06.13.09
Posted in Interoperability, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Xandros at 2:55 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“Every line of code that is written to our standards is a small victory; every line of code that is written to any other standard, is a small defeat.”
–James Plamondon, Microsoft Technical Evangelist [PDF]
Summary: Microsoft longs for a more dominant position through control of APIs and Novell actively permits this to happen
LAST WEEK we wrote several posts about Novell integrating Mono with .NET and Windows [1, 2, 3]. To Microsoft, if GNU/Linux assimilates itself to Windows, then it becomes easier for Microsoft to embrace and extend it. It puts Microsoft behind the steering wheel.
“There are other new areas where Novell assimilates itself to Microsoft’s software.”It is abundantly clear that Mono is better to Microsoft than Java is. To Microsoft, Mono is a latch. That’s why it likes it so much and to repeat a ZDNet comment from the Microsoft blog (mentioned in the "Microsoft Moonlight" post):
“Sounds like one more way to help migrate from linux to Microsoft Windows. If this is implemented pulling data from a linux server will be that much easier until the server is no longer needed. I’m liking this interoperability.”
There are other new areas where Novell assimilates itself to Microsoft’s software. Here is the latest example from IDG (assimilation through submissive connectivity). It will be formally announced quite shortly.
Novell next week plans to release yet another tool that is the product of its three-year-old integration agreement with Microsoft, this time a plug-in for Microsoft’s management tools that lets users manage Novell’s Suse Linux.
The tool, which will ship June 19, was produced as part of Novell’s involvement with the Microsoft/Novell Interoperability Lab, which opened in 2007.
Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, is designed to extend across seven SUSE Linux Enterprise OS services the monitoring capabilities within Operations Manager 2007 R2. Users will be able to monitor both Linux and Windows environments from one console.
We wrote about Operations Manager before [1, 2]. It is about putting Microsoft in charge of datacentres. Novell supports this and so does Xandros. Elsewhere in the news this week we found the following:
“More customers are moving to Microsoft, so legacy has been declining Novell was not growing for us.”
This shows who controls the relationship between Microsoft and Novell, does it not? █
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Posted in Free/Libre Software, Microsoft, Open XML, Standard at 2:17 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A lesson in lock-in, courtesy of Microsoft
A few days ago we wrote about Microsoft Money coming to an end (there are many punchlines which properly fit this rare item of news). Other interesting perspectives continue to appear after all that Microsoft PR (and damage control, mostly to do with migration of existing clients). TechDirt writes:
A great example of this is the failure of Microsoft Money. The company has now announced that it’s going to discontinue the product despite years of effort and millions of dollars spent to try to defeat Intuit’s Quicken product.
One particularly good article on the subject comes from Sam Varghese, who explains how this whole situation serves as a reminder that Free software can be one’s savior.
Open source takes no hostages
Have you ever had the experience of creating and storing data in a certain application, only to find that your dependency on a proprietary format means that you have lost all your data?
[...]
With a package like Money, new versions take into account the changing laws that govern small business and personal finances and the headache of managing money disappears.
But what about your data? Is Microsoft going to offer a package that can translate that data into something that could, perhaps, be used by a package like that put out by Intuit?
Unlikely, given that Microsoft once tried to buy Intuit and was only stopped by the US department of justice which “felt strongly that the proposed merger would lead to higher prices and less innovation in the personal finance software market.”
The article as a whole is recommended and so are the comments. Classic arguments about curation, portability, and long-term preservation neatly apply here. Just take OOXML for example. If Microsoft Office is discontinued a few years from now (let’s say due to unsuccessful migration to the Web), how will data encoded in OOXML be accessed 10 years from now? Or 50 years from now? OOXML is proprietary, it is poorly documented, and it contains binary blobs; no application other than Microsoft Office can handle Microsoft’s de facto implementation of something which is only close to ECMA OOXML but drifts further away from it as time goes by (not to mention the crime associated with OOXML). It is designed this way to tighten lock-in.
Free software has been around for ages. It can never be “discontinued” as long as determined users or developers are willing to hack on it. Free software does not depend on any one company for its existence and maintenance. Mozilla/Firefox, for example, outlived the demise of Netscape, using Gecko. █
“People sometimes ask me if it is a sin in the Church of Emacs to use vi. Using a free version of vi is not a sin; it is a penance. So happy hacking.”
–Richard Stallman
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Posted in Microsoft, Security, Windows at 11:09 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: MSN Canada the latest to be compromised, Windows botnet tools put up for display
SOME weeks ago we learned that even 'amateur' users like the FBI are unable to dodge Windows viruses. Just a few weeks ago we also saw a Microsoft Web site (MSN New Zealand) falling victim to crackers and it has just happened again, proving that even Microsoft cannot secure its servers. How do they expect others like their clients to succeed?
