• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Desktop

• Dell to Continue to Sell Ubuntu Systems, Just Not on Its UK Website

  But, while ‘Dell no longer sells Ubuntu laptops’ makes for a great headline, it’s not exactly true. In fact, Dell is expanding its offering with the first desktop system available for quite a while and has started shipping systems with Ubuntu 10.04. However, it has stopped selling Ubuntu machines in its UK online shop.

Google

• What is the Chromium Project?

  Most people know what Google Chrome is and some have already started using the web browser. Yet, few are aware of the fact that the Google team is working on an operational system (OS) that will be part of the open-source project.

  The Chromium Project is the open-source project behind the OS and the browser.

Applications

• Proprietary

  • ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise: Easier Management for KVM and Xen

    The Convirture Corporation is proud to announced today, July 28th, the Enterprise edition of the open source ConVirt software. With features such as high-availability, automation and private could management on board, ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise edition makes managing open source hypervisors, like KVM and Xen, a lot easier.

• Instructionals

  • Bash Script for file increment logic

  • Using ALSA to Control Linux Audio

Desktop Environments

• GNOME Desktop

  • GNOME 3.0 release delayed by six months

    The GNOME project has been under pressure to come out with a snazzy, new look after, KDE, the other commonly used DE for Linux, underwent a massive transformation a few years ago.

Distributions

• New Releases

  • Clonezilla Live updates underlying OS

    Clonezilla developer Steven Shiau has announced the release of version 1.2.5-35 of Clonezilla Live. Clonezilla is an open source clone system (OCS) with features similar to Symantec Ghost Corporate Edition and Partimage, and is designed for hard disk partitioning and cloning.

  • Clonezilla Live 1.2.5-35 Comes with Linux Kernel 2.6.32-17

• Debian Family

  • Canonical/Ubuntu

    • System76 Continues Linnux Netbook Line With Second-Gen Starling

      A little gem from the System76 has just been released as the second generation Starling netbook. As far as specs go, System76 keeps on with the norm. They have the Atom, the 10″ screen size and the almost typical memory and storage size. However, they do have something that sets them apart. They offer their products — netbooks, laptops, desktops, et al — with appropriate versions of Ubuntu Linux pre-installed.

Devices/Embedded

• Open source installer offered for Plug Computer

  Marvell announced the availability of an open source installer, simplifying software deployment on its Linux-based Plug Computer reference design. The Easy Plug Computer Installer (EPI) is the first wizard-based installation tool for Marvell’s Plug Computer, which is being supported by more than 20,000 developers worldwide, says Marvell.

• Phones

  • Android

    • Lumigon to Launch Android Handset In Time For Halloween

      Danish company Lumigon has announced that they’ll be launching their first Android handset this October. The handset, known as the T1, will be launching on October 20th, with pre-orders beginning on September 20th. The T1 will sport a 480 x 320 resolution 3.2-inch capacitive touchscreen, a Freescale 1Ghz i.MX51 processor, a 5MP camera with flash and some 720p video output goodness thrown in. WiFi, A-GPS, accelerometer, and Bluetooth are also included.

    • 10 years on: free software wins, but you have nowhere to install it

      I am typing this as I am finally connected in shell to my Android phone. The prompt reminds me that it’s based on the Linux kernel (it’s free), the Dalvik virtual machine (it’s free), and free libraries. Millions of Android devices are shipped every day, each one is a Linux system. Today, it’s phone. Soon, it will be tablets: Android 3.0 (coming out at the end of the year) will finally be very suitable for tablets. Apple alone will have to face fierce competition on pretty much every front. Microsoft… who? They are more irrelevant every day. I should be happy, right? Well, sort of. Looking back at how long it took me to get this shell prompt makes me worried. Very worried. We are heading towards a world where we no longer own the hardware we buy — and there is no point in having free software if you can’t own your hardware.

    • How To Be An Android Power User

      Android hardware offers some of the most powerful smartphones we’ve ever seen. The Android Market app store is growing strong, and the Android user base is growing just as fast. Android phones are flying off the shelves faster than they can be created, so we think it’s about time we put together a guide for the Android power user. On the following pages, we’ll walk you through what you need to know about Google’s mobile OS and how to make the most out of it.

• Tablets

  • 35 Dollar Indian Pad? Go Indians, Go!

