I love the Nexus 10, it’s a fantastic Android tablet and the Jellybean-based AOKP Rom I’m running on it is swee-eet.
But I’m also a bit of a penguin-lover. Not a full-on “I only run Linux” person, I’ve got plenty of love for my Windows boxes too, and I wouldn’t turn my nose up at an iPad. But I’ve got a special place in my heart for Ubuntu for its ability to breathe life into older kit (through variant distros such as Xubuntu) and one of my daily drivers is running Linux Mint 14 very nicely.
So the question is, will I …
I love the Nexus 10, it’s a fantastic Android tablet and the Jellybean-based AOKP Rom I’m running on it is swee-eet.
But I’m also a bit of a penguin-lover. Not a full-on “I only run Linux” person, I’ve got plenty of love for my Windows boxes too, and I wouldn’t turn my nose up at an iPad. But I’ve got a special place in my heart for Ubuntu for its ability to breathe life into older kit (through variant distros such as Xubuntu) and one of my daily drivers is running Linux Mint 14 very nicely.
So the question is, will I jump on the Ubuntu boat when they release their Tablet version tomorrow (if rumours are to be believed)? Apparently the Developer Preview will be available from Feb 21st.
Watch Ubuntu’s head bod Mark Shuttleworth bang on about how sexy it’s going to be:
That does look pretty sexy.
Do Robots play with electronic LEGO? Mindstorm EV3
Lego have unveiled their third generation programmable robotics platform at CES this week.
My kids are fortunately approaching the point where I can justifiably buy “Technical Lego” and pretend to myself it’s mainly for them, so I’m VERY excited about this new platform.
Snake Robot with IR sensor and 'intelligent brick'
It’s been nearly 25 years since I last built up my Car Chassis (8860), Bulldozer (856) and others; but the memories are still strong. So far in my parental life we’ve ploughed through Duplo, Police, Star Wars and Harry Potter Lego kits but these have …
Lego have unveiled their third generation programmable robotics platform at CES this week.
My kids are fortunately approaching the point where I can justifiably buy “Technical Lego” and pretend to myself it’s mainly for them, so I’m VERY excited about this new platform.
It’s been nearly 25 years since I last built up my Car Chassis (8860), Bulldozer (856) and others; but the memories are still strong. So far in my parental life we’ve ploughed through Duplo, Police, Star Wars and Harry Potter Lego kits but these have not slaked my thirst for some plastic limited-slip differential action…
The new platform is properly space-age. Previous incarnations of the Lego robotic platform allowed PCs to control the constructions using a simple programming interface, EV3 takes this one step beyond in providing programmable ‘intelligent bricks’ that are built into the construction – this can be programmed directly without using an external device, it can store programs created on a PC or similar device or allow direct remote control.
The ‘intelligent bricks’ are built around an ARM9 processor running Linux with 16MB of flash memory and 64MB of RAM, SD expansion slot, Infra Red sensor and USB, Ethernet and Wireless connectivity.
As before multiple ‘bricks’ can be combined to offer a more sophisticated level of control and behaviour; EXT allows four ‘bricks’ to be daisy-chained; one more than the previous platform.
Another exciting area is that Mindstorm EV3 has support for both iOS and Android devices via Bluetooth connectivity.
There are suggestions that the product will ship from Q3 2013 for a basic price of $399. Early Christmas present for the Framework office perhaps?
Scribbled by Ian
Ubuntu Phone OS is getting closer…
The Ubuntu bods have just made an announcement about their latest mobile project – Ubuntu: the Phone OS.
Ubuntu is one of the most popular Linux distributions, with a relatively large user base and a mature ecosystem.
Canonical, the chaps behind Ubuntu, have been eyeing the mobile market for a while now, with overtures in partnership with the likes of Motorola to bring smartphones and desktop computing together (“WebTop” hasn’t really exploded yet but I reckon it’s only a matter of time before people expect to be able to plug monitors, mice and keyboards into their phones).
The Ubuntu bods have just made an announcement about their latest mobile project – Ubuntu: the Phone OS.
