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Sunday, May 6, 2012

Electronic Arts to Produce Games for Linux

Electronic Arts, one of the biggest games publishers in the world, having titles like Battlefield 3 and Mass Effect to their name, will be making a short presentation at next week's Ubuntu Developer Summit. The EA plenary session is a mere 15 minutes long, but coming on the back of the recent news that Steam is coming to Linux, this could be very significant indeed. With mainstream gaming on board, perhaps this will finally be the breakthrough that Linux needs to reach critical mass and become mainstream on the desktop? It would certainly give much needed competition for Microsoft in this space. Let's hope so. 

The DRM question is interesting though: Linux doesn't have any DRM in it like product activation and Linux users are a highly computer literate, tech savvy bunch, while EA infests all its titles with hardcore DRM and will be highly unlikely to want to let it go. The shakeout between these two diametrically opposed mindsets will be interesting to see and could shape the future of gaming on Linux and the future of Linux on the desktop.

CREDITS: http://www.legitreviews.com/news/13049/

Make a bootable Linux USB key with the Universal USB Installer


A bootable USB memory key is the best way to try out or install Linux on a netbook without an optical drive but making one can be tricky if you don't have access to a second computer with an optical drive. The Universal USB Installer is the answer as it will create a bootable USB key using the ISO file downloaded from the Linux website.
There is no installation required as the program can be run directly from the download. You might want to make a note of where you download the program so you don't lose it if you need it again.
Agree to the licence agreements and the main screen will be displayed.
Select a version of Linux from the dropdown menu in Step 1. There is a wide selection including the latest versions from Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, Fedora, Opensuse and Puppy Linux. There are also entries for some Linux based antivirus rescue tools from companies such as AVG, Avira, Bitdefender, F-Secure and Kaspersky.
The second step is to locate the Linux ISO on your computer. Universal USB Installer includes an option to download the ISO if you don't already have it. This will start the download in your default browser.
Once the download has finished and the ISO file has been selected, select the USB key you want to install Linux on in the Step 3 dropdown menu. Click on Create to make the bootable key. We suggest you shouldn't have any files on the USB key before you start to avoid losing anything important.
After the USB key has been selected you can choose how much space to dedicated to persistent storage, that's a place to keep documents on the USB key to use in more than one session. Once that's selected click on Create and the USB memory key will be prepared for use.
There's not much else to say except to highlight how helpful the ability to download the ISO images is. A real timesaver.









Linus Torvalds likes the Google Chrome OS Linux desktop

Linus Torvalds, Linux’s primary creator, hasn’t been happy with the direction his formerly favorite Linux desktop interface, GNOME, has gone. In fact, Torvalds downright hates GNOME 3.x. He’ll get no argument from me. I hate GNOME 3.x too. Recently though, Torvalds has start toying with Google’s new Chrome operating system’s Aura interface and, guess what, he kind of likes it.
Torvalds wrote, “And I haven’t really played around with it all that much, but as a desktop it really doesn’t look that bad. I could name worse desktops (cough cough). [That would be GNOME.]
Torvalds continued, “It allows such radical notions as having easy mouse configurability for things like how to launch applications. Things gnome removed because those kinds of things were “too confusing”, and in the process made useless. And an auto-hide application dock at the bottom. Revolutionary, I know.”
Say hello to Google’s new, old Chrome OS (gallery)
He added, “It also seems to improve on the experience even in the non-laptop mode. Making the calendar start as a “window” instead of as a browser tab also means that when you use it in the single-use mode that we traditionally did, the app takes up the whole screen, without the browser buttons etc.”
“So the new Aura approach seems to work both as a traditional window manager and as a more limited “apps take up the whole screen”. Maybe this whole ‘browser as an app’ thing can really work,” Torvalds concluded.
In short, he found, as I have when I tested Chrome OS Aura, that Google has taken its hybrid Linux desktop/cloud-based and given it a really useful retro desktop look. Personally, I’ll take this kind of desktop, or the Linux distribution’s Mint new take on the GNOME 2 interface, Cinnamonover such new and improved desktop interfaces as GNOME 3.x or Windows 8 Metro any day of the week.
The current generation of Chromebooks though, which is where most people including Torvalds use Chrome OS, are another matter. Torvalds wrote, “The whole point of a laptop for me is that you can take it on the road and do your work. And that, to me, means “compile stuff and use git”. And no, “use ssh [Secure Shell] in a browser to compile on some other machine” does not count. The laptop is the only thing I have with me. So for it to count as a real laptop, I need to be able to do real work locally too. I like having lots of connected options, but they can’t be the onlyoptions.”
Of course you don’t need a Chromebook to run Chrome OS. You can run it on any PC. It’s just that it’s not packaged that way. In fact, I run Chrome OS in virtual machines all the time. Personally, though, my Samsung Series 5 Chromebook has become my grab and go laptop.
On the other hand, I just use Web applications like Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Voice on it. I don’t try to use git, never-mind compile anything on it! For those uses, it would be great if, as it appears might be the case, the next generation of Chromebooks will be built on Intel’s Ivy Bridge chips.
In the meantime though, as Torvalds said in a comment, “I was pleasantly surprised by the new interface - it seems to be going very much in the right direction. Give it a few years (and better hardware), and I can really see it happening. As it is, it’s clearly useful for some people, judging by the comments here. It’s not there for me now. But the new interface is better even just for the limited use I put the thing to.”

