December 2014
Xiaomi Said to Launch a Linux Notebook
Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Wednesday 31st of December 2014 11:47:39 PM Filed under

Xiaomi is quickly becoming a major player in the tech gadget space. It’s already a huge smartphone maker in China, though has started to spread its wings into other arenas as well. Next up may be a new laptop, at least according to some specs that were recently provided by GizmoChina. As you’ll note from the image above, this looks like a MacBook Air – but don’t let that fool you just yet.
GizmoChina says that the Xiaomi notebook, powered by Linux, may cost under $500, though the specs suggest it may cost a bit more than that. The site says Xiaomi’s notebook will pack an Intel Core i7 Haswell processor, a 15-inch 1920 x 1080-pixel display and a solid 16GB of RAM. There’s no news on what sort of storage this will pack, though if it’s as thin as the picture suggests, it may have a solid state hard drive as well.
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Performance Analysis With Performance Co-Pilot, iPython and Pandas
Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Wednesday 31st of December 2014 11:23:58 PM Filed under


One of many reasons to love Performance Co-Pilot, is the fact that it is a fully fledged framework to do performance analysis. It makes it extremely simple to extend and to build anything on top of it. In this post we shall explore how simple it is to analyze your performance data using iPython and pandas.
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Systemd Development Skyrocketed This Year
Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Wednesday 31st of December 2014 10:49:12 PM Filed under
Rising above all of the systemd controversies and in-fighting this year, systemd developers remained committed and did a heck of a job at adding code to the project.
As some complementary development statistics for systemd focused on 2014 to yesterday's lead developers of systemd article, I ran GitStats this morning on the latest end-of-year systemd mainline Git repository. The numbers speak for themselves and systemd grew significantly this year.
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Ringing in 2015 with 40 Linux-friendly hacker SBCs
Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Wednesday 31st of December 2014 10:45:56 PM Filed under

2014 brought us plenty of new open-spec, community-backed SBCs — from $35 bargains, to octa-core powerhouses — and all with Linux or Android support.
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Purism Librem 15
Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Wednesday 31st of December 2014 10:35:27 PM Filed under


While the Librem 15 doesn't necessarily match my personal tastes for laptop hardware due to the overall size and the mouse in particular, the mission of the company definitely does. Up until this point there were few options for laptops that ran purely Free Software, much less any that had modern hardware and a modern look and feel. I believe Purism genuinely wants to create a quality laptop that will appeal both to the Free Software community as well as privacy advocates and the Librem 15 is a nice start. In this era of pervasive surveillance, rootkits bundled with corporate software, threats of hardware backdoors by nation states, and the overall increasing sophistication of attacks, I think Purism is on to something here. As more people value transparency as a means toward security, a computer that can provide the source code for every driver, application, and firmware it uses becomes more valuable.
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My Chromebook with KDE
Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Wednesday 31st of December 2014 08:02:25 PM Filed under
I got my new Chromebook... Yes, you've heard me right, but wait before you raise your eyebrows...
I installed Ubuntu on it as my default OS, though I can go back to Chrome OS any time I want. I don't see any point in doing it.
Roy helped me do the partitioning, configuration and tweaking. We configure it in a way so that I can use it in my work, not just for Facebooking, tweeting and chatting's sake.
I am still exploring the machine, basically familiarising with the keyboard and all the function settings on it. The Kubuntu environment which I chose will need some adjustments; also the applications which I downloaded are a bit different from the other laptop's (which I used to work on).
Change is good, but it requires a lot of patience and adaptation to the new environment.
I like my Chromebook very much. It is one of the best gifts I have received from my husband. It is more practical, it gives me more confidence to learn and to develop more of my computer skills. Innovation is fast-moving and technology is progressing, so you definitely need to catch up with it. Unless you want to be left behind by choice... █
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Linux Deepin 2014.2 Makes It Out Just In Time For The New Year
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Wednesday 31st of December 2014 05:02:19 PM Filed under

Deepin Linux with its original desktop environment claims to have been downloaded tens of millions of times and in use in more than 40 countries around the globe. Deepin 2014.2 delivers new themes, drag-and-drop reordering support for the Dock icons, launcher improvements, improved multi-screen support, network improvements, system notification improvements, tablet support, and other updates focused around its HTML5-based desktop.
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Mesa Crosses 1.5 Million Lines Of Code, Highest Activity Since 2011
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Wednesday 31st of December 2014 04:56:17 PM Filed under

Mesa 3D in 2014 saw slightly more commits this year than the previous two years. However, Mesa didn't see much in the way of new active contributors this year.
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Desktop Linux and Open Source in 2014: Looking Back
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Wednesday 31st of December 2014 04:50:46 PM Filed under

Clichéd though they may be, year-in-review pieces about desktop Linux—by which I mean Linux distributions designed for end users working on desktops, PCs and, perhaps, large-form mobile devices—are a tradition here at The VAR Guy (and, before that, at our late, great sister-site, WorksWithU, a blog dedicated to Ubuntu Linux). But at the end of 2014, there's not much to say about desktop Linux other than that it's now so mature, and open source momentum so focused on other niches, that the Linux desktop has seen little major action over the past 12 months.
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Windows Phone Replaced with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS on Lumia 1020
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Wednesday 31st of December 2014 10:48:06 AM Filed under
Windows phone (Lumia 1020) is probably the last place where you would expect to see Ubuntu, but a user has posted images with Ubuntu running on this device and they seem to be legit.
The first thing that users might think is that someone ported Ubuntu Touch for the Lumia 1020 device and that would not be an impossible task. It would be difficult but not impossible. It would also be a difficult to install a custom ROM, but that's also not impossible. The interesting thing is that the images show an Ubuntu system running and not the Touch version.
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digiKam 7.7.0 is released
After three months of active maintenance and another bug triage, the digiKam team is proud to present version 7.7.0 of its open source digital photo manager. See below the list of most important features coming with this release.
| Dilution and Misuse of the "Linux" Brand
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Samsung, Red Hat to Work on Linux Drivers for Future Tech
The metaverse is expected to uproot system design as we know it, and Samsung is one of many hardware vendors re-imagining data center infrastructure in preparation for a parallel 3D world.
Samsung is working on new memory technologies that provide faster bandwidth inside hardware for data to travel between CPUs, storage and other computing resources. The company also announced it was partnering with Red Hat to ensure these technologies have Linux compatibility.
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