IBM Again Pledges $1 Billion to a Linux Effort

Linux continues to dominate data centers. IBM wants more of that action to take place on its hardware.

The computer giant on Tuesday plans to pledge that it will spend $1 billion over four or five years on Linux and related open-source technologies for use on its Power line of server systems, which is based on the internally developed chip technology of the same name.

IBM has long been one of the biggest backers of Linux. It made another celebrated $1 billion pledge in 2000 to support the technology as it was beginning to gain a foothold in businesses.

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Divinity Original Sin Gets KickStarted

Larian Studios, is happy to announce that their KickStarter campaign for Divinity: Original Sin reached its funding goal. This allows for Larian to offer a more expansive and in-depth game, as well as Linux and Mac versions.

Divinity: Original Sin is an open world RPG that features a turn based combat with both single and co-op modes. Shipping with the game is the editor that the developers used to make the game, which makes Divinity, the first RPG in quite some time to feature an editor that supports multiplayer.

Read on for all the official details and press release.

Key Features:
Class-Free Progression - Choose skills, abilities, and gear to create the character that ‘you’ want.
Cooperative Play - Drop-in/drop-out cooperative multiplayer with full-featured RPG gameplay for both players.
Skill and Spell Combos - A block of ice can be melted with fire, turned into a lethal pool of electricity, and refrozen into a slippery trap. This is one example of the many interactions possible.
Meaningful Dialogue - For better or worse, your conversations have actual and noticeable impacts in the game-world. When playing cooperatively, both players have a say in the outcome.
Open-World Gameplay - No artificial constraints to keep players from exploring the world or level-scaling to coddle you. If you are too weak for an area, you will quickly learn your lesson.
Editor – Full suite of editing tools - the same used by the developers – to create completely new environments and adventures.

About Larian Studios
Larian Studios is an independent game developer located in Ghent, Belgium. The company develops all kinds of games for all kinds of platforms that are played by millions of people all over the world, with some of the best-known being the Divinity RPG series.

Pertinent Details

Developer: Larian Studios
Publisher: Larian Studios
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
Genre: Cooperative (or SP) Turn-Based Fantasy RPG
Release Date: Later this year
Price: TBA

Spicy Horse Unleashes Hell Invaders This Fall

Spicy Horse has announced their next project will be a collectible card game/RTS tentatively titled Hell Invaders. Shooting for a fall release, Hell Invaders is being developed for PC, Mac, Linux and tablets.

Hell Invaders will consist of actual card battles, instead of two cards fighting on a table. The creatures of the cards will have 3D representations which will do battle as well as cards that offer upgrades and swappable skills, giving cards with identical characters a completely different experience.

Players can play in a single player campaign or fight in PVP arenas. Trading, card management and other social features will also offer more ways to enjoy your time in hell.

Spicy Horse will be unveiling more details about Hell Invaders in the coming months. Don’t Hate The Geek will relay all the information as it becomes available.

Pertinent Details

Title: Hell Invaders

Developer: Spicy Horse Games

Publisher: TBA

Genre: CCG/RTS

Platform: PC, Mac, Linux, tablets

Price: TBA

Release Date: Fall

Chromebook Pixel can boot into Ubuntu and Linux Mint, just like a real laptop

There are plenty of reasons to not want to spend $1450 on the Chromebook Pixel, but most of them are an extension of the fact that Chrome OS hasn’t grown up enough to replace a traditional OS. Fortunately, Google’s new BIOS makes it easier to work around the native operating system than any Chrome OS hardware before it.

The main appeal of the Samsung Chromebook and its ilk has been price. For $250, you could afford to pick one up and see if you were going to like it. You could give one as a gift to that family member who considered it a biological imperative to click on every link they came across, leaving you to scrub the shame off of their hard drive the next time you were over for a visit.

It seemed, for a while, that the whole point of Chrome OS was to offer something for those who rely on the web exclusively. When offered with inexpensive hardware, this all makes perfect sense. When you offer that web-only experience in one of the most expensive (non-Apple) consumer laptops on the market, the least you can do is make it so power users don’t have to work too hard to get more out of that gorgeous hardware.

Like all Chromebooks before it, the Pixel offers a Developer Mode. It’s triggered by a simple toggle switch which, if flipped, allows the user to sit outside of the Chrome OS sandbox and get creative. This version of Chrome OS takes things further with a semi-writable BIOS. Unlike all previous Chrome OS hardware, the Pixel offers a secondary BIOS that is not Read Only, and is accessible in Developer Mode. This means that installing other operating systems is as simple as booting from an SD card or USB stick with a Linux image and then installing, just like you would on any other computer that’s not “protected” with Secure Boot.

So far, several users have taken advantage of this, and in a short while there were mostly functional versions of Ubuntu and Mint running on the Chromebook Pixel. You lose that luxurious trackpad until someone gets it working in Linux, but the rest of the OS works just fine.

An alternative solution is to use Linux in a virtualized manner. Crouton is a tool developed by a Googler to allow for Ubuntu to exist virtualized, but allow you to use the alternative to Chrome OS as though it is running naturally. Crouton is specifically for Ubuntu right now, with a publicly available GitHub that explains in detail how to install and use this new OS on your Chromebook. Ubuntu will be given its own file system to run in, with applications that run in its own environment, just like a virtual machine.

Remember: if you choose to use your Chromebook Pixel this way, you’re stuck in Developer Mode. This means that your Chromebook will take 30 seconds longer than usual to load every time you start it, because the boot sequence feels the need to take that time to remind you that you’re in Developer Mode. It also means that your laptop is less secure, in that a root exploit can grant any user access to the whole system. There’s no real way to escape this, and while it may seem like a small price to pay for full-fledged Linux on your Pixel, it is also a daily reminder that you’re not using the laptop the way it was originally intended.