40303977
submission
Mojo66 writes:
After project savings had been estimated to amount to at least €4 million in March, more precise figures are now in: Over €10 million (approximately £8 million or $12.8 million) has been saved by the city of Munich, thanks to its development and use of the city's own Linux platform. The calculation compares the current overall cost of the LiMux migration with that of two technologically equivalent Windows scenarios: Windows with Microsoft Office and Windows with OpenOffice. Reportedly, savings amount to over €10 million. The study is based on around 11,000 migrated workplaces within Munich's city administration as well as 15,000 desktops that are equipped with an open source office suite. The comparison with Windows assumes that Windows systems must be on the same technological level; this would, for example, mean that they would have been upgraded to Windows 7 at the end of 2011. Overall, the project says that Windows and Microsoft Office would have cost just over €34 million, while Windows with Open Office would have cost about €30 million. The LiMux scenario, on the other hand, has reportedly cost less than €23 million. A detailed report (in german) is available here.
40252399
submission
xonen writes:
It is now official — with the release of Unity3D version 4, Linux is an official target platform.
"Unity 4 Pro delivers the efficient and flexible workflow, graphical polish and power, smooth performance, fine tuned animations and creative control you need to make, ship and sell professional games."
The little catch here, is that Linux is not yet supported as host platform — you will still need a Windows or OSX computer to develop your games. However, we can expect a great deal of existing and new games to be released as Linux version too soon, especially since both the indie ('free') and pro versions of Unity3D support building for Linux target.
40230353
submission
sfcrazy writes:
The KDE team has released the first beta for its renewed Workspaces, Applications, and Development Platform. With API, dependency and feature freezes in place, the KDE team's focus is now on fixing bugs and further polishing new and old functionality.
40213881
submission
zzats writes:
The Finnish mobile phone manufacturer Jolla, started by ex-Nokia Meego engineers, is showing it's Linux-based Sailfish OS for the public for the first time today. The first (supposedly generic) keynote speech is scheduled to air 9:15 GMT, with an UI-focused presentation starting later, 15:00 GMT. In addition to using the OS on their own devices, Jolla is planning to license it to third party manufacturers. The company has previously stated their initial focus for creating an ecosystem is in the Chinese market.
40212057
submission
sfcrazy writes:
Microsoft may have attracted some headlines and discussion on Slashdot for being a 'sponsor' at the Linux Foundation's Europe event LinuxCon. But this sponsor is not giving the Linux Foundation any special treatment when it comes to UEFI Secure boot. The Foundation's James Bottomley says how challenging the process is and they are still waiting for Microsoft's response to get the signed bootloader. Some key findings are:
1. Microsoft has banned GPLv3 and similar licences to be used in bootloader
2. There are some agreements that you have to sign with Microsoft with go beyond UEFI. These can be problematic.
40205411
submission
hypnosec writes:
The Linux Foundation’s plans of releasing a signed pre-bootloader that will enable users to install Linux alongside Windows 8 systems with UEFI have been reportedly delayed. TLF proposed a signed pre-bootloader that will chain-load a bootloader which in turn will boot the desired operating system thus keeping Linux installations for novice users as simple as it were before. Further, this particular component is meant for small-time Linux distros which otherwise wouldn’t have the required expertise or resources to develop their own system to tackle the secure boot issue. This was going as per plans up until James Bottomley, Parallels’ CTO disclosed that he has been having rather bizarre experiences with Microsoft sysdev centre. Bottomley, when asked about the status of the project, told Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of ZDNet, "We're all done and dusted with the signed contract with Microsoft and the binary ready to release. However, I've been having bizarre experiences with the Microsoft sysdev centre."
40202697
submission
medge_42 writes:
Linux mint 14 is out. Release into the wild at 10:27am on 20/11/2012
40182825
submission
Trailrunner7 writes:
A new Linux rootkit has emerged and researchers who have analyzed its code and operation say that the malware appears to be a custom-written tool designed to inject iframes into Web sites and drive traffic to malicious sites for drive-by download attacks. The rootkit is designed specifically for 64-bit Linux systems, and while it has some interesting features, it does not appear to be the work of high-level programmer or be meant for use in targeted attacks.
The Linux rootkit does not appear to be a modified version of any known piece of malware and it first came to light last week when someone posted a quick description and analysis of it on the Full Disclosure mailing list. That poster said that his site had been targeted by the malware and some of his customers had been redirected to malicious sites.
40182347
submission
An anonymous reader writes:
The Google Samsung Chromebook was already interesting for its competitive $250 price-tag and that it can be loaded with Linux distributions beyond Chrome OS, but it turns out that its performance is particularly good too. When loaded with Ubuntu Linux, the Samsung Exynos 5 Dual ARM SoC on the Chrome notebook had outperformed a 1.8GHz Intel Atom, a quad-core Calxeda ARM server, and a TI OMAP4 PandaBoard.
40149107
submission
skade88 writes:
Everyone knows content is king. Many of us use Windows or OSX at home instead of Linux because the games we love just are not available on Linux. With Steam moving forward for a Linux launch, I would like to hear from the Slashdot community on this topic. What are the game(s) you cannot live without? If they were available in Linux would you be happy to run Linux instead of Windows or OSX?