MSN Canada Website Compromised by Hackers
[...]
Researchers from net security company Websense warn that a particular section of the MSN Canada website has fallen victim to hackers who injected rogue code into a page used for redirection.
In other news, CNET shows that even kids can now create their own Windows botnet.
The abstract concepts of “botnet” and “Trojan” just became a lot more concrete for me.
In less than an hour on Thursday, I was able to use programs readily available on the Internet underground for as little as $300 to infect several Windows clients and take complete control of them in a test environment.
No wonder so many teenagers are wreaking havoc across the Internet (some are too young to be held accountable by national law) and ~320,000,000 computers are estimated to be zombies. Some researchers are rather astounded by the fact that the Web keeps standing at all. But at what cost? Damages are huge. We too are among the victims. █
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Posted in America, Antitrust, Europe, Microsoft, Vista 7 at 10:33 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“…[Windows 98] must be a killer on shipments so that Netscape never gets a chance…”
–Former Microsoft Vice President James Allchin in an internal memo
Summary: Microsoft’s settlement in Mississippi wrongly estimated at $100 million; abuses in Europe carry on
MANY states have already sued Microsoft only to be granted what we call ‘funny money’ settlement, which is just encouraging even more sales (possibly of the very same products that led to legal action in the first place).
The Comes case (Iowa) was unique because it was a very public one and loads of evidence ended up online. We shall soon resume going through exhibits (throughout this summer).
In large states like California there were very massive settlements (over a billion dollars), but much of the money is not being reclaimed by the public. This is a tragedy which means that Microsoft need not even pay the fines imposed. It shows that crime pays.
But anyway, out of nowhere comes this news about Microsoft settling Mississippi’s case against it. When did all that happen? Is there any material for the public to gain access to?
Microsoft settles suit with Mississippi for $100 mln
[...]
Microsoft faced a rush of class-action suits on behalf of consumers in individual states after a U.S. federal judge found in 2000 that the world’s largest software company abused its monopoly power by tying its Internet Explorer browser to its Windows operating system.
Microsoft’s de facto PR person in CNET alluded to this settlement and confirms that indeed it’s just ‘funny money’.
Those in Mississippi who purchased Microsoft products or computers containing Microsoft products between January 1, 1996, and Thursday will be eligible to receive a voucher of $12 or $5, depending on which products were purchased. The vouchers can be used toward the purchase of any software or hardware product.
This is also covered in:
A lot of people tend not to remember why such cases came up in the first place. Younger generations believe (or are led to believe) that Microsoft is being punished for having high market share, not for obtaining it illegally. A US government official famously said: “The government is not trying to destroy Microsoft, it’s simply seeking to compel Microsoft to obey the law. It’s quite revealing that Mr. Gates equates the two.”
There is another important development right now, but it is happening in Europe. Groklaw wrote about it thusly:
Microsoft Announces It Will Ship Without IE in Europe – Reactions – Updated
[...]
My first reaction was, I guess that means you actually can remove the browser and Windows will still run, despite what Microsoft told the court in the US. My second was, if OEMs can choose to install IE, why wouldn’t Microsoft just sit on them in various subtle ways to make sure it’s in their best interests to always “choose” to install IE? And does this fix Vista? XP? I have some other reactions for you. Thomas Vinje of ECIS says this is “an acknowledgement of the validity of the EU Commission’s case, but it is by no means enough.
“I don’t think anybody is going to have a dominant position in a network-centric world like they had in a desktop-centric world. I just cannot believe that. And I will tell you this: it will be a shame if they do.”
–James Barksdale, Former Netscape CEO
From the BBC:
European buyers of Windows 7 will have to download and install a web browser for themselves.
But wait. This is a stunt. Microsoft chose to do this for selfish reasons and Opera’s CEO calls this “a game”.
“They are trying to play a game,” said von Tetzchner, “and I don’t think anyone appreciates that fact they are trying to get away with a solution that doesn’t solve anything.
“Microsoft is proposing a solution that is not going to solve the issue or provide consumers with choice,” he added.
“We are going to cut off their air supply. Everything they’re selling, we’re going to give away for free.”
–Paul Maritz, former Microsoft Vice President, referring to Netscape
Mozilla is also complaining:
As Mike Shaver, Mozilla’s vice president of engineering, articulated to me, most people download Firefox…using IE, which means leaving them browser-less (even without IE) is tantamount to cutting off their access to Firefox.
“Pitting browser against browser is hard since Netscape has 80% marketshare and we have <20% … I am convinced we have to use Windows-this is the one thing they don’t have…”
–Former Microsoft Vice President James Allchin in an internal memo
The EU too is underwhelmed. Microsoft is playing dirty again.
