Ubuntu

Starting out as an overgrown browser on affordable but low-powered laptops, Chrome OS has now grown into something that Microsoft and Apple now consider to be a deadly rival, especially in education and enterprise markets. The platform has definitely grown to become a software powerhouse that could run almost any app, whether directly or indirectly. Its next trick, however, is gaming, and recent changes to Chrome OS's source code hints that Google might be getting close to making that happen.

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We basically have a two-horse race in the mobile market but there was never a shortage of attempts to have a third contender. There's Microsoft's Windows Phone and Windows Mobile attempts, of course, as well as Nokia's spiritual successor Jolla. And then there's Ubuntu Touch, so far still the most successful attempt to bring a mainstream Linux OS to commercial phones. Canonical basically giving up on that effort ironically caused Ubuntu Touch to become available on even more devices and the Cosmo Communicator is probably one of the best examples of what an Ubuntu phone should have been.

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A phone called F(x)tec Pro1-X is in the works with a promise for unmatched power user options. Where most other phones focus on an overall positive experience, thus limiting the software and hardware for quality control, the F(x)tec Pro1-X seems to want to do something rare: Trust the user. Of course, as the phone project partners with XDA Developers for development, it's implied that users of this phone will have the ability to troubleshoot.

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While the year of the Linux Desktop remains a dream, awareness and adoption of this open source operating system has perhaps never been better. That's partly thanks to companies like Canonical that push Linux not only to businesses but also to consumers. The latter, however, would probably prefer not to have to install Linux themselves on their new laptops or desktops. With the latest fruit of the collaboration between the Ubuntu maker and Lenovo, they won't have to, presuming they're buying a new ThinkPad or ThinkStation.

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Dell debuted a few laptops aimed at gamers but it also has one that caters more to users doing some serious work. At least when that work involves maintaining servers, developing software, or simply just using Linux. Continuing their nearly decade-long partnership, Dell and Canonical are putting out yet another Ubuntu-powered laptop, this time the XPS 13 Developer Edition, that's promised to get security updates for up to ten years. Presuming the laptop does last that long, of course.

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The fuss over Linux phones seems to have died down a bit, perhaps due to the coronavirus pandemic making it harder to manufacture and ship these devices. For companies and developers pushing these open source and privacy-focused ecosystems forward, the show must go on. After a brief period of relative (but not total) silence, PINE64, makers of the PinePhone Linux phone, has opened pre-orders for its Linux tablet that's coming with a slight twist.

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Lenovo has announced Linux Certification for its ThinkPad and ThinkStation workstations, giving every model and every configuration full compatibility. The news means each one of Lenovo's current range will be certified to use distributions from Ubuntu, Red Hat, and others.

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Linux phones like the PINE64 PinePhone and Purism Librem 5 may be the hot topic in the free and open source community but they are hardly the first to take a stab at that dream. Just a few years back, Canonical, makes of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, decided to take a whack at creating a mobile Linux platform, Ubuntu Touch. It failed but the open source community took over the helm, paving the way for a new partnership that has now resulted in the PinePhone UBports Community Edition.

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Game streaming might be one of the buzzwords in the gaming industry today but the idea of accessing computers hosted elsewhere has long existed even before "streaming" itself became a thing. Remote desktop access isn't exactly new but Canonical, the company behind one of the most popular Linux distributions on the planet, is putting a unique twist to that idea by delivering not Windows or even Linux but Android on a cloud.

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Due in part to the feedback given to the group over the weekend and because of their connections with Valve, Canonical did an about-face today. They've suggested that feedback from gamers, Ubuntu Studio, and the WINE community led them to change their plan and will "build selected 32-bit i386 packages for Ubuntu 19.10 and 20.04 LTS. Whether this will change Valve's future with Ubuntu Steam, we'll see.

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The majority of the time that Linux gets dragged in the spotlight is when there are high-profile security bugs that remind people how Linux practically runs the world behind the scenes. This time, however, the controversy is ironically around one of the operating system's weakest points: gaming. A Valve developer just "announced" on Twitter that the company will be dropping support for future releases of Ubuntu and, as expected, it has driven Linux users into a slight frenzied panic.

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Modern cars may be computers on wheels, but even Tesla probably wasn't expecting Model 3 owners to go to the effort of rooting the EV and running Ubuntu on it. That's just what one person has spent an estimated 100 hours in doing, though, and in the process confirming exactly what hardware the Model 3's touchscreen-dominated dashboard runs, as well as getting owners of the car tentatively excited about future modifications.

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