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Exclusive: Full List of Official Left4Dead Achievements

Norman Chan — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 18:25:32 -0500

We'd slay zombies all day just for the heck of it, but turns out you can earn some sweet rewards for putting down the undead. Steam (and Xbox 360) achievement points, to be exact. Valve Software has hooked us up with the official full list of Left4Dead's 50 game achievements, which can be earned on both the Survivor and Infected side (in Versus mode). Among our favorites in the list? "Zombie Genocidest", which requires that we kill 53,595 common infected zombies, and "101 Cremations", which you earn by setting 101 infected on fire with the molotov cocktail. Hit the jump for the full list!

Edit: There are actually only 50 achievements, not 52.

Will Linux Beat Out Windows in Mobile Internet Device Market?

Chris Moody — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 08:34:17 -0500

Eweek says that Linux will outpace Windows in mobile internet device (MID) market by 2013? Is it any wonder? Netbooks are catching on as a great way to check email and surf the web in out of the way places without having to lug a notebook with you. The netbook credo is cheap, light and small. Mobile internet device market is expected to grow from the expected 305,000 units in 2008, to 39.6 million units in 2012.

MIDs are targeted at cloud computing, which involves checking email, IM, browsing, etc. They do not require Windows to get that done and you don’t need the one thing that Windows brings to the table, which is a large library of software.

Eweek also suggests that another form of MID; smartphones are a market that Linux is going to make inroads into as well. Mobile Linux providers LiMo, Maemo and Moblin are laying out the groundwork now so they can be out front when the market takes off. There are several new phones for LiMo that look really interesting and are sure to shake things up.

In the mobile market things are almost even amongst mobile operating systems. Linux would seem to have an advantage since it is highly flexible, configurable, and has a huge following for developing open source software to expand the usability of these devices.

Will you be picking up an MID for your next gadget, and will it be sporting Linux or maybe you already have one? Fill us in!

Asus' Express Gate, is it a Useless Gimmick or a Glimpse of the Future?

Chris Moody — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 10:59:29 -0500

Over at PCmag.com, they bring up an interesting point about Asus’ new ROM boot chip and "Express Gate"; how it will affect users psychologically. We are not talking about power users, but just regular end users and how they feel about Linux.

For power users, there just isn’t much draw on Express Gate. So it lets you boot into a basic OS with a web browser and Skype in five seconds. Not really a big deal since most power users keep their machines on 24/7, or maybe let them sleep/hibernate. They also may have a dual boot system to a full featured Linux OS as well. This leaves power users scratching their heads asking why. Had Asus decided to make use of this Linux on ROM to provide things like diagnostics, data recovery, BIOS configuration/updating, or hardware systems monitoring, they would have had us at “hello”.

End users on the other hand, are more likely to power their systems on and off. For these folks having the option to boot quickly to use a web browser for a few minutes before rushing off someplace makes sense. More importantly it gets them using Linux without being obvious about it. I am sure Asus likes this idea as it will warm users up to their Eee line using the Linux OS. This could spool up to be a big deal if other manufacturers pick up on the idea and start serving up their own Splashtop Linux ROM chips on their motherboards.

The effect becomes that there will be more users comfortable using Linux and that could eat into Microsoft’s market share. If this takes off, Microsoft has little choice but to make it’s OS capable of going instant on, or creating a super light and cheap version of Windows that can do the same thing (like Windows CE, but better).

Do you think this might take off? Can we expect Microsoft to follow suit and do their own instant on OS? Let me know!

Ubuntu Box Distro Hits Consumer Electronics Stores For $20, Still Free Online

Chris Moody — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:10:17 -0500

Linux is moving a little bit more to center this week with Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 Linux distros becoming available at BestBuy.com and Amazon.com for $20. It includes OpenOffice, FireFox, Evolution email, Rhythmbox media player, and MP3 support. While Wal-Mart has offered Linux based computers at their stores on low end PCs and laptops, this marks a first for boxed Linux Distros at consumer electronics stores like Best Buy.

ValuSoft is packaging the OS and it includes printed documentation and 60 days of unlimited customer support.

ValuSoft advertising goes right for the consumer panic button with this line; “You're right in the middle of an important procedure when your computer freezes and crashes, erasing your data and costing you hours of extra work.” We’ll see how well that works on the masses.

Netgear WGR614L Embraces Open Source Firmware

Chris Moody — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 07:50:11 -0500

Netgear may have found a winner with it’s newly announced WGR614L wireless-G router that provides open source developers with an appliance platform that can be customized. Linksys has been enjoying a certain amount of popularity from the open source community since it released its original Linux based WRT54G router back in 2003. Since then a number of projects to change the firmware on the WRT line have come about like Tomato and OpenWRT. Of course flashing the firmware to anything other than the Linksys designed firmware voids your warranty. Netgear has chosen to embrace this community with their new WGR614L, rather than fight it.

Make the jump to get the details on the WGR614L.

Open Source Community Blasts Nvidia on Drivers

Chris Moody — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 10:04:55 -0500

Nvidia has reiterated that it won’t provide open source drivers for Linux. They claim that there is no need for it. It does however provides binary Linux drivers and has open sourced a few drivers.

According to ZDnet Nvidia said in a statement: “NVIDIA supports Linux, as well as the Linux community and has long been praised for the quality of the NVIDIA Linux driver. NVIDIA’s fully featured Linux graphics driver is provided as binary-only because it contains intellectual property NVIDIA wishes to protect, both in hardware and in software,”, which was in response to developers’ direct criticism of hardware vendors that produce just closed source drivers.

So what's the beef? Read on, to find out more.

openSUSE 11 Officially Released

Chris Moody — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 10:52:50 -0500

openSUSE 11 officially premiered yesterday with more than 200 new features specific to openSUSE and a redesigned installer that makes openSUSE even easier to install (and if you've ever installed it before, it was pretty darn easy then).

If you're into bling (and who doesn't like a little bling), there is the 3-D desktop app Compiz Fusion and it is now default in openSUSE 11.0. It includes a number of Compiz plugins, as well as easier configuration with Simple CompizConfig Settings Manager (CCSM) and the more comprehensive CompizConfig Settings Manager that lets you do detailed configuration of your Compiz setup.

Image Credit: openSUSE

Daily News Brief: Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Goes Live

Paul Lilly — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:52:36 -0500

New version of Ubuntu ready for download, Apple buys microprocessor design company, take an early peek at AMD's new Radeon cards, and more!