Free Republic

In the world of consumer electronics, if you don't give the buyer what they want, they'll go elsewhere. We've recently witnessed this with the Firefox browser. The consumer wanted a faster, less-bloated piece of software, and the developers went in the other direction. In the end, the users migrated to Chrome or Chromium.Linux needs to gaze deep into their crystal ball, watch carefully the final fallout of that browser war, and heed this bit of advice:If you don't give them what they want, they'll leave.Another great illustration of this backfiring is Windows 8. The consumer didn't want that interface. Microsoft,...

Linux. It’s been around since the mid ‘90s, and has since reached a user-base that spans industries and continents. For those in the know, you understand that Linux is actually everywhere. It’s in your phones, in your cars, in your refrigerators, your Roku devices. It runs most of the Internet, the supercomputers making scientific breakthroughs, and the world's stock exchanges. But before Linux became the platform to run desktops, servers, and embedded systems across the globe, it was (and still is) one of the most reliable, secure, and worry-free operating systems available.For those not in the know, worry not –...

Introduction This is part 2 of a series looking to help people find the best Linux distribution for them. In the first part of the series, I looked at some of the best Linux Desktop Environments so that you could eliminate distributions which only use desktops that won't work for you and your setup. The title of this post says it all really. Here are the 5 distributions I would turn to if I wanted to use Linux and I didn't want to be too hassled setting things up and they just work. Notice that the title includes the...

I have tried and enjoyed a number of great Linux distributions over the years. Some were more popular than others. But the one thing they all have in common is each provides the end user with hidden benefits and unexpected disadvantages over proprietary desktop operating systems.In this article, I'll explore what make the Linux desktop a superb fit for some users while providing thoughts on overcoming the challenges had by others.Desktop Linux is free Perhaps one of the most stunning benefits of the Linux desktop is the price – zero. Modern Linux distros designed for desktop end users remain completely...

For some time now, there has been much talk about the Raspberry Pi revolutionising the teaching of computing in schools. Linux User & Developer has devoted much space and attention to the growing number of Jamborees and the increasing attention teachers are giving to the small, £25 bare-bones machine. It is, say advocates, the perfect way to introduce children to the world of computing, allowing them to see and actually interact with the innards of the machines they are using. It is, they add, a great platform for programming and for creating all manner of electronic wonders.But for former journalist...

The true measure of any great gaming platform is not the number of games available. Nor is it the need to have the same games as other competing platforms (the Playstation 4 doesn't need Mario games to be considered successful). And it really isn't even about how many total games are sold, though that certainly helps. The measure of a great gaming platform is if people want to use it to play games on... rather than another platform. At least on occasion. For example: The SEGA Genesis. That beautiful console sold substantially less than the Super Nintendo. But it was...

Malware dubbed Mayhem is spreading through Linux and FreeBSD web servers, researchers say. The software nasty uses a grab bag of plugins to cause mischief, and infects systems that are not up to date with security patches. Andrej Kovalev, Konstantin Ostrashkevich and Evgeny Sidorov, who work at Russian internet portal Yandex, discovered the malware targeting *nix servers. They traced transmissions from compromised computers to two command and control (C&C) servers. So far they have found 1,400 machines that have fallen to the code, with potentially thousands more to come. […] Mayhem spreads by finding servers hosting websites with a remote...

Infections found in Australia and New Zealand. A new malware that runs on UNIX-like servers even with restricted privileges has already infected machines in Australia and is actively hunting for more targets, a new research paper has shown. Three researchers from Russian web provider Yandex - Andrej Kovalev, Konstantin Ostrashkevich and Evgeny Sidorov - said in the technical analysis of the malware, published on security and anti-virus specialist publication Virus Bulletin, that Mayhem functions like a traditional Windows bot. -snip- According to the researchers, Mayhem appears to be the continuation of the Fort Disco brute-force password cracking attack campaign that...

AMD has just published a massive patch-set for the Linux kernel that finally implements a HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture) in open-source. The set of 83 patches implement a Linux HSA driver for Radeon family GPUs and serves too as a sample driver for other HSA-compatible devices. This big driver in part is what well known Phoronix contributor John Bridgman has been working on at AMD.********************** Heterogeneous System Architecture has been talked up for a while now by AMD as well as ARM vendors and now finally for open-source enthusiasts we can finally start seeing the advantages of the CPU and...

