The epic Android story keeps getting better. Android OS has been dominating the smartphone scene in a spectacular fashion (almost 80-20 in favor of Android lately) for sometime now. Tablets market was not an easy one to crack either. Apple's domination of this segment was near perfect. But with the arrival of Nexus tablets, things started to change dramatically. According to ABI Research, critical shift in consumer behavior took place during the second quarter of 2013. Let's take a closer look at these latest developments.

Steam based hardware for living rooms was widely being speculated ever since the arrival of Steam for Linux client. All speculations can finally be laid to rest. Steam hardware is real and will be based on SteamOS, which in-turn is basically a heavily modified Linux distro. And the new hardware won't be a one-size-fits-all thing either. Valve is working with multiple partners to bring a variety of Steam gaming machines to market during 2014, all of them running SteamOS. It seems like we have a truly open competitor to XBOX and Play Station finally.

steam machines powered by steamos linux
The first Ubuntu Touch powered smartphone is supposed to arrive in the first half of 2014. When you put that into perspective, there's not much time left for Canonical. Ubuntu Touch already got over-the-air update capability among many other essential features. But the eco-system needs further focus. That's where apps such as these comes into play. The default Music app for Ubuntu Touch has improved manifold over the past several months. Here's how it looks like now. A quick video featuring Ubuntu Touch Music app. 

ubuntu touch core apps video
Video editing in Linux is a controversial topic. There are a number of video editors for Ubuntu that works quite well. But are they any good for serious movie editing? Perhaps not. But with the arrival of Linux variants from many big-shots such as Lightworks, things are slowly starting to change. Remember the kind of sweeping-change we witnessed in the Linux gaming scene once Valve released their much-touted Steam client for Linux. But that's another story. Here, we'll discuss 5 of the most potent video editors available for Ubuntu. 

lightworks for linux beta

Lightworks is a top notch, professional-grade video/movie editor which recently released a beta version for Linux as well. Lightworks was perhaps one of the firsts to adopt computer-based non-linear editing systems, and has been in development since 1989.


The release of an open source version, as well as ports for Linux and Mac OS X were announced in May 2010. Lightworks beta video editor is free to download and use, and their is a PRO paid plan offering which gives you extra features and codec support at $60/year.
best video editors for linux ubuntu

Kdenlive is an open-source, non-linear video editing software available for FreeBSD, Linux and MAC OSX platforms. Kdenlive was one of the earliest to develop a dedicated video editor for Linux with the project starting as early as in 2002. Kdenlive 0.9.4 is available in Ubuntu Software Center by default. But if you want the latest version (Kdenlive 0.9.6 instead), do the following in Terminal. Visit Kdenlive download page for more options.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:sunab/kdenlive-release
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install kdenlive

top 5 video editors for linux ubuntu

OpenShot is perhaps one of the most active open source video editing software projects out there. In my book, OpenShot is a little more intuitive when compared to its competition. And after a successful Kickstarter funding campaign recently, the team will be launching a Windows and Mac version of OpenShot apart from the normal Linux variant. Add the following PPA to install OpenShot in Ubuntu. More download options here.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:openshot.developers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install openshot openshot-doc

5 best video editors for linux ubuntu

Flowblade Movie Editor is an open source, multitrack and non-linear video editor for Linux. Flowblade is undoubtedly the hottest new entrant into the Linux video editing scene. Project started only last year and there has been just three releases so far.


The latest release was Flowblade version 0.10.0 and this happened just two weeks ago. And it is already showing enormous amount of potential. Flowblade is available in DEB packages only at the moment.
top video editing software for linux ubuntu

Cinelerra is a professional video editing and compositing software for Linux which is also open source. Cinelerra was first released August 1, 2002. Cinelerra includes support for very high-fidelity audio and video. The latest version, Cinelerra 4.4, was released more than an year ago and it featured a faster startup and increased responsiveness among other improvements.

