http://www.sglnx.com/ SGLiNuX en-us Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:28:23 GMT 1440 CPG-Nuke Dragonfly SGLiNuX News http://backend.userland.com/rss http://www.sglnx.com/images/logo.gif http://www.sglnx.com/ http://www.sglnx.com/News/article/sid=37.html SGLNX is not defunct yet.. I am merely trying to see how to get this to work.. Linux has much coverage in both software and hardware. And the recent netbooks and low power processors has raised lots of interests on linux again. And as the sole administrator, there's only how much can be done. We'd be needing more news contributors. Guidance will be given. If you think you wanna try, do email me at admin@sglnx.com In my own little way, I hope linux can propagate more into everyday use here in SG.. If you see linux magazines being placed in the front magazine racks in bookshops... that was me Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:28:23 GMT http://www.sglnx.com/News/article/sid=36.html It may be too late to write this now, but for the benefit of those not already aware, Microsoft has apparently chosen to support ODF over OOXML in Office 2007. What a joy - or not. Details are vague as of now, but at least we know that ODF is now serious business and Microsoft, in whatever manner, is considering to support it natively. "Microsoft today announced that it would update Office 2007 to natively support ODF 1.1, but not to implement its own OOXML format. Moreover, it would also join both the OASIS ODF working group as well as the ISO/IEC JTC1 working group that has control of the ISO/IEC version of ODF. Implementation of DIS 29500, the ISO/IEC JTC 1 version of OOXML that has still not been publicly released will await the release of Office 14, the ship date of which remains unannounced." There are still questions that need answers, and you can take a look at them in the following article published at least two weeks earlier: www.consortiuminfo.org...1092930864 Mon, 02 Jun 2008 14:05:44 GMT http://www.sglnx.com/News/article/sid=35.html So we have another release from Ubuntu, this time with more goodies in stock: Long Term Support Better Tango compliance Compiz improvements Vinagre VNC client PulseAudio (replacing ESD) With this 8.04 long-term-support version, perhaps, things are getting better. There is, however, a silent moan from somewhere blue. Yes, we're talking about the KDE *buntu guys. Due to the soon-to-be-deprecated KDE 3 and yet-to-be-widely-adopted KDE 4, Kubuntu is not an LTS release. Despite the fact, we're sure these guys will be more than happy with the remix version which includes the spanking new K Desktop Environment. "Ubuntu 8.04 LTS raises the bar on the Linux desktop experience. It includes the latest, stable version of many core products, and in that spirit is the first distribution to bring Mozilla Firefox 3 (Beta 5) to millions of users. The combination of Linux and Firefox make Ubuntu 8.04 LTS a superb web desktop, with fast browsing and greatly reduced exposure to viruses, web forgery and spyware." Release notes Discuss Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:06:31 GMT http://www.sglnx.com/News/article/sid=34.html Well, not to get anyone's hopes up or anything but it has come to our attention that the Singapore Linux Meetup Group (SLMG), along with the Linux User Group Singapore (LUGS), are planning an event to (finally) raise awareness of free software come September. "Just want to mention that subsequent to the Mar 08 meetup, I have made contact with Linux User Group Singapore and we are in principle agreeable to make this happen." As you can see, there isn't much information to scrutinize yet. What we can gather from this is that the event will be part of the initiative behind Software Freedom Day. There will be things like an installfest, talks, exhibitions, and uhh..apparently a Hackathon too. Whatever it is, let's just hope that this hackppens. Source Discuss Fri, 04 Apr 2008 13:52:33 GMT http://www.sglnx.com/News/article/sid=33.html Finally, after months of high anticipation and hopes, the K Desktop Environment team has announced the stable release of the fourth major version today. It "marks both the end of the long and intensive development cycle leading up to KDE 4.0 and the beginning of the KDE 4 era", and the developers deserve more than just a round of applause. There have definitely been improvements of equal magnitude in almost every area, no doubt that it "breaks binary compatibility" with previous versions. You can find out more from their official announcement. "Lots of KDE Applications have seen improvements as well. Visual updates through vector-based artwork, changes in the underlying libraries, user interface enhancements, new features, even new applications -- you name it, KDE 4.0 has it." Distributions of Linux and GNU have been showing off "previews" of this new KDE for a while now, triggering both praise and criticism - albeit to a little extent - from the (free) software community. Some though, like Arch Linux, will have 4.0 in testing repositories before being available as stable. With that said, although alpha and beta stages are now over, it has yet to be seen whether KDE 4.0 is able to live up to its hype. Nevertheless, it's a job well done thanks to everyone behind the project and of course, Google. Read