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Submission + - Why I'm Saying Goodbye to Apple, Google and Microsoft (medium.com)

Submitted by DrJimbo
DrJimbo writes: Dan Gillmore says; "When I became a technology columnist in the mid-1990s, the public Internet was just beginning its first big surge. Back then, I advised my readers to avoid the semi-political, even religious battles that advocates of this or that technology platform seemed to enjoy. Appreciate technology, I urged, for what it is—a tool—and use what works best.

So why am I typing this on a laptop running GNU/Linux, the free software operating system, not an Apple or Windows machine? And why are my phones and tablets running a privacy-enhanced offshoot of Android called Cyanogenmod, not Apple’s iOS or standard Android?"

Submission + - Could Tizen be the next Android? (dailydot.com)

Submitted by MollsEisley
MollsEisley writes: Right now, Tizen is still somewhat half-baked, which is why you shouldn’t expect to see a high-end Tizen smartphone hit your local carrier for a while yet, but Samsung’s priorities could change rapidly. If Tizen development speeds up a bit, the OS could become a stand-in for Android on entry-level and mid-range Samsung phones and eventually take over Samsung’s entire smartphone (and tablet) lineup.

Submission + - Black Lab Linux KDE 6.0 SR1 Released (pc-opensystems.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Today we are announcing that back by popular demand is the KDE release of Black Lab Linux. We have a long history with KDE and it has always been one of our more popular releases and the KDE desktop is the most requested desktops for our custom build service. With this release we are bringing it to the general public. With this release we made many changes to the KDE desktop to make it more friendly to novices as well as power users alike. The KDE release like all of our releases of Black Lab Linux is based on the LTS version of Ubuntu and so you can be rest assured of continued support by us and by Canonical

Submission + - Systemd's Lennart Poettering: "We Do Listen To Users" 1

Submitted by M-Saunders
M-Saunders writes: Systemd is ambitious and controversial, taking over a large part of the GNU/Linux base system. But where did it come from? Even Red Hat wasn't keen on it at the start, but since then it has worked its way into almost every major distro. Linux Voice talks to Lennart Poettering, the lead developer of Systemd, about its origins, its future, its relationship with Upstart, and handling the pressures of online flamewars.

Submission + - Linus Torvalds: Apple's HFS+ is probably the worst file-system ever (itworld.com)

Submitted by sfcrazy
sfcrazy writes: It’s been long since we heard a good rant from Linus Torvalds. Linux doesn't rant much, but when he does he hits the nail and he doesn't mince worlds and this time he targeted Apple's HFS+. Linus says, "The true horrors of HFS+ are not in how it’s not a great filesystem, but in how it’s actively designed to be a bad filesystem by people who thought they had good ideas."

Submission + - Legal developments show the importance of FOSS is growing (opensource.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The year 2014 continued the trend of increasing importance of legal issues for the FOSS community. Intellectual property attorney Mark Radcliffe takes a look back at how GPLv2, EU's FOSS policy changes, Android litigation, and other legal issues shaped the direction of open source in 2014.

Submission + - Archive.org adds close to 2400 DOS games

Submitted by Bugamn
Bugamn writes: Archive.org added a new library of DOS games. The games are playable on the browser through EM-DOSBOX, a port of the DOS emulator. The games are provided without instructions, so some experimentation (or search for old manuals) might be necessary. The library does not mention any copyright concerns, although some of the games can be found for sale on sites such as Steam and GoG.

Submission + - Male sperm count in Western industrialized countries dropping at alarming rate (ispub.com) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: There have been a number of studies over the past 15-20 years, which suggest that sperm counts in man are on the decline. Since these changes are recent and appear to have occurred internationally, it has been presumed that they reflect adverse effects of environmental or lifestyle factors on the male rather than, for example, genetic changes in susceptibility. If the decrease in sperm counts were to continue at the rate that it is then in a few years we will witness widespread male infertility. To date it remains unknown why this is happening and the available preventative measures, which can be taken to avoid a continuation of this trend, are not common knowledge.

Submission + - AMD Catalyst Linux Driver Catching Up To & Beating Windows (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Along with the open-source AMD Linux driver having a great 2014, the AMD Catalyst proprietary driver for Linux has also improved a lot. Beyond the open-source Radeon Gallium3D driver closing in on Catalyst, the latest Phoronix end of year tests show the AMD Catalyst Linux driver is beating Catalyst on Windows for some OpenGL benchmarks. The proprietary driver tests were done with the new Catalyst "OMEGA" driver. Is AMD beginning to lead real Linux driver innovations or is OpenGL on Windows just struggling?

Submission + - Red Hat Engineer Improves Math Performance of Glibc

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: Siddhesh Poyarekar from Red Hat has taken a professional look into mathematical functions found in Glibc (the GNU C library). He has been able to provide an 8-times performance improvement to slowest path of pow() function. Other transcendentals got similar improvements since the fixes were mostly in the generic multiple precision code. These improvements already went into glibc-2.18 upstream. Siddhesh believes that a lot of the low hanging fruit has now been picked, but that this is definitely not the end of the road for improvements in the multiple precision performance. There are other more complicated improvements, like the limitation of worst case precision for exp() and log() functions, based on the results of the paper Worst Cases for Correct Rounding of the Elementary Functions in Double Precision. One needs to prove that those results apply to the Glibc multiple precision bits.

Submission + - Linux on a Motorola 68000 solderless breadboard

Submitted by lars_stefan_axelsson
lars_stefan_axelsson writes: When I was an undergrad in the eighties, "building" a computer meant that you got a bunch of chips and a soldering iron and went to work. The art is still alive today, but instead of a running BASIC interpreter as the ultimate proof of success, today the crowning achievement is getting Linux to run:

"What does it take to build a little 68000-based protoboard computer, and get it running Linux? In my case, about three weeks of spare time, plenty of coffee, and a strong dose of stubborness. After banging my head against the wall with problems ranging from the inductance of pushbutton switches to memory leaks in the C standard library, it finally works! "

Submission + - Dell offers Ubuntu and RHEL OS options on Precision laptops (dell.com)

Submitted by yahyamf
yahyamf writes: Dell is offering pre-installed Linux OS choices on their Precision M4800 laptops. The options available are Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and RHEL 6.4. For the Ubuntu option, the price drops by $100 compared to Windows. This is a high end machine with QHD+ display (3200x1800, 16:9) display, up to 64GB RAM, and optional optical bay hard drive. Here's your chance to show support using your wallet!

Submission + - Jolla's tablet will be able to run Linux and Android apps (itworld.com)

Submitted by sfcrazy
sfcrazy writes: Jolla's tablet campaign on Indiego has crossed the desired $380,00 goal and hit the half million mark with $731,764 raised. While there are Firefox OS and Android, Sailfish like Ubuntu Touch, is the only Linux based OS which can install and run traditional Linux applications. So Jolla is really going to be exciting tablet for Linux users.

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