As part of its effort to graduate its Chrome browser to the upcoming Chrome OS, Google is working to add device orientation to the browser's capabilities.

Not that orientation — the ability for an app or OS to know that up is up and down is down — is all that revolutionary of a breakthrough. Developers have been tapping to that ability on the iPhone (UIDeviceOrientation) and Android-based devices (SensorManager) for some time. Read More

Previously OpenOffice.org used Sun's Java Media Framework to play back audio and video in documents. It seemed to work well for a while, but as time went on Java became more outdated. So, developers have decided to implement the widely used GStreamer framework.

Java was problematic for customers because many distributions did not include it in default installs and almost as many didn't offer it in repositories. It could also be inconvenient or difficult for users to properly install themselves for use with OpenOffice.org. Read More

I started using KDE when version 4.0 was out. I had had a taste of KDE 3.5, which I didn't like, but release 4.0 looked like a big step forward, so I was tempted to give it a go. Just like so many others, I found KDE 4.0 disappointingly slow, unstable and unintuitive. However, I did see lots of potential in it and kept using it release after release.

Up until recently, I was mostly a GNOME user. I considered it faster, leaner, more intuitive... and certainly not as ugly as some say! No matter how hard I tried to like KDE, it would always feel a bit alien and I would always end up going back to GNOME. The tide has shifted lately, though, and I have found myself leaning towards KDE desktops more and more. I believe that is mostly a result of the incredible work the developers are putting in place to improve and polish the product, but also down to the fact that I have been learning more about its "secrets". Read More

Paul Frields, who has been getting his paycheck from Red Hat to run the Fedora development Linux variant since 2008, is moving back inside the company to work on Enterprise Linux, and an outsider named Jared Smith is being brought in as the new Fedora Project Leader.

Frields joined Red Hat in February 2008, replacing Max Spevack, another Red Hat employee who ran the open source Linux development product from February 2006 until Frields took over. Smith will take over the FPL position (which is a full-time job with a Red Hat paycheck) to steer the development of Fedora 14, something that Frields already got the ball rolling on. Read More

We would all like to think that, since we are using Linux, we will never really need a backup of our data. Now, let's look at this realistically. Even if your OS is 100% rock solid, with nary a nanosecond of downtime, that hardware running that OS can not possibly give 100% forever. Add to that the irresistible urge to upgrade hardware and you have the serious makings for the need to back up.

When you need to back up where do you turn? Of course you could slap together a good ol' fashion Bash script using rsync, ssh, tar, and a few other Linux tools. But for those who haven't the slightest idea how to cobble together their own Bash scripts, what is there to use to back up all of that precious data? Those of you who don't want to “roll your own” or those just looking for something easy to use, you're in luck... thanks to Lucky Backup! Lucky Backup is a very user-friendly backup tool that will have you backing up remotely or locally in no time. Once you've seen Lucky Backup in act

Cisco announced an enterprise-focused tablet based on a 1.6GHz Intel Atom, using Intel's upcoming x86 Android port. Due in the first quarter of 2011, the Cius offers a seven-inch touchscreen, 32GB of flash, 3G and 802.11 a/b/g/n communications, a 720p-capable front-facing videocam, a five-megapixel still camera, plus an optional HD audio docking station equipped with a telephone handset. Read More

LinuxCertified Inc, a leading provider of Linux training and services, today announced its next Linux Device Driver Development Course class to be held in South Bay, CA from June 28th - 30th, 2010.

With the increasing adoption of Linux in wide variety of environments, supporting Linux has become vital for device vendors. Being able to support Linux opens a rapidly growing market to these device vendors. For developers,the skill set to develop and maintain Linux drivers presents a lucrative career option. Read More

Making an image copy of your system disk is a great way to create a backup. With the cost of portable USB drives at all time lows, you could keep a couple around for rotation purposes. If your main drive does crash, you could be back up and running in a matter of minutes. Now all that's left is making the actual image copy. There are lots of ways to accomplish this task, and we'll spell a few of them out to help you along.

The biggest issue with making an image copy of your system disk is that you must boot from another device to get a true copy. Options include a "live" CD or bootable USB. You probably have a copy of your favorite distribution's installation disk lying around somewhere, so that would be an obvious choice. For our purposes we'll use the Ubuntu 10.4 distro on a USB disk. The second option would be to use an actual disk duplication distro like Clonezilla. This turns out to be one of the easier ways to get the job done, especially if you're not too comfortable with the command line. Read More

Android on desktop video terminals, a great idea especially when they are extendable with apps and widgets. This looks like a very nice video terminal to have on your desktop. I can think of lots of possibilities, for instance installing the openremote home automation app.

UMEC has several versions available, depicted above is the CU-702 which is "just" a video terminal running android 2.1. The terminal is Voip enabled and has a 7 inch touch screen. Read More

Have you been thinking about upgrading your computer to Ubuntu 10.04? I recently made the leap, at the prompting of my Update Manager. The process went fairly smoothly, but I did have to deal with a couple of minor annoyances. Since you never know exactly what may happen when you decide to upgrade, here are a few tips to get you started. Read More