more here. Discuss here. Fri, 11 Jan 2008 17:24:18 GMT http://www.sglnx.com/News/article/sid=32.html With AMD's recent announcements on open-source and their involvement, it sounds almost too good to be true that after we nearly gave up hope on their graphics drivers, the community is soon going to get full support from AMD. Wait, that's not the juicy part yet. The community is soon going to get full open-source support! "AMD is buttering up the Linux desktop camp by announcing details of a major scheme to support the open-source development community for ATI Radeon graphics chips on Linux desktops. AMD plans to provide an open-source information and development package supporting the ATI Radeon HD 2000 and Radeon X1000 series of graphics processing units (GPU) on Linux desktops." The article goes on to mention that work will go into 2D first, then 3D in the coming months. For this, the microprocessor company has teamed up with the Suse Linux engineering division. A more recent piece of news questions the impact this could have on the Linux market. AMD will not only support open-source development and provide specifications for their chips, but documentation is also going to be part of the package. Will this decrease the disadvantages we have when it comes to content? We can only tell that as long as there is closed-source content and unwilling parties (hint: nVidia), there is going to be little improvement. Nevertheless, this is really good news and we may be getting closer to having more games support too. Well, looks like Stallman's statement on AMD has been justified further now. Discuss here. Thu, 20 Sep 2007 18:21:00 GMT http://www.sglnx.com/News/article/sid=31.html Yes, the big bang of KDE is coming. If there were any prior big bangs in KDE, this one is definitely the biggest yet. Wait, I meant to say "the big bang of Linux". According to this report, there is a big bag (read: bag, not bang) of "shiny" new things to come. That means our wait is truely going to be worthwhile, with all the new "Plasma" and "Oxygen" and so on. These words do sound shiny, no? "KDE 4.0 is bringing exhilarating graphical, usability, and functionality improvements to the Unix-like systems it is designed for—and Windows users will get a taste, too." Furthermore, this new KDE is going to be as much cross-platform as open-source can be. With Google backing up the KDE project, a lot of work has been going in for some time now. An interesting fact to note is that Desktop Environments these days, especially GNOME and KDE, are more "centralized" than what could be blasphemous to the GNU philosophy - but this kind of centralization is an exception, as noted: "The unification of all these packages into a single project serves a valuable purpose. Open source development is notorious for forks, fractures, and, generally, a smorgasbord of competition that, many believe, confuses users and detracts from the progress of individual projects. Desktop environments establish uniform development frameworks that provide a robust base that makes application development less a process of reinventing-the-wheel while also encouraging consistency, integration, and quality assurance in the applications built on top of them." The article does some good explanation and introduction of the whole Desktop Environment thing, so give it a good read. It fills us in on what to expect and also provides a few enlightening facts. Although the screenshots look like they have a hint of "alpha" work somewhere along some bad aliased corners, they are no doubt impressive and portray a good deal of visual improvement. Add some good depth, refreshing colours, just one nice font and you have a desktop sexier than Mac OS Leopard. Discuss Wed, 19 Sep 2007 02:07:23 GMT http://www.sglnx.com/News/article/sid=29.html More tension has been brewing as we count the days since the release of GPLv3. Creator of the Linux kernel, Linus Torvalds, has criticized the authors of this new version of the General Public License. "Linux creator Linus Torvalds said the authors of a new software license expected to be used by thousands of open source programmers are a bunch of hypocrites and likened them to religious fanatics -- the latest sign of a growing schism in the open source community between business-minded developers like Torvalds and free software purists." Source Discuss here. Thu, 12 Jul 2007 01:24:27 GMT http://www.sglnx.com/News/article/sid=28.html Version 12 of Slackware GNU/Linux was released on the 2nd of July, touting XFCE 4.4.1, KDE 3.5.7 and HAL. Other highlights include X11 (X.Org) 7.2.0 and the 2.6.21.5 Linux kernel. Quote: ...announcing Slackware version 12.0! Since we've moved to supporting the 2.6 kernel series exclusively (and fine-tuned the system to get the most out of it), we feel that Slackware 12.0 has many improvements over our last release (Slackware 11.0) and is a must-have upgrade for any Slackware user. Please read the official announcement here. Discuss here! Thanks to BaltO for the notice. Wed, 04 Jul 2007 00:59:40 GMT http://www.sglnx.com/News/article/sid=27.html Latest Kernel to address updated module drivers with new paravirtualization features.. Most notable change will be support for Tickless idle loop mechanism aka Dynticks More here in our forums Thu, 10 May 2007 03:58:29 GMT