06.26.10

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers
• Clip of the Day

GNU/Linux

• Ballnux/HP

  • HP linux netbook

    This is the HP Mini 100e, a netbook which looks are fully customizable. There’s an option for SUSE Linux as the operating system. It’s nice to see something different in operating system options, too bad the other 2 options are windows versions (XP and 7)

  • HP and Linux’ OEM problem

    The problem, however, will remain in any case. In freeing itself from the tyranny of Windows, HP takes software and customer responsibility into its own hands. It’s something no Linux distro owner has been able to do in a consumer market.

    If HP succeeds Microsoft is in real trouble.

• Kernel Space

  • Is PowerTop Still Useful For Extending Your Battery Life?

  • Graphics Stack

    • Intel Releases Its 2.12 X.Org Driver, 2010Q2 Package

      While Intel had only released its xf86-video-intel 2.12 release candidate ten days ago and there was only one RC, yesterday afternoon they decided to go forward and make the final release. The xf86-video-intel 2.12.0 DDX driver is now available and they have also tagged their 2010Q2 driver package.

• Applications

  • NetUP IPTV 1.6 has been released

    NetUP have released a new version of IPTV Complex, an interactive TV software bundle. It introduces new graphic interface featuring a number of improvements both in design and on technical level.

  • GUI For GoogleCL Script 0.1

  • VLC 1.1.0 for Linux – Complete Review

    As always, VideoLAN has come up with interesting tweaks, updates and enhancements to its all popular VLC media player with the release of version 1.1.0.

  • 9 Top Alternative Linux Music Players

    Reinventing the wheel is sometimes viewed as a significant barrier to the development of open source software. Critics point out that if developers simply collaborated more with each other, instead of creating yet another Linux distribution or programming another text editor, this would help to simplify matters for users, and actually significantly advance the development of established open source projects.

  • Proprietary/Wine

    • Wine Announcement

      The Wine development release 1.2-rc5 is now available.

      What’s new in this release (see below for details):
      – Many translation updates.
      – A lot of bug fixes.

    • An introduction to CrossOver Office and Games for Solaris

    • Linux game-time refined with latest Wine

      Wine, the project that lets Linux users run Windows apps within Linux, has released a major update that fixes a number of bugs and includes 64-bit support.

      Wine 2.1 includes a new set of icons, a number of fixes for video rendering – improving Windows gaming – and better font anti-aliasing and handling of desktop link files.

  • Instructionals

    • Hackery Xen 4.0.1-rc1 source & kernels packaged for Ubuntu Lucid @Virtualusr Site up to 4.0.1-rc3

    • How To Install nVidia 256.35 Display Drivers In Ubuntu (From A PPA Repository)

    • How To Install BIKA LIMS Inkosi On Ubuntu Server In 15 Minutes

    • Install New GIMP 2.6.9 in Ubuntu 10.04 ‘Lucid Lynx’

    • JasperReports 3.6: Creating a Report from XML Data using XPath

    • Setting Up VAAPI Hardware Accelerated Video Decoding for Ubuntu 10.04 (example Intel Poulsbo GMA 500)

• Desktop Environments

  • K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

    • What Happened at LinuxTag

      During the conference, Radio Tux interviewed Frederik Gladhorn about the KDE Plasma Netbook interface (interview in German) and Frank Karlitschek participated in the discussion around cloud computing (also in German). Frank also did an interview with Vincent Unz and Stormy Peters from GNOME.

    • KOffice 2010 Summer Sprint Report

      Hot on the heels of the 2.2 release of KOffice — the first release we feel that users can give a try and use for real work — the KOffice developers met in Essen-Horst in Germany, in the wonderful Linux Hotel. Thanks to sponsorship by the KDE e.V. and the hard work by Alexandra Leisse and Inge Wallin, we could spend three days discussing and hacking.

  • GNOME Desktop

    • GNOME Shell 2.31.4 released

• Distributions

  • New Releases

    • Publicación de Molinux 6.0 “Zoraida”

    • Peppermint One-06172010

    • Clonezilla 1.2.5-30

    • GPARTED 0.6.0 RELEASE

  • Debian Family

    • Verbal bits from the Debian Project Leader

      LinuxTag 2010 is the host of a Debian miniconf; that, in turn, was where relatively new Debian leader Stefano Zacchiroli delivered a relatively high-energy “state of Debian” talk. According to Stefano, Debian is doing great, but can do better yet; he has some ideas for how to make the project better.

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Project Harmony looks to improve contribution agreements

        On 16 June Project Harmony had its first official meeting in Boston, and we’re planning another in London on 1st July at Canonical’s offices. Its initial goal is to avoid proliferation in contribution agreements across FOSS software projects where those organisations chose to work with contribution agreements.

      • The Unity Launcher Looks Gorgeous [Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.10]

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Goodbye Ubuntu, it’s been fun — as part of my withdrawal, I’m running Xubuntu … for now anyway

          If you’re happy with Ubuntu Lucid, I salute you and wish I was among you. My problems at this point are my own — I don’t detect any groundswell of geeks moving away from the GNOME build of Ubuntu. And I’m glad Xubuntu is here to provide a stripped-down Ubuntu experience that more closely matches my hardware and workflow.

          Yeah, I love freedom. Three cheers.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Embedded Linux development platform adds PowerPC support

    Mentor Graphics announced a version of its Mentor Embedded Linux development platform that supports Freescale’s PowerPC-based QorIQ and PowerQUICC processors. The multicore-ready Mentor Embedded Linux for QorIQ and PowerQUICC includes an Embedded System Builder build engine, an Eclipse-based Mentor Embedded Edge IDE (integrated development environment), and debug tools, says the company.