For years, Linux has ruled supercomputing. So, it came as no surprise to anyone at the Linux Enterprise End-User Summit near Wall Street that once again the Top500 group found in its latest supercomputer ranking that Linux was the fastest of the fast operating systems. With 97 percent of the world's fastest supercomputers running Linux,the open-source operating system has eliminated almost all its rivals. As one Red Hat representative said, "The only thing that would be surprising about Linux being the top dog would be if anything else even came close." He doesn't have any reason to worry.In the latest contest, not only...

Mint KDE 17 is finally released!

This is a debate that most certainly brings out the beast in many a Linux user. The argument doesn't generally boil down to which distribution is truly best suited for new users, but which distribution is favored by those in the debate. If we set our personal preferences aside, a clearer picture can arise. But even that clarity can quickly get obscured by the needs and desires of the new users. Given that, I decided to take a different approach to finding the “best distro for new users." My criteria for best distribution must not only be easy to use,...

Sure there are technical forums that discuss btrfs, the shiny new filesystem for Linux but my experience has shown that FReepers meet or exceed the technical expertise anywhere on the net. The two cutting-edge filesystems that are (supposedly) impervious to bitrot are btrfs and zfs (which has a Linux implementation, older than what Oracle has now closed off).

The sheer variety available to the Linux desktop brings with it a level of discussion and debate most other platforms do not know. Which desktop is the best? Should Linux hold onto what has always worked? Should the Linux desktop mimic what others already know? Dare Linux look and feel like OS X?That last idea is a bit of a conundrum – one with multiple arguments. First and foremost, there is no debating that OS X is a fast-growing platform. It not only has deep roots in Linux architecture, it has been accepted by numerous types of users. There...

Need Tech Support on Linux

Hirschgarten, in the west of Munich, is one of Europe’s biggest beer gardens, with over 8,000 places to sit. It’s a spectacular sight in summer: hundreds of benches as far as the eye can see, trees providing some shelter from the heat, and a vast number of people relaxing and enjoying the city’s famous beers. But while 8,000 is an impressive number, it’s not as impressive as 15,000. That’s how many people the Munich city council has switched from Windows to Linux over the last decade. Migrating workers of Germany’s third-largest city was no easy task and there were plenty...

The Linux platform is actually the base for a multitude of operating systems, but a part of the community feels that there are too many distributions. The truth is that there are probably too few of them. One of the points of contention that usually arise in the Linux community is the fact that there seem to be too many Linux distributions and too many desktop environments. If we were to compare Linux with any other platform that would be true, but such a comparison would be incorrect. Linux is the only platform that allows this kind of freedom, so...

Asking for opinions on the best budget tablet. Something big enough for me to work on -- i.e., be able to type easily and see the display without holding it six inches from my face. Not worried about communications -- as long as it's got WiFi built in (which I'm sure they all do), I can use my cellphone as a mobile hotspot to transfer/send files. This is intended to be a replacement for a working laptop/notebook. And again -- "budget" is the keyword. Thanks all!.

- Ubuntu Kylin China is one of the countries that have suffered the most when Microsoft decided to pull the plug on Windows XP. The Chinese government is now looking towards Linux to fill that gap, and it intends to use its resources to make that happen. China has been struggling for years to make its own Linux operating system, but it had little success. At one point it had something called the Red Flag Linux distribution, but the project never really got off the ground and lost all support from the Chinese government. Microsoft's decision to stop issuing...

A popular beat combo from the town which bought us Nirvana has released a debut album as a Linux kernel module alongside the usual formats. Netcat, which shares its name with a networking tool of the same name, told the world+dog on its Facebook page that the world was ready for Linux kernel module music."Are you ever listening to an album, and thinking 'man, this sounds good, but I wish it crossed from user-space to kernel-space more often!' We got you covered. Our album is now fully playable as a loadable Linux kernel module."The album has the catchy title Cycles...