40130873
submission
tetrahedrassface writes:
An app for Netflix-Desktop that is much cleaner and easier to install was released today. It is built for Ubuntu, but per the comments some .RPM builds are being worked on. The app runs well, looks native, and plays Netflix video nicely. Trust me, after building WINE via git 5 times to get the manual method method of Netflix running on LInux, the app is a godsend. Hop over and check it out. Hopefully it's the start of a great thing for us Linux users.
40124265
submission
garbagechuteflyboy writes:
PengPod is the first dual-booting tablet; It's able to run both Linux and Android. Pengpod is now running the latest Plasma Active which gives this powerful Linux tablet features that were previously only available to iPad and Android tablets. PengPod is currently selling Pre-orders on Indiegogo.
PengPod hoping to ship inexpensive Linux tablets with 7, 10 inch displays liliputing
Android and Linux on a dual-booting tablet Ars Technica
Meet the PengPod, a 'true Linux' tablet starting at $120 PCWorld
40121863
submission
An anonymous reader writes:
Developers been working hard for the past few months to get Linux ported to the TI-Nspire calculator.
The port is not yet fully stabilized nor quite ready for broad consumption and requires some user-level knowledge of Linux systems, but is definitely worth a try. Experimental support for root filesystem installed on USB mass storage is being worked on, so that Datalight’s proprietary Flash FX/Reliance filesystem used by TI’s OS isn’t a limit anymore. This also means that the native TI-Nspire OS image is not replaced by the Linux system, and Linux can been booted on demand.
Support for USB keyboard, X server, directFB, Wi-Fi (with the help of a powered USB hub) and text-based Internet browsing is progressively being added and tested.
40080673
submission
Penurious Penguin writes:
Via LXer, a hopeful article at The Verge persuasively suggests that through Valve, Linux could soon become a formidable contender in the gaming arena, capable of holding its own against such giants as Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and the Wii. With 50 million users, a growing Linux team, a caboodle of interesting experiments ("Steam Box" hardware baselines, etc.) and a strong conviction that more-open platforms are the way, Valve may actually see it through.
40054037
submission
skade88 writes:
With the Linux Steam beta giving Ubuntu and it's large user base all the love, other Linux gamers are understandably wanting to let in on the fun. For the beta, Valve has provided Steam as a Debian package. Many hungry Linux gamers have reported that they have have Steam running on their fav. distro, but that still leaves the legal debate. What is the legal threshold needed to get Steam in the repos of your fav. flavor of Linux? Will Valve's one-size-fits-every-OS license be flexible to work on Linux or will it kill/Delay the dream of a viable gaming world for Linux? We are so close to bridging the last major hurdle in finally realizing the year of the Linux desktop: Gaming. Lets hope the FOSS community and Valve can play together so we all win.
40046041
submission
hypnosec writes:
Lenovo’s UEFI implementation is only allowing Windows or Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to boot by explicitly checking for these two operating systems while refusing to boot all other UEFI-installed systems, it has been revealed. Matthew Garrett, in a blog post, disclosed his findings stating that when an operating system with UEFI support such a Fedora Linux is installed, the ThinkCentre M92p desktop from Lenovo checks for presence of firmware descriptive strings — "Windows Boot Manager" and "Red Hat Enterprise Linux". According to Garrett, if the system that is being loaded doesn’t match either of the above mentioned descriptive strings, the UEFI neither shows the operating system in the boot menu nor would it let the system boot.
39961289
submission
sfcrazy writes:
A very serious argument erupted on the Linux kernel mailing list when Andy Grover, a Red Hat SCSI target engineer, requested that Nicholas A. Bellinger, the Linux SCSI target maintainer, provide proof of non-infringment of the GPL. Nick is developer at Rising Tide Systems, a Red Hat competitor, and a maker of advanced SCSI storage systems. Nick's company recently produced a groundbreaking technology involving advanced SCSI commands which will give Rising Tide Systems a lead in producing SCSI storage systems. Now, RTS is blocking Red Hat for getting access to that code as its proprietary. What's uncertain is whether RTS' code is covered by GPL or not — if it is then Red Hat has all the rights to get access to it and it's a serious GPL violation.
39912565
submission
Artefacto writes:
The Ksplice team has made available a git repository with the changes Red Hat made to the kernel broken down. They are calling this project RedPatch.
This comes in response to a policy change Red Hat had operated in early 2011 with the goal of undercutting Oracle and other vendor's strategy of poaching RedHat's customers. The Ksplice team says they've doing the work they're now making available since the policy was implemented; they claim to be now making it public because they "feel everyone in the Linux community can benefit from the work".
For Ksplice, we build individual updates for each change and rely on source patches that are broken-out, not a giant tarball. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to take the right patches to create individual updates for each fix, and to skip over the noise — like a change that speeds up bootup — which is unnecessary for an already-running system. We’ve been taking the monolithic Red Hat patch tarball and breaking it into smaller commits internally ever since they introduced this change.
At Oracle, we feel everyone in the Linux community can benefit from the work we already do to get our jobs done, so now we’re sharing these broken-out patches publicly.