    By now you probably have heard about the “pad” computer designed in India that is being touted as costing thirty-five U.S. Dollars to manufacture. While there is very little in the way of technical details about it, some information has been published that says it consists of:

    * An ARM9 Architecture Processor from Freescale (I.MX233): 5 USD

    * Memory: 3 USD

    * WiFi b/g: 4 USD

    * Other “discrete” components: 3 USD

    * Battery: 5 USD

    * 7” 800×480 resistive touch screen: 15 USD

    for a total bill of materials: 35 USD, and rumors that in the future this will drop to 20 USD and even 10 USD. The system is “Linux based”, but does not say if it is based on Android, ChromeOS or some other Linux-based distribution. There is also no mention of persistent storage other than the fact it has a USB connection that could be used for flash.

    As other reporters and blogs have pointed out, there is no mention of the PCB for the motherboard (assuming it has one), nor the assembly, packaging, transportation, testing, returns, etc. The reports run hot and cold about how much this system will really cost, whether it will have enough power in the system to be useful, whether it will ever really be produced, whether it is “rugged enough”. There was no mention of the operating temperatures of the unit. There are a lot of very hot places in India, and of course the system has no fan. There were also lots of comparisons with the OLPC, which I feel are unfair since the OLPC was solving slightly different problems, and was a leader in the effort.

Shift to Open Source Could Save Trillions, Govt Claims

A government campaign to migrate to open source software instead of paying for proprietary products could save the state as much as Rp 3.6 trillion ($400 million), the State Ministry for Research and Technology said on Wednesday.

The campaign, introduced in 2004, called “Indonesia, Go Open Source,” was fueled in part by the obligatory use of legal software, as defined in the 2002 Law on Intellectual Property Rights.

Your World Of Text Goes Open Source

Popular “write-what-you-want-because-our-whole-site-is-a-canvas” website Your World of Text yesterday announced that it was doing what many copy-cats would hope it would: release the source code.

Will Open Source Boost SAP?

I reported in “The SAP Foundation” that open source software could chew into some SAP licensing and services revenue. I knew that Linux Journal had reported in June 2010 that SAP “has invested in many of the top open source companies, through its SAP Ventures arm. Well-known names it has backed include Alfresco, GroundWork, Intalio, JasperSoft and Zend; earlier investments include MySQL and even Red Hat.” Several years ago, a client alerted me to SAP’s strong interest in Eclipse. Since that conversation, SAP has become more active in the Eclipse Foundation as a Strategic Developer.

OSCON/Events

• OSCON returns to Portland, seeks civic contributions from developers

  This week, Portland is once again at the center of open source technology.

  More than 3,000 software developers from around the globe have descended on the Oregon Convention Center for the O’Reilly Open Source Convention — OSCON — one of the largest gatherings of its kind. It’s also among Portland’s biggest national conferences.

• New Languages, and Why We Need Them

  Creators of two dozen new programming languages–some designed to enable powerful new Web applications and mobile devices–presented their work last week in Portland, OR. The reason for the gathering was the first Emerging Languages Camp at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention.

Education

• SUNY Delhi Hosts Third Annual Technology and Higher Education Conference

  This year’s theme, “Technology during an Economic Crisis, The Benefits of Open Sourcing,” looks at how higher education institutions can save money and extend services by implementing open-source software solutions and other initiatives.

Business

• Semi-Open Source

  • Don’t Be Too Quick to Dismiss Open Core

    I have some concerns about how these companies will handle open source contributions to the free “core” software if the contribution gets too close to the functionality offered in the commercial add-ons. Under open source, traditionally all contributions should be accepted (or not) based on technical merit or the scope of the software.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• Funding Plea

  So the Gnash team is broke, and has been for most of a year. This has forced many, but not all of the Gnash developers to find paying work, and mostly stop working on Gnash. The few of us left focused on Gnash like to eat and pay bills.

Project Releases

• Sporadic NAEV Newsletter Vol. 1

  As the changelog indicates, we’ve been working on two of the major features of 0.5.0. Namely, the all-famous big systems and electronic warfare. Currently development is being done off of master to keep that “playable” while we develop separately. There are two branches you can check out:

  bigsys (Has big systems – Last updated in May.)
  ewarfare (Has big systems and electronic warfare – Cutting edge.)

