Iphone 5 reloaded...

The fact that I frequently display my iPhone 5 to you, whenever I am displaying tweaks, themes, or anything else iOS related. I often get asked what specific app I use for what, which apps are my favourite and a wide spectrum of questions relating to this sort of thing. Instead of answering all of these individually, I thought I would correlate which apps I use with a video, so here is it! What’s on my iPhone 5? Check out the video below to find out:

This was just an overview of the main applications that I use on my device. Of course, my iPhone 5 is jailbroken, so if you’d like to see ‘What’s on my iPhone 5′ jailbreak edition, I’ll be sure to produce that for you in the near future.

I’m curious to know, what applications do you use on a daily basis? Are there any in my selection that are also in yours? Let me know in the comments below.

LMDE Update Pack 4 released..!!

LMDE Update Pack 4 is being prepared and tested at the moment.

Among other important updates this new update pack features:

• Linux 3.2 kernel
• MATE 1.2 (with mintMenu and mintDesktop now fully ported to MATE)
• Cinnamon 1.4
• KDE 4.7.4
• Gnome Shell 3.2.2
• Xfce 4.8

The one thing it’s missing is Gnome 2.

Gnome 2 is, by far, the most used and popular Linux desktop. It’s also the environment we’ve been improving and polishing since we started in 2006 and it’s been a core component of the Linux Mint desktop. Gnome 3 carries the same name but the similarities stop there. It’s a new and radically different desktop and it has very little in common with it.

As you probably know, Gnome 3 conflicts with Gnome 2 and so most distributions lost Gnome 2 about a year ago. Linux Mint 12 lost it in November and LMDE is about to lose it as well with this update pack.

As more and more Gnome 2 users couldn’t use it anymore, many people migrated to other existing desktops such as KDE, Xfce or LXDE. Some people used Gnome Fallback (a Gnome 3 environment which looks like Gnome 2 but which lacks support for Gnome 2 applets and is meant to disappear) and others migrated to a distribution which still had Gnome 2 (Linux Mint 11 or LMDE for instance).

Since that happened, we’ve been worried about the lack of satisfactory alternatives to Gnome 2. Looking towards the future of LMDE and the upcoming Linux Mint 13 release, our top priority was to get to the stage where we can provide our users with something most people would find as good or better than Gnome 2.

We worked extremely hard on Linux Mint 12 and provided an early release of MATE 1.0 and a set of extensions to Gnome Shell called MGSE.

LMDE was frozen at Update Pack 3 with a Gnome 2 desktop until we reached the point we are at today, where both MATE  and Cinnamon are ready.

MATE is basically Gnome 2 renamed. The more the Mate team works on it, the more stable it gets. What it looks like and how it behaves is exactly like Gnome 2. So for most people, this is probably the best alternative.

Cinnamon is a brand new desktop which looks modern (like Shell and Unity) but which works in a similar way than Gnome and Compiz. It’s also a desktop we develop ourselves, which is tailored to the vision we have and so which fits the purpose of Linux Mint perfectly. For this reason Cinnamon is both extremely innovative in the features and polish it gets and very traditional in its layouts and paradigms.

Like Gnome Shell, Cinnamon uses Clutter and needs 3D acceleration. It’s stable and full-featured but it might not work well for you, depending on your graphics card.

With Update Pack 4 LMDE users will gain access to new versions of KDE, Xfce and LXDE, but also for the first time to Gnome Shell, MATE and Cinnamon.

We’re delighted with the current state of these desktops. It’s still too soon to predict which of MATE or Cinnamon will become the most popular desktop in the future, but they both, and in a very different way, represent viable and quality alternatives to Gnome 2.

Last but not least, if you’re still not convinced by the alternatives you can freeze your LMDE system and avoid Update Pack 4 (thus keeping Update Pack 3 and Gnome 2), by pointing to the following repositories:

deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import
deb-src http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/gnome2-frozen testing main contrib non-free
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/gnome2-frozen/security testing/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/gnome2-frozen/multimedia testing main non-free

We hate to put people in a position where they can’t choose, so we will maintain these repositories for a little while, but please consider your options going forward as Gnome 2 will eventually completely disappear.

OpenStack: A Story about Confidence

Today we have a guest article submitted by Jesse L. on OpenStack. Enjoy!

Open source solutions, while certainly nothing new, have exploded into the consciousness of IT departments around the world over the past few years. Sensing an opportunity to move cloud computing forward, Rackspace introduced an open source cloud computing solution, OpenStack. The move was a risky one, but now it appears to be paying off as the technology has attracted supporters from around the IT industry.

OpenStack Origins
The origins for OpenStack date back to the summer of 2010 when Rackspace Hosting and NASA teamed up to create an open source project. The first release, code named Austin and released under an Apache License, was written in Python and designed to allow any organization to create a cloud solution for their clients. The original code included components for computing, object storage and image service, with security management and a user interface to be developed later. The software was initially well-received, and after a little more than a year it has attracted a number of major players in the cloud space, including HP, Citrix, Dell and AMD. In late 2011, Rackspace handed OpenStack over to a not-for-profit organization, which will support its continued development while attracting Rackspace’s competitors to use the solution.

The Risk of OpenStack
For a company that had cloud computing pretty well figured out, launching an open source product could have some serious drawbacks. But at the time, the future of cloud computing in general was at risk as vendor lock-in prevented many organizations from fully exploring cloud options. Once they chose a provider, companies simply wouldn’t have the option of an easy migration to another service. OpenStack aimed to become an open source solution that would do for the cloud what Android did for mobile devices, essentially becoming a base on which other companies could build and innovate. Rackspace considered the risk worth it, and if its collaboration with NASA paid off, the company would position itself as an industry guide for years to come. Almost two years later, that’s exactly what happened—and now Rackspace, and the cloud computing sector in general, are reaping the benefits.

OpenStack Benefits
The major benefit of OpenStack is that organizations can build on a technology that is quickly becoming an industry standard, making it easier to fully explore cloud computing options from a variety of providers. Since OpenStack is open source, it also benefits from the culture of open source software with people viewing, updating and perfecting the code. Since industry experts from around the world are involved in the project, OpenStack is poised to become stronger and more dominant as time moves on.
While not all open source software gambles pay off, OpenStack looks like a winner for Rackspace. From being little more than an interesting piece of open source news last year, the technology has grown and gathered the attention of most of the major players in the cloud computing industry. While there will always be vendor-specific cloud options available—especially from major vendors who already have tons of support and investment in their architecture—OpenStack is on its way to becoming an industry standard. A few hurdles still stand in the way, and only time will tell if the OpenStack Foundation can properly shepherd the technology into the future. But for now, Rackspace’s experiment looks like a success.