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04/04/2013

Attack of the Androids TV with Mat Lee, Richard Hay ...

aNewDomain.net and aGNUdomain unplugged -- Here's the latest episode from our Mat Lee's Attack of the Androids.

This week, the guys are talking about their first smartphones -- Richard Hay has a piece on his first Android phone on the main aNewDomain.net site today -- and the 40th anniversary of the first mobile call. A Motorola exec made it from the first commerically available mobile phone, the Motorola DynaTAC, in 1973.

Check out Attack of the Androids, below.

Posted at 02:57 AM in aGNUdomain, agnudomain.net, Ant Pruitt, Around the Web, attack of the androids, Richard Hay, smartphones | Permalink | Comments (1)

04/03/2013

Video: How Linux is Built (via the Linux Foundation)

aGnuDomain.net TM unplugged and aNewDomain.net -- This short video is the money. If your friends ever ask you to explain the wisdom and architecture behind the glory that is Linux, you might refer them to this video. It's called How Linux is Built.

Uploaded by the Linux Foundation onto YouTube today, the short video "takes you inside the process by which the largest collaborative development project in the history of computing is organized. Based on the annual report "Who Writes Linux," this is a powerful and inspiring story of how Linux has become a community-driven phenomenon."

Find more details on Linux and The Linux Foundation at http://www.linuxfoundation.org and http://www.linux.com. Enjoy.

Posted at 11:33 PM in agnudomain.net, Gina Smith, How Linux is Built, The Linux Foundation, Video | Permalink | Comments (1)

02/25/2013

Hands-on with Ubuntu Touch Preview for the Nexus 4

aGNUdomain.net - This weekend I formatted my Nexus 4 and loaded up Canonical's new Ubuntu Touch Preview. I was impressed by its polish and beauty.

Ubuntu Touch launched Feb. 19, 2013. As aGNUdomain's Ant Pruitt explained, Ubuntu Touch is Canonical's attempt to break into the mobile market. Smart Linux users already know how to run full-fledged Ubuntu on some Android devices, but this preview marks the first time Google released a developer version immediately installable on the latest four Nexus devices from Google.

If you have a Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4, Nexus 7 or Nexus 10 -- and you're feeling adventurous -- you can download the Ubuntu Touch preview code now.

Installing Ubuntu Touch was simple, though the current installation method is only supported using Ubuntu for desktop. After downloading the code only one command is required: phablet-flash -b.

If you are inclined to check out Ubuntu Touch yourself, be warned that your entire phone will be erased during the installation process. It is also possible that you could break your phone.

In reality there is not too much to see at this point. The folks at Canonical correctly labeled this release a "developer preview." You can think of it more like a model home. It is certainly a beautiful operating system but is hardly functional.

If you would rather wait for a more fleshed-out version of Ubuntu Touch, included are some screenshots of it running on my Nexus 4. Enjoy!

Have you flashed Ubuntu Touch? Do you think it has potential or is another non-starter? Leave a comment on the site and over on Google Plus.

For aGNUdomain.net, I'm +Eric Finkenbiner.

Posted at 06:00 PM in aGNUdomain, agnudomain.net, android, How To Ubuntu, Ubuntu | Permalink | Comments (1)

02/21/2013

Ubuntu Tablet/Phone Developer Preview Released

The developer preview of Linux distro Ubuntu is now available for tablets and mobile phones. Excited? I am. Well, I was initially. Sadly, I'm a Galaxy Nexus (Toro) owner. The preview is available to Nexus devices but only the GSM variants. I own the Nexus 7 tablet but I decline to install the preview for now.

Image credit: Ubuntu

The OS demostrations I've seen of late seem to be promising, offering yet another open platform for our mobile devices. Ubuntu's video details more on the features of the OS for tablets and phones. My first glance at the real world views of Ubuntu Phone lead me to think the OS was slightly lagging in performance. The UI is nice, but the devices being tested showed slow transitions from screen to screen and app to app.

I had to take this first look with a grain of salt. I mean, the OS is in preview. It's not going to be perfect just yet.

I shared the information about the developer preview to my circles on Google+ It was received with mixed reactions from my wonderful geek followers. Some felt that removing the Nexus experience from current devices was pointless. Others were just curious to see what the OS had to offer.

