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Source: DistroWatch.com: News

Fabio Erculiani has announced the release of Sabayon Linux 5.3, a Gentoo-based distribution for the desktop with custom package management and many cutting-edge features: "The best, refined blend of GNU/Linux, coming with bleeding edge edges is eventually here - say hello to Sabayon 5.3, available in both GNOME .

Source: DistroWatch.com: News

Barry Kauler has announced the release of Quirky 1.2, a fast, minimalist desktop Linux distribution with many characteristics of Puppy Linux, but built with a different toolkit: "Quirky 1.2. This continues bug fixing of 1.0/1.1, but also many packages are upgraded and new packages and ideas incorporated. In .

Source: DistroWatch.com: News

Ylmf OS is a new Ubuntu-based distribution from China with the GNOME desktop tweaked to resemble Microsoft Windows XP. Version 3.0 was released early this week based on Ubuntu 10.04, with the major components being Linux kernel 2.6.32-22.33, X.Org Server 1.7.6, GCC 4.4.3, and GNOME 2.30.0. It allows .

Source: DistroWatch.com: News

Andrew Gillis has announced the release of VortexBox 1.4, a Fedora-based Linux distribution for music servers and jukeboxes: We are pleased to announce the release of VortexBox 1.4. Continuing with our goal to make VortexBox the universal server for any media player we have added full DLNA support .

Source: Linux Today

Linux Journal: "[Phone company], in their infinite-but-incompetent wisdom, pushed an OS upgrade to [their] Android [model] phones last night that wipes out your contact lists."

Source: Linux Today

FT.com: "IBM has joined forces with chip companies Arm, Freescale, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments, to create a company that will accelerate the development of Linux software for devices such as mobile phones, tablet computers and digital televisions."

Source: Linux Today

Ubuntu User: "At this year's COSSFEST in Calgary, I took part in a lively panel discussion titled "The Death of the Desktop", essentially a free-for-all discussion on whether 'the cloud' will kill off our beloved desktop."

Source: Linux Today

Linux User and Developer: "Let's take a look at how to use Scribus, an open source desktop publishing application available for all these three platforms, to create a smart PDF document containing a form which your client can fill out."

Source: Linux Today

LWN.net: "At the end of April, Lennart Poettering announced the initial availability of systemd, a new system initialization and session management daemon. This announcement caused a bit of surprise and concern for those who didn't know it was coming."

Source: Linux Today

Network World: "Being bought by a commercial competitor is about the best possible thing that could eventually happen to a popular, pure FOSS project."

Source: Slashdot: Linux

InfosecWarrior writes "Adobe issued an alert late Friday night to warn about zero-day attacks against an unpatched vulnerability in its Reader and Flash Player software products. The vulnerability, described as critical, affects Adobe Flash Player 10.0.45.2 and earlier versions for Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Solaris operating systems. It also affects the authplay.dll component that ships with Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.x for Windows, Macintosh and UNIX operating systems."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot: Linux

Nunavut writes with news that a number of hardware companies have banded together to battle the fragmentation of the mobile Linux market. ARM, Freescale Semiconductor, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments are forming Linaro, a nonprofit organization that plans to focus on "low level software around the Linux kernel that touches the silicon, key pieces of middleware that enable new markets and tools that help the developer write and debug code."
"Linaro's chief goal is to reduce the time that it takes to bring a new ARM-powered product to market with Linux. This effort is largely neutral with respect to what software environment and components individual vendors choose to run in user space. Linaro will not compete with existing platforms such as MeeGo and Android. Instead, it will attempt to improve the shared underlying software components that allow those platforms and others to run on ARM SoCs. In principle, this could actually reduce fragmentation at the lower levels of the Linux stack."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot: Linux

unteer writes "I am a US Peace Corps volunteer currently teaching a computer technician course at a technical college in Kenya. My students have all completed the Kenyan equivalent of high school and have been accepted into a program where they give a year of nation-building non-military service in return for a technical education. My students' course load includes an introduction to computer networking, and this is where my problem lies. Do any of you know of a visual network simulator that can create an interactive network map that allows me, the instructor, to manipulate various components of a network, including the physical media, routing configuration, and which applications are being used to submit data? An example would be to have a visual of the differences between mail traffic and web traffic, and be able to show how the configuration of a wireless network might be different from a wired network. I know this may seem silly, but visuals of all this are critical to getting ideas across. It doesn't even have to be technically accurate, but rather just pictorially accurate, possibly just labeling the various components correctly. Also, it would be highly preferable if it ran on Linux, as I teach using FOSS only."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Security DevCenter

If I had a dollar for every time I've heard the phrase "make it a game" or "make it like a game" or "give it some game-like features" in my career, I'd be retiring in luxury next week. Games provide an important proving ground for interface methods that drive technology forward and have the potential to bring about a sense of accomplishment, inspiration, and engagement unparalleled in other avenues of life. n this post I want to examine the value of this statement, if any, and what we as RIA developers might learn from games.