57188811
submission
sfcrazy writes:
Gnome developers have been debating the full support for Wayland in 3.12 for a while. They at one point even considered delaying the Gnome release to keep the development in sync with Wayland. Finally, developers have decided to keep Wayland in ‘preview’ mode as there is still a lot of work to be done.
57151217
submission
sfcrazy writes:
NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered 715 new planets which are orbiting 305 stars, revealing multiple-planet systems much like our own solar system. NASA says, “Nearly 95 percent of these planets are smaller than Neptune, which is almost four times the size of Earth. This discovery marks a significant increase in the number of known small-sized planets more akin to Earth than previously identified exoplanets, which are planets outside our solar system.”
57150603
submission
sfcrazy writes:
Google has already announced the first event around project Ara where they will start teaching people how to use it. Now the reports are floating that Google may start selling the ‘modular’ Ara smartphones for $50 by next year. What all hardware a user will get for $50 is unclear, but looking at the nature of the concept, you can just throw some more dollars to add more components. I am not sure if the concept will become popular among average users who may or may not care about such a device, but power-users, developer and enthusiasts will definitely be the #1 target of the device and it may sell like hot cakes.
57124749
submission
sfcrazy writes:
Motorola sent a wave of excitement when they announce project Ara which allows people to add latest components to their smartphones, keeping the hardware as up-to-date as is the software. The Android maker will be organizing the first Ara Developers’ Conference, to be held April 15-16, 2014. Given it’s ‘online’ nature more people will be able to participate in the event and those who are around can always get on-to-one experience.
56956431
submission
sfcrazy writes:
The UK government is all set to move away from vendor-locked proprietary to Open Source, Open standard solutions. Microsoft is, obviously, scared and is trying to spread incorrect and misleading information about Open Source/vendor-free technologies warning the UK citizens and businesses that, "We believe very strongly that the current proposal is likely to increase costs, cause dissatisfaction amongst citizens and businesses, add complexity to the process of dealing with government and negatively impact some suppliers to government."
Here is a good article talking about how Microsoft bribed countries to get OOXML approved as an ISO standard.
56923737
submission
sfcrazy writes:
Amazon is all set to get Apple and Roku some serious competition with it’s own ‘web-TV’ or set-top box. According to reports Amazon will be using Google’s Android to build the box. Amazon already has a huge library of content (from Amazon Prime) which it can push to the living room through the box. Amazon, like Netflix, is also investing heavily in producing content to their own set-box. Amazon has also been hiring game developers and it won’t be surprising if the company also dabbles into gaming.
56922553
submission
sfcrazy writes:
The last ChromeOS update now makes it amazingly simple to enable Kiosk Mode on your ChromeOS device. Previously, this was a more manual affair, but times are a changing. Rather than comb through policies yourself, there is now a method to make the process much easier. This mode is squarely aimed at shops and users who wish to present a single app to a set of users, restricting use of ChromeOS only to that application. Also, when in this mode, ChromeOS disables key features such as the login screen, screen locking, among other multi-user features.
56918527
submission
sfcrazy writes:
Ivan takes a brief look at the various gaming options available to GNU/Linux users. The writer gauges what benefits and drawbacks you can run into when it comes to these options. This isn’t meant to be completely exhaustive, but rather a good introduction, if you are new to Linux or to the concept of Linux gaming in general. As such, we’ll be covering four primary sources.
56897953
submission
Billly Gates writes:
Arstechnica reviewed one of the 14.4 pre-releases and found menu's returning to its version of Gnome 3 (gnome-shell). With rumors of Windows 9 reversing course with its mobile UI already evident in Windows 8.1 update 1 and now Gnome-shell could this mean the mobile phase of focusing just on minimalism and viewing content is coming to an end?
56897391
submission
sfcrazy writes:
Canonical is bringing back menu integration with application windows. In 14.04 there will be an option for users to enable menus in application windows. That's a huge u-turn from Mark's stand on Global Menus which upset a lot of Ubuntu users.
56692557
submission
sfcrazy writes:
Canonical's requirement of a licence to create an Ubuntu derivative has surfaced again. Yesterday the Community council published a statement about Canonical's licencing policies but it doesn't nothing more than leaving things more vague than they were and tell derivatives to not go to the press and instead talk to the Community Council which seldom responds. Now Jonathan Riddell of Kubuntu has come forth and said no one needs any licence to create any derivative. So the question remains when Oracle or CentOS don't need licence from Red Hat to create a clone why does Canonical?
56675211
submission
sfcrazy writes:
Canonical and Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth says that Ubuntu will switch to systemd ditching their own Upstart init system. The decision taken by the Debian technical committee, to use systemd, left Canonical with two choices — either user Upstart and patch things heavily against the upstream or adopt what Debian is choosing. One may wonder what would happen to Upstart which is used by Google in ChromeOS and some other projects such as Gentoo.
56638013
submission
sfcrazy writes:
Googler Dennis Woodside, who stepped up to head Motorola Mobility replacing Sanjay Jha, is leaving the company to join Dropbox as its first CEO. Google recently sold Motorola unit to Lenovo and it was unclear what senior leadership of Motorola would do. Prior to taking over Motorola Dennis was the Vice President of Google’s America Operations. He joined Google in 2003.
56581847
submission
sfcrazy writes:
Mozilla has taken a u-turn from their previous stand on online advertisement where they were blocking ad cookies by default. Now the organization is opting for showing ads on a user's home page which they call Directory Tiles. There is no doubt that Mozilla is in a tricky situation as it's multi-year deal with Google will end this year and it's uncertain if Google will renew it. So, ads may be their last resort. Still it's ironic.
56570269
submission
sfcrazy writes:
Debian has chosen systemd as the default init system for its next release ending the long debate. Today Bdale Garbee has cast his vote to choose D as the winner, which already had majority votes. Announcing systemd as the default init system of Debian Bdale wrote: "Per 6.3.2, I use my casting vote to choose D as the winner". He further wrote. "We exercise our power to decide in cases of overlapping jurisdiction (6.1.2) by asserting that the default init system for Linux architectures in jessie should be systemd. Should the project pass a General Resolution before the release of “jessie” asserting a “position statement about issues of the day” on init systems, that position replaces the outcome of this vote and is adopted by the Technical Committee as its own decision."
