An anonymous reader writes: Today marks three years since Valve's Steam client went into beta on Linux. In that time over 1,600 games have become natively available for Linux. Going beyond having many new Linux games, Phoronix recaps, "we've seen Valve make significant investments into the open-source graphics stack and other areas of Linux (in part through their sponsorship of Collabora and LunarG). Valve developers are significantly pushing SDL2. We've seen more mainstream interest in Linux gaming, and Valve has been heavily involved in the creation of the Vulkan graphics API. They have given away their entire game collection to the Mesa/Ubuntu/Debian upstream developers, and much more." The three-year anniversary is coincidentally just days before the release of Steam Machines.

iamacat writes: Back in 90s, we used Linux not only because of open source, but also for innovative features not found in commercial operating systems — better multitasking, network power features like slirp and masquerading, free developer tools for many languages. Nowadays OSX and Windows caught up in these areas and mainstream distros like Ubuntu dumbed down in default configuration. So where to go for active innovation like 3D/VR desktop, artificial intelligence, drag and drop ability to mash up UI of multiple apps or just drastically better performance? Something maybe rough around the edges but usable and exciting enough to use as daily desktop?

An anonymous reader writes: Phoronix's recent 22-Way SteamOS Graphics Card Comparison showed that NVIDIA wins across the board when it comes to closed-source OpenGL driver performance. However, when it comes to the open-source driver performance for Steam Linux gaming, no one is really the winner. A new article, "Are The Open-Source Graphics Drivers Good Enough For Steam Linux Gaming?" answers that question with "heck no" by its author. While AMD is generally regarded as having better open-source support, their newer graphics cards still can't run at their rated clock frequencies due to lack of power management support, the lack of enough OpenGL 4.x support means many AAA Linux games simply cannot run yet, not enough QA means regressions are common, and other issues were noted when it comes to testing a number of modern graphics cards on the open-source drivers.

LichtSpektren writes: Ubuntu 15.10 "Wily Werewolf" is now released and available, along with its alternative desktop flavors (MATE, Xfce, LXDE, GNOME, KDE, Kylin). This release features Linux 4.2, GCC 5, Python 3.5, and LibreOffice 5. The default version is still using X.org display server and Unity7; Mark Shuttleworth has said that Mir and Unity8 won't arrive until Ubuntu 16.04 "Xenial Xerus." Not much has changed beyond package updates, other than replacing the invisible overlay scrollbars in Nautilus with the GNOME 3 scrollbars.

Phoronix brings us the only bit of drama regarding this release: Jonathan Riddell, long time overseer of Kubuntu, has resigned with claims that Canonical has "defrauded donors and broke the copyright licenses." Another reader adds a link to a Q & A session with Riddell.

An anonymous reader writes: Intel has begun releasing more "Skylake" processors that are cheaper than the launch SKUs of the i5-6600K and i7-6700K. One of the new processors that is now widely available is the Core i5 6500 and it costs just $199 USD — that puts it just a few dollars more than the AMD FX-8370 and significantly less than the higher-end Skylake and Haswell CPUs. At least with Ubuntu Linux, the Core i5 6500 is showing competitive performance that for some workloads puts it faster than Core i7 Haswell/Broadwell processors and much faster than any AMD processors. The Intel Skylake CPUs are fully supported under Linux but the caveat is needing the very latest kernel otherwise there's no graphics acceleration or sound support.

An anonymous reader writes: Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth revealed today that they're planning to make ZFS standard on Ubuntu. They are planning to include ZFS file-system as "standard in due course," but no details were revealed beyond that. However, ZFS On Linux contributor Richard Yao has said they do plan on including it in their kernel for 16.04 LTS and the GPL vs. CDDL license worries aren't actually a problem. Many Linux users have been wanting ZFS on Linux, but aside from the out of tree module there hasn't been any luck in including it in the mainline kernel or with tier-one Linux distributions due to license differences.

itwbennett writes: After just under 8 years at Canonical where he was Community Manager of Ubuntu, Jono Bacon left in search of a new challenge. Now, a year and a half into his tenure at the XPRIZE Foundation as Senior Director of Community, Bacon reflects on the changing nature of community and how he is working to bring the 'anybody can play a role in a bigger picture' aspect of open source to "solve the grand challenges facing humanity." Update: 09/17 00:20 GMT by T : Jono wants everyone to know that he's certainly not leaving the world of open source software, either; headline has been updated to reflect that.

