Tux:Tops - Mobility with Linux and more

International Space Station switches from Windows to Linux, for improved reliability

Fri, 10 May 2013 06:01:44 -0400

The United Space Alliance, which manages the computers aboard the International Space Station in association with NASA, has announced that the Windows XP computers aboard the ISS have been switched to Linux. “We migrated key functions from Windows to Linux because we needed an operating system that was stable and reliable.”

In specific, the “dozens of laptops” will make the change to Debian 6. These laptops will join many other systems aboard the ISS that already run various flavors of Linux, such as RedHat and Scientific Linux. As far as we know, after this transition, there won’t be a single computer aboard the ISS that runs Windows. Beyond stability and reliability, Keith Chuvala of the United Space Alliance says they wanted an operating system that “would give us in-house control. Read More

Iron Penguin: First open-source "Iron Man" suit within reach?

Wed, 08 May 2013 19:48:28 -0400

Even before Tony Stark, billionaire technology genius, revealed that he was Iron Man in 2008, others were trying to build augmented fighting suits. Now that Stark has shown that Iron Man technology was within the reach of homebrew builders, work has started on the first open-source augmented fighting suits.

This is, of course, work that only the most advanced homebrew inventors will want to try. As the failures of Armand Hammer, Ivan Vanko, and Microsoft with Armor 8 have shown, it's not easy to build your own armor (BYOA). Read More

Android this week

Wed, 08 May 2013 19:44:50 -0400

Google’s I/O Developer event is fast approaching and expectations of a showcase new device are riding high. It’s likely that Google’s Nexus 7 tablet will see a refresh at the very least. And based on information of an alleged Samsung road map leak, Google could be introducing a new Nexus 11 tablet. Read More

Top 10 Ubuntu App Downloads for April 2013

Wed, 08 May 2013 19:41:16 -0400

Canonical published a few minutes ago, May 3, the regular top 10 app downloads chart, this time for April 2013, extracted from Ubuntu Software Center.

While the Stormcloud weather app is still number one, there are two new entries in the paid apps top: Splice, the fantastic and unique puzzle game that conquered the mobile world, and UberWriter, a beautiful and distraction free writing tool. Read More

Firefox Gives You More Control Over Your Privacy

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 04:32:14 -0500

Firefox includes a new enhancement to private browsing that allows you to open a new private browsing window without closing or changing your current browsing session. You can shop for a birthday gift in a private window with your existing browsing session uninterrupted. You can also use a private browsing window to check multiple email accounts simultaneously. We are also proud to announce that Firefox for Android also supports private browsing on a per tab basis. Firefox for Android allows you to open a new private browsing tab during your current browsing session, allowing you to switch between private and standard tabs within the same browsing session. Read More

AMD Releases Open-Source UVD Video Support

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 04:30:48 -0500

Within the next few hours AMD will be publishing open-source driver code that exposes their Unified Video Decoder (UVD) engine on modern Radeon HD graphics cards. This will finally allow open-source graphics drivers to take advantage of hardware-accelerated video decoding. Read more details in this Phoronix exclusive. Read More

Unix commands and tools you just can't live without

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 04:27:45 -0500

Are you someone who never met a Unix command you didn't like? OK, maybe not. But are there commands you just can't imagine living without? Here are some that have made a big difference on my busiest days and those that people I've worked with over the years have said are their most important essentials. Read More

Google offers patent amnesty for open source projects

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 04:25:36 -0500

Google has reasserted its support of open source by pledging it won't sue users, distributors or developers of such software that uses the search engine giant's patents.

Called the Open Patent Non-Assertion Pledge, Google said the promise applies to anyone unless the company is first attacked. Read More

7 More Top eCommerce Software

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 04:21:19 -0500

The buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks is known as eCommerce. This type of trading offers many advantages over 'traditional shopping' for both the buyer and the seller.

eCommerce enables businesses to trade 24 hours a day, sell products and services to a wider market, and to keep a check on operational costs. For example, retailers do not need to rent stores or offices, and have the potential to make significant wage savings. For consumers, eCommerce lets individuals and businesses shop or pay for goods and services at any time, avoid queuing, avoid unnecessary travel expenses, and make prices between different providers transparent. Read More

Forget Coming Soon! It's Here! One of worlds fastest and high performance Linux laptop.