Cinelerra has many download options. If you're on Ubuntu, just do the following.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cinelerra-ppa/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cinelerra-cv

I have deliberately not included Blender here because, even though it can do video editing, Blender is much more than that. Blender is a full blown graphics processing software with advanced 3D modelling capabilities (Tears of Steel was the latest in a long list of official Blender made animation movies). Did we miss out on any other good video editors for Linux? Let us know in the comments. Thanks for reading.
Linux and open source software in general are not something meant for just hobbyists anymore (which I don't necessarily consider as a bad thing). It is widely used by multinationals in various forms, Goobuntu by Google and Sony PS4's Orbis OS being perfect examples. But the rise of Linux in the gaming scene has to be the most spectacular story of them all. Valve's co-founder, Gabe Newell's keynote speech at LinuxCon was a testament to that. 

The Future of Gaming is Linux
This is great news. After the likes of Dota 2, Half Life 2, Portal and Left 4 Dead 2, another massive gaming title is opening its gates for Linux users. Sports Interactive has announced that Football Manager 2014 will be released on October 31 for Windows, Mac and Linux. 

Football Manager 2014 linux release dates
With the first ever Ubuntu phone touted to arrive in early 2014, Canonical is wasting no time in the development for Ubuntu Touch for smartphones. Currently, the four supported Ubuntu Touch devices include maguro (Galaxy Nexus), mako (Nexus 4), grouper (Nexus 7) and manta (Nexus 10). Anyone using one of those devices can choose to switch to the latest Ubuntu Touch image and have the "over-the-air" update capability right away!

ubuntu touch over the air update
Humble Indie Bundle is back and this time, Linux users are not left behind. As usual, Humble Indie Bundle 9 offers 6 blockbuster games (all DRM-free) at pay what you want prices. And for the very first time, FEZ for Linux is also released! 

humble indie bundle 9: fez for linux released
This might come as a surprise to many. Ubuntu is known to be more of a regular consumer-focused OS. But in a test conducted by NetworkWorld to find out the best enterprise oriented Linux distro out there, Ubuntu came on top overtaking the likes of enterprise specific Linux distors such as Red Hat, ClearOS, SUSE Enterprise and the likes.

Ubuntu bags the top spot in Linux Enterprise Server Test
Only last week we came to know that the upcoming Sony Play Station 4 (PS4) is based out of FreeBSD. And it is a fairly common knowledge that Google uses a modified version of Ubuntu at their workplaces. Now, it seems like Linux is being used at even more unheard of places. Google's driverless cars are a pretty familiar phenomenon in tech circles. But I don't think many are familiar with the fact that they are running a modified version of Ubuntu at its core!

Google's Driverless Cars are using a Lightly Customized Ubuntu
When we wrote about our favorite Real Time Strategy (RTS) games for Linux sometime ago, 0 A.D. was featured right on top. It is a free and open source game which holds a lot of promise. And after nearly 4 years of development, 0 A.D. has just hit version Alpha 14, codenamed "Naukratis". Along with the release, 0 A.D. devs have launched a much-deserved crowd-funding campaign as well to bring the game to completion. 

0 A.D. Crowdfunding Campaign on Indiegogo
Unity and GNOME Shell have slowly become two of my favorite desktop interfaces, so much that, I just can't stand conventional desktops like XFCE or KDE anymore. I am aware that many of you have a different opinion about the same, but that's just me. And when it comes to GNOME Shell, Ubuntu GNOME (called as Ubuntu GNOME Remix earlier) gave me the best pure GNOME experience till now. Development of the latest Ubuntu GNOME 13.10 is progressing at a brisk pace and the beta 1 version of it has just been released. 

ubuntu gnome 13.10 beta 1 released
According to a recent study by International Data Corporation (IDC), Android now controls 79.3% of the world-wide smartphone market share, with iOS dropping to just 13.2%. Here is some more good news. Senior Vice President of Chrome and Apps at Google, Sundar Pichai, has revealed that Android has just surpassed the magic number, a mind numbing one billion activations! Now that the emerging markets scene also hotting up, this trend is only going to continue and acquire pace. Exciting times to be an Android user!

android 4.4 kitkat