An anonymous reader writes: I have a decent video camera, but it lacks a terminal for using an external mic. However, I have a comparatively good audio recorder. What I'd like to do is "automagically" synchronize sound recorded on the audio recorder with video taken on the video camera, using Free / Open Source software on Linux, so I can dump in the files from each, hit "Go," and in the end I get my video, synched with the separately recorded audio, in some sane file format. This seems simple, but maybe it isn't: the 800-pound gorilla in the room is PluralEyes, which evidently lots of people pay $200 for --and which doesn't have a Linux version. Partly this is that I'm cheap, partly it's that I like open source software for being open source, and partly it's that I already use Linux as my usual desktop, and resent needing to switch OS to do what seems intuitively to be a simple task. (It seems like something VLC would do, considering its Swiss-Army-Knife approach, but after pulling down all the menus I could find, I don't think that's the case.) I don't see this feature in any of the Open Source video editing programs, so as a fallback question for anyone who's using LiVES, KDEnlive, or other free/Free option, do you have a useful workflow for synching up externally recorded sound? I'd be happy even to find a simple solution that's merely gratis rather than Free, as long as it runs on Ubuntu.

An anonymous reader writes: I've started a second career, teaching English at a High School in a middle class area. While the large majority of students have a computer and internet access at home, about 10-15% do not. I assign papers that must be typed, I have papers turned in online, and I plan to freely refer to texts, videos, and other resources that are available online. This gives an extra disadvantage to students that may be from the poorer end of the strata, and also means extra inefficiency for me, as I have to make allowances for students who don't have a computer available at home.

Right now, I have to tell them to either use school computers during the day, or to pick up a $170 laptop (more than enough — I administer the class using such a laptop). However, I was surprised at the lack of a super-cheap option for students. I'd love to see something for $20 that any student could afford easily, or perhaps I could just gift to a few students. I feel like something in this price range could be sufficiently powerful for basic word processing, youtube videos, and internet searches (internet access is a separate issue). But looking over my options I see:

1) The very cheapest Chromebooks are also in the $170 range.
2) Android Sticks have been around for a while, and do cost in the $20 range, but don't seem to have matured into a generally usable technology. Surprisingly, there doesn't seem to be a community effort to easily turn these Android sticks into Ubuntu/Mint sticks.
3) Students can't be assumed to have the technical know-how to fix up a Salvation Army computer (I wouldn't mind helping out a bit, but I don't want to turn into tech support)
4) A Raspberry Pi costs $70 once you include a case/power supply/etc, and students would receive a big bag of parts.
5) Cheap Windows Tablets have glitches, and don't have an HDMI out.
6) There isn't a good solution to using a cell phone as a desktop computer.

Are any of my assumptions wrong? Are there any other options I'm not considering?

darthcamaro writes: Mark Shuttleworth, BDFL of Ubuntu is clearing the air about how Ubuntu will make use of .deb packages even in an era where it is moving to its own Snappy ('snaps') format of rapid updates. Fundamentally it's a chicken and egg issue. From the serverwatch article: "'We build Snappy out of the built deb, so we can't build Snappy unless we first build the deb,' Shuttleworth said. Going forward, Shuttleworth said that Ubuntu users will still get access to an archive of .deb packages. That said, for users of a Snappy Ubuntu-based system, the apt-get command no longer applies. However, Shuttleworth explained that on a Snappy-based system there will be a container that contains all the deb packages. 'The nice thing about Snappy is that it's completely worry-free updates,' Shuttleworth said."

mescobal writes: A new release of the Trinity Desktop Environment (TDE) is out. TDE is "a computer desktop environment for Unix-like operating systems with a primary goal of retaining the function and form of traditional desktop computers" which translates into a fully functional KDE 3 style Desktop. Something is missing in the new generation of desktop environments, since some people (perhaps more than "some") feel at home with Gnome 2 or KDE i3. They have repositories for Debian and Ubuntu-based distros. I'm now using it on Ubuntu 15.04, amazed about how well-planned things were in the previous generation of DE. We may have gained some things with Gnome 3 and Plasma 5, but we lost a lot of good features too. TDE brings them back.

An anonymous reader writes: According to a new report by Cloud Market, Ubuntu is more than twice as popular on Amazon EC2 as all other operating systems combined. Given that Amazon Web Services has 57% of the public cloud market, Ubuntu is clearly the most popular OS for cloud systems. This is further bolstered by a recent OpenStack survey, which found that more than half of respondents used Ubuntu for cloud-based production environments. Centos was a distant second at 29%, and RHEL came in third at 11%. "In addition to AWS, Ubuntu has been available on HP Cloud, and Microsoft Azure since 2013. It's also now available on Google Cloud Platform, Fujitsu, and Joyent." The article concludes, "People still see Ubuntu as primarily a desktop operating system. It's not — and hasn't been for some time."

