Hasta La Gadget!

If you’re rich in buddies, but poor in cloud storage space, Canonical will let you turn those relations into megabytes with its new Ubuntu One referrals program. If you didn’t want to pay before, you could get up to 5GB of storage, with an upgrade to 20GB available for $30 per year. Now, you can use the new link on the service’s web dash to tell your contacts all about it via Twitter, Facebook or email. For each one that signs up, you’ll get an extra 500MB, gratis, as will your newly clouded pal. However, if you’re thinking you can leverage that fat Twitter list into terrabytes of offsite storage joy, think again — the limit is 40 invites, or 20GB. Still, that’s that’s not bad compared to the competition and other referral programs, so check the source to see how to start.

Filed under: Internet, Software

Canonical launches Ubuntu One referrals program, lets you earn cloud storage one friend at a time originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Aug 2012 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The godfather of Linux, Linus Torvalds, may think that NVIDIA is “the worst,” but Valve respectfully disagrees. The company has been working closely with the manufacturer, as well as AMD and Intel, to boost performance of its hardware under the open source OS. The developer clearly has an interest in getting the best from those companies as it works to port Left 4 Dead 2 and Steam to Linux. That close partnership is already bearing impressive fruit as Valve claims its co-op zombie shooter now performs better on Ubuntu than it does under Windows 7 using a GeForce GTX 680. The first Open GL Linux version managed a measly six frames per second, while the Direct X powered Microsoft one was topping 270. Only a few months later, and Left 4 Dead 2 is hitting 315fps on the 32-bit version of Precise Pangolin, outperforming even the Open GL Windows port which sits at 305fps. Of course, it’s relatively well established that Ubuntu has lower overhead and running Direct X only compounds the issue, though, its unparalleled driver support can’t be denied. While it’s not completely fair to compare performance on a 32-bit OS to a 64-bit one, Valve is proving that gaming on Linux need not be some proof-of-concept exercise. Linus can flip NVIDIA the bird all he wants but, through its work with Valve, it may be doing more to bring Linux to the mainstream than anyone previously has.

Filed under: Gaming

Valve says NVIDIA’s the best, Steam and Left 4 Dead for Linux coming along nicely originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 15:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dell has announced that it’s planning to bring Ubuntu to the masses. In the fall of 2012, Dell’s XPS 13 will be available with an install of Ubuntu direct from the company. But who’s going to buy one? More »

Soon enough, Chrome OS won’t be the only game in town when it comes to tightly integrated web apps running on a Linux core. Today Canonical announced Ubuntu WebApps, a new feature that will be integrated into version 12.10 of the open-source OS, Quantal Queztal. In its simplest form this means being able to place an icon in the launcher and open your favorite sites and services as standalone windows. When you visit a compatible page in the browser an alert pops up asking if you want to “install” it as a WebApp. So far, most of the engineers’ efforts have focused on Firefox, but Pete Goodall (a product manager at Canonical) said Chrome and Chromium support is also in the works. The really fun starts, though, when devs start playing with the new APIs and Greasemonkey-like extensibility offered. WebApps will be able to access many of Unity’s finer features like progress bars in the launcher, the sound menu and messaging menu as well. So now you can get desktop alerts from Gmail without installing some wonky app or setting up Thunderbird. WebApps can even tap into the HUD, though, it’ll be up to the devs to expose the appropriate actions to the search-as-you-type menu system.

Of course, this is all just the first step. More APIs will eventually expose additional features, and high on that list is hardware access — an essential feature for video and voice chat. Another key plan is integrating web credentials with desktop apps. So, if you log into Facebook in the browser, Shotwell will recognize that and upload imported photos to your profile. The initial list of recognized apps is small, but impressive, including Twitter, Last.FM, GMail, Google+, Facebook and YouTube. And, while the feature is set to debut in October with Quantal, Pangolin devotees will also be able to take advantage simply by adding a repository to their software sources.

Update: You’ll now find the PR and a nice demo video after the break.

Continue reading Canonical integrating Ubuntu WebApps in Quantal Quetzal (video)

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Canonical integrating Ubuntu WebApps in Quantal Quetzal (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Jul 2012 12:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If bits of launcher script, photographic evidence and a short video weren’t enough to convince you Valve was porting Steam to Linux, maybe you’ll take it directly from the horse’s mouth: Steam is coming to Ubuntu 12.04. Sick, perhaps, of denying the project, Valve has created a Linux blog to document its efforts — outlining its history with the open-source OS and making its goals public. The plan is simple: get Steam ported to Linux with full functionality, optimize Left 4 Dead to run at a respectable clip with OpenGL and port additional Valve titles. The team is also asking for feedback, and hope to leverage the ideas of the community. Eager to put in your two cents? Check out the blog at the source link below.

[Thanks, Andrew]

Valve launches Linux blog, officially announces Steam for Ubuntu originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Jul 2012 21:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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