GNOME

Submission + - GNOME 3 -Beauty to the Bone?

Submitted by __aamdvq1432
__aamdvq1432 writes: According to the GNOME design crew, as reported by Allan over at As Far as I Know, GNOME 3 will represent A New Approach to GNOME Application Design. The design patterns being developed and employed may effect a new, prettier interface, but more importantly a new mindset about the entire project, a mindset intended to encourage greater deep beauty in the application layers below the user interface. Maybe...for now, I'm sticking to the sinking ship of KDE in the Ubuntu ocean.
Linux

Submission + - TOY FAIR 2012: new Linux system for RC cars (hobbymedia.it)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Last weekend during the Nuremberg Toy Fair 2012 I spotted a really cool new system for "professional" RC models based on Embedded Linux.

The WiRC allows to control an RC car (or any other RC vehicle) with an iOS/Android device using WiFi.
The core of this system is a 240 MHz ARM9 processor, with 16 MB SDRAM and 4 MB FLASH (with 2 USB ports and 802.11b/g WiFi, a microphone input and a Speaker output). It features 8+4 channels of output.

A free software SDK is now in development to code your own transmitter applications.
Windows

Submission + - Windows 8 Features That Have Linux Roots (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "As details about new features in Windows 8 started to be discussed in the Building 8 blog and bandied about in Linux/Windows forums, Linux users were quick to chime in with a hearty 'Linux had that first' — even for things that were just a natural evolution, like native support for USB 3.0. So ask not 'did Linux have this first', but 'does Windows 8 do it better?'"
Operating Systems

Submission + - Now The Bad Guys Are Using Open Source Too (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
colinneagle
colinneagle writes: "What is good for the goose, is good for the gander, right? Open source has been so successful in giving us software like Linux, Apache, Hadoop, etc., why wouldn't the open source method work with other types of software? Probably no one expected that the criminals behind vast malware trojans would adopt open source methods to make their malware more dangerous, but they have. According to this report from Seculert Research, the makers of Citadel, a variant of the Zeus Trojan are using open source models to hone their code and make the Trojan more dangerous."
Red Hat Software

Submission + - Red Hat Appoints First Female Fedora Project Leader (fedoraproject.org)

Submitted by darthcamaro
darthcamaro writes: Red Hat is changing the leadership at the Fedora Project. Jared Smith is out after having been the Fedora Project Leader since June of 2010. In is Robyn Bergeron — who will be the first female leader of the open source project's history. Bergeron is well known in the community as she has most recently been the Fedora Program Manager.
Linux

Submission + - Nouveau Open-Source NVIDIA Driver Achieves OpenCL Support (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Nouveau driver project that's been writing an open-source NVIDIA graphics driver via reverse-engineering has moved forward in their support. The Nouveau driver now has OpenCL acceleration support to do GPGPU computing on the open-source community driver for several generations of GeForce GPUs.
KDE

Submission + - Details Emerge About Spark Linux-Based Tablet (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "There’s a new tablet in town called the Spark. The Linux-driven tablet, based on the Zenithink C71 and KDE was unveiled by developer Aaron Seigo recently. The tablet will be available for pre-order this week and will start shipping worldwide in May. In terms of specifications, the 7-inch (800x480) multi-touch slate will run a 1GHz AMLogic ARM processor and Mali-400 GPU, sport 512MB of RAM, 4GB of internal storage (with a microSD slot for expandability), 802/11b/g WiFi, a pair of USB ports, a front-facing 1.3MP webcam, and an audio jack. The UI of choice is Plasma Active and there will apparently be a content store where developers can peddle their wares and users can snag software."
Linux

Submission + - Linux Vendors Need To Sell More Than Linux (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruh
jfruh writes: "Mandriva, a venerale Linux distro, is on the verge of shutting down. One of its main problems is that it never grew into more than just an OS vendor. The big players in the commercial Linux space — Red Hat, SuSE, Canonical — all built Linux into their larger computing visions. Is there any room in the marketplace for just a straight-up Linux distro anymore?"
KDE

Submission + - KDE's Plasma Active releases own 7" tablet (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
mpol
mpol writes: "KDE's Plasma Active introduced last Saturday its own 7" tablet. According to Aaron J. Seigo, "It's the first tablet computer that comes with Plasma Active pre-installed".
The 'Spark' with its 7" screen is built around a Cortex A9 with a Mali-400-gpu, 512MB RAM and an SD-card slot. It will have a 800x480 screen resolution and will cost around 200 Euro.
It is actually a rebrand of the Zenithink ZT-180 C71, which comes with Android by default.
On a personal note, Aaron J. Seigo will no longer be sponsored by Qt Development Frameworks to work on Qt and KDE. He will however stay involved with KDE and Free Software he says."
KDE

Submission + - KDE 4.8 Released (kde.org)

Submitted by
jrepin
jrepin writes: " KDE community have released version 4.8 of their free and open source software bundle. The new version provides many new features, improved stability and increased performance.

Highlights for Plasma Workspaces include window manager optimizations, the redesign of power management, and integration with Activities. The first Qt Quick-based Plasma widgets have entered the default installation of Plasma Desktop, with more to follow in future releases.

KDE applications released today include Dolphin file manager with its new display engine, new Kate text editor features and improvements, Gwenview image viewer with functional and visual improvements. KDE Telepathy reaches first beta milestone. New features for Marble virtual globe keep arriving, among these are: Elevation Profile, satellite tracking and Krunner integration.

