Valve has been working to reassure members of its community that it has not yet thrown in the towel on SteamOS and Linux gaming systems that have been hampered over the years due to performance issues, soaring sales on mainstream rival platforms, and generally weak demand. Valve recently withdrew St...

Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 team on Tuesday published a report on Gunpoder, a family of Android malware that can evade detection scans by pretending to be adware. Cong Zheng and Zhi Xu authored the report. The team discovered the new Android malware last November. Its new report aims to spur coopera...

The SparkyLinux GameOver 3.4 Edition may be one of the best Linux distros catering to game players you will find. It is a full-service specialty Linux OS with a focus on gaming. Linux distro developers usually do one of two things about games. One, they provide none or only a few low-impact card and...

For long-suffering Linux users who have endured the dearth of high-quality action games on their open source desktops, the wait for better game developer support soon may be over. New technology is making Linux more attractive to game makers. In fact, it may keep Linux under the hood, so players wil...

Close to a third of all websites use Linux, according to W3Techs, and Linux system users are arguably second only to Mac users in their devotion to their platform of choice, yet Linux gamers have traditionally been the red-headed stepchildren of the gaming community. Xbox 360 was the top-selling con...

Valve cofounder Gabe Newell has made no secret of his disdain for Windows 8 and his newfound love for Linux as a gaming platform over the past year or so. It seems fair to say, however, that few here in the Linux community expected the colossal bear hug of support Valve gave our favorite operating s...

After bringing its Steam gaming service to Linux earlier this year, Valve on Tuesday unveiled SteamOS, a new, Linux-based operating system that is designed to deliver PC entertainment in the living room. The new OS will connect with the Steam gaming service, offering all of the features PC-based Ste...

For the last decade, the battle for supremacy in the video game arena has been waged by three players -- Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. These are companies with long track records, numerous successes, some setbacks and failures -- but most importantly, deep pockets and experience in the marketplace. ...

Well it was a difficult week for those of us here in the Linux blogosphere last week, what with all the din emanating from the Windows territories to the south. Drums, cymbals and fanfare of every sort effectively drowned out every conversation we tried to have here in these parts, as did all the fr...

Smartphones and tablets might be the current hot technology, but history says it's all just another fad. Twenty years from now, almost nobody will own either device. Seems unbelievable, but the same technology that makes them hot today will make them not tomorrow. Consider what happened to another "...

No sooner did the Novell v. SCO case draw to a close than another one seems to have come to take its place. This time, of course, IBM is the big name involved, while TurboHercules, a French company that makes a mainframe emulator, plays the little guy. At issue are Hercules, the open source mainfra...

"Never get between a geek and a processor" would be an excellent maxim for tech companies to live by, but it's one that gets ignored again and again. Take Sony's latest misguided move. Not only is it what inspired Montreal consultant and Slashdot blogger Gerhard Mack to utter those sage words, but...

A patent represents a grant from the United States government to an individual for the exclusive right to make, use, import, sell, and offer to sell an invention. In order to obtain a patent, an inventor must prove that the invention is new, useful, and not merely an obvious improvement over what wa...

When you think about portable gaming gadgets, it's hard to rattle off a hefty list of possibilities. They mostly follow a path of heavy marketing -- the Nintendo DS and the PlayStation Portable are heavily advertised, and their sales are strong. But some hardcore gamers have become attracted to devi...

Open source software is often an unsung hero in the online gaming universe. Game engines are complex applications with core functionalities provided by numerous modules. These include a rendering engine for 2-D or 3-D graphics and a physics engine or collision detection and response calculator. In a...

For developers who have fallen in love with .Net/C#, but aren't married to running their applications on Windows, the Mono Project aims to let Microsoft .Net-based apps run on Linux and Mac OS X, among several other platforms. Sponsored by Novell, the Mono Project has released Mono 2.0 of its cross-...

Sony Computer Entertainment pushed back its open beta test for the launch of Playstation's Home, a 3-D virtual world, from the summer to the fall, marking the second time the company has delayed the launch of the product. Unlike traditional games, Home is a sandbox world designed to allow players th...

When a Web surfer clicks on an icon to launch his or her favorite Web browser, only the geekiest of the geeky pay any thought to which engine layout is at work. The typical Web user has no clue that a different browser choice may also include a different browser layout engine. If anything, most Inte...

When entrepreneur and Second Life real estate mogul Ailin Graef sat down to an interview with a technology news Web site in December, she, no doubt, did not expect to be caught in a downpour of digital phallic symbols. Yet, considering the interview took place in the virtual world Second Life, perha...

When a Web surfer clicks on an icon to launch his or her favorite Web browser, only the geekiest of the geeky pay any thought to which engine layout is at work. The typical Web user has no clue that a different browser choice may also include a different browser layout engine. If anything, most Inte...