The European Unions however is absolutely not impressed by Microsoft’s move. It is clear that what the EU wanted was to force Microsoft to include alternative browsers with Windows 7 rather than removing Internet Explorer, and with good reasons. The EU competition commission has certainly not forgotten the Windows N debacle, when they managed to force Microsoft to sell a version of Windows without a media player only to see all OEMs ship the versions with the media player included.
Can Microsoft ever change its behaviour? That’s highly doubtful. It never tried, it never did. █
“Microsoft is, I think, fundamentally an evil company.”
–Former Netscape Chairman James H. Clark
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Posted in Debian, GNU/Linux, Law, Microsoft, OSI, Patents, Ubuntu at 9:23 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Opposition to Mono grows in some GNU/Linux distributions and run over in others
THIS is a quick update about the Mono situation. We’ll treat some of the key distributions in turn, at least where developments exist.
Red Hat/Fedora
In a timely new report, Fedora leader and Red Hat employee Paul Frields admits that the company is looking into possible legal issues relating to Mono.
That said, Frields also told me that in his view there are some problems with the language used in the legalese surrounding Mono and its redistribution.
“We do have some serious concerns about Mono and we’ll continue to look at it with our legal counsel to see what if any steps are needed on our part,” Frields said.
While Mono is part of Fedora, Mono is not part of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and hasn’t been since 2006. It’s not clear if mono will stay or go for the final Fedora 12 release when it appears 6 months from now.
“We haven’t come to a legal conclusion that is pat enough for us to make the decision to take mono out,” Frields said. “Right now we’re in a status quo. Gnote is a relatively recent development and unfortunately was too late in the Fedora 11 development cycle to include by default.”
Response from proponents of Mono would be helpful. The very fact that Red Hat is looking into it suggests that there is uncertainty and quite likely a real problem. Fedora has already rejected Moonlight for legal reasons (Microsoft licences/covenants for starters).
Canonical/Ubuntu
One person believes that Mono does not belong in Ubuntu by default (printed on CDs, as opposed to patent-encumbered codecs for example). It is very important to make the distinction between inclusion by default and inclusion in the repositories. If Mono-based programs are as great as their proponents claim they are, then people will install them. It is very trivial to achieve in Ubuntu and those who wish to accept the risk of Mono will do so by personal choice, not a choice imposed by those with unquestioned affinity for Mono.
Now when I install Ubuntu and therefor Gnome, it does not pull in Wine at all. In fact, I’ve been running Ubuntu without wine for most of the past 5 years. So killing wine would only affect people still locked in to certain windows programs and not have any effect of the Free Desktop by itself.
In contrast, removing mono rips out F-Spot and Tomboy and even the Ubuntu-desktop meta-package. You see, Ubuntu uses a lot of mono-apps by default and even vanilla-Gnome includes Tomboy and as such, depends on mono. Yes, replacing Tomboy is easy, but what if Evolution also comes to depend on mono, or Nautilus or gnome-panel? Then ripping out mono means the end of the Gnome Desktop.
Another new perspective goes like this:
The Ubuntu/Mono debate continues…
[...]
My perspective on the Mono thing is from that of a user and not a developer. I really fail to see why anyone would want to build new applications on top of a framework that has so many unanswered questions and causes so much angst in the community as a whole. We have plenty of other solutions that are – if not 100% free from controversy – certainly far less likely to end up requiring the kind of backtracking or complete re-writing that Jo describes above.
Software patents are not the only issue at play. As Microsoft puts it [PDF], “Every line of code that is written to our standards is a small victory; every line of code that is written to any other standard, is a small defeat.” One reader of ours adds: “Maybe that is some of what Mono is about: porting security flaws, bad design and vulnerabilities to new platforms.”
But looking at patents in isolation, one person asks whether it is an issue only in a minority of countries.
Is mono a problem outside the US and other patent friendly countries?
[...]
As Canonical is based in the EU this should not give the Ubuntu community any issue by itself. So keep any patent related problem for United-States based distributions and leave Ubuntu alone. Or move to a country that enforces your freedom all-day-every-day!
The situation is unfortunately quite different. TomTom, for example, is based in Europe, but Microsoft brought software patents to a case against it. Microsoft got its way for reasons we explained before.
As a matter of fact, at this very moment we are seeing attempts by the Microsoft lobby to make software patent fully enforceable in Europe (and not just Europe, either). The other day we wrote about what the EPLA had been doing and Glyn Moody has more to say about the latest findings:
More whining from the anti-software patent lot? Well, not actually. These words were written by Alison Crofts, who:
provides specialist IP advice and expertise in both litigation and commercial matters. This includes advising on: the creation, protection and exploitation of IP rights, including trade secrets, confidentiality issues, technology transfer agreements and licensing; the enforcement and defence of IP rights, including the conduct of litigation and arbitration proceedings; and IP aspects of joint ventures, co-ownership and transactions. Alison has an engineering background and has particular experience in the semiconductor, oil and gas, hi-tech and telecoms engineering industries.