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 18:55:41 -0500

LinuxCertified Inc introduced the LC530Sb 17.3" High Resolution, Full HD Display - Portable Workstation with pre-installed with Linux. The LC2530Sb is one of the fastest and powerful Linux laptop computer designed for high performance computing needs.

"We are pleased to add the LC2530Sb Linux laptop to our highly successful LC series product line," said Rajesh Goyal, vice president of LinuxCertified, Inc. "The laptop offers world's fastest notebook GPUs - the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670MX or GTX 680M , to accelerate the performance for even the most demanding system tasks."

LC2530Sb is ready to provide accelerated system performance. With capability of support for the 3rd Generation Intel® Core™ Processor and up to 32GB dual-channel DDR3 memory, the LC2530Sb provides exceptional performance for advanced multi-threaded applications.

In addition to the superior graphics and processor technology, the LC2530Sb can support upto 3TB of storage space, supports hardware RAID functionality plus an mSATA SSD capable slot. The unit also features full color programmable backlit keyboard, an eSATA & USB 3.0 Ports, HDMI & DisplayPort video out, wireless N LAN & Bluetooth connectivity, high resolution video camera. With the combination of all of these powerful technologies, the LC2530Sb is the ultimate workstation for demanding environments.

The system is available for purchase at http://www.linuxcertified.com/linux-laptop-lc2530sb.html

To learn more contact

Rajesh Goyal @ info(at)linuxcertified.com or at 1-877-800-6873 Read More

Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 19:11:23 -0500

One of the major advantages of free software is that the community protects users from malicious software. Now Ubuntu GNU/Linux has become a counterexample. What should we do?

Proprietary software is associated with malicious treatment of the user: surveillance code, digital handcuffs (DRM or Digital Restrictions Management) to restrict users, and back doors that can do nasty things under remote control. Programs that do any of these things are malware and should be treated as such. Widely used examples include Windows, the iThings, and the Amazon "Kindle" product for virtual book burning, which do all three; Macintosh and the Playstation III which impose DRM; most portable phones, which do spying and have back doors; Adobe Flash Player, which does spying and enforces DRM; and plenty of apps for iThings and Android, which are guilty of one or more of these nasty practices. Read More

SUSE Linux Says Btrfs is Ready to Rock

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 19:09:33 -0500

The advanced Butter/Better/B-tree Filesystem, Btrfs, is still labeled as experimental in the Btrfs Wiki and on Oracle's Btrfs page, though the Oracle page looks outdated. Btrfs is an advanced copy-on-write filesystem with a lot of great capabilities: snapshotting and rollbacks, checksumming of data and metadata, RAID, volumes and subvolumes, online defragmentation, compression, and online filesystem check and repair. Snapshots are always interesting to me; they're not backups, but a fast way to restore a system to a previous state. With Btrfs users can manage their own snapshots in their home directories. Btrfs supports filesystems up to 16 EiB in size, and files up to 16 EiB as well. (Which may be almost enough to store all the cute kitten photos on the Internet.) Read More

The open source advantage: Executives learn how to stay competitive

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 19:08:05 -0500

Let's say you're a big company in a competitive industry. One who innovates and succeeds by creating software. Not extending COTS, not adapting existing code. Generating fresh, new code, at your full expense. The value the company receives by investing in the creation of that software is competitive advantage, sometimes known as the profit-motive. Read More

NVIDIA Publishes Open-Source 2D Driver Code

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 17:28:41 -0500

NVIDIA has published initial patches for providing open-source 2D hardware acceleration support on their NVIDIA Tegra 2 and Tegra 3 SoCs. This work is based upon the experimental open-source Direct Rendering Manager driver to be merged into the Linux 3.8 kernel.

Times are great with NVIDIA dabbling with more open-source code and Imagination looking at some level of open-source PowerVR support. This weekend I wrote about NVIDIA working on open-source support for their Tegra graphics while this morning new open-source patches arrived from the NVIDIA Finland office. Read More

Fedora 18 finally makes beta

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 17:24:11 -0500

After a number of delays, the beta of the Fedora 18 Linux-based distribution has been released.
The beta release date had been extended six times over the past two months, mostly due to an underestimation of the amount of work required to rewrite the Anaconda software, which is used to install or upgrade Fedora.

"It was a one-time aberration," said Robyn Bergeron, who leads the Fedora Project.

The final release of Fedora 18, which was named code-named "Spherical Cow," is now set for Jan. 8, 2013, almost two months after the original ship date, and about seven months after the release of Fedora 17. Read More