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Sunday, October 25, 2015

Steam Machines: Valve Announces New Living-Room Hardware That Runs SteamOS

Valve has announced a new category of living-room hardware today, that will be running Steam OS and will be available in multiple configurations. Only 300 of these boxes will ship this year though, for testing purposes.

While in testing, the new "Steam machines" will be free of charge for 300 lucky Steam users that are eligible to get one. For this, you must complete a quest before October 25: join the Steam Universe community group, agree to the Steam Hardware Beta Terms and Conditions, make 10 Steam friends, create a public Steam Community profile and play a game using a gamepad in Big Picture mode. Once you complete these steps, you'll be awarded a special badge and be among the pool of people that can be chosen to test the new hardware.

According to Valve, the new Steam machines will be "completely upgradable and open" and starting next year, there will be multiple machines to choose from, made by different manufacturers. There are no hardware specifications at this time.

For more information, see the official announcement.

Ubuntu Phone Review (BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition): Great OS, Average Hardware

After years of development, the first Ubuntu phone is finally here (Europe only) and while the hardware is average at best, the OS is a breath of fresh air, bringing innovations like scopes and "magic edges", designed not just to be different, but in many ways, better than the current trends.

Before proceeding, note that the phone targets early adopters and if you just want WhatsApp or Skype, Ubuntu phone isn't for you just yet, as these services aren’t yet available.

Hardware

Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition is the first Ubuntu phone and it was made in partnership with BQ, a Spanish producer of smartphones, tablets, electronic readers, and 3d printers.

Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition specs:

Screen: 4.5”, 540x960 resolution
Dimensions: 137 x 67 x 9 mm / 123 g weight
CPU: Quad Core Cortex A7 up to 1.3 GHz MediaTek
GPU: Mali 400 up to 500 MHz
Camera: 8 Mpx rear interpolated (Dual-flash and autofocus), 5 Mpx front
Internal memory: 8 GB
RAM: 1 GB
Battery: LiPo 2150 mAh
Dual micro-SIM
MicroSD slot, up to 32 GB
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth® 4.0
2G GSM (850/900/1800/1900)
3G HSPA+ (900/2100)
GPS and A-GPS
LED notification, Dolby® sound technology, FM radio, microphone, noise canceller

Hardware-wise, the phone doesn't come with anything special: from the plastic case and average screen (4.5'' 540x960 resolution) to the CPU (1.3 GHz MediaTek Quad Core Cortex A7), internal memory (8 GB) and battery (2150 mAh), everything's basically unremarkable however, at €169.90, it's a pretty good deal.

For someone who cares more about the OS / Ubuntu, like me, the mid-range hardware is not a deal-breaker, not even close, but what does frustrate me hardware-related is the camera: the pictures are decent but could be better ~~and furthermore, photos taken with the flash are too bright and basically unusable (here’s an example), which is kind of a major inconvenience~~. Update: the too bright (flash) photos issue was fixed recently - here's a new photo.

The plastic case and the ~2cm bezel underneath the display (Aquaris E4.5 was initially an Android phone and this space served for Android's home/back buttons) are more reasons why the phone itself is a bit disappointing. But Canonical had to start somewhere and while not perfect, Aquaris E4.5 is a decent phone overall - it doesn't lag, comes with dual sim, the speakers are good and it's the perfect size, at least for me.

Scopes

What makes the Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition special is of course the OS, which can run HTML5 web apps as well as native QML apps.

You'll find apps in any mobile OS but Canonical also implemented scopes, an innovative (and this is to be appreciated, because innovations nowadays are Android copying iOS, iOS copying Windows Phone and so on - well, more or less anyway) feature thanks to which the content from multiple sources can be displayed in one place - you basically have the content that interests you in one place, when you need it.

For instance, the main screen consists of Today's scope which includes the date with the sunrise and sunset information, weather, upcoming holidays, upcoming events, recent calls, messages, headlines from various sources and more. Each of these can be enabled or disabled, so Today's scope will only display the information you need, which is pretty cool.

The same goes for other scopes - for instance, the Music scope includes sources such as 7digital, Grooveshark, SoundCloud, YouTube and Songkick, but if you only use YouTube, you can disable the others. Or, you can completely disable the Music scope if you don't plan on using it.

I must confess that the scopes are actually my favorite Ubuntu Phone feature, even though I wasn't a fan of it on the desktop, at first because it was slow and then because some pretty important sources like YouTube were missing. But that's not the case with the phone and on top of that, the scopes are actually more customizable on the phone than on the desktop.

However, while the whole scopes idea is great, the implementation is not ideal because they are pretty limited in functionality and what's most important, the content is mostly not displayed in the scope itself and must be opened in the web browser. For instance, you can listen to single tracks from say SoundCloud, but you can't add songs to the queue or anything like that and furthermore, YouTube clips or Grooveshark songs must be opened in the browser. Pretty much the same goes for news articles: you can read an excerpt but to read the whole article, you must open it in the web browser.