In other words, she’s likely to be for rather than against software patents.
The OSI too is openly protesting against software patents at the moment. Its president understands the importance of this.
I’ve heard a lot of arguments against software patents (SWPAT) since Richard Stallman first raised the flag at the League for Programming Freedom, and almost all of the arguments are variations on a theme. A valid theme, but a theme that, after 20 years, has become a bit monotonous. Herman Daly puts that theme in a new context that has me all excited. He says
Stop treating the scarce as if it were non-scarce, but also stop treating the non-scarce as if it were scarce. Enclose the remaining commons of rival natural capital (e.g. atmosphere, electromagnetic spectrum, public lands) in public trusts, and price it by a cap-auction-trade system, or by taxes, while freeing from private enclosure and prices the non-rival commonwealth of knowledge and information.
Until software patents are eliminated altogether — and there is a chance this might happen with sufficient public support — Mono will continue to be a weapon of FUD to Microsoft (and Novell). They’ll vilify — in a whisper campaign (behind-closed-doors) fashion — those who don’t offer "intellectual property peace of mind". Microsoft President Bob Muglia says that Mono is “being driven by Novell, and one of the attributes of the agreement we made with Novell is that the intellectual property associated with that is available to Novell customers.” What about Ubuntu users? OpenSUSE users? Fedora Users? Debian users?
Debian
Debian, unlike Fedora and Ubuntu, does not have a commercial entity behind it. Well, at least not in the sense that a company actually owns Debian. Some people have decided to treat this as an open door to a form of civil disobedience, so rather than claim that Mono has no legal issues, it is being added to Debian (by default) because legal issues can be disregarded.
For those who haven’t been following closely, the explanation behind Jo Shields’ recent post instructing us on the greatness of Mono and the Microsoft .NET approach to software development could be found in the fact that Josselin Mouette has decided that Mono must be part of the default desktop install for Debian Squeeze.
There are some interesting comments to be found in there and also cheap shots like the one we've been getting because Mono is “holy” or “sacred” (it cannot be criticised, it’s a taboo). It would be a lot more constructive to carry a technical discussion which also makes use of Red Hat’s assessment. Fedora already lists Moonlight under “forbidden” items for legal reasons and it is only now taking a closer look at Mono. So to simply toss Mono into Debian (by default) under the premise that “Mono doesn’t suck” and software patents are already void (i.e. made history prematurely ) is not the best way to proceed.
There are those who propose looking at Vala, so there is clearly acknowledgment that Mono presents/poses a dilemma. █
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Posted in Microsoft at 8:00 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Sanjay Parthasarathy is leaving Microsoft
WE HAVE attempted to find more articles about this (using Google News), but all we could find are the Seattle-oriented and/or pro-Microsoft folks covering what seems like Microsoft’s little secret.
Sanjay Parthasarathy, the Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) corporate vice president who oversees the company’s Startup Business Accelerator group—which was set up last year with the charter of building new businesses for the company—is leaving Microsoft, paidContent has learned. The announcement was made internally this week, although a spokeswoman said that Parthasarathy made the decision to retire late last year for personal reasons.
So, that would be around the same time as at least 3 more departures at an identical level (vice presidents) [1, 2]. There was another one quite recently.
Microsoft’s PR people (disguised as journalists) wrote about this latest one as well. So what are those “personal reasons”? It usually means lost interest in the company due to lack of prospects, direction, or ethics. There was another one last week. █
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Posted in News Roundup at 7:18 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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I have been talking about the convergence of telephony and desktop computing for years. Nowadays, more and more companies are announcing small devices (“netbooks”) that will run Android — and we are not talking about phones here. Is this the beginning of a new revolution? Or maybe not?
[...]
More interestingly, hardware makers are making (or are considering making) small laptops which will come with Android rather than Windows XP (!) or Ubuntu. This hasn’t happened yet, but everybody is expecting it.
More interestingly, Ubuntu developers are talking about finding the best possible way to integrate Android applications within Ubuntu. This pretty much confirms that they expect Android to be “the next big thing” in the client-side computing world. Write once, run everywhere — for real this time.
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Openfiler saw open source — the Linux kernel — as a way for enterprises to inexpensively yet efficiently deploy and manage their storage networks years ago. And it developed an open source network storage operating system with a Web-based GUI that worked with any industry standard x86 or x86/64 server, which enterprises could download for free. Several years later, Openfiler boasts more than 1,000 customers and is busy developing new features to serve its growing customer base — and both enterprises and vendors have taken notice.
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There is a two-horse race in the market, wherein one segment is dominated by the Windows platform while the other caters to the Linux platform in terms of market share, unit shipment, revenue, etc. If you look at Linux, Red Hat has pretty much emerged as the biggest player in this space and, depending upon which geography you are in, the numbers are as high as 95%.