Licensing

• Urbi SDK 2.1 Is Now Completely Open Source

  Gostai, a company that specializes in robotics software has announced that it is opening up its Urbi operating system. Urbi is a robotics operating system used by a number of very well-known, commercial robots. The company already shared the component architecture and the libraries under an open-source license and will now do the same for the Urbi kernel. Urbi is being released under an Affero GNU GPL v3 license.

Openness/Sharing

• A Novel Approach: Free Books For Donations

  The Kindle, the iPad and e-books are all part of a revolution that’s shaking up the publishing business. The big question is how to ensure the book industry can remain profitable?

  There’s at least one publisher, however, that doesn’t care about profits. For the past two years, the Concord Free Press, has been publishing books and giving them away for free.

  Writer Stona Fitch, the founder of the press, shows a reporter around the headquarters in Concord, Mass., just west of Boston. The tour takes less than a minute: It consists of two tables in an office.

• Open Data

  • Politician Profiles: Senator Kate Lundy

    Senator Kate Lundy has become known in the technology community as a fierce advocate of government engagement and Gov 2.0, pushing for support of many of the recommendations made last year by the Government 2.0 Taskforce, and pre-empting the declaration of open government by Finance minister, Lindsay Tanner. Lundy has also been involved in many of the government’s committees into technology, including the recent Senate select committee on the National Broadband Network.

Programming

• GitHub Hits One Million Hosted Projects

  GitHub, the source code hosting and collaboration service, has hit a major milestone tonight: the site is now hosting one million projects, confirmed Scott Chacon, VP of Research and Development at GitHub. Approximately 60 percent of these projects are full repositories – that is, shared folders with code spread across multiple files – while the remaining 40 percent are “gists”, or short code snippets contained in a single file, like this one, for example.

• Sourceforge invites corporations to the new forge

  Sourceforge has been rewritten, from the ground up, with improvements across-the-board from the Wiki to issue tracking, from code management to discussion.

  But that’s not all. Sourceforge is making a renewed play for the corporate market, and has its first big win in Adobe, which has moved its open source development to Open@Adobe.

Standards/Consortia

• The Web has never been as exciting!

  In my opinion, combining CSS3, new APIs (including WebGL) and HTML5 is enabling the Web as a development platform to make a huge leap forward. I have worked with the amazing Paul Rouget in order to have a video of his demos in order to share my excitement.

Guest Post: Here’s Why Google’s Paywall Will Work (And The Times’ Will Fail)

The search giant will apparently launch “an integrated payment system” allowing users to buy news content with just “one click”. Newspass would allow publishers to use a single infrastructure for Web, mobile and tablet computers to monetise their content.

Re-inventing Publishing for the Digital Age

Which means that once I – or anyone – has bought a copy of the PDF, it can be freely shared, subject to those conditions. Which means that it *will* be available online, sooner or later (assuming it’s worth reading, and hence sharing), and that all the search engines will find it. So why slow down that process of discoverability by forcing someone to buy one copy? Is it really worth losing all that free marketing and visibility in the intervening days or weeks for the sake of £4.95?

Security/Aggression

• DfT ‘unwittingly’ bigged-up speed camera benefits

  The Department for Transport (DfT) has “unwittingly” misled the public over the benefits of speed cameras for the last four years.

Environment

• Russian subs dive deep for new energy sources

  Russia has some of the largest energy reserves in the world, but it keeps searching for new sources – even if it means going underwater.

  Two Russian deep-water submersibles have once again taken a dive in Lake Baikal, to study recently found fields of gas hydrates, a possible fuel of the future.

• Study: Solar power is cheaper than nuclear

  The Holy Grail of the solar industry — reaching grid parity — may no longer be a distant dream. Solar may have already reached that point, at least when compared to nuclear power, according to a new study by two researchers at Duke University.

Finance

• Two Goldman Lawsuits on Abacus Placed on Hold

  A New York judge put two shareholder lawsuits against executives and directors of Goldman Sachs Group Inc on hold until progress is made on 16 other lawsuits related to a controversial debt transaction involving the Wall Street bank.

  The lawsuits, brought in state Supreme Court by Robert Rosinek and Morton Spiegel, accuse Goldman officials, including Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein, of breaching their fiduciary duties by letting the bank enter transactions involving risky collateralized debt obligations tied to subprime mortgages.

