Archive for the ‘Software’ Category

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Miracle of Miracles, Adobe Releases Preview of 64-bit Flash For Linux

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008

Can it be?  Is it really possible?  Adobe has finally put up with a 64-bit Flash player for Linux.  Admittedly, it’s still a preview release, but still it seems too good to be true.  It isn’t April Fool’s, is it?

The pre-release release was announced with a bit of, what I hope is, sarcasm:

We are pleased to announce that there is now a version of the Flash Player for Linux that supports 16 theoretical exabytes of physical memory. This technological feat is accomplished using a bleeding edge type of processor known as a 64-bit CPU.

I feel a bit sentimental about it all. It’s weird, but I think I’m going to miss the hundreds of comments on every post gently requesting a 64-bit version. So don’t be afraid to pop in with a “64-BIT NOW!!!1!!” comment every so often, you know, just for old time’s sake.

The alpha release of 64-bit Flash for Linux is now available for download at Adobe Labs, go and get it if you dare.

Adobe Penquin.SWF blog [via Slashdot]

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Posted in Closed-Source, Software | No Comments »

ARM to release netbook chips

Thursday, November 13th, 2008

ARM has announced a partnership between it and Canonical (of Ubuntu fame) to produce chips for netbooks.  The chips will compete directly with Intel’s Atom CPUs and VIA’s C7 series.  Canonical is porting Ubuntu to run on the ARM Cortex-A8 and Cortex-A9 processors and is set to be released in April 2009.

Engadget

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Posted in Distributions, Hardware | No Comments »

Quickie: Ubuntu 8.10 released

Friday, October 31st, 2008

Ubuntu 8.10 has been officially released.  I’ll have some screenshots once I figure out how to install the VirtualBox Guest Additions in it.

In the mean while I’m going to have to leave you to download the live CD to try it for yourself.

Ubuntu

Posted in Distributions, Open Source, Software | No Comments »

Secrets of command line VirtualBox

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 
matt@foo ~ $ VBoxManage list vms
VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 2.0.4
(C) 2005-2008 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
All rights reserved.

Name:            Ubuntu
Guest OS:        Ubuntu
UUID:            7732c04e-0a50-461c-86d3-a18814ac9257
Config file:     /home/matt/.VirtualBox/Machines/Ubuntu/Ubuntu.xml
Memory size:     512MB
VRAM size:       8MB
Boot menu mode:  message and menu

[... truncated ...]

I’m a big fan of Sun’s VirtualBox. It allows me to run other operating systems (such as Windows and Ubuntu) safely and easily without having to deploy them beside my Gentoo install. Now here comes Linux.com with a quick guide to using VirtualBox from the command line (every Linux aficionado’s one true friend). You might as why you’d want to use the CLI, luckily for me the guys at Linux.com already answered that question:

The CLI works well for users who want to control a VirtualBox running on a headless server with no monitor or keyboard attached. Even desktop users, running and managing VirtualBox from the same machine, can pull a stunt or two with the CLI that they can’t do in the GUI, such as shrinking or cloning virtual disks, customizing the BIOS logo, and collecting metrics data from virtual machines.

Linux.com

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Posted in Open Source, Software | No Comments »

Powered by…

Monday, October 27th, 2008

At this point I thought I’d take a moment to go over how this site is powered.

First off, there’s the VPS from Linode (Linode stands for Linux Node) which comes with the following specifications:

  • 360MiB RAM
  • 12GiB storage space
  • 200GiB data transfers per month
  • Full SSH access (root)
  • Managed DNS
  • (and more…)
  • $19.95 per month (about 14€)

I’d say that that’s pretty good value for money…  So far I’ve been extremely happy with the Linode VPS, no glitches or breakdowns and it’s fairly zippy (even though I’m in Europe and the server is in the US).  Oh, and when you order a VPS you get to choose which data centre you want it to be in.