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Meanwhile, I’m looking at what’s coming up on the features roadmap, and I’m pretty excited. We’ll soon be making it easier to submit articles to all parts of Linux.com (and awarding of serious Guru points for doing so).We will also be working on building a more centralized directory of software, hardware, and distributions.
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I am proud to announce, on behalf of the BEL Project team, that BEL Project (Business Edition Linux) is here to help.
BEL Project is targeted to the Small Business as well as School communities.
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Among the new additions to the service is a Linux client (in alpha for now), which Linux users and cross-platform users may welcome.
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Desktop
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Speaking of pricing, that leads me to my final point of this article. Just why do so many people pay a hundred or two dollars for Microsoft to hassle them? Is the product really that worth it? Most Linux distributions are free and even the ones that aren’t generally cost only a fraction of what Microsoft charges. There is no activation routine either. You buy it or download it, and you use it at your leisure. Sure, Linux may not run every application that Windows does, but there are amazing Linux apps that haven’t been ported to Windows either.
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Ubuntu is running beautifully, all of my files are where I want them, I have no DLLs to worry about, and it’s smooth sailing. And it looks as good as ever, too.
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For the last one: Being a Linux user is not like getting into a religion or cult. It might feel like it to some who hear so many talks about the philosophy of Linux and free and open source software. Maybe it’s time to balance it out by showing how the community interacts. If you’re active in the Linux community maybe you could introduce your friend/colleague to other Linux users locally just so your friend knows who else are using Linux and what they think about it personally. It’s not just all about the intellectual stuff, after all.
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There are hundreds of stories about people who pulled an old Windows 95/98/ME computer out of their basement, put some kind of Linux distro on it, and are in a computing heaven, blissfully unaware of the age of their computer. And you never hear about people pulling the same computer out and saying, “Wow! Windows 95 solves all of my problems! Good bye, modern computing!” Why is Linux so dominant in this category?
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The time has never been better to try Linux. With improved hardware compatibility, excellent software applications, and superior stability and security, there’s really nothing holding you back from giving Linux a try.
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Kernel Space
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It has been several months coming, but the “radeon-rewrite” driver has been merged into the mainline Mesa code-base in the past hour.
[...]
This radeon-rewrite merger is also good news for those interested in the forthcoming merger of the TTM memory manager and Radeon kernel mode-setting into the Linux 2.6.31 kernel.
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So why am I in a good mood?
My real “work” is not really writing code any more, and hasn’t been for a long time. No, I worry most about the whole “flow of patches”, and the way development happens, rather than so much about any individual piece of code I maintain. And the last few release cycles have had a couple of really hard-to-merge issues – not because the code was necessarily bad, but because of how it was then presented to me as a fairly messy history.
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Applications
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Gilles Caulier has announced the first beta version of DigiKam with the magic number 1.0.0. Downloads are provided.
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Instead of staring at a screen of binaries and snippets of documentation, users could view a brief summary of what each application does, as well as its system requirements and a screenshot or two. Integrated community features would not only allow users to submit bug and help requests a la SourceForge, but would give users a chance to add comments and rate the application. Registered users, validated developers, or important community members could chime in to lend these notes and reviews a voice of authenticity over the general internet mutterings, and good users-like Yelp commenters-could be voted into authority based on their behavior.
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The launch of Amarok 2.1, five months after its previous version 2.0 was announced , the all-free multimedia player developed primarily for the KDE desktop.
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Desktop Environments
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We still have a target goal and 4.3.0 will be an outstanding release, it’s just a bit more reasonable given our priorities for 2009. A number of our team showed up on IRC today and helped slay the dragons as they rolled in, so there’s still a lot of attention being paid to polishing up 4.3.0 for the release.
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Kent Robotti announced yesterday (June 11th) yet another stable release of his popular R.I.P. (Recovery Is Possible) Linux distribution. R.I.P. 9.1 comes with the newly released Opera 10 Beta (the installation is available as an option in the X11 setup menu), an updated SVN version of GRUB 2 1.96 and the latest beta of the upcoming Firefox 3.5 web browser.
The following applications have also been updated in R.I.P. 9.1.: Partclone 0.1.1-svn revision 294M, aria2c 1.4.1, LYNX 2.8.7pre.5b, Syslinux 3.82 and ClamAV 0.95.2.
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Ok, so I’d say Zenwalk is a good, beautiful distro. I would only recommend it to a new user if they have done their research on this Linux thing. They need to know how to find help or why Firefox is called Iceweasel or they need to have a geek friend they can ask. For Linux veterans, Zenwalk seems nice and easy. It seems to give all the power of Slackware with none of the (IMHO) BS. The repos are not as large as Fedora or Ubuntu, so check that you don’t need programs that aren’t there or are ok with compiling software. I’m still of the opinion that anyone who is unhappy with his or her current distro should try this one out. You may find it to be a good fit. It has nice, light requirements including Pentium 3 and 128 MB RAM so it might be great for resurrecting some old computers without having to resort to a “light” distro. It’s also good if you like Xfce or Gnome. There does not appear to be an official KDE version.
