[Updated 12:00PM] — Marvell has posted detailed datasheets on its previously opaque Armada 370 and XP SoCs, used in Linux-based NAS systems from Buffalo, Netgear, and Synology.

Until now, datasheets and other details about the ARM-based Armada 370 and Armada XP system-on-chips have been available only under NDA to Marvell customers and partners. During the past month, however, the chipmaker released detailed datasheets on the SoCs, with no restriction or registration required. Both functional and hardware spec datasheets were released, each of which is more like a manual than a typical datasheet.

We were tipped to the Marvell Armada 370 and XP datasheet releases by embedded Linux development and training specialist Free Electrons. (The company is well known here for its regular contributions of videos and slide decks from shows like the Embedded Linux Conference, released under a Creative Commons license.)

The true measure of any great gaming platform is not the number of games available. Nor is it the need to have the same games as other competing platforms (the Playstation 4 doesn't need Mario games to be considered successful). And it really isn't even about how many total games are sold, though that certainly helps.

Time was, if you had a hankering for a nice Raspberry Pi, you had but one choice: the Raspberry Pi Model B. You plunked down your $35, and like millions of other Pi-heads, you liked it. Then came the stripped-down $25 Model A, followed this year by the Raspberry Pi Compute Module. Now they've got this gussied up Raspberry Pi Model B+ with four USB ports and a backward-compatible 40-pin expansion connector. What's the world coming to?

Zorin OS Educational, an Ubuntu-based operating system aimed at Windows users who are switching over to Linux, is now at version 9.

There are 2600 packages installed in the main file-system and the chroot for thin clients. It even installs LDAP and xrdp, much more than a minimal installation. I fear this is bloat for a lot of schools who just need a lab running… Without a fast local mirror, this installation takes many hours and I can see teachers taking up much of a weekend to do it.

I recommend doing a minimal installation of Debian GNU/Linux and adding the LTSP parts manually to avoid the bloat. That way you can get XFCE4, turn off encryption and use a local mirror or cache of packages. That will save downloading packages twice, once for the file-system and once again for the chroot and if you need to repeat the installation, the second try will be much faster.

According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics, global smartphone shipments reached 295 million units in the second quarter of 2014. The Android operating system captured a new record of 85 percent global marketshare, mainly at the expense of BlackBerry, Apple iOS and Microsoft Windows Phone.

Copr is an easy build service for Fedora which can make you your own repo very easily. I have been contributing to this project since March 2014 and this month has been the best in terms of new features: you can track your builds much better, it is bit easier to use and also got much faster in some cases.

SolydX and SolydK, two Debian-based distributions that feature the Xfce and the KDE desktops, have been updated with the latest security fixes and they are now at version 201407.

Thanks to the recent Linux support provided by DRM-free classic games provider, GOG.com, getting that nostalgic kick on Linux has never been easier. In this article I'll also detail a few of my favourite classic games that are now available to play in Linux.

Although the official Android platform isn't open source (nor is the majority of the apps found on the Google Play Store), there are plenty of open-source apps available for you to install and enjoy. These apps range from silly games to everyday tools. One category that benefits from open source is productivity. You'll find apps to fit many of your productivity needs. If you don't like the way these apps look or behave (or even if you want to add new features) and you have the skills to do so, you can get their source and rework them to better fit your needs.

The complete and free “out of the box” software solution for schools, Debian Edu / Skolelinux, is used quite a lot in Germany, and one of the people involved is Bernd Zeitzen, who show up on the project mailing lists from time to time with interesting questions and tips on how to adjust the setup. I managed to interview him this summer.

Bio-Linux, a fully-featured, powerful, configurable, and easy to maintain bioinformatics workstation built on the Ubuntu operating system, is now at version 8.0.2.

Reliability – Ubuntu provides the reliability that Windows could not. The operating system speed has at least tripled in comparison with using Windows 7. We are not pulling our hair out waiting for a program to load, experiencing hang-ups or delays when switching screens or shutting-down. All actions are instantaneous.

The Debian Linux kernel team has discussed and chosen the kernel version to use as a basis for Debian 8 'jessie'.

This will be Linux 3.16, due to be released in early August. Release candidates for Linux 3.16 are already packaged and available in the experimental suite.

If you maintain a package that is closely bound to the kernel version - a kernel module or a userland application that depends on an unstable API - please ensure that it is compatible with Linux 3.16 prior to the freeze date (5th November, 2014). Incompatible packages are very likely to be removed from testing and not included in 'jessie'.

Magellan unveiled an Android-based navigation tablet for RVs with a 7-inch, 800 x 480 touchscreen, WiFi and Bluetooth, and real-time traffic updates.

The RoadMate RV9490T-LMB appears to be Magellan’s first Android-based automotive GPS, and it’s specifically aimed at recreational vehicle owners. Magellan still uses Windows Mobile in many of its navigation devices.

That is where my time with Linux Mint 17 "Qiana" MATE ended. I'm slightly disappointed to see the dependency issue crop up with M64Py, considering that the issue seems exclusive to Ubuntu and its derivatives; I'm just as disappointed to see Mupen64Plus not work even in its CLI form despite the absence of any indication of what the problem actually is. These issues of course may well be more the fault of those programs than of this distribution, but I can't deny that the experience was very slightly marred. Those are more personal opinions, though, and I still think that otherwise overall, Linux Mint 17 "Qiana" MATE continues to deliver a solid and reliable experience that is suitable for total newbies to Linux.
You can get it here.

In the past 4 months during this years Google Summer of Code (GSoC), a global program that offers student developers stipends to write code for open source software projects, Christian Bruckmayer collaborated with other students and mentors to code a dashboard for the Open Source Event Manager (OSEM). In this series of three posts Christian will tell you about his project and what he has learned from this experience.

This is a simple story about a logo design process for an open source project in case it might be informative or entertaining to you.

A little over a month ago, Tomas Redej contacted me to request a logo for DevAssistant. DevAssistant is a UI aimed at making developers’ lives easier by automating a lot of the menial tasks required to start up a software project – setting up the environment, starting services, installing dependencise, etc. His team was gearing up for a new release and really wanted a logo to help publicize the release. They came to me for help as colleagues familiar with some of the logo work I’ve done.

TouchPico is prepping an Android 4.2 mini-PC that doubles as a pico-projector and approximates touch input via an infrared stylus and camera.

It’s not enough to offer just another straight-ahead pico projector these days. Sprint’s recent, ZTE-built LivePro, for example, doubles as a mobile hotspot and features an embedded display, and Promate’s LumiTab is also a tablet. Now a startup called TouchPico offers a similarly Android-based TouchPico device that adds touch input to projected images.

Judging from the latest global smartphone sales numbers, players like Mozilla who are focused on markets outside the U.S., including emerging markets, may have the wind at their backs. As just one example of why that's true, Samsung and Apple, dropped to their lowest shares of the worldwide smartphone market in years during the second quarter as Chinese smartphone vendors delivered strong growth, market research firm IDC reported.