If you do decide to get a VPS from Linode, I’d appreciate it if you used my referral code:

632bae5e8fd45745396cd410c14d94771105bc6a

I’ll be honest about it: I get $20 credit if somebody gets a VPS with that code (and keeps it for 90 days)…

Well, that covers the hardware, so to speak.
(more…)

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Posted in Internal news, Open Source, Software | 3 Comments »

Arduino, a brief introduction.

Thursday, October 23rd, 2008

This week I’ve been on a introductory course for Arduinos, so I thought I might share some of what I’ve learned. Arduino is an open source rapid prototyping platform based on easy to use hardware and software. It’s intended to be used by hobbyists, artists, designers, and anyone who’s interested in quickly and easily creating their own gadgets.

It is possible to connect almost anything to the Arduino board. I myself have successfully experimented with servos, ultrasound distance sensors, and the Wii Nunchuck, among others. What’s more, an Arduino can easily be connected up to a computer that can control the Arduino, and can receive data from it.

The Arduino can work with pretty much any computing platform, and the official IDE is available for Linux, Mac OS X, and even Windows.

I’ll soon post some of my projects here, and in the meanwhile you can get more information on Arduinos on the Arduino home page and on the Arduino Wikipedia article.

For an idea of some of the things that you can do with Arduinos, go to Arduino Playground.

If you understand Finnish, you can also go to Sulautetut.fi

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Posted in Hardware, Open, Open Source | No Comments »

Google releases Andriod source

Tuesday, October 21st, 2008

Google has finally released the full source code of its Linux-based Android platform.   The source files are available for download at:

http://source.android.com/posts/opensource

David Bort writes on the Android page:

Even if you’re not planning to ship a mobile device any time soon, Android has a lot to offer.  Interested in working on a speech-recognition library?  Looking to do some research on virtual machines?  Need an out-of-the-box embedded Linux solution?  All of these pieces are available, right now, as part of the Android Open Source Project, along with graphics libraries, media codecs, and some of the best development tools I’ve ever worked with.

[via Ars Technica]

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Posted in Open Source, Software | No Comments »

Adobe releases Flash Player 10, still no 64-bit support

Wednesday, October 15th, 2008

Adobe has today released version 10 of their Flash Player. This new version comes with numerous improvements and is designed to compete with Microsoft’s Silverlight technology, thankfully which is yet to gain a significant foothold on web sites…

“We’re providing unprecedented creative control for developers and designers,” with Flash Player 10, Barclay said. In addition, he said the new release is available immediately on Windows, Mac and Linux, including new support for Ubuntu 7 and 8. “Linux is a first-class citizen for us,” he said.

It might be available for Linux, but Adobe still hasn’t managed to produce a 64-bit build. Seriously speaking, this is getting ridiculous… I guess we’ll be getting 64-bit Flash support at around the same time that Sun releases a 64-bit browser plug-in for Java…

Adobe Flash Player [via eWEEK]

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Posted in Closed-Source, Software | No Comments »

OpenOffice 3.0 released

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008

OpenOffice 3.0 is now available for download.  I myself will be testing it out once there’s an Gentoo eBuild that isn’t hard masked.

OpenOffice.org

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Posted in Open Source, Software | No Comments »

Wikimedia moves to Ubuntu servers

Saturday, October 11th, 2008

Wikimedia, the non-profit that runs Wikipedia and its related sites (Wiktionary, etc.), has moved its entire server infrastructure to Ubuntu Server. In the pas Wikimedia has run a mixture of Ubuntu, Red Hat, and Fedora.

“It definitely has gotten a lot simpler,” Vibber said. Mass upgrades can be done more easily, and the data center can be managed as a unit, he said.

“We can run the same combination everywhere, and it does the same thing” and runs the same software, Vibber said. “Everything is a million times easier.”

The move has been seen in the industry as a major victory for Ubuntu Server, and other community based distributions, such as CentOS.

ComputerWorld [via Slashdot]

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Posted in Distributions, Free, Software | No Comments »

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