Evidently tired of smooth running graphics, lightning fast processing and bags and bags of available memory, programmer Dmitry Grinberg decided to go back to computing basics. And then some. As Linux was developed on a 32-bit machine with 1MB of RAM, this has always been considered the minimum system requirements to run the open source OS. Dmitry, however, put this theory to test, building a barebones set-up with just an 8-bit RISC microcontroller at its heart. Running at a somewhat sedentary 6.5KHz, with only 16KB of SRAM and 128KB of flash storage, these are specs that make most phones look like [...]

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If you do a lot of work on a Linux computer, continuously switching between many windows, the right window manager can make you much faster and more productive than an extra 2GB of RAM. In this context, ‘right’ means any combination of two different qualities: raw speed and correspondence with your actual needs, habits and personality. If you need to make the most of an obsolete PC, you’ll probably want something slimmer and nimbler than either Gnome or KDE. In other cases, what saves you more time is whatever does by default, with one click or keystroke, what you want [...]

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Would you like to play media files or use your PC by remote control? Here’s how you can turn your Android phone into a remote control with GMote 2.0. What You’ll Need: GMote Server software installed on your Computer. GMote app installed from the Android Market. Windows, Mac, or Linux computer. A WiFi router. You can use GMote over your 3G connection, but it will require you to forward port 8889 on your router. Download and install GMote from the Android Market. When you launch the GMote app for the first time on your Android device, you’ll be prompted to install the Gmote server software [...]

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Interested in test driving the latest version of Google’s Android OS without buying a new mobile device?  Here’s how to run Android on your PC for free with the Android SDK Emulator. Android is the latest mobile OS to take the world by storm, but everyone doesn’t have access to the latest mobile devices.  Thankfully, there’s an easy way to run Android on your Windows, Mac, or Linux computer.  Google provides an Android emulator with their SDK, which is designed to let developers test their apps on Android before running them on handsets.  We can use this to [...]

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You can now run Chromium OS, the open source developmental version of Google Chrome OS, on your Dell Mini 10v. Don’t have one? Neither do I, so don’t feel too bad. It make take some time to set up. For one, the download (an image file), as put together by a few of Dell’s Linux guys, weighs in at 7.5GB. Not only will that take a while to download, but you’ll also need a flash drive with at least 8GB of free space on there—another thing I don’t have. You’ll also need access to another Linux-based computer (well, any computer that can run the “dd” command) to get everything up [...]

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