• Goldman Sachs Creates Derivatives Clearing Unit

  Derivatives are private bets between two parties on how the value of assets like crops or measures like interest rates will change in the future. The market is dominated by about 20 large banks worldwide.

• Goldman Sachs still under a microscope

  A federal commission investigating the causes of the financial crisis has been among the most visible challengers, suggesting it could hire outside accountants to audit the data Goldman keeps on its derivatives businesses.

• Sorkin: Some Backup for Goldman on A.I.G.

  New documents released show the bank living up to its reputation as the smart set, eliminating much of its its exposure to the giant insurer through a combination of collateral calls and hedges made through other institutions.

• Banks Charge States Millions in Debt Binge to Fix Subprime Bust

  Bank of America Corp., owner of the most-active subprime lender, Countrywide Financial Corp., earned $2.9 million in interest and fees for a line of credit Arizona used through June to balance a budget undermined by the housing- market collapse.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Wetlands Front Group Funded By Big Oil Wants To Ensure Taxpayers Foot The Bill For BP’s Gulf Destruction

  A group of oil companies including BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, Citgo, Chevron and other polluters are using a front group called “America’s WETLAND Foundation” and a Louisiana women’s group called Women of the Storm to spread the message that U.S. taxpayers should pay for the damage caused by BP to Gulf Coast wetlands, and that the reckless offshore oil industry should continue drilling for the “wholesale sustainability” of the region.

  Using the age-old PR trick of featuring celebrity messengers to attract public attention, America’s Wetland Foundation is spreading a petition accompanied by a video starring Sandra Bullock, Dave Matthews, Lenny Kravitz, Emeril Lagassi, John Goodman, Harry Shearer, Peyton and Eli Manning, Drew Brees and others.

• ID card astroturf – No2ID beats the truth out of IPS

  A cackling Phil Booth, No2ID National Coordinator, writes to tell us that six months after he first pestered the Identity & Passport Service about its quotes from ID card-toting happy campers in its publicity material, it has confessed – um yes, all but one of those quoted worked for the government.

  “We can confirm that eight of the nine people quoted on the website at the time either worked for the Identity and Passport Service (IPS), the Home Office or another government department or agency”, said IPS in an FOIA response (pdf) yesterday, just a week after Phil requested an IPS internal review of its failure to provide a substantive response to his request dated 3 March.

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• Four Journalists Kidnapped in Mexico

  Four reporters, including two from Televisa, Mexico’s most powerful television network, have apparently been held since Monday by drug traffickers unhappy with coverage of last week’s arrest of a prison director who allegedly armed prisoners, provided them with cars and then allowed them to leave the penitentiary to commit mass murders.

• FTC Leaning Toward Do-Not-Track List for Online Ads

  As it prepares a major report with guidelines for protecting consumer privacy online, the Federal Trade Commission is mulling a simple mechanism that would allow users to opt out of behavioral tracking across the Web, the head of the agency told a Senate panel on Tuesday.

• WikiLeaks and a failure of transparency

  In some cases, such opacity is by mistake. But in WikiLeaks’ case, it is by design. Just two weeks before Afghan War Diary was released, Wired published an enterprising story on WikiLeaks’ finances. The reporter, Kim Zetter, tracked down a vice president of the Berlin-based Wau Holland Foundation, which apparently handles most contributions to WikiLeaks’ contributions. The story provided some idea as to the scale of the WikiLeaks budget — the group needs about $200,000 a year for basic operations — but the vice president offered only a promise of more disclosure next month. And from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange? No comment.

  I understand the need to protect whistleblowers and other sources. But when it comes to the group’s finances, can’t they cut out all the James Bond stuff? I don’t need names and addresses of donors, but can’t we have a little more transparency and accountability?

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

• Just two Chinese ISPs serve 20% of world broadband users

  If you need a reminder of just how big China is—and just how important the Internet has become there—consider this stat: between them, two Chinese ISPs serve 20 percent of all broadband subscribers in the entire world.

  Telegeography has updated its world Internet service provider database and finds that the sheer scale of China dwarfs just about everyone else. China Telecom is the largest ISP in the world, with 55 million subscibers. Second is China Unicom, with just over 40 million.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • US: Copyright of Sound Recordings of World War I Music

    There is good and bad news. The good news is that since WWI occurred before 1923, sheet music from that period would be in the public domain in the U.S.

