Software

The Black Panther OS is a bare-bones Linux distribution built around the KDE desktop. The KDE environment itself is not a minimal component, but how it is integrated within Black Panther gives you an almost-nothing-there installation until you painstakingly install system tools and applications, lit...

Lenovo, which owns Motorola, last week released the kernel source code for the Moto Z Droid smartphone on Github. The move follows the company's posting of the Moto Z Droid Moto Mods Development Kit and Moto Mods on Github this summer. This is the first kernel source code made available for the Moto...

Opera earlier this week released a new version of its browser, Opera 40, which comes with a free virtual private network service built in. The official rollout follows five months of user experimentation with a beta version. The company evaluated beta users' feedback and subsequently brought on addi...

Parsix is a feature-rich distro that will delight GNOME desktop users looking for a well-tweaked user experience. It offers a well-oiled, single track Linux desktop operating system. It has no distractions from multiple desktop options. It provides one of the best integrations of the latest GNOME de...

Online education company Udacity on Tuesday introduced a new "nanodegree" program in self-driving auto engineering. President Sebastian Thrun made the announcement. The goal is to build a crowdsourced, open source self-driving car, he said. Students will learn the skills and techniques used by self-...

Startup Arya.ai on Monday introduced Braid, an open source tool available for free to companies developing neural networks. Braid is a flexible, customizable, modular meta-framework that works with operating systems for deep learning. It is designed for rapid development and to support arbitrary net...

Cub Linux, an improved rebranding of the innovative Chromixium Linux distro, combines the look, feel and functionality of Google's Chrome OS with traditional Linux performance. It provides a complete Chromebook experience on the hardware of your choice. The innovation is quite impressive. Cub Linux ...

The latest ransomware intrusion that targets Linux servers, dubbed "FairWare," may be a classic server hack designed to bilk money from victims with no intent to return stolen files after payment in bitcoins is made. The attack reportedly targets a Linux server, deletes the Web folder, and then dema...

The Peppermint operating system is built around a concept not found in most Linux distros. It is a hybrid combination of traditional Linux desktop applications and cloud-based infrastructure. Peppermint 7, the annual update released in June, is a lightweight distribution based on Ubuntu 16.04. It us...

The Linux operating system started out as an alternative to other platform architectures in use on mainframes and enterprise back-ends. It has grown into a major mainstream computing platform.

Slackware is one of those Linux distros often described as being difficult to use. The Slackware Project version 14.2 released on July 1 does little to change that view -- at least, as far as installing it is concerned. Its KDE desktop is probably the most contemporary trait. Other than an update un...

The Linux Foundation on Tuesday added PNDA -- the Platform for Network Data Analytics -- to its project menagerie. PNDA provides an open source, scalable platform for next-generation network analytics. It integrates data from multiple sources on a network and works with Apache Spark to crunch the nu...

The Linux Mint 18 Sarah will please long-time users and impress new adopters for its growth in features and overall consistent performance. Linux Mint 18, released at the end of June, is a long-term edition supported through 2021. The in-house built Cinnamon desktop and the GNOME 2 fork MATE desktop...