Apps

While the phone is scope-centric, it does run apps as well and by default, it ships with native browser, music, camera, gallery, media player and calculator apps (along with phone/messaging/contacts apps of course) with more available via Ubuntu Store (which can be used to install both scopes and apps):

For services like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or Google Maps, Ubuntu Phone uses web apps, which even though integrate with the OS, are not as nice as the official applications for Android or iOS (for instance, in my opinion, the Facebook mobile website is not exactly pretty).

Of course, the apps are as beautiful and featureful as those services' mobile website and until Facebook, Google, etc. build their own applications for Ubuntu Phone, that's not going to change. That's why I'm not a big fan of web apps and while I understand their utility, I really hope they will be replaced by real apps at some point.

Unfortunately, there are also some services that are missing from the Ubuntu Store, like Whatsapp (but Telegram, a nice alternative to Whatsapp, is available), Skype, Instagram (there is an Instagram scope that displays the Instagram feed though) and that's going to be a major downside for some, but then again, right now, Ubuntu Phone isn't targeted at the masses, but at early adopters / Ubuntu enthusiasts and I don't know about you, but I can live without them (well, I don't have Whatsapp, Skype and Instagram installed on my Android phone either). For now.

”Magic edges”

Unlike Android or iOS for example, Ubuntu Phone doesn’t make use of any hardware buttons and instead, it uses all four screen edges for navigation, app switching, settings and indicators, this being yet another feature which feels natural and most importantly, very useful.

Using the left Ubuntu desktop-like launcher, you can easily launch your favorite applications, pin and unpin apps and see what’s running. With a swipe to the right, you can see a preview of all running apps, switch or close them:

The bottom edge holds the settings: when you’re in the the scopes for instance, a swipe from the bottom allows configuring which scopes to display, or in Contacts, swipe to add a new contact.

Quick access indicators are at the top and if you don’t fully open the drawer, you can navigate between the Time & Date, Battery, Sound, Network, Notifications and so on, with a left or right swipe, this being yet another feature which I really like and if I were to guess, I’d say we’re likely to see it in other mobile operating systems at some point.

Conclusions and how to get your own Ubuntu Phone

There's much more to say about this very first Ubuntu phone and especially about the OS, like click packages and the fast, secure transactional updates, the cool default browser and other default apps and so on, but I don't want to bore you with all the details.

Overall, Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition is a decent phone with a very interesting and innovative OS which I really hope will succeed. Not with this device of course, it’s too rough and not for the average consumer, but the potential is there and while it’s risky, in a market dominated by giants like Apple and Google, if Canonical does everything right, this could be the beginning of something big.

To get a better idea on what I’m talking about in this article, I’ve recorded a video showing some of the phone’s features:

(direct video link; for more videos, subscribe to our YouTube channel)

Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition will be available in the coming days on BQ.com, through a series of “flash sales” and it will cost 169.90 Euros (~ $193 / £127). The exact date, time and URL of the flash sales will be announced on the Ubuntu and BQ Twitter accounts as well as the Ubuntu Facebook and Google+ pages starting this week, so keep an eye on them if you want to be among the first to get an Ubuntu phone.

Update: the BQ Ubuntu Phone is now available for general purchase in the European Union.

Update 2: another BQ Ubuntu phone is now available for purchase in Europe - Aquaris E5 HD Ubuntu Edition (€199.90).

i7z: Monitor Intel i7, i5 And i3 Frequencies, Multipliers And More Under Linux

I needed a tool for monitoring the CPU frequencies while testing thermald + intel_pstate, and stumbled upon i7z, so I though I'd share it with you, in case you're not familiar with it.

i7z is a tool that reports Intel Core i7, i5 and i3 CPU information about Turbo Boost, per core CPU frequencies, multipliers, temperature as well as times spent in the C0/C1/C3/C6/C7 states, all in real time.

The tool comes with both console (ncurses) and GUI (Qt) versions, however the GUI doesn't have all the features available in the console version and further more, the GUI incorrectly adds C7 state values to the C0 state for Sandybridge and Ivybridge, so it reports things incorrectly. The console version is recommended.

i7z also supports outputing the results to a log file - from the i7z help:

i7z Tool Supports the following functions:
Append to a log file:  sudo i7z --write a [OR] sudo i7z -w a
Replacement instead of Append: sudo i7z --write l [OR] sudo i7z -w l
Default log file name is cpu_freq_log.txt (single socket) or cpu_freq_log_dual_%d.txt (dual socket)
Specifying a different log file: sudo i7z --logfile filename [OR] sudo i7z -l filename
Specifying a particular socket to print: sudo i7z --socket0 X 
In order to print to a second socket use: sudo i7z --socket1 X 
To turn the ncurses GUI off use: sudo i7z --nogui
Example: To print for two sockets and also change the log file: sudo i7z --socket0 0 --socket1 1 -logfile /tmp/logfilei7z -w l

For more information on i7z, see its Google Code page.