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Qt Software announced that Red Flag Software will start using the SDK (software development kit) for the Qt development framework as part of its Red Flag Software Linux Desktop 7.0 distribution. Red Flag Linux is the most widely used Linux desktop distribution in China, Nokia-owned Qt says.
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PCLinuxOS
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Apturl is a web-based tool that install applications on the PCLinuxOS distribution. This is a web interface for APT, and the packages are downloaded and installed from official PCLinuxOS repositories right from your brower.
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The new PCLinuxOS Documentation site has been launched. We are currently recruiting members with a knowledge of PCLinuxOS to assist with the rebuilding of documentation for PCLinuxOS. Please visit MyPClinuxOS where a topic is in progress about the recreation of our documentation.
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Fedora
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I’ve been doing quite a few Fedora 11 installs on various hardware in preparation for the review of I’m working on but I wanted to give a short glimpse of KVM in Fedora 11 with the Virtual Machine Manager (virt-manager). I also show MontanaLinux (a Fedora 11 remix), some of the new features in Fedora 11 and some additional software.
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Desktop effects with NVIDIA graphics cards still, therefore, require NVIDIA’s proprietary driver. As this is not available under an open source license, it is not included in Fedora, which restricts itself to open source software only. Likewise AMD’s proprietary graphics driver (“Catalyst” or “fglrx”), the latest version 9.5 released in May, also happens to be incompatible with the Linux kernel version 2.6.29 used in Fedora 11.
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Ubuntu
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The Fit-PC2 has an Intel Atom Z530 processor running at 1.6 GHz, 1 GB of RAM, an Intel GMA500 graphics chipset with hardware acceleration and a 160 GB SATA drive. It also sports Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11g wifi, 6 USB 2.0 ports, and runs on 12 volts at 1.5 amps. Physical dimensions (without the little power brick) are 1 1/8″ (27 mm) x 4 1/2″ (115 mm) x 4″ (101mm). See Figure 1 for a typical desktop configuration.
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The Ubuntu developers are moving quickly to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source Community has to offer. The Karmic Koala Alpha 2 is the second alpha release of Ubuntu 9.10, bringing with it the earliest new features for the next version of Ubuntu.
This is an alpha release. Do not install it on production machines. The final stable version will be released on October 29th, 2009.
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We should start this article by letting everyone know that Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala), due for release in late October this year, will not have that professional theme everyone was expecting, as stated by Mark Shuttleworth himself in the Ubuntu Open Week Q & A:
“It has taken a long, long time to pull together a design team. I had hoped to have that team in place six months ago, but it’s still forming. I think we will make good progress in the next cycle, you can already see a few things that have borne fruit from that team: notifications, time zone selector in installer, etc, but it’s fragmentary. I’m pretty darn confident we’ll have a new look for 10.04 but I think only pieces of that will emerge for 9.10.”
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The Ubuntu-Doc mailing list just received word from Dylan McCall and the Ubiquity Slideshow Team that Ubiquity (the Ubuntu live CD’s installer) is being retrofitted with a slideshow that will play during installation. This is something I’ve supported for a long time and good news for new users, but it likely won’t help anyone else.
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Due to the agreement between our Education Department and Microsoft I work in a Microsoft centric environment. So when our network manager recently became very enthusiastic about the latest Ubuntu release (9.04), I asked him to spell it out. This is what he said:
Ubuntu is better than Windows (eg. Vista) as follows:
* managing memory
* easier to install virtual box, for testing multiple OS environments
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Canonical’s Ubuntu & Kubuntu distros are loaded with great software and utilities. There are, however, a bunch of great tools that are not included in their standard installations. Aside from Skype, all of these tools can easily be added by going to your download package manager (in Ubuntu, Synaptic) and search for the program names.
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Folks, we are back with another Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase!
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Let’s also remember non-Linux FOSS operating systems such as FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. From these also come herds of wonderful things such as routers, firewalls, drivers, network stacks, and stout high-demand servers. (Take a look at the top servers on Netcraft.)
We don’t need a savior. Saviors make us weak. “The most terrible thing to befall a people is a hero.” We need a strong, diverse community chock-full of smart people creating interesting things. Here’s to creative chaos, and all the good things it brings us.
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The nettop also provides VGA, DVI, and HDMI video ports, a gigabit Ethernet port, and audio and PS/2 connections, says ZaReason. A variety of Ubuntu 9.04 Linux distros, detailed in the table below, are available pre-installed.