An anonymous reader writes: Ubuntu Core is a tiny Ubuntu distribution aimed at the Internet of Things, using a new transactional packaging format called Snappy rather than the venerable Debian packaging format. It recently gained support for I2C and GPIO on the Raspberry Pi 2, and a quick demo is given here. Ubuntu's Core support site says that the support for Raspberry Pi 2 isn't yet official, but provides some handy tips for anyone who wants to try it out.

jones_supa writes: Just like the city planned a year ago, Munich is still calling for a switch back to Windows from LiMux, their Ubuntu derivative. The councilors from Munich's conservative CSU party have called the operating system installed on their laptops "cumbersome to use" and "of very limited use." The letter from the two senior members of the city's IT committee (PDF in German) asks the mayor to consider removing the Linux-based OS and to install Windows and Office. "There are no programs for text editing, Skype, Office etc. installed and that prevents normal use," the letter argues. Another complaint from councilors is that "the lack of user permissions makes them of limited use." These kind of arguments raise eyebrows, as all that functionality is certainly found on Linux.

An anonymous reader writes: IBM is introducing two mainframe servers that only run on Linux. It's part of a new initiative from the Linux Foundation called the Open Mainframe Project. "The idea is that those companies participating in this project can work together, and begin building a set of open source tools and technologies for Linux mainframes, while helping one another overcome common development issues in the same manner as all open source projects." IBM's hardware release is accompanied by 250,000 lines of code that they're open sourcing as well. "Ultimately the mainframe mainstays are hoping to attract a new generation of developers to their platform. To help coax new users, IBM will be offering free access to the LinuxOne cloud, a mainframe simulation tool it developed for creating, testing and piloting Linux mainframe applications." Canonical is working with IBM to bring Ubuntu to mainframes.

An anonymous reader writes: When Canonical's phone-centric adaptation of Ubuntu first made it onto devices last year, it received a mostly "wait-and-see" reception. For anyone outside Europe, they didn't have much choice, since it was unavailable elsewhere. Now, BQ has opened sales of the Ubuntu phones worldwide. That said, the devices still have technological restrictions. "Both of these devices support GSM bands 850, 900, 1,800 and 1,900, as well as UMTS 900 and 2,100 — so you're not going to get any joy if you're on a CDMA network like Verizon."

New submitter ssam writes: The Document Foundation has announced LibreOffice 5.0, the tenth major release since the launch of the project, bringing new features including Windows 10, Android and Ubuntu touch compatibility, superior interoperability features, an updated UI, and lots of under the hood improvements. For people still running OpenOffice it is probably time to move over.

Purism uses its own OS, PureOS, which is a Debian derivative by way of Ubuntu and other members of the Debian-derivative family, but with no taint of proprietary code. Now imagine all the binaries stripped out of the Linux kernel, making it closer to the FSF ideal of a 100% free operating system than the Linux kernel in use almost everywhere else.

They're still using a proprietary BIOS, but have people working on a Free one. The main thing, though, is that Purism is working to give you all the privacy and freedom they can -- with more coming as they keep working to replace proprietary bits of the OS, BIOS, and hardware drivers with Free Software. Best of all, even if you don't need a new laptop right now, you can download PureOS and run it on any compatible hardware you already own.

An anonymous reader writes: A NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV modified to run Ubuntu Linux is providing interesting data on how NVIDIA's latest "Tegra X1" 64-bit ARM big.LITTLE SoC compares to various Intel/AMD/MIPS systems of varying form factors. Tegra X1 benchmarks on Ubuntu show strong performance with the X1 SoC in this $200 Android TV device, beating out low-power Intel Atom/Celeron Bay Trail SoCs, AMD AM1 APUs, and in some workloads is even getting close to an Intel Core i3 "Broadwell" NUC. The Tegra X1 features Maxwell "GM20B" graphics and the total power consumption is less than 10 Watts.

sfcrazy writes: Today, during the Akademy event, the KDE Community announced Plasma Mobile project. It's a Free (as in Freedom and beer), user-friendly, privacy-enabling and customizable platform for mobile devices. Plasma Mobile claims to be developed in an open process, and considering the community behind it, I don't doubt it. A great line: "Plasma Mobile is designed as an ‘inclusive’ platform and will support all kinds of apps. In addition to native apps written in Qt, it also supports GTK apps, Android apps, Ubuntu apps, and many others." And if you have a Nexus 5, you can download and play with a prototype now.