KDE Platform provides the foundation for KDE software. KDE software is more stable than ever before. In addition to stability improvements and bugfixes, Platform 4.8 provides better tools for building fluid and touch-friendly user interfaces, integrates with other systems' password saving mechanisms and lays the base for more powerful interaction with other people using the new KDE Telepathy framework."
GNOME

Submission + - The Gnome Shell-fork Cinnamon releases v1.2 (linuxmint.com)

Submitted by
Novin
Novin writes: ""Cinnamon 1.2 is out!

All APIs and the desktop itself are now fully stable!

I hope you’ll enjoy the many new features, the desktop effect, desktop layouts, the new configuration tool, the applets, changes, bug fixes and improvements that went into this release. This is a huge step forward for Cinnamon."

Phoronix also has a story about this, http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTA0NzQ"
Security

Submission + - Exploits emerge for Linux privilege escalation fla (techworld.com.au)

Submitted by
angry tapir
angry tapir writes: "Linux vendors are rushing to patch a privilege escalation vulnerability in the Linux kernel that can be exploited by local attackers to gain root access on the system. The vulnerability, which is identified as CVE-2012-0056, was discovered by Jüri Aedla and is caused by a failure of the Linux kernel to properly restrict access to the "/proc//mem" file."
Ubuntu

Submission + - Ubuntu rips up drop-down menus (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by
Barence
Barence writes: "Ubuntu is set to replace the 30-year-old computer menu system with a “Head-Up Display” that allows users to simply type or speak menu commands.

Instead of hunting through drop-down menus to find application commands, Ubuntu’s Head-Up Display lets users type what they want to do into a search box. The system suggests possible commands as the user begins typing – entering “Rad” would bring up the Radial blur command in the GIMP art package, for example. HUD also uses fuzzy matching and learns from past searches to ensure the correct commands are offered to users.

Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth told PC Pro the HUD will make it easier for people to learn new software packages, and migrate from Windows to Linux software without having to relearn menus. The HUD will first appear in Ubuntu 12.04."
EU

Submission + - Spanish Extremadura Moving 40,000 Desktops to Linu (europa.eu)

Submitted by
jrepin
jrepin writes: "The administration of Spain’s autonomous region of Extremadura is moving to a complete open source desktop, confirms the region's CIO, Teodomiro Cayetano López. The IT department started a project to install the Debian distribution on all 40,000 desktop PCs. "The project is really advanced and we hope to start the deployment the next spring, finishing it in December." The project makes it Europe's second largest open source desktop migration, between the French Gendarmerie (90,000 desktops) and the German city of Munich (14,000 desktops)."
Amiga

Submission + - Commodore OS Vision Beta (Linux) Available as Free (commodoreusa.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Commodore USA has been shipping its revamped C64s, which pack modern PC hardware into the good old plastic C64 keyboard-casing, for some time. A new line of Amigas, which feature even more powerful graphics-workstation level PC hardware, is also in development, and was announced some time ago. What has puzzled would-be buyers of the new C64s and Amigas for some time, however, has been precisely what Commodore USA's announced new Commodore OS will look like. That veil of secrecy has now been lifted with Commodore OS Vision Beta having been made available as a free download to all. Commodore OS appears to be a Linux-derived and Linux- compatible 64bit OS with a retro-novel Commodore look/styling, but also features full backwards compatitibility with old 8bit, 16bit and 32 bit era Commodore software via emulation, many classic games in particular (although you only get these when you buy one of the new Commodore computers). It also allows Windows to be installed and run in a virtual machine (Virtualbox), and promises a special "seamless mode", where Windows applications can be run straight inside Commodore OS as thought they are native applications. Those curious about whether Commodore can revive the once mighty Commodore platform now have a chance to (beta) test the new Linux, Windows and vintage Commodore compatible Commodore OS Vision for themselves.
Linux

Submission + - An Open-Source, Reverse-Engineered Mali GPU Driver (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Next month at FOSDEM there will be an announcement of a fully open-source and reverse-engineered ARM Mali graphics driver for Android / Linux. This driver, according to Phoronix, is said to support OpenGL ES and other functionality from reverse engineering the official ARM Linux driver. Will this mark a change for open-source graphics drivers on ARM, just as the Radeon did for x86 Linux?
Security

Submission + - Will secure boot cripple linux compatability (dreamwidth.org)

Submitted by MojoMax
MojoMax writes: The advent of Windows 8 is drawing ever nearer and recently we have learned that ARM devices installed with Windows 8 will not be able to disable the UEFI secure boot feature that many of us a deeply concerned about. However, UEFI is still a very real danger to linux and the freedom to use whichever OS you chose. Regardless of information for OEMs to enable customers to install their own keys, such as that published by the linux foundation (http://www.linuxfoundation.org/publications/making-uefi-secure-boot-work-with-open-platforms), there are still very serious and as yet unresolved issues with using secure boot and linux. These issues are best summarised quoting Matthew Garrett's words in his article "Why UEFI secure boot is difficult for Linux":

"Signing the kernel isn't enough. Signed Linux kernels must refuse to load any unsigned kernel modules. Virtualbox on Linux? Dead. Nvidia binary driver on Linux? Dead. All out of tree kernel modules? Utterly, utterly dead. Building an updated driver locally? Not going to happen. That's going to make some people fairly unhappy."

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