09.15.10

Links 15/9/2010: Linux Mint Coverage, Best Buy Uses Drupal

Posted in News Roundup at 7:27 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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

GNU/Linux

The Bully In The Linux Schoolyard

There are plenty of people who have offered explanations for why Linux thrives anonymously on servers and as Android on smartphones but lags behind on the desktop. Though reasons abound, at least one significant one is a self-inflicted wound: the Terminal Bully.

The Terminal Bully is the poster who refuses to offer a respectful and understandable solution to a genuine problem some newcomer has posted on a forum, and instead tries to show off their own knowledge by offering a lengthy and sometimes risky set of commands that only confuse anyone who is not yet familiar with Linux.
Audiocasts/Shows
- LB – Episode 61 – Whadya Talkin About Wheezy by Linux Basement
Kernel Space
- Graphics Stack
  - What Is The Wayland Display Server & Its Protocol?
    
    While Kristian Høgsberg is now likely on his way to Toulouse, France for the 2010 X Developers’ Summit, over the past day he has been working on some minor changes to the Wayland Display Server that he has now been working on for a while to leverage the latest Linux graphics technologies like kernel mode-setting and is something we initially reported on back in 2008 when it began.
Applications
- 5 Great Linux Tools You Should Know About
- Text editor frenzy
  
  Know about vim? emacs? nano? Bah. You have only scratched the surface.
- Videoporama: Create Cool Video Slideshows From Your Pictures [Windows, Linux]
  
  Videoporama (available for Windows and Linux) is an application you can use to create videos (or slideshows – call it what you like) from images.
- Preview: GIMP 2.8
  
  GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a powerful and versatile graphics manipulation application that is available for many different OS. GIMP is a standard in Linux, usually part of the standard image on most desktop distros. It is clearly one of the most popular applications in the Linux application catalog, mostly down to its outstanding quality, power and flexibility.
  
  [...]
  
  Single Window Mode. An old favorite request from the user community.
- Proprietary
  - What’s up ? Flash Player “Square”
    
    What’s next ? You guys may ask. It’s been a while since I wanted to talk about this, but there it is, the Flash Player “Square” preview has been posted this morning.
    
    The drops we posted today includes :
    
    - 64-bit releases for all platforms (Linux, MacOS and Windows).
    - Enchanced support for IE9 (leveraging the GPU through Direct3D9 for compositing)
- Instructionals/Technical
- Games
  - HoN Trial Is Now Open For Everyone !
    
    I was hoping it would take longer so my last “contest”/giveaway will make sense – but now everyone can register a trial account and play 10 matches.
Desktop Environments
- K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)
  - Sabayon KDE 4.5.x ?
    
    Applications seem to be working fine and snappy. My previews are even working with dolphin file manager.
  - KDE Science: Thomas Friedrichsmeier on RKWard, Toolkits and the KDE Platform
    
    As reported a few months ago, KDE software has plenty of use among scientists, who may use Plasma workspaces for their daily jobs or develop applications on top of the KDE Platform.
    
    One application that builds on the KDE Platform is RKWard. RKWard is an integrated development environment (IDE) for the R programming language, a free implementation of the statistics and math oriented S-plus. Due to the wealth of statistical and mathematical functions and the large number of add-on libraries, R is often the tool of choice for people doing statistics and mathematics in many different fields of science. As R does not come with a GUI on Linux (unlike its Windows counterpart), RKWard provides one and adds a lot of features to ease the job, going beyond the role of a simple front-end.
  - Interview with Aaron Seigo – Part 1
    
    Aaron: I am a member of the global KDE community, and have been for nearly a decade now. Within KDE, I work as a software developer, provide some project and community management services and help provide a public face to the world for KDE by doing presentations at conferences, participating in interviews like this one, etc. I have also served on the board of directors as President of our global non-profit foundation, KDE e.V.
    
    Beyond KDE, I live in Canada and have a young and happy family on the Western coast of North America, which provides a wonderful environment for enjoying the outdoors as well as music and food, which are two of my main “vices”.
  - Interview with Aaron Seigo – Part 2
Distributions
- Linux for a green desktop
  
  No, I do not want to talk of Linux MINT, but as is practically possible to apply some tricks to make our desktop a bit more nature oriented.
- Linux distributions need fresher drivers
  
  In software development, it has become common practice to improve program code, stabilise it in alpha and beta versions, and then release it. The whole process then begins again, while the released version receives small low-risk fixes as patches. Most Linux distributions pursue this strategy to coordinate the software contained within them and test the mixture. A lot of distributors are very careful in maintaining their distributions to keep the complex structure from collapsing when a new distribution is released; instead of providing updates to more recent program versions, between distribution versions they merely send out the changes that patch security holes and correct other major flaws.
- New Releases
  - Release Notes: aptosid 2010-02
    
    aptosid is a full featured Debian sid based live CD with a special focus on hard disk installations, a clean upgrade path within sid and additional hardware and software support. The ISO is completely based on Debian sid, enriched and stabilized with aptosid’ own packages and scripts.
- Red Hat Family
  - Fedora
    - ‘Til Tuesday.
- Debian Family
  - Testing Debian MINT 201009
    
    The distribution contains everything you average desktop user need:
    Gnome desktop, Firefox, Thunderbird, openoffice, pidgin, brasero, The Gimp, Transmission, Rhythmbox, VLC, mplayer, Xchat and Gwibber.
  - Linux Mint 9 Xfce
    
    We all know that there are passionate partisans of the GNOME and KDE versions of Linux Mint; yet, oddly, you rarely hear about people raving about the Xfce version. That’s a shame, because sometimes less is truly more. Linux Mint 9 Xfce has a lot to offer to those who have limited hardware, or who simply prefer not to deal with the eye-candy bloat of GNOME or KDE.
    
