Category: Linux

On Thursday the folks at Canonical will release Ubuntu 9.10, the latest version of the popular Linux distribution. But as the operating system grows more and more popular, there's one service that Canonical has been offering for years that gets more and more expensive. Up until now, if you wanted to install Ubuntu, you could either download a disc image and burn it to a CD or DVD or sign up to ...

It's Sunday, and we're off the clock. Time for a little open-source RTS fun with Unknown Horizons! Though it claims to be a clone of the Anno series by Sunflowers/Ubisoft, you will probably associate this game more with the Settlers games -- a very popular, age-old series of 2D real-time simulation games. The premise from their own website: 'The player starts with a ship somewhere amid an ...

The open source movement isn't just for grown-ups: Open Office 4 Kids is a slimmed-down version of the open source Microsoft Office alternative OpenOffice.org. The target age group for Open Office 4 Kids is 7-12, but after trying it out, I think there are a lot of adults who would prefer it over MS Office or the full version of OpenOffice. It's available on whichever OS you've set your kid up ...

It's time for the third installment of our 'Tell DLS' feature and today i'm sharing my top 10 must-have apps for Linux with you, our lovely readers. I confess to not really being a Linux expert, generally using OS X for the majority of my working day and using Windows and Linux only when the need arises. With that said, I think I have some great applications in my list! Of course, being a ...

I've read about using candles as a replacement for your Wii's sensor bar before, but what about the other end of the gaming input equation? Say what? The controller. How about using the candle as a controller? Who gives a crap if there's a slight risk of spilling a little hot wax on your hand during game play? No real man cares, that's for sure. In fact, the possibility of sustaining minor ...

Ubuntu certainly has its fans - perhaps more than any other Linux distro. One person you can rest assured isn't part of that group: EEEUbuntu developer Andrew Wyatt. In case you aren't familiar with the project, EEEUbuntu is a customized Linux distro tailored to Asus' line of netbooks. It was a SourceForge community choice award winner this year - for best new project. Now, however, it looks ...

You've likely heard about Ubuntu One by now - we've mentioned it a couple times here on Download Squad, and it's now making regular appearances on Karmic Koala beta desktops everywhere. Canonical made it clear from the get-go that Ubuntu 9.10 was going to pack plenty of cloud functionality for both desktops and servers. One piece of that puzzle is CouchDB, which developer Elliot Murphy was ...

It would be easy for Linux and Mac users to point to this blog post by Brian Krebs at the Washington Post's Security Fix and feel smug. The post flat out states that the simplest, most cost-effective way to avoid online fraud is: "Don't use Microsoft Windows when accessing your bank account online." If you're a Windows user, ouch. But hold on a second. The thing is, Krebs isn't endorsing the Mac ...

If your computer has an accelerometer in it, Firefox 3.6 will be able to detect when your computer is tilting to the left, right, front, or back. Accelerometers serve a number of purposes in laptops and tablets. In some cases, they can be used to shut down a hard drive if your computer is falling so that less damage occurs when your laptop hits the floor. But they can also be used to add ...

Now that I've managed to pick up a spare laptop on the cheap, I finally have a dedicated Linux machine to experiment with. Priority number one since I'm Off the Clock for the weekend: get some games installed that are more fun than the ones Ubuntu ships (sorry Nibbles and Gnometris). Enter djl. Think of it as a kind of FOSS version of Steam. Except, of course, that all the games are totally ...

If there's one thing better than a handy, free application it's a handy, free application that runs on everyone's computer. Looking for a cross-platform download manager? Take a look at Multiget. Once installed, Multiget monitors your clipboard for download links -- or you can start putting the app to use via its floating drop box. Find something you want to download in your favorite browser, ...

Not familiar with Arora? It's a lightweight, cross-platform, open-source, Qt and Webkit-based browser. Brad first wrote about it back in July, and the development team has already rolled out one pretty significant addition. Starting with v.10 -- which is now available for Windows, Linux, and Mac -- Arora ships with AdBlock pre-installed. Unlike Opera and Konqueror which allow for manual blocking ...

VirtualBox has always enjoyed one key advantage over VMWare: it's free. Sure, the VMWare Player is also free -- but all it can do is boot virtual machines which have been previously by another app. Rather, that's all it could do until now. VMWare Player version 3 has hit the release candidate stage and is available for public download, and guess what? It's now got the ability to create virtual ...

It's been quite a week here at Download Squad - and contrary to popular opinion there's been more than Google Wave in the news, so here's quick roundup of the news from the last seven days alongside some other stories that we simply didn't get a chance to cover. ...

Canonical has decided -- in response to user requests -- to give paid users of its Ubuntu One online sync and storage tool a big, fat boost in drive space. One recently made its way into Karmic Koala -- which has just reached beta. When beta testing began in May, it looked as though free accounts would get 2GB (the same as Dropbox) and premium users would receive 10GB. That may have been a tough ...