older versions of Java SE allow attackers to use specially crafted WebStart applications or web services to install malicious code on computers running flawed Java releases...

Older versions of Java SE allow attackers to use specially crafted WebStart applications or web services to install malicious code on computers running flawed Java releases

Read more at The H

New Web Browser for HP's Open webOS

Along with the release of a new web browser for the webOS mobile operating system, HP has also announced governance details for the mobile platform that is soon to be fully open source...

Along with the release of a new web browser for the webOS mobile operating system, HP has also announced governance details for the mobile platform that is soon to be fully open source

Read more at The H

AMD Catalyst A.I. Useless Under Linux?

AMD today launched the Radeon HD 7570/7770 graphics cards as the latest GPUs built on the GCN architecture. Unfortunately there still is not any open-source support for the Radeon HD 7000 series hardware nor has AMD sent out any review samples to Phoronix. But there is some other Catalyst Linux...

Read more at Phoronix

5 Questions with StudentsFirst's Michelle Rhee on Education Reform

The name Michelle Rhee most likely rings a bell because of all the hard work she put towards reforming the Washington, DC public schools as chancellor from 2007 to 2010. During that time period, she hosted hundreds of community meetings, even creating a Youth Cabinet to bring students' voices into...

Read more at OpenSource.com

Vimeo Adds Support for Browsing CC Licensed Videos

As part of its recent platform revamp, Vimeo has added support for browsing and searching for videos made available under a Creative Commons licence, along with a new CC Vimeo portal for signed-in users...

Read more at The H

Google Announces Code-in 2011 Grand Prize Winners

Google has announced the grand prize winners for its 2011 Google Code-in contest, in which pre-university students were introduced to open source software development. Winners will be flown to Google's campus later this year...

Read more at The H

Developer Values Debian at £12.1 Billion

According to an analysis by James Bromberger it would cost £12.1 billion to develop the software that is included in Debian from scratch...

According to an analysis by James Bromberger it would cost £12.1 billion to develop the software that is included in Debian from scratch

Read more at The H

Horde Groupware Contains Backdoor

Unknown perpetrators infiltrated a backdoor into several installation packages during a hack of the groupware provider's FTP server. The attack went undetected for a period of four months...

Unknown perpetrators infiltrated a backdoor into several installation packages during a hack of the groupware provider's FTP server. The attack went undetected for a period of four months

Read more at The H

Java-Alternative Kotlin Now Available as Open Source

Now available to download as in-development snapshots or source, JetBrains' Kotlin language aims to address the same issues as Scala, but be easier to use...

Now available to download as in-development snapshots or source, JetBrains' Kotlin language aims to address the same issues as Scala, but be easier to use

Read more at The H

Linux Skills Remain In Strong Demand In the Job Market

For many people who are still unemployed, this year's top resolution will be finding a job. We've reported before on how acquiring skills with open source technologies can be an effective differentiator for the tech job seeker. In the latest roundup of data from job site Dice.com, based on survey responses from employers, Linux skills are emerging as one of the most valuable differentiators of all in the job market.

Read more at Ostatic

LibreOffice 3.5 Sharpens its Grammar Checking

The new version is ready for all users and includes a new built-in grammar checker, interactive word count, support for 10,000 sheet spreadsheets and Visio importing. It also sees update checking turned on for the first time.

Read more at The H

Firefox Extension Illustrates Password Reuse

The Password Reuse Visualizer is Mozilla's way of drawing attention to a security problem which is as familiar as it is widespread...

The Password Reuse Visualizer is Mozilla's way of drawing attention to a security problem which is as familiar as it is widespread

Read more at The H

NVIDIA Releases 295.20 Linux Drivers

NVIDIA this morning formally released the 295.20 display drivers for Linux x86/x86_64...

Read more at Phoronix

Miguel de Icaza Calls For More Mono, C# Games

Miguel de Icaza presented this weekend at AltDevConf where he heavily promoted Mono and using C# for game developers...

Read more at Phoronix

How San Francisco Can Get its Gov 2.0 Groove Back

There’s been a great deal of discussion lately around the topic of government innovation, especially here in San Francisco, with the appointment of a new chief innovation officer, a new “civic accelerator,” a new venture with a consortium of Bay Area technology companies and a new technology and innovation task...

Read more at OpenSource.com

After BFS, Now Comes The BLD Linux Scheduler

Adding to the already existing Linux schedulers, including the out-of-tree Brain Fuck Scheduler (BFS), is now a proposal to integrate a new scheduler... The Barbershop Load Distribution scheduler...

Read more at Phoronix

VA-API Video Decoding Support For Wayland

One of the many items that Intel developers have been working on for the rapid ascent of Wayland is GPU video decoding support...

Read more at Phoronix

Brian Stevens on Red Hat's Involvement with OpenStack

Red Hat has been involved with OpenStack development for some time. Unlike the bulk of companies involved, however, Red Hat has gone about its work quietly and without "officially" joining the effort. Red Hat still isn't saying exactly what it hopes to get from OpenStack contributions, but Brian Stevens did divulge a bit about the company's involvement.

You Need A Budget

This time of year is often rough on finances, and although there are many money-management tools available for Linux, none are quite like You Need A Budget, or YNAB for short. Unlike traditional budgeting programs, YNAB focuses on a few simple rules to help you get out of debt and, more important, to see where your money is going. more>>