    The bad news is that no sound recording made before 1972 has federal copyright protection. They are instead protected by state common law copyrights, and will not enter the public domain until in most cases 1 January 2049, regardless of when they were recorded. (I have a section on sound recording copyrights in the chart at http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm ). Note that state protection is afforded even to European recordings, most of which enter the public domain in their home country after 50 years.

  • ACTA

    • Jailbreaking Decision Is Temporary Relief

      Second, global trade. US legal norms for technology businesses for patents and copyrights may still be forming (for patents they are still “only” the result of case law), but that hasn’t stopped the US Trade Representative (USTR) and US trade missions globally from treating them as if they were handed down on stone tablets. They have been using conformance with “US norms” as a trading card in their rough games of political poker with various world governments. You know the sort of thing. “Nice export industry you have there for your agricultural produce. It would be a shame if anything happened to it. You can make sure it doesn’t if you legislate to prevent your citizens harming our noble media industries.” Kipling wrote about it eloquently, but people are still paying the USTR-geld.

      Which is probably the intent of the copyright- and patent-dependent companies sponsoring the action anonymously through their trade associations. If they can get foreign governments to make hard rules where they can only persuade their own governments to make soft rules, the battle is all but won for them. They can use “international harmonisation” as the justification to get the draconian rules reinstated. That seems to be the reason ACTA has been given so much endorsement by the USA, as well as why they have been so keen on veiling its proceedings in secrecy. It’s not just USTR either – the equivalent functions in the European Commission seem to be working just as hard against their citizens’ interests.

    • Civil Society Groups Warn EU On ACTA

      An international set of civil society groups today sent a letter to the European Union trade commissioner outlining concerns that the latest, leaked, version of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement under negotiation will introduce “new and unbalanced intellectual property rules” which “would condone overzealous and erroneous enforcement of intellectual property for medicines and thereby pose a danger to public health, while doing little to protect consumers from unsafe products.” O

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Missile defense contractor taps Sabalcore Computing for design deal

ASI officials said that having real-time access to Sabalcore’s Linux-based network is cost-saving and essential to its work, especially its use of a fluid-dynamics calculation program in designing the aerospike component.

Desktop

• The PC Is Not Dead; Long Live PCs

  Looking at some of the sources of the “PC is dead” mantra, it is usually a new technology that inspires the prediction:

  * Internet in 1994
  * Thin Clients in 1996
  * Smart phone in 2002
  * Virtualization in 2005
  * Cloud in 2007
  * Netbook in 2008
  * Slate in 2010

• The Dell Dance

  Is Dell a global corporation with the corporate knowledge that GNU/Linux does well in and outside the USA? Does Dell actually know how to sell stuff? Imagine a car dealer with “Keep Out” signs all around the lot. Image a fish monger with huge signs saying “Our fish stink!”. That’s what Dell is doing with Ubuntu and GNU/Linux.

Server

• VMI Enters Into LOI to Sell SaaS Technology to Applied Voice and Speech

  Company officials said that the UCN250 is a highly scalable and reliable Linux and SIP-based SaaS platform that will be integrated intoAVST’s ( News – Alert) unified communications (UC) solution portfolio to accelerate AVST’s ability to address the evolving communications requirements of current and future AVST customers.

• IBM’s Next-Gen ‘System of Systems’ Mainframe

  This isn’t the first time IBM has delivered a wholly realized hybrid system. In 2006, the company announced the integration of its System i and BladeCenter servers, which allowed hardware, OSs and applications (including Windows) to be commonly managed via the System i platform. That same year, IBM and the Los Alamos Lab announced Roadrunner, a supercomputer utilizing both AMD (NYSE: AMD) Opteron and IBM Cell BE microprocessors, and that became (in 2008) the first system to break the petaflop sustained performance barrier.

Events

• Australian Linux conference issues call for papers

  Organisers of the 11th Australian national Linux conference have invited those who wish to present papers at the January 2011 event to submit their proposals by August 7.

• Linux Poll: Six Questions to Reveal Biggest Success and Failures

  As the conference focused on all matters Linux, LinuxCon brings attention to the most cutting-edge Linux advancements taking place today and the work being done to take them into the future. LinuxCon is the pinnacle for understanding what is happening with Linux at the developer, IT management and business levels of every enterprise.