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Positron Telecommunication Systems is shipping a PBX PCI adapter with telephony and Ethernet ports, based on the open source Asterisk telephony engine. The Linux-based V-114 is an “Asterisk PBX on a card,” complete with hardware echo cancellation, and supports any desktop OS, says Positron.
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Trinity Convergence has extended its mobile VoIP/video middleware software to enable a wide range of embedded devices with IP telephony and video. The Linux-compatible VeriCall Communicator is available in voice-only and voice/video versions targeting ARM-based devices such as video doorbells and surveillance systems, says the company.
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Phones
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If you are a programmer, then you will surely love this newly introduced Android application. It’s appropriately called Android Scripting Environment (ASE) since this program makes it possible for you to edit and execute scripts directly on your Android device.
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Palm
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The reviews appear to be largely positive for the Palm Pre, with eWEEK lauding its “exceptional design, aesthetics and usability.” Both the smartphone and the Linux-based WebOS stack live up to their billing for ease of use, but battery life is a problem, says eWEEK.
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Most of the gadget press is obsessing over whether the Palm Pre is an iPhone killer, but they’re asking the wrong question. We’ve been testing one for the past few days, and it’s clear to us that the real target of Palm’s new phone is the BlackBerry. Here’s how Palm will use the webOS to tackle the enterprise market.
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If you were holding off on buying a Pre until it had some great games, start warming up that credit card. We knew homebrewers were already at work and one of those, a bloke who goes by the name Sargun, has managed to get the iconic Doom running on the phone — or the open-source PRDoom, anyway, which is close enough for us.
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The verdict is… It works BEAUTIFULLY. The 650 would usually hang up and not always finish the sync. The Centro usually thoroughly syncs. Also, the 650 would not always sync. It only seemed to want to sync when there was new information. The Centro will sync every time you hit the button.
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Sub-notebooks
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Netbook makers are currently lobbying Microsoft to reduce the price of its upcoming operating system revision, which, DigiTimes reports, is currently priced at $45-55 a pop, depending on the vendor’s negotiating skills and the size of its order.
[...]
We’d suggest the even cheaper option: Ubuntu.
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As the articles here and here as well as the discussion here point out, leaving Linux is not only a bad move from a technical point of view but the way it was done also angered and insulted members of the Linux community, many of which are your customers. Guess what? They are not you consumers anymore. Worse, these are usually people responsible for purchasing the computing equipment for their families or their companies, so the loss goes much deeper than just a few Linux users. Let’s look at a few chosen comments from the articles above:
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In another threat to the PC Wintel establishment, smartbooks use Linux operating systems and not Microsoft’s (MSFT Quote) Windows programs. The disadvantage is that users can’t run common Microsoft programs like Word or Outlook. The advantage is that a Linux laptop has eight-hour battery life, instant-on power-up and an always-on 3G wireless data connection.
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Non-tinkerers can order the assembled version of the EduBook for US$200 plus shipping costs. This comes with Ubuntu Netbook Remix pre-installed, but will also support other Linux distros as well as Windows XP, as demonstrated in NorhTec’s video, for those who want to run a more dated operating system.
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In 2009, LSM will take place between July 7th and July 11th in Nantes, France ! An event managed by the Linux-Nantes Association, with active support from Free, Libre and Open Source Software users’ associations from the whole country. The city that we call “West Venice” is becoming the meeting place for the many invited nationalities.
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All software sucks. It’s full of bugs, and rarely works right.
The general solution to this is to live with bugs, and fix them as you see them. Eventually, you’ve fixed enough of them that you don’t care anymore. If one comes up, you just fix it. Easy.
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When you “buy” a proprietary software you are not actually buying the software but a license to use it. Although in many cases the physical package of the software convinces you that you actually bought something that belongs to you, in reality what you get is someone’s permission to use a piece of software.
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The bottom line is that I’ve having doubts about whether there really is a MySQL data warehousing mass market. I know this blog is still very young and does not have many readers, so there are unlikely to be any comments, but if you do have thoughts on this subject, I’d be interested to hear them.
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There is cause to believe that an entity could be established in such a way as to be a deductible gift recipient under the Australian Income Tax legislation and that donations of open source software to that entity would give rise to a tax deduction to the benefit of the donor while preserving public access to the software. Such an arrangement would benefit individual FLOSS developers (who have an income against which a deduction can be claimed), including those whose FLOSS activities are pro bono at the moment. There is no reason to think the same principles would not apply to other licensing schemes, such as open content.
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As enterprise platform vendors, at the operating system, middleware and application levels, begin to expand their App Store capabilities, the wrong path forward will be for each vendor to invest in building the store platform themselves. The App Store isn’t going to be differentiating technology, so why invest in it individually? A better approach is for one of these vendors to open source their existing store platform code, with the goal of building open standards based on that implementation. Then the cost of maintaining and evolving the App Store platform code would be shared across multiple vendors.