Install i7z in Ubuntu

Ubuntu 13.10 and 14.04 users can install i7z from the official Ubuntu repositories. To install it, use the following command:

sudo apt-get install i7z

Or, to install the i7z Qt GUI, use:

sudo apt-get install i7z-gui

For older Ubuntu versions, you can try to use the Ubuntu 13.10 deb files which you can download from here: 32bit | 64bit (the debs can be found under "Built files" at the bottom). Note that I tested this in VirtualBox and the packages install successfully in older Ubuntu versions, but I don't know if i7z actually works since it doesn't work properly in VirtualBox.

Then, start i7z using the following command:

sudo i7z

Or, to run the i7z GUI (not recommended for the reasons stated above), use the following command (there's no desktop file so you won't find it in the menu / Dash):

gksu i7z_GUI

For other Linux distributions, search for i7z in the repositories or grab the source from Google Code.

Also see:

Quick update: the BQ Ubuntu Phone is now available for general purchase in the European Union. Until now, the phones could only be bought through flash sales.

"After a successful few flash sales we're excited to announce that the shop is now open! The Ubuntu Phone will be available to purchase via our partner +BQ's store. We look forward to welcoming you to this new generation of mobile experiences that is simpler for developers and more unified for user".

+Ubuntu

Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition is the first Ubuntu phone and it was made in partnership with BQ, a Spanish producer of smartphones, tablets, electronic readers and 3d printers.

The phone, which costs 169,90€, uses a 4.5” display (540x960 resolution) and comes with a Quad Core Cortex A7 1.3GHz MediaTek CPU, Mali 400 up to 500MHz GPU, 1 GB of RAM, an 8 Mpx rear interpolated (dual-flash and autofocus) camera and a 5 Mpx front camera.

It's important to note that the phone targets early adopters and if you just want WhatsApp or Skype, Ubuntu phone isn't for you just yet, as these services aren’t yet available.

You can read more about the Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition phone in our review.

Buy Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition (169.90€)

Raspberry Pi 2 Goes On Sale, Includes A Quad-Core ARMv7 CPU

The Raspberry Pi Foundation announced "Raspberry Pi 2" today, a new powerful Pi which has the same form-factor and price ($35) as the old Model B+.

For those not familiar with the Raspberry Pi, this is a credit-card-sized computer which runs Linux (and Windows 10 starting with the new Raspberry Pi 2, see below), created with the intention of promoting the teaching of basic computer science in schools. A wide variety of Linux distributions are available for Raspberry Pi, such as Raspbian (Debian Wheezy), Pidora (Fedora remix), Openelec and RaspBMC (XBMC Media Center) and Arch Linux.

The new Raspberry Pi 2 Model B features a much more powerful CPU - a 900MHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 -, and twice as much RAM as the old Model B+ (1GB LPDDR2 SDRAM).

Other than that, the old Model B+ and the new Raspberry Pi 2 are pretty much the same - they both ship with 4 USB ports, a MicroSD card socket, an Ethernet port, HDMI 1.3 & 1.4 video/audio socket and they are fully compatible: the connectors are in the same place, have the same functionality and both can run from a 5V micro-USB power adapter.

The announcement mentions that thanks to its ARMv7 processor, the new Pi can run "the full range of ARM GNU/Linux distributions, including Snappy Ubuntu Core" (a package for NOOBS will be available in the next couple of weeks), "as well as Microsoft Windows 10". Furthermore, the Rasperry Pi Foundation has been working close with Microsoft to bring Pi-compatible Windows 10 free of charge to the new Raspberry Pi 2.

You can buy the new Raspberry Pi 2 from element14 and RS Components.

What do you think?

via raspberrypi.org

Aquaris E5 HD Ubuntu Edition is now available for pre-order in the European Union, Norway and Switzerland.

The phone, made by the Spanish smartphones, tablets, electronic readers, and 3d printers producer BQ and, just like the first Ubuntu phone (Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition), this was initially an Android device.

Compared to the first Ubuntu phone, Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition, the new device comes with an improved rear camera (from 8 to 13 Mpx), double internal memory (8 GB vs. 16 GB), larger capacity battery (2150 mAh vs. 2500 mAh) as well as a better screen (5'' 720 x 1280 for the E5 HD while the E4.5 has a 4.5'', 540x960 resolution screen).

