Day: March 24, 2013

This past week the Linux Mint Team released a new LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) for 2013!  Linux Mint is my favorite Linux client distro, and the main release is based on Ubuntu.  This edition is based on “raw” Debian.

Linux Mint Debian 201303 released!

“The team is proud to announce the release of LMDE 201303!

Highlights

• Update Pack 6
• MATE 1.4
• Cinnamon 1.6
• Installer improvements (graphical timezone and keyboard selection, support for installation on multiple HDD, slideshow, webcam and face picture support)
• Device Driver Manager
• Plymouth splash screen

If you’re new to LMDE, welcome to Linux Mint Debian!

LMDE in brief

• Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) is a semi-rolling distribution based on Debian Testing.
• It’s available in both 32 and 64-bit as a live DVD with MATE or Cinnamon.
• The purpose of LMDE is to look identical to the main edition and to provide the same functionality while using Debian as a base.”

The American Geophysical Union announced this week that:

“Thirty-five years after its launch, Voyager 1 appears to have traveled beyond the influence of the Sun and exited the heliosphere, according to a new study appearing online today.

The heliosphere is a region of space dominated by the Sun and its wind of energetic particles, and which is thought to be enclosed, bubble-like, in the surrounding interstellar medium of gas and dust that pervades the Milky Way galaxy.”

Which is a fancy way of saying that Voyager 1 (known as “V-ger” to it’s friends) has become the fist human designed object to have actually gone BEYOND our Solar System! Pretty cool! We are finally in Interstellar space, go humans!

Not really.

Windows 8 Store cracks 50K app mark, but now what?

“After a sluggish 2013 start, Microsoft’s Window 8 App Store appears to be attracting new titles again.

The online outlet vaulted the 50,000 app mark Saturday, according to MetroStore Scanner, a website that unofficially monitors app activity at the Microsoft outlet.

That’s a global number, so all those apps may not be available to U.S. users.

Since the high-profile launch of the Windows 8 Twitter app on March 13, only 49 new apps have hit the US version of the Windows Store. However, Metrostore Scanner—the tracking service this report is based on—shows that 3000-plus new apps have appeared globally during the same time frame.

Among the offerings arriving in the app store on Saturday that helped the outlet jump the 50K milestone were programs covering:

• Sports teams (Boston Celtics, L.A. Dodgers, Miami Heat, Oklahoma Thunder, Tampa Bay Lightening, Toronto Maple Leafs, and Queens Park Rangers);
• Children’s books (Sharing, Getting Along and Taking, and The Little Girl Who Loves Make Believe);
• Utilities (a random number generator and URL shortener);
• Education (the story of Christmas, a math challenge, and a Periodic Table challenge); and
• Games (AE Lucky Fishing, Photo Puzzle, Shuffle Party, and Tilez).

Most of the apps are free.”

Kinda odd if you ask me. But there are those that compare Open Source to communism (not me.)

China to create home-grown operating system

“China is working with software firm Canonical on an open-source operating system customised for Chinese users.

The collaboration will produce a version of Canonical’s Ubuntu operating system called Kylin which will be released in April.

The deal is part of a five-year plan by China to get more people using open source software.

This software gives people more access to its internal workings so they can modify it themselves.

The first version of Ubuntu Kylin is intended for desktop and laptop computers. As well as using Chinese character sets, Kylin will also do more to support the way Chinese people interact with computers as well as reflect China’s date conventions.

Future versions will include tools that let people use popular Chinese web services such as Baidu maps, the Taobao shopping service as well as versions of office programs and image management tools, directly from Ubuntu’s main screen.

The code will be created at a laboratory in Beijing staffed by engineers from Canonical as well as several Chinese R&D agencies.

Canonical is also working with the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on a version of Kylin that will run on servers so websites, online shops and hosting firms can adopt the software.

The move is widely seen as an attempt by China to wean its IT sector off Western software in favour of more home-grown alternatives.

Ubuntu is based on the Linux operating system and its development and use is governed by an open ethic that emphasises the sharing of core computer code. It stands in contrast to the closed or proprietary systems of Microsoft and Apple who restrict access to the core or source code for their operating systems.”