  Since LinuxCon debuted in September 2009, a lot has happened in the Linux and open source space. Android is expected to outship iPhone; MeeGo is being built to power a whole new generation of computing devices; HP acquired Palm and its WebOS. And, that’s just in the mobile computing space! Linux is powering the largest cloud providers in the world, and it’s the foundation for most IT managers’ virtualization strategies. Linux is also the underlying technology for nearly every major web-based company – Facebook, Google and more.

Google

• Chrome dev too stable? Try new Chrome Canary

  Google later this year plans to release a browser-based operating system called Chrome OS. Although it runs Linux under the hood, the applications run within the browser, one incarnation of the concept known as cloud computing.

• OpenXcell Now to Offer Professionals for Android Application Development

  It was not long before that Google introduced Android operating system to work on Linux kernel and then it enhanced itself with Android Inventor that helped it to get programmed easily for small applications. While normal people can only develop small applications like creating tunes, images etc. with the help of Android operating system, therefore OpenXcell is now offering a helping hand to assist people with the creation of complex business applications.

• Google Makes Custom Web Typography Ridiculously Easy

  Back in May, Google rolled out its Font Directory and the Google Fonts API. The idea was that these tools would make it simpler for designers and devs to embed a wider range of fonts in their sites and applications.

• Lantronix Furthers Its Commitment to Linux

• Vision Solutions CEO on Double-Take: ‘Virtualization is exciting’ for us

  Arnold:: We don’t have a Linux product today in the IBM world, and Linux is one of the fastest growing segments. We can take Linux from the Intel base at Double-Take and bring it to our customer base in Power systems. On the other side, we see many companies with Power systems with lots of Intel and this allows us to talk to customers we haven’t spoken to before. For customers that have integrated these technologies in their shops, we can bring them products nobody else has today.”

Kernel Space

• Kernel Summit 2010 planning process begins

• Graphics Stack

  • AMD Ups The Workstation Ante With A New FirePro Driver

    Whether you are an owner of an ATI FirePro V3800 that retails for just over $100 USD, the proud owner of an ATI FirePro V8800 that goes for over $1,300 USD, or any of the FirePro products in-between, you will want to update your graphics driver when AMD puts out their next stable software update. Back in March AMD put out an amazing FirePro Linux driver that increased the performance of their workstation graphics cards already on the market (and the other Evergreen-based workstation cards that entered the market soon after) by an astonishing amount. Our independent tests of this proprietary Linux driver update found that the performance in some workstation applications had increased by up to 59% by simply installing this updated driver while other OpenGL tests had just improved rather modestly with 20%+ gains. AMD though is preparing to release another driver update for Microsoft Windows and Linux that ups their workstation graphics performance even more! We have run some tests of this new beta driver against their older driver with both their low-end and ultra-high-end FirePro products and have found the improvements again to be astonishing.

  • The Gallium3D R600 Driver Now Has Texture Support

  • Patches to run Wayland on Radeon graphics card

  • ATI releases Catalyst 10.7 drivers

Applications

• Ubuntu tweak 0.5.5 released with Purge PPA and installation instructions inside

• Irssi – A Really Good Terminal Based IRC Client For Linux

  The only IRC client I ever used was XChat. I decided to try something different and Irssi client was a great find. Irssi is a terminal based IRC client for Unix systems and is probably the best I have used till now.

• Sunbird: Your Calendar, Your Way

  Computerized calendars are all about convenience. Your calendar app — perhaps more than any other type of software — has to work the way you need it. Mozilla’s Sunbird gives you customization options for the interface as well as a rich set of under-the-hood controls for setting up where, how and when the application gets its information.

• Instructionals

  • Are You Expecting? Your Boss Should Know

  • Dock any application in the notification area with AllTray

  • Author interview: UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook

• Wine/Emulators

  • CodeWeavers Releases CrossOver 9.1 and CrossOver Games 9.1 for Mac and Linux

    On the heels of the highly-anticipated release of Wine 1.2, CodeWeavers, Inc. today announced the simultaneous release of CrossOver 9.1 and CrossOver Games 9.1 for both Mac and Linux.

  • Emulating an Amiga in Linux

    The Amiga was one of the most powerful PC’s of it’s time, easily trumping the emerging IBM PC’s in the 80′s. You can relive this classic PC on your Linux desktop thanks to a number of emulators that are available.