As for the price, the new Aquarius E5 HD Ubuntu Edition costs €199.90 (including taxes but excluding shipping), €30 more than the Aquaris E4.5.

Aquaris E5 HD Ubuntu Edition specs:

Screen: 5'' (720 x 1280, 294 HDPI)
Dimensions: 71 x 142 x 8,65 mm
CPU: Quad Core Cortex A7 up to 1.3 GHz
GPU: Mali 400-MP2 up to 500 Mhz
Camera: 13 Mpx with autofocus and Dualflash rear / 5 Mp front
Internal memory: 16 GB eMMC
RAM: 1 GB
Battery: Lipo 2500 mAH
Dual micro-SIM
MicroSD slot, up to 32 GB
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth® 4.0
3G: 3G + (HSPA+/UMTS/GSM)
Dragontrail Protection Glass, Ambient noise cancellation, Brightness sensor, Microphone, Notification LED, Proximity sensor

Pre-order Aquaris E5 HD Ubuntu Edition - €199.90 (the order will be processed starting from June 22nd)

image via BQ

Psensor Updated With Option To Display Temperature Sensors On The Panel [Ubuntu 14.04 PPA]

Psensor, a hardware temperature monitoring tool, was updated recently with an option to display the temperature on the panel (next to its AppIndicator icon), along with other improvements and bug fixes.

For those not familiar with Psensor, this is a tool which can be used to monitor the motherboard and CPU temperatures, Nvidia GPUs temperature, (for ATI/AMD it's more complicated) hard disk temperature, fans rotation speed and CPU usage.

The application comes with Ubuntu AppIndicator support (the icon turns red when the temperature reaches a certain threshold), desktop notifications as well as Unity Launcher support (it displays the highest temperature on top of the Psensor icon in the Unity Launcher). These features are all configurable - enable/disable them from the Psensor preferences.

From its preferences, you can select to show/hide the Psensor window on startup so you can use it as a stand-alone indicator or to hide window decoration and use the Psensor graph as a desktop widget (well, sort of).

The latest Psensor 1.0.1 (now updated to 1.0.2 to fix a minor bug), released recently, includes the following changes:

the temperature can now be displayed directly in the panel, next to the Psensor icon (this feature is currently considered experimental);
the indicator icons are now smaller and more consistent with the default Ubuntu themes;
added a setting to enable/disable launching Psensor on session startup (and with this, Psensor is no longer autostarted by default);
various GUI fixes;
fixed NVIDIA strings;
other bug fixes.

To get Psensor to display the temperature on the panel (next to its indicator icon), here's what you need to do: click the Psensor indicator, select "Sensor Preferences", then select the sensor(s) for which you want the temperature to be displayed on the panel and enable "Display sensor in the label (experimental)":

You can do this for as many sensor as you want, but that will clutter the Unity panel so it's best if you only select to display one sensor.

Note that it may take a few seconds after you enable this until the temperature shows up on the panel.

Ubuntu 14.04 installation and usage

Before proceeding, please note that the latest Psensor 1.0.2 is only available in a PPA for Ubuntu 14.04 for now! For older Ubuntu versions, you can get an older Psensor version from the Ubuntu repositories or from both the stable and unstable (see below, step 3) Psensor PPAs.

1. Psensors makes use of lm-sensors and hddtemp to get the temperatures, so you need to install these two packages:

sudo apt-get install lm-sensors hddtemp

2. Update: for Ubuntu 14.04 and newer, skip this step as Psensor doesn't require it any more (it uses udisks2).

To get the hddtemp daemon to run on boot, use the following command:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure hddtemp

and select "Yes" when asked if hddtemp should run at boot. Select the defaults for the other questions.

3. Next, you need to set up lm-sensors by running the following command:

sudo sensors-detect

And answer "yes" to everything.

To avoid a system restart, run the following command to load the modules required by the sensors:

sudo service kmod start

(if no sensors show up in Pensor, try a system restart)

4. Install Psensor

The latest Psensor 1.0.2 is available in its official Unstable PPA for Ubuntu 14.04 only for now (it will be available in the stable PPA after the new packaging is accepted into Debian).

To add the Psensor Unstable PPA and install the latest Psensor in Ubuntu 14.04, use the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jfi/psensor-unstable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install psensor

By default, the latest Psensor doesn't start automatically when you login (unless you've upgraded from an older version). If you do want it to run on startup, in its Preferences (not Sensor Preferences!), click on the Startup tab and then enable "Launch on session startup". If you don't want the Psensor window to be displayed on startup (for instance, you only want the indicator to start automatically - you can manually open the Psensor window later on), also enable "Hide window on startup".

Other Linux distributions: check out the Psensor homepage.

For how to report a bug, see what some sensors represent and more, check out the Psensor FAQ.

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