Darryl Barnes is clearly excited about the OS preview. "Downloaded. Installing to Nexus 4 tonight ... can't wait to dump Android," he says. There are concerns that the preview will not allow for the radio to handle cell calls. It will be a WiFi device only. Barnes has other ideas.

"I will have data working on mine by this weekend," he says. "It's nothing to reverse-engineer the radio for use under Ubuntu."

I can't wait to hear about Barnes' progress on getting the radios to work for him. Hopefully he will keep us in the community updated.

If I catch a wild streak in my personality, I may take the dive in formatting my Nexus 7 to play around with the OS preview, but I won't make any promises. What are your thoughts on the preview? Will you experiment with the images available for your Nexus device? Leave me a comment with your plan and thoughts on Ubuntu Tablet/Phone Developer Preview.

I'm Ant Pruitt and this is aGNUdomain.

Jordan Keyes of TWILDOTTV installed the preview on his Nexus 7 to give us his first look. Check out the video below from his channel.

Posted at 05:40 PM in agnudomain.net, Ant Pruitt, Ubuntu | Permalink | Comments (0)

02/14/2013

Burn the Heretic! John Carmack Talks Linux Gaming and Steam

John Carmack, the man behind some of the most influential video games of all time, caused a flurry of discussion over on Reddit last week when he expressed his opinions regarding native Linux ports of popular video games. Carmack's response on Reddit was an eloboration of a Twitter update he made on Feb. 4th where he stated that, "Improving Wine for Linux gaming seems like a better plan than lobbying individual game developers for native ports."

Carmack's logic is simple: There simply is not enough potential to monetize a native Linux port for game studios to invest the time, money and effort. So what if you started a company which ported popular games to Linux on behalf of a publisher? Carmack states that even if you were able to show a potential profit, it would need to be significant in order to recoup the high ancillary costs that most large publishers incur regardless of the size or scope of a port.

What is the solution to this problem? According to Carmack the solution is to invest more resources into projects such as WINE, which allow for the installation and execution of Windows applications in Unix-based operating systems. He states that, " ... figuring out exactly what the difficulties are and making some form of 'D3D interop' extension for OpenGL to smooth it out is a lot easier than making dozens of completely refactored, high performance native ports."

At the end of his explanation Carmack also stated that Steam could be, "a plausible path forward."

This spurred responses from gamers in the Linux community who have been feeling optimistic regarding native ports of Linux games following Steam's long-awaited release of the Steam for Linux Beta client. Some expressed concern regarding the current state of WINE. Even in games which are listed as Platinum, there are still a litany of errors and fix-me's that occur when those applications are run.

I certainly would like to see the application continue to grow and improve, however this does not mean that I do not want native ports of my favorite games to show up on Linux. While I'm not convinced that WINE is the right permanent solution to gaming on Linux, I think that it is a viable option for those of us who would prefer not to dual boot to Windows.

What do you think? Leave a comment or start a discussion on Google Plus. I'm +Eric Finkenbiner for aGNUdomain.net

Posted at 01:53 AM in aGNUdomain, agnudomain.net, Eric Finkenbiner, Ubuntu, Wine | Permalink | Comments (0)

02/13/2013

Linux Command Cheat Sheet: Valentine's Day Gift for the Linux Geek You Love

aGNUdomain.net unplugged: As we ramp up our upcoming aGNUdomain.net site, I thought this Linux Command Cheat Sheet from Dave Child was ideal -- it is the money if you want Linux commands at your fingertips or as a Valentine's Day 2013 gift for someone you love who loves Linux. And it's free, courtesy cheatography.com. Yum. Beats chocolate. Not diamonds, though.