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • Next generation OpenGL compositing in 4.6

    In this blog post I want to give an overview on what I am planning and working on for KWin in KDE SC 4.6. The big topic for 4.6 is performance – in 4.5 we introduced the blur effect and our designers want to extend the usage of blur to all windows. This is currently not yet recommendable (yes there are widget styles on kde-look which offer this function, but KWin is not ready for it!), so we have to work on it.

    [...]

    And what next? We still have many things to improve. Especially window rendering has to be changed to cache the geometries (when it makes sense) and the clip regions. The clip regions are one of the reasons why I want to switch to Shaders (other reasons are Nuno’s wishes for effects – if you want to work on awesome effects get in touch with one of us). The API still needs some more cleanup and our compositing stack has to be split into parts for GLX and EGL. Nevertheless I think the API is already in a state where I think of daring to compile KWin effect library this weekend on Maemo to see what breaks (effects would not yet compile).

  • OpenGL 4.1 Spec Finalized

    The Khronos Group announced that finalizing the OpenGL 4.1 specifications had been completed and that its release would be immediate. The new API specification is fully backwards compatible and adds several new features including 64-bit floating-point component shader inputs for higher geometric precision and the ability to query and load binary for a shader program objects.

  • OpenGL 4.1: 3D interface for Mac OS X and Linux

• GNOME Desktop

  • GNOME Census

    Today at GUADEC I presented the results (Slides are now on slideshare) of the GNOME Census, a project we have been working on for a while. For as long as I have been involved in GNOME, press, analysts, potential partners and advisory board members have been asking us: How big is GNOME? How many paid developers are there? Who writes all this software, and why?

    [...]

    I see this information being useful for companies interested in using the GNOME platform for their products, companies seeking custom application development, potential large-scale customers of desktop Linux or customers buying high-level support who want to know who employs more module maintainers or committers to the project.

Distributions

• New Releases

  • Softpedia Linux Weekly, Issue 107

    Summary:
    · First Look: Jolicloud 1.0
    · Announced Distro: Tiny Core Linux 3.0
    · Announced Distro: Linux Mint 9 Xfce RC
    · Announced Distro: ClearOS Enterprise 5.2
    · Announced Distro: eBox Platform 1.5

    [...]

• Red Hat Family

  • Fedora

    • Fedora 13: what you need to know

      Corporate backing and a large supportive community – almost all Linux distributions can boast of at least one half of that.

      Fedora, since its inception in late 2003 as Red Hat’s community distribution, has nurtured around itself a devoted community. It has achieved this after providing, release after release, an innovative and complete distribution that demands attention and respect.

• Debian Family

  • Canonical/Ubuntu

    • The Ubuntu Software Management- A little clarification

      One of the greatest strengths of Linux over other OS is the centralized software and update management tools that come built in. This means that whenever there is an update to any of the packages or softwares you have installed, you are sure to not miss it. This alone goes a long way to improve the security of a Linux system.

Devices/Embedded

• Exacq Introduces Low-Cost, 8 and 16 Input exacqVision EL-S Hybrid NVR Line

  Using embedded Linux on a solid-state drive ensures that the unit will be available to users in the event of a hard drive failure.

• Phones/Mobile

  • Nokia/MeeGo

    • MeeGo and Intel Atom to power next-gen car stereos

      Windows-based in-car entertainment systems give us the heebie-jeebies — Blue Screen of Death might be rather too literal — so we’re delighted to see that a Linux operating system, backed by Intel Atom chips, could soon get a crack at the automotive action. Genivi, a car-industry alliance including BMW, Intel and Nokia, has chosen the MeeGo Linux OS and — by proxy — Intel Atom CPUs as the basis for its forthcoming In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) system.

    • MeeGo heading for your BMW

    • The Competition: MeeGo [OSCON2010]

      Development of MeeGo, the operating system that’s the result of the marriage of Intel’s Moblin and Nokia’s Maemo platforms, is pushing ahead full steam. Being that its a Linux based open source project, I’ve been able to catch a few presentations and even handle some preproduction hardware and software here at OSCON. It’s been relegated to netbooks so far in its short time on the market, but its set to hit handsets in October of this year. It’s more similar to Android in terms of how it’ll be distributed (and it’ll likely be just as open), but there are similarities to webOS in terms of what developers can do with the platform.

  • Android

    • Sales of Android soar 350% in first three months of 2010

      Sales of Google’s Android-based phones have sky-rocketed in the UK over the past three months according to new figures.

