Thanks to Linus Torvalds’ figurative stroke of the pen, the Linux kernel 3.10 is now final — paving the way for its inclusion in a bevy of Linux distributions, and even offshoots such as Android and Chrome OS. The fresh kernel brings a good number of changes, such as timerless multitasking, a new caching implementation and support for the ARM big.LITTLE architecture. In simplistic terms, the new multitasking method should help improve performance and latency by firing the system timer only once per second — rather than 1,000 times — when tasks are running. Meanwhile, users with both traditional hard drives and SSDs will find performance benefits from bcache, which brings writeback caching and a filesystem agnostic approach to leveraging the SSD for caching operations. Also of significance, Linux kernel 3.10 enhances ARM support by including the big.LITTLE architecture, which combines multiple cores of different types — commonly the Cortex-A7 and Cortex-A15 — that focus on either power savings or performance. The full list of improvements is rather lengthy, but if you feel like nerding out with the changelog, just grab a caffeinated beverage and get to it.
Good news Linux gamers, it looks like Half-Life 2 for Linux has managed to make its way out of beta and is currently available for download on Steam for Linux, according to an announcement the company made earlier today. We […]
Now that Linux Mint 15 is available, it’s only fair that we get a new MintBox to match. The CompuLab and Linux Mint teams won’t disappoint us on that front: they’ve just previewed the MintBox 2, a big upgrade to their open source mini PC. The new version drops AMD processors in favor of an Intel Core i5 that’s reportedly four times faster than the AMD T56 in the MintBox Pro. The refresh also doubles the storage to 500GB while adding a second gigabit Ethernet jack for server duties. CompuLab and Linux Mint haven’t said how soon they expect the MintBox 2 to ship, but they’re expecting a $599 price at Amazon.
Valve’s Half-Life 2 along with Episodes One and Two are out of beta and available for download on Steam for Linux, the company announced today. While we welcome any Half-Life news, it’s hard to not get disappointed when the number three isn’t involved. Gordon Freeman’s last known appearance uses the new SteamPipe content delivery system and “numerous” community bug fixes have been implemented.
That’s not all! Oculus Rift (and other virtual reality device) support has been added as well. We aren’t aware of any other VR units besides the Rift, but in March Valve told us it’s pursuing hardware itself. Speculating about other VR systems isn’t far from speculating about Half-Life 3‘s existence — we don’t know anything at this point. However, Linux gaming site Phoronix says to expect more good Valve Linux news in July. We reached out to Valve for more info and will update if we hear anything back.
Many suspect that China’s Tianhe-2 could win the supercomputer speed wars, but there haven’t been real numbers to back up that hunch. We now have some of those figures courtesy of Top 500’s Jack Dongarra, and Tianhe-2 could well be the new leader — by a gigantic margin. The cluster of Ivy Bridge and Xeon Phi chips has benchmarked at 30.65 petaflops when using 90 percent of its nodes, giving it a 74 percent edge (!) over the 17.6-petaflop Titan. There’s no guarantee that Tianhe-2 will hold the crown when the official Top 500 rankings appear on June 17th, but we don’t see any upstart rivals on the horizon. It could be lonely at the top… for a while.
This week the folks at Double Fine have announced that they are – once again – taking to Kickstarter to fund an upcoming gaming venture. This time around, it’s a game by the name of Massive Chalice, and they’re pushing forth a world in which turn-based tactics meet “feudal fantasy”, making what they call a “lovechild” of the two elements – this game will eventually be appearing on Windows, Mac, and Linux machines.
Once this game is under way, it’ll be powered by Double Fine’s in-house 3D Buddha Engine. This means that once they’ve raised the cash they need to move forward – and by the looks of it, it wont be long – Double Fine will have a big opportunity to once again make an in-house hit. Nothing like inspiring people to buy your game with funding project they put their own cash into.
ABOVE: A conceptual map made for “Massive Chalice” in pre-production.
The game is, as the folks at Double Fine say, inspired by games such as Final Fantasy Tactics and X-COM – this along with the game Fire Emblem rounding out some classic turn-based tactical strategy games that they intent Massive Chalice to join. This place in the gaming universe is one that’s long-lasting: playing games from many years ago that were made in this genre continue to be a challenge, the best of them continuing to be cult-classics due to their intricate gameplay.
But why does Double Fine need a Kickstarter to make this game a reality?
“Last year, you Kickstarted Double Fine Adventure, shattering records and bringing video games to the Kickstarter spotlight! Now known as Broken Age, that game is in full production and is already a beautiful and unique experience—but the Broken Age team only represents a third of our multi-game studio.
Double Fine’s goal is for all our teams to remain independent and responsible directly to their players. Kickstarting MASSIVE CHALICE allows us to maintain a pure creative vision, put out updates on our own schedule, respond to feedback without roadblocks, and release it all DRM-free.” – Double Fine
Again, the campaign behind this game is already at $620,447 of its $725,000 USD goal with 26 days left to go, so it’s not as if this Kickstarter wont be a successful one. It’s just a matter of time before the next push begins. Now we’ll see if the creators of Iron Brigade, Psychonauts, and Brutal Legend can create another successful video game title.
As with previous releases, the newest Mint iteration, “Olivia,” comes in two distinct flavors: Cinnamon and MATE. While both have received a bit of polish, it’s the fresher Cinnamon that has gotten the most attention. Version 1.8 of the desktop environment has received plenty of bug fixes, along with a new dedicated settings panel that bypasses the GNOME control center. Support for “Desklets” (read: widgets) has also been added and the log-in screen is completely customizable through HTML5. Both versions benefit from the addition of MintSources, for managing software repositories, and MintDrivers, for managing drivers, obviously. While they’ll come in handy for consumers, the biggest advantage is that IT managers may now be more accepting of the refreshingly green Ubuntu derivative. The developers are calling version 15 their most ambitious release yet, and while we’re not completely convinced that’s true, it’s certainly a significant upgrade over November’s Nadia. You’ll find the full changelog and download links at the source.
When Ubuntu Linux was still in early development back in August 2004, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth filed a tongue-in-cheek first bug: that Microsoft had a majority of PC market share. Little did he realize that he’d have an excuse to cross that bug off the list in 2013. Since computing now includes phones and tablets, he argues, that leaves the traditional PC (and therefore Windows) in the minority versus Android, iOS and other platforms. Whether or not you agree with that market interpretation, Shuttleworth is ready to move on — he feels it’s better to polish Canonical’s own cloud, desktop and mobile efforts than to target someone else. It’s undoubtedly easy for Shuttleworth to make peace when the battle is supposed to be over, but we can’t object to such a healthy attitude.
Samsung committed to launching Tizen devices almost as soon as 2013 began, but there has been little to show for its promise outside of a developer phone. To our relief, there are signs of sustained interest in the project: Techtastic has spotted a Samsung user agent profile for the Tizen-toting GT-i8805. The web code suggests that the company is playing it safe with its first wave of hardware for the OS, however. While the i8805 appears to support LTE, mentions of a 720p display and an older ARM Cortex-A9 chip probably won’t have technofreaks regretting their Galaxy S 4 purchase. Even so, the sighting should give hope to those who’ve been waiting months on end for Bada’s spiritual successor.
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