  • Linux-based multicore design targets femtocells

    The initial TCI6485 and TCI6489 models were said to power femotcells serving between eight and 32 HSPA 3G wireless users, respectively. At the time, TI said the DSPs were offered with a Linux support package and a software reference design from TI partners Continuous Computing and MimoOn. (See farther below for more on the TCI6489.)

  • RISC/DSP cores gain Linux development support

    ARC International announced that its ARC 700 processor cores would be available with a Linux distribution from Codito Technologies back in 2004. ARC added SIMD (single-instruction, multiple-data) instruction support to the ARC 700 line in 2005, and added support subscriptions for the Codito Linux tools in 2007.

  • Android

    • Seriously, why do you still have an iPhone?

      And that’s my point. Surely the iPhone is the best phone for some people. However, we are a society that prefers choice because nothing is one-size-fits-all. There has to be a better phone for most than the iPhone. Sales are beginning to show this is true, as Android is quickly overtaking Apple. Yes, that has a lot to do with the proliferation of Android across 30+ mainstream devices and Apple having only one. Yet this goes to further my point: given the choice, you should go with the device that makes the most sense to you. As fans of open source, I cannot fathom how the iPhone can be an easy decision for you, the opensource.com reader.

    • Android Also Gives Google Remote App Installation Power

Free Software/Open Source

• Open Tech Exchange talks to Tectonic

  The latest episode of OTE podcast features an interview with Tectonic in which we talk about open source software in Africa.

• Open Source Geographic Tracking?

• Events

  • MeeGo Conference Slated for November

• Web Browsers

  • Android Becomes Flash Mobile’s First BFF

  • Uncertain future for Flash

    And it’s not just YouTube that uses Flash, almost all video sites do, as well as online games sites and entertainment sites. An older survey of websites by browser maker Opera found that in most countries around 30% of websites were built in or contained Flash elements. And in some countries that was as high as 40% or 50%. So it’s safe to say that as much as 30% of the web relies in some or other way on Flash.

  • Mozilla: We’re not ‘on board’ with Google’s plugin spice

    Mozilla says it has “no official position” on NPAPI Pepper, the revamped browser plug-in API developed by Google for use with Native Client, a plug-in that runs native code inside its Chrome browser.

• SaaS

  • Red Hat says everybody gets a cloud

    At its Boston developer summit Red Hat is pushing the theme that every company can have its own cloud with the first in a line of Cloud Foundation tools.

• Programming

  • Take more note when Eclipse code drops on schedule

    Five years into my tenure on this beat and I still read, in comments, snark about open source programmers being amateurs, coding in their parents’ basements, in their pajamas.

    This was always a false image. Not that I have anything against a good parent’s basement, or a nice comfortable pair of jammies. And when open source was being born, at the bottom of the dot-bomb, there was high unemployment in the code-o-sphere.

    But the coders and the coding were always professional. There have always been a lot of people in open source who knew how to make the coding train run on time.

• Standards/Consortia

  • [Charles-H. Schulz] Joining the OASIS Consortium’s Board of Directors

Leftovers

• Security/Aggression

  • Peace campaigner, 85, classified by police as ‘domestic extremist’

    For John Catt, protest has never been about chaining himself to a railing or blocking a road in an act of civil disobedience. The 85-year-old peace campaigner’s far milder form of dissent typically involves turning up at a demonstration with his daughter, Linda, taking out his sketch pad and drawing the scene.

  • Senator Moves To Form Federal “Cyber-Emergency” Agency

    The President would gain the power to unilaterally declare a national cyber-emergency and order operators of “critical infrastructure” to immediately implement “response plans” as provided for by the act. Those who fail to do so would be subject to fines, while those who comply would be protected from civil liability for any damages they might cause in doing so — government speak for “you can break people’s stuff and they’re just out of luck.”

  • FBI Failed To Break Encryption of Hard Drives

• Environment

  • Ushahidi tracks the Gulf Oil Spill: Open Source Crowdsourcing at Work

    Together, crowdsourcing and open source are a potent combination especially during possible emergencies. In this case, the Ushahidi based Oil Crisis Map has helped share data across communities and has openly presented the magnitude of the oil spill. Also, it has enabled people on the ground to actively participate in solving this crisis using current and accurate information.

    Ushahidi (Swahili for “testimony”) itself emerged from another emergency – monitoring a disputed Kenyan election in 2007 with a mash-up of eyewitness reports onto a Google map. Today Ushahidi has developers from Kenya (where it started), Ghana, South Africa, Malawi, Netherlands and the US. Ushahidi was also used in Project Vote Report India for India’s 2009 general elections to track election irregularities.

• Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

  • Reporters Without Borders unveils first-ever “Anti-Censorship Shelter”

    Reporters Without Borders today launched the world’s first “Anti-Censorship Shelter” in Paris for use by foreign journalists, bloggers and dissidents who are refugees or just passing through as a place where they can learn how to circumvent Internet censorship, protect their electronic communications and maintain their anonymity online.

• Copyrights

  • Creative Commons Responds to ASCAP

    Yesterday, we reported that ASCAP said that organizations like Creative Commons were undermining their copyrights. Today, we’ve received an official response from Creative Commons with regards to the letter writing campaign.

    In the same article, we discussed how Creative Commons was, contrary to what ASCAP said, not about undermining anyone elses copyrighted material, but rather, giving artists an option that was not the Public Domain (no rights reserved) nor Copyright (all rights reserved).

    Eric Steuer, a Creative Commons spokesperson, thanked ZeroPaid for the earlier posting as being well-thought out and was happy to respond to ASCAPs letter