Why Linux is a desktop flop

It's free, easier to use than ever, IT staffers know it and love it, and it has fewer viruses and Trojans than Windows.
It's already ubiquitous on the server side. Plus, there are now alternatives to the most popular software packages out there -- again, for free -- and new software releases often have Web-based interfaces, making operating systems irrelevant. (Watch a slideshow of 7 reasons why Linux is a desktop flop.)
So, why hasn't Linux on the desktop taken off?
10 great illustrations of Linux humor
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Especially since Linux -- in the form of the Android operating system -- dominates the mobile market, with a 50.9% market share at the end of 2011, according to Gartner numbers released in February, up from 30.5% market share at the end of 2010.
On the server side, Linux is also doing well, especially with high performance computing and cloud infrastructure deployments, according to IDC, with Linux servers now accounting for more than 18% of all server revenues.
But on the desktop, Linux's numbers barely register. Gartner predicts that Linux penetration on the desktop will remain below 2% for the next five years.
So, what's the problem? It's not just corporate inertia -- companies are quick to move when there's money to be saved. But when it comes to desktop Linux, the cost savings turn out to be problematic, there are management issues, and compatibility remains an issue.

Cost

Let's get the money question out of the way first. Yes, Linux is free, and so is the open source-software that often comes with it -- OpenOffice, the GIMP photo editing software, the Thunderbird email client.
But, as the old saying goes, it's "free as in puppy, not free as in beer."
First, Windows itself isn't that expensive when you get it bundled in with new desktops and laptops. The cost savings to run Linux on the same hardware is minor.
For example, the Dell Latitude 2120 with Windows 7 Home Premium is $494, while a similarly-loaded Ubuntu Latitude 2120 is $434 -- a savings of just $60.
In addition, the free versions of Linux are only supported with free fixes for about a year, says Michael Silver, an analyst with Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner group.
"You have to switch to the new version of Linux every year," he says. "Microsoft supports each version of Windows for ten years -- I don't have to pay any more money, and I still getsecurity fixes. Even vendors that do offer extended security fixes for Linux, like Novell or Red Hat, they're going to charge every year for the privilege."
So companies wind up paying either for the time it takes to upgrade all the Linux machines, or for the extended support. "The cost ends up approaching Windows -- if not surpassing it -- fairly quickly," Silver says.
The idea that Linux is free and companies can save a lot of money by switching is a myth, he adds, one of many myths surrounding Linux deployment. "This has been a typical understanding, but a lot of organizations that have explored that have found that there's more to it," he says.