Linux Command Cheat Sheet from Davechild Linux Command Line -- at anewdomain.net with Gina Smith, John C. D... by

Posted at 11:33 PM in aGNUdomain, agnudomain.net, android, Ant Pruitt, Around the Web, Commentary, Current Affairs, Eric Finkenbiner, How To , Linux Command Cheat Sheet, Linux tips and tricks | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: anewdomain.net, cheatography, cheats, commands, deep geek Linux/GNU coverage and more, Gina Smith and John C. Dvorak aNewDomain.net launch aGNUdomain.net, how to Linux, john c. dvorak, linux, Linux, linux command sheet cheat, Linux tips, Linux tricks, spinoff anewdomain, valentines day present for linux lovers, what is anewdomain, who is gina smith, x valentines day for geeks

02/09/2013

David Street: What's GNU: Richard Stallman's GNU versus Linux Demystified

aGnuDomain.net unplugged -- By David Street, aNewDomain.net: You think you knew GNU. So do a lot of people. Richard Stallman does an amazing job in his GNU history and explainer to dispel myths about it.

Read the whole story here from Stallman writing for GNU.org. Here's an excerpt from Stallman's excellent piece. Scroll after the excerpt because it gets better.

Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux,” and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.

There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: The whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux ...

Many users do not understand the difference between the kernel, which is Linux, and the whole system, which they also call “Linux.” The ambiguous use of the name doesn't help people understand. These users often think that Linus Torvalds developed the whole operating system in 1991, with a bit of help ...

Programmers generally know that Linux is a kernel. But since they have generally heard the whole system called “Linux” as well, they often envisage a history that would justify naming the whole system after the kernel. For example, many believe that once Linus Torvalds finished writing Linux, the kernel, its users looked around for other free software to go with it, and found that (for no particular reason) most everything necessary to make a Unix-like system was already available ...

They found an incomplete GNU, though. The free software was the end result only and solely, Stallman says, because the GNU Project was on a project to build it since the mid 1980s.

Read The GNU Manifesto. In it, Stallman and his fellows clearly spelled out their mission of creating a free, open-sounce (and Unix-like, in that) system. Do you recall the initial announcement back then? That initial announcement presciently set out the goals and plans for GNU.

But did you know that the GNU system was alm? By the time Linux was started, GNU was almost finished by the time Linus Torvalds started to work on his version of the Unix-like kernel, now known as Linux.

And those, like the work of Don Knuth (TeX) and Bob Scheifler (Remember X Window, the 1990s GUI?), were supposed to be projects for a single task.

In his excellent piece on gnu.org, Stallman gives us a rhetorical well worth considering:

If we tried to measure the GNU Project's contribution in this way, what would we conclude? One CD-ROM vendor found that in their “Linux distribution,” GNU software was the largest single contingent, around 28% of the total source code, and this included some of the essential major components without which there could be no system. Linux itself was about 3 percent (then) ... the proportions in 2008 (were) similar. Linux (was at) 1.5 percent and GNU packages were 15 percent ... so if you were going to pick a name for the system based on who wrote the programs in the system, the most appropriate single choice would be “GNU.”

Note, again, as Stallman does, that the GNU Project never was a project for developing a text editor. "It was not a project to develop a C compiler, although we did that," he writes. "The GNU Project set out to develop a complete free Unix-like system: GNU."

Torvalds of course played a huge role. His Linux in 1992 completed GNU to create a combined Linux/GNU that was free, open, workable and extensible.

Did you know there are completely free GNU/Linux distros? Two are Ututo and gNewSense.

But keeping GNU/Linux distros free and available means keeping Linux free, too.

Bottom line, as Stallman points out, calling Linux the word "Linux" is confusing because it clouds the fact that, while the kernel in fact is Linux. But the system as a whole is GNU -- plus Linux. Tell your friends. Education is good.

Good links to find out more include:

http://www.gnu.org/gnu/the-gnu-project.html

http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?Linux

Posted at 07:27 PM in aGNUdomain, agnudomain.net, Around the Web, Commentary, David Street, GNU 101, Richard Stallman | Permalink | Comments (0)

Eric Finkenbiner: Microsoft Hints at Office 2014 for Linux, LibreOffice Comparison

By Eric Finkenbiner for aGNUdomain.net: A few days ago Michael Larabel posted on his Twitter feed that Microsoft is currently considering a Linux release of Microsoft Office in 2014.

He learned this while attending the Free Open-Source Developers' European Meeting (FOSDEM) in Brussels this past weekend. This rumor is welcomed by those in the Linux community who still rely on Microsoft Office for their day to day work activity.

