Software

Facebook last week launched its Incubator on GitHub in order to distribute its own open source software projects. Incubator serves as a testing ground for new open source projects from Facebook, which has open sourced almost 400 projects to date. New projects will be posted on Incubator pages to gau...

The Solus Project version 1.2, released last month, shows considerable maturity in the homegrown Budgie desktop. Solus 1.2 is the second minor release in the Shannon series, built around a custom Budgie desktop developed in-house and the eopkg package manager forked from PiSi. Solus is a Linux distr...

Google on Tuesday released an updated version of its Phone app for Android with a new spam protection feature that warns users when an incoming call is likely to be spam. It also lets them block numbers and report spam. The app is available on Google Play. The spam warning feature works on Nexus a...

Chrome OS and Android Apps now run together on some Chromebooks. Many, but not all, Chromebook models will get the operating system update that allows it as fall approaches. The Asus Chromebook Flip C100P -- the first Chromebook to get the upgrade -- is an impressive example of what will come with t...

Splice Machine this week announced it has open sourced its Spark-powered relational SQL database system. The company has set up a cloud-based sandbox for developers to put its new open source Splice Machine 2.0 Community Edition to the test. The company also announced the release of a cluster versio...

Microsoft last week introduced a new Web-based Skype for Linux client in alpha. Based on WebRTC, it uses Microsoft's next-generation calling architecture. It lets users share files, photos, videos and new emoticons. Users will be able to call others using the latest versions of Skype on Windows, Mac...

HandyLinux is a distro that offers a simplified approach to using the Linux desktop operating system. HandyLinux first appeared about three years ago. The latest version, 2.5, was released in early June. The developers make it easy to peel off the "Handy" layers to reveal a more standard Linux envir...

Bulgaria's Parliament recently passed legislation mandating open source software to bolster security, as well as to increase competition with commercially coded software. Amendments to the Electronic Governance Act require that all software written for the government be Free and Open Source Software...

If you want a classy distro with the look and feel of the Microsoft platform, the MakuluLinux LinDoz edition will feed your nostalgia. MakuluLinux developer Jacque Montague Raymer released MakuluLinux 11 LinDoz edition earlier this month after a year and a half in the making. Forked from the Origina...

Red Hat this week announced the release of Fedora 24, an open source Linux operating system maintained by the Fedora Project community. Fedora Linux is the community version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, or RHEL. Fedora 24 is comprised of a set of base packages that form the foundation of three disti...

Docker on Monday announced Docker Engine 1.12 with built-in orchestration, which allows automated deployment and management of Dockerized distributed applications and microservices at scale in production. Users can select Docker Swarm mode to turn on built-in orchestration, or they can use their own...

Snapcraft -- the Linux package format Canonical developed for Ubuntu -- now works on multiple Linux distros, including Arch, Debian, Fedora and various flavors of Ubuntu. They're being validated on CentOS, Elementary, Gentoo, Mint, OpenSUSE, OpenWrt and RHEL. "Distributing applications on Linux is...

Linux Lite 3.0 is anything but what its name implies. It is a full-featured operating system that lets you get down to serious business right out of the box. It is one of the few out-of-the-box experiences I have had testing Linux distros in which I actually was set up and working in less than five ...

Hewlett Packard Enterprise on Tuesday announced it was open-sourcing The Machine to spur development of the infant computer design project. HPE has invited the open source community to collaborate on its largest and most notable research project yet. The Machine focuses on reinventing the architectu...