mintCast 188 – Mint 16 KDE and Xfce

PreShow Music:

Petra backports available in Linux Mint 13 – The most significant improvements in Petra are being backported to Maya. Among other things, this gives Linux Mint 13 LTS users access to the following packages: MDM 1.4, Cinnamon 2.0, MATE 1.6, The latest versions of mintwelcome, mintstick, mintnanny, mintupload, mintupdate, mintinstall, mintsystem, mintmenu and mintdesktop. (blog.linuxmint.com)
Cinnamon: graphics tablet support needs testing – We’ve begun re-porting graphics tablet (wacom) support back into Cinnamon. (segfault.linuxmint.com)

Linux Wins the Desktop in 2014 and 3 More Bold Predictions – Linux won, the penguin has achieved world domination, and the usual commentarians completely missed it even after years of predicting it. (linux.com)
Why didn’t Linux win on the desktop? – Heady forecasts showing Linux would become a major player on the desktop. While the prognostications proved correct for server and embedded operating systems, what happened on the desktop? (zdnet.com)

Valve Already Has A Dozen Steam Machine Partners – Valve has announced their first 12 partners that intend to bring Steam Machines to the marketplace this year. (phoronix.com)

GNU Octave 3.8 With Its GUI Officially Announced – GNU Octave 3.8 was officially released on 31 December 2013 to close out the year. Octave 3.8 has its own graphical user-interface and uses OpenGL in conjunction with FLTK widgets. (phoronix.com)
Panasonic will bring Firefox OS to your smart TV this year – Firefox OS won’t be confined to small devices for much longer. Panasonic has announced a partnership with Mozilla that will see it launch Firefox OS-powered smart TVs and other “smart screens.” (engadget.com)

Linux Mint 16 “Petra” KDE released!
- What’s new
- Release notes
- Installation – issues encountered (detailed in feedback)

Podcast Announcements:

Jonathan Nadeau has launched an indiegogo campaign to help bring digital sight to the vision impaired. Further developing the Orca screen reader for vision impaired users to access a computer. (www.igg.me/at/orca)

Linux in the Hamshack (lhspodcast.info) has also kicked off an indigogo campaign to cover some of the costs of participating in the Dayton Hamvention this year. Through a bi-weekly audio podcast, live streaming Internet radio show, community event sponsorship and general outreach, Linux in the Ham Shack (LHS) exposes users to Free Software, and amateur radio to everyone. (igg.me/at/lhs2014)