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Browsers
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Google Chrome
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Charles McLellan checks out the new features in Google’s latest browser, and compares its performance to its rivals
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You’ve probably seen many web sites saying, “Yeah! Chrome rocks! Fast! Speed-speed-speed! Woo-hoo!”, provided with a bunch of benchmarks flexing it’s muscle, so to speak.
Is Chrome fast? Yes, obviously. The fastest? No, that honor still belongs to Lynx and always will. Fastest GUI-based browser? Quite possibly.
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I would say once Flash gets in into this Google Chrome pre releases then it will be something I will stick with on Linux. Once Google Chrome comes out to Linux and Mac the browser wars will really heat up, and I don’t think Chrome is going to melt.
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Mozilla Firefox
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FireFox 3.5 is due out by the end of June and includes some pretty interesting new features–and not a moment too soon. Some of these new features include the ability to play videos in the browser without the need to download and install a third-party plugin. It also includes TraceMonkey, which is a JavaScript Engine that is much faster (And hopefully less buggy) than the one in previous FireFox versions.
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As part of the Mozilla Corporation’s ongoing security and stability process, Firefox 3.0.11 is now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux users as a free download from getfirefox.com.
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At times it feels like the ad industry is constantly besieged by bad news: Budgets are getting trimmed, mass audiences are splintering into niches, display ad click-through rates are at all-time lows and no one has figured out the social-media equation just yet.
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Firefox 3.0.11 was downloaded about 150 million times in the last 24 hours.
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Is the browser the new idiot box? With convergence as a mantra, movies are finding homes in new places. Correct me… I should say ‘old’ because watching movies on our computers is already passé. It’s maybe the iPod now. But still, the internet remains a favorite source and the computer screen, the sink pit for our movie addiction. And the browser of course, is the vehicle of choice to get to that blockbuster.
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Firefox has surpassed 22 percent global market share, its popularity driven in large part by the thousands of extensions and add-ons that personalize the Firefox experience for diverse users. Intriguingly, however, Firefox’s extensions strategy didn’t start out as a strategy at all. It was a compromise to keep the project’s developer base together, as Mozilla’s Asa Dotzler explains in this interview with John Newton (Alfresco) and Matt Asay (Alfresco, CNET’s Open Road blog).
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Business
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The MySQL developers have presented a new release model for the development of the open source database. The aim of the changes is to create a more dynamic, accessible, open and understandable development model.
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Releases
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IBM has announced the release of Lotus Symphony 1.3, an alternative suite to Microsoft Office. The productivity tool suite consists of three component applications, Documents, Spreadsheets and Presentations, and is based on the 1.x branch of OpenOffice that has been modified by IBM developers.
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Government
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The lack of open standards is actually one of the largest barriers to open source, said Ottawa-based open source activist Russel McOrmond. The only way for open data to be useful is if it’s released in an open standard, he pointed out.
What makes the motion so significant is that it recognizes the interdependency between data, standards and software, he said. “Recognizing that there are interconnections between all three things is great,” he said.
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The Dutch government is using Drupal for the website of the State Service for Cultural Heritage. The site was built by Cinnamon.
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Openness
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Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, will help the British government to make its data more easily available online, Gordon Brown said today.
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I’m a big fan of Free Culture and free open source web services too, licensed under the AGPL. The example I use most is probably Identi.ca, because I’m a noisy git and I like talking to people. I also wrote about the creation of Libre.fm a little while back, and I think we could really use more of these truly “free” web services. So when I heard about a new AGPL social network for film fans, I was very happy. The site is called Filmaster and I was lucky enough to have a chat with Borys Musielak (the site’s creator) about how it all came to fruition. Borys is also involved with the popular website Polish Linux, which you may have heard about.
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Programming
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The Symbian Foundation has announced that its developer portal is now open to everyone.
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Finally. After years of denying its role in the campaign of climate denial, Exxon has revealed a dirty secret, that it has and likely still is DIRECTLY funding junk scientists.
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Small cable operators say they worried about content providers charging ISPs “discriminatory” access fees, which they say Disney does with ESPN360.com. They want the FCC to stop the practice before it spreads, turning the arguments about net neutrality in the other direction.
Real-time Linux hacker Bill Huey discusses Linux kernel society 07 (2004)
Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.
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06.12.09
Posted in GNU/Linux, OpenSUSE at 7:27 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Federico is leaving
IT HAS only been 7 months since OpenSUSE’s board elections [1, 2]. The third most-voted-for member is leaving now. He explains his reasons in the following message, which was posted publicly to the mailing lists too.
As you know, I have been part of the openSUSE Board for a few months now, thanks to your kind election. However, work and other duties have kept me too busy to be a useful part of the Board.
The community manager wrote about this a short while ago and combined with the issues in OpenSUSE Forums, this does not look promising for the project as a whole. █
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