      Research published by German-based GfK Retail and Technology has revealed that Android operated phones now cover a 13 per cent share of the UK’s smartphone contract sales compared with a mere three per cent at the start of the year.

    • Acer launches a high end Android smartphone

      The Acer Stream is destined for demanding users with a bob or two to spare but just misses out on the Froyo release of Google’s Linux based OS, settling for Android 2.1 instead.

• Tablets

  • $35 Computer Tablet to Feature Solar Design

    Still considered a novelty as it’s still in its first-version infancy, the iPad may have a new competitor on the market. A new Linux operating system-based tablet was introduced in India as one of the “world’s cheapest” innovations.

  • Afterthought: Is a $35 Tablet Even Feasible?

    Other than broad capabilities and vague details about this $35 mystery Indian tablet, little is known about the endeavor. R&D officials have yet to release processing power or memory capacity, leaving many people speculating this is some sort of media stunt to gain press for the advancement of Indian technology or to aid political figures along in the polls.

  • KMart stocks a $150 Android tablet

    Cheap Android tablets are officially starting to show up in the US. While we’re still waiting for higher end devices like the Dell Streak to go on sale, dirt cheap tablets running Google Android have been hitting the streets in China and other Asian countries for the past few months. Some of these cheap tablets are even available in the US thanks to companies that import goods from overseas. But now it looks like you may not even have to resort to ordering from obscure retailers to get your budget Android fix. Because Kmart is selling an Android tablet for $149.99.

  • $149 Android Tablet coming to……K-Mart?

  • iPad gets odd rival in $150 Android tablet at Kmart

  • Tablets

    This second half of 2010 should be quite hot for such devices. The manufacturer, Augen, makes all kinds of consumer gadgets and is not a “partner” of M$ and so in uninhibited by taxes and exclusive dealing with M$. Their retail partners may be uninhibited too. KMART sells products from M$, too, but may not have gotten the message. Interestingly Augen and KMART push Android and not ARM. Perhaps it is the year of Android, too.

Lockheed Martin goes open source, people freak out.

Wait, what? Open source advocates have, for years, been trying to encourage more code to come out from behind corporate skirts. Where companies can build business models around governing and supporting open source projects, we want them to take the plunge. If more code is open, that makes everyone smarter. And that, my friends, is exactly what Lockheed Martin did today. Someone who probably never contributed code in their lives just gave the community a project they’ve been working on for months, or even years. I think that’s amazing. In return, this brave developer gets painted as a nefarious secret agent out to steal our thoughts and bug our laptops. Or whatever.

Databases

• Oracle shuts down open source test servers

  Oracle has shut down servers Sun Microsystems was contributing to the build farm for open source database software, PostgreSQL, forcing enthusiasts to scramble to find new hosts to test updates to their software on the Solaris operating system.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• Proprietary software puts pacemaker users at risk

  “Our intention is to demonstrate that auditable medical device software would mitigate the privacy and security risks in IMDs by reducing the occurrence of source code bugs and the potential for malicious device hacking in the long-term,” the report states. “Although there is no way to eliminate software vulnerabilities entirely, this paper demonstrates that free and open source medical device software would improve the safety of patients with IMDs, increase the accountability of device manufacturers, and address some of the legal and regulatory constraints of the current regime.”

Openness/Sharing

• Creating online community the open source way

  There really are no right and wrong answers to the open source way, but we’re trying lots of things. It’s important to remember that the principles of the open source way should be used as guidelines when making decisions. But you should always be as transparent as possible with your community.

Finance

• Goldman reveals where bailout cash went

  Goldman Sachs sent $4.3 billion in federal tax money to 32 entities, including many overseas banks, hedge funds and pensions, according to information made public Friday night.

  Goldman Sachs disclosed the list of companies to the Senate Finance Committee after a threat of subpoena from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Ia.

  Asked the significance of the list, Grassley said, “I hope it’s as simple as taxpayers deserve to know what happened to their money.”

  He added, “We thought originally we were bailing out AIG. Then later on … we learned that the money flowed through AIG to a few big banks, and now we know that the money went from these few big banks to dozens of financial institutions all around the world.”

  Grassley said he was reserving judgment on the appropriateness of U.S. taxpayer money ending up overseas until he learns more about the 32 entities.