While it’s still early days, the tech specs are being bandied about the interent, and essentially Ubuntu will ride somewhat on the coat tails of that other Linux-based OS, Android, by borrowing drivers and suchlike in order to reach current hardware compatibility. Canonical have said though that they won’t be using a Virtual Machine like Android’s Dalvik VM, but allowing code to run directly on the hardware which could potentially give an extra kick of speed.
While Android apps won’t natively run on Ubuntu for Phones, word is that it should be relatively painless to create for existing Linux software using QML which could give the new phone platform a huge wealth of apps, right out the gates.
I’m certainly looking forward to giving this a whirl once flashable ROMs appear, and it will be very interesting to see which phone manufacturors partner up with Canonical to produce brand new handsets designed to make the most of Ubuntu’s capabilities.
Scribbled by Tom
Steam coming to a Penguin near you – Valve giving Ubuntu 12.04 some love
Yep you heard it right, games development giant Valve have lifted the lid on their plans to bring the Steam platform to Ubuntu 12.04
Yep you heard it right, games development giant Valve have lifted the lid on their plans to bring the Steam platform to Ubuntu 12.04
Valve has initially been working on a solid port for Left 4 Dead 2 and a pretty much fully-functional Steam client that runs natively on Ubuntu (no Wine in sight!).
Once they’ve ironed out performance and application support on Ubuntu they plan to spread the net to other distros – hopefully we’ll see full support for the Source Engine and future games being released across Windows, Mac OS X and your favourite flavour of Linux.
Can’t help but wonder if the rumoured Steam Console will turn out to be Penguin-Powered? It’ll certainly keep licensing costs down…
Scribbled by Tom
Finally ordered our Raspberry Pi, with a few sides…
The email finally arrived! We have our unique activation code that allows us to order ONE Raspberry Pi…
The delivery forecast seems to suggest we should be getting our grubby mitts on one in three weeks or so, so maybe second week of June.
The email finally arrived! We have our unique activation code that allows us to order ONE Raspberry Pi…
The delivery forecast seems to suggest we should be getting our grubby mitts on one in three weeks or so, so maybe second week of June.
We went straight on to the Raspberry Pi website this lunchtime…
Once you’ve entered the code you are taken to a page where you can select your side orders.
We went for the power supply, HDMI cable (can never have too many) plus a 4Gb SD card with the OS already installed.
So the total cost for the board itself, plus the accessories (and including delivery and VAT) was a faintly ridiculous £45.15 – my ZX81 cost around £70, and that was over 30 years ago…
We’ll let you know when our package arrives….
Scribbled by Ian
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Everything you wanted to know about Ubuntu but were too afraid to ask
Canonical have created an impressive online tour of the latest Ubuntu build. It’s not your common-or-garden slideshow of features – it’s a very nicely put together simulated desktop experience in HTML5, which should run in any decent up-to-date browser.
If you want to get really recursive, you can even do the tour within the Firefox browser from within the tour, ad infinitum.
I would tell you more, but that would ruin the fun. So if you’ve been meaning to try out Ubuntu but haven’t had the time to install it on a …
Canonical have created an impressive online tour of the latest Ubuntu build. It’s not your common-or-garden slideshow of features – it’s a very nicely put together simulated desktop experience in HTML5, which should run in any decent up-to-date browser.
If you want to get really recursive, you can even do the tour within the Firefox browser from within the tour, ad infinitum.
I would tell you more, but that would ruin the fun. So if you’ve been meaning to try out Ubuntu but haven’t had the time to install it on a machine (virtual or otherwise), head over to http://www.ubuntu.com/tour/en/ and have a play!
Scribbled by Tom
Yo dawg, I heard you like Linux
A little while ago I wrote about the teaser from Canonical about Ubuntu coming to Android. Not much seems to be emerging from them just now, and having the attention span that I do when it comes to gadgets and being able to run Linux on them, I was pretty excited to hear about one individual’s own efforts to put Linux on Android.
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