While LibreOffice is great, there are admittedly some situations where you need the actual Microsoft Office program for compatibility purposes. Even if you needed to run Microsoft Office on Linux it was a fairly straightforward proposition using WINE, the popular Windows compatibility application.

I will admit that it is tempting to think of a world where I could install Microsoft Office without the need for another application, such as WINE. However I'm not sure that I am very interested in the idea. I have been very lucky in that my last two employers were participants in Microsoft programs which allowed me to get Office for the heavily-discounted price of $9.95.

If that were not the case, I would not have purchased it. I have long been a fan of OpenOffice, which is now LibreOffice, and feel that it fits my needs quite nicely. The only exception to this is the apparent lack of functionality of the LibreOffice suite when compared to Microsoft Excel. Even given that fault, at the low price of free I find LibreOffice to be a great value for the everyday user.

LibreOffice just happened to announce this same week the release of their next iteration, LibreOffice 4. With this version they have even announced support for Microsoft Visio and Publisher files.

If you listen to Attack of the Androids you are probably aware of the sad state of my home internet connection. This means that I am still downloading the latest version of LibreOffice and can't give you my full opinion just yet. However I still feel justified in saying that this rumor, while yet unconfirmed, just doesn't evoke the immense feelings of joy and relief that it may have seven years ago when I started using Linux fulltime.

What do you think? Is this just the news you needed to convince yourself to move to the Linux desktop? Has Microsoft just ushered in the long-awaited, never-fulfilled dream of "The Year of the Linux Desktop?" Leave a comment below or chat me up on Google+.

I'm +Eric Finkenbiner for aGNUdomain.net.

Posted at 06:08 AM in agnudomain.net, Eric Finkenbiner, FOSDEM, Libre Office, Ubuntu, Wine | Permalink | Comments (5)

02/08/2013

Hello World -- in Ubuntu: Write It in GNU C++ (video)

aGNUdomain.net unplugged -- It's official. The edit team at aNewDomain.net is spinning out its first new media site. It's going to be called aGNUdomain.net -- our co-founder John C. Dvorak gets cred for coming up with the name.

It'll be Linux news, views, reviews, teardowns, Android rooting, open source advice, all flavors of Linux for the geeks who love open source. And we have a ton of great ones on our team, founded by Dvorak, Gina Smith, Dr. Jerry Pournelle and 70+ vets of the edit team that relaunched BYTE two years ago and turned about to create aNewDomain.net.

Led by aNewDomain.net's Ant Pruitt and Eric Finkenbiner, aGNUdomain.net will be a total, unbridled geek fest. That's guaranteed, as you can see when you scroll below the fold in this post.

The site at the agnudomain.net url will be up soon. In the meantime, this aGNUdomain unplugged site will let you watch as we start putting material and staff together for our launch. And if you're interested in geeking up with us, shoot Ant or Eric a note on Google +. We're always looking for great writers, podcasters, and vidcasters who are open about their love of open source.

In the meantime, we thought we'd say, Hello World! Here's a tech tutorial we found on YouTube via JTRtoday on how to write a simple Hello World program using the GNU C++ compiler for Ubuntu. Enjoy. This tutorial employs an older version of Ubuntu -- 10.04 -- but it's still relevant. The narrator is using its nano text editor to do it. Great work from JTRtoday.

Video credit: JTRtoday YouTube Channel

Here's a video intro of Eric Finkenbiner talking Android and aNewDomain.net from Rangoon. It'll give you a flavor of what you're in for.

And here's an Ant Pruitt video hosting a bunch of smartphone photographers on his popular Google+ hangout show, Point and Shoot with Ant Pruitt.

Video: Feb. 7, 2013

Joining Ant above are a bunch of current aNewDomain.net (and former teamBYTE) editorial staffers, contributors and tech pro commentators and photographers. The lineup includes Chris Miller, Mike Sweeney, Joey Kelley, Mat Lee, Robert Knight, Kenny Lee, M. Dean Jones and Michael King. Here's a video from Ant demonstrating the original Kindle Fire running Android version 4.1.1 Jelly Bean with help from XDA-Developers Forums.