Hasta La Gadget!

I’ve never been a fan of garden gnomes, honestly they are little disconcerting. I always had the sense that they’re watching me and is waiting for nightfall when they’ll creep into the house and stuff Tic-Tacs up my nose until I suffocate. For some reason I don’t find these zombie garden gnomes nearly as creepy as the regular ones – go figure.

These would be perfect decorating your garden for Halloween. ThinkGeek has four different zombie garden gnome styles including the survivor, zombie, rising, and evil versions. Each individual zombie garden gnome is between nine and 11.4-inches tall and made from resin.

The only exception is the zombie version (the one with the blue outfit), which is actually made from terracotta.

I particularly like the survivor gnome because he has a machine gun and it says “Say hello to my little friend” underneath. The gnomes sell for $19.99(USD) each, or you can get the survivor and zombie version in a bundle for $29.99. We’ve seen some other zombie gnomes in the past, but ThinkGeek has machine guns (plus they’re cheaper.)

We’ve taken you through a tour of Window Managers in Linux, and now it’s time to show you the Window Manager’s bigger brother: the desktop environment, or DE for short. With a sea of choices out there, we can see where Linux newbies might feel a bit overwhelmed. Catch us after the break and we’ll show you some of our favorites, along with a few honorable mentions.

Continue reading How-to: Picking a desktop environment in Linux

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While most of its energy is focused on the XO-4 Touch, the One Laptop Per Child project is swinging into full gear for software, too. The project team has just posted an OS 12.1.0 update that sweetens the Sugar for at least present-day XO units. As of this latest revamp, text-to-speech is woven into the interface and vocalizes any selectable text — a big help for students that are more comfortable speaking their language than reading it. USB video output has been given its own lift through support for more ubiquitous DisplayLink adapters. If you’re looking for the majority of changes, however, they’re under-the-hood tweaks to bring the OLPC architecture up to snuff. Upgrades to GTK3+ and GNOME 3.4 help, but we’re primarily noticing a shift from Mozilla’s web engine to WebKit for browsing: although the OLPC crew may have been forced to swap code because of Mozilla’s policies on third-party apps, it’s promising a much faster and more Sugar-tinged web experience as part of the switch. While they’re not the same as getting an XO-3 tablet, the upgrades found at the source link are big enough that classrooms (and the occasional individual) will be glad they held on to that early XO model.

Filed under: Laptops, Software

OLPC delivers big OS update with text-to-speech, DisplayLink and WebKit originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 02 Sep 2012 02:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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That the GNOME devs planned to package their distro of Linux is hardly a secret, but we haven’t heard too many details. Now Allan Day, one of the interface and UX designers, has explained not just the goals, but the reasoning behind the move. The foundation has realized a number of things, chief amongst them is that the move towards tablets and smartphones means GNOME needs to become more finger-friendly if it hopes to survive. That doesn’t mean that the desktop environment is looking to take on iOS and Android necessarily. GNOME OS is going to be aimed at developers, with the goal stabilizing its associated SDKs and APIs, while refining the user experience. That means not just UI tweaks, but rewritten core apps and a “new model for accessing content.” For more details about the Linux stalwart’s efforts to maintain relevancy in the face of a quickly evolving market (and the loss of Ubuntu to its in-house Unity UI) hit up the source.

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GNOME OS plans detailed: desktops and tablets and smartphones, oh my! originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Aug 2012 20:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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