    [...]
    
    Summary: Linux Mint 9 Xfce is a near-perfect blend of the minimalist advantages of the Xfce desktop environment and the tools/features of Linux Mint.
    
    Rating: 4/5
  - Debian Bugs Search using UDD
    
    After a few hours of hacking, I came up with Debian Bugs Search. This Ultimate Debian Database tool enables to query different kinds of Debian bugs (especially RC bugs using a multi-criteria search. It is aimed at being a replacement for the unofficial RC Bugs tracker, which has some bugs and fails to display the correct status for some bugs (Debian Bugs Search sees 450 RC bugs affecting squeeze, vs 278 for the unofficial RC bugs tracker).
  - Canonical/Ubuntu
    - Nathan’s Journal – The importance of default backgrounds
      
      When the new wallpaper landed in maverick, there was a loud outcry as a lot of users were upset with the visual appearance–the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS background with deeper saturation and orange spots added. I did not appreciate it either, although it did grow on me. But I eagerly awaited the revamped wallpaper and it finally landed.
    - The Final Ubuntu 10.10 Default Wallpaper, Released! [Download]
    - Intel using 10.10 Unity user? Be cautious with updating today
    - Ubuntu 10.10’s new installer slideshow oozes class
      
      They say first impressions count and Maverick has certainly taken that to heed with its redesigned slideshow to play during installation.
Devices/Embedded
- Tablets
  - $169 Linux tablet… sortof
    
    The Insignia Infocast is a $169 simple media device being sold at Best Buy. Marketed as a way to share photos and run Chumby apps, hackers are starting to release packages to extend its features.

Free Software/Open Source

Why Your Startup Should Be Involved in Open Source

Oftentimes, when you hear the arguments for “Why open source?”, they are aimed at convincing companies to use open source software. But the other piece of the argument is, of course, an argument for why your company should build open source – why it should develop its technology in a community-driven, open sourced way.

Along those lines, Peter Friese, head of mobile development at Itemis recently wrote an article arguing “Why Your Next App Should Be Open Sourced.”
Open source, helping the children of the future.

Fortunately open source software has reached the point where it has become mainstream. Companies are buying other companies purely for their open source components. Other open source programs are extremely popular and grabberments, educational institutions and more businesses than ever before are seriously considering or using open source software. However, you may be thinking, what does this have to do with our children?
The Arc of the Moral Universe is Long…
Web Browsers
- Mozilla
  - What’s next for Firefox on Linux?
    
    Growth over the last year has been static, and things are about to get worse. A competing open source browser has been able to go from zero to 7% market share, and doesn’t show any sign of slowing down.
Oracle
- OpenSolaris spork ready for download
  
  It is not quite ready for primetime, but with the announcement of OpenIndiana, a so-called spork of Oracle’s OpenSolaris Unix distribution, the server world is getting a familiar, re-opened, and community-developed operating system aimed specifically at data center workloads.
  
  Alasdair Lumsden owns a hosting company in London called EveryCity Managed Hosting, and his customers are deployed on Solaris 10, which was made freely available with security patches when it was announced nearly six years ago by Sun Microsystems. The company has 50 servers supporting 250 Solaris containers – not exactly a hyperscale customer by some standards – but Lumsden has been an enthusiastic supporter of the OpenSolaris project and did his part in the community as he built a business running Solaris on x64 servers.
- Is Oracle poised to effectively end open source software?
  
  The preferable approach, and the safest approach, to protecting innovation in the field of software development from the chilling effects of patent claims will always be to eliminate the dangerous practice of software patents altogether. It is important to oppose software patents at every turn, and for those of us in the United States to try to get the USPTO to stop issuing patents for software, if you care about healthy innovation in the software industry in general and open source software in particular.
CMS
- Best Buy using Drupal
  
  Best Buy, one of the biggest retailers of consumer electronics in the United States is using Drupal for their mobile magazine website: http://www.bestbuymobile.com/. Best Buy earns 50 billion USD in revenues and has over 180,000 employees. Needless to say, this is a big enterprise adopting Drupal.
- Deleted Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn Accounts!
  
  I kept my account on identi.ca, the open source version of Twitter. When there are Open Source solutions for the broader problem of social networking, I’ll install them.
Education/Libraries
- Will Librarians Leave Facebook for Diaspora?
  
  Librarians uncomfortable with the erosion of privacy on Facebook can now turn to a new social network called Diaspora, a personal Web server that stores shared information securely.
FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
- Look who’s using free software…
Government
- Australian e-tax software unjust: Stallman
  
  E-tax is software provided by the Australian Taxation Office to conduct tax returns online. The office has been under fire for a number of years for not making a version of the software function on Linux or Apple Mac systems.
  
  However, this wasn’t the reason Stallman called the product “unjust”. His reasoning for this term was that it is not “free” software.
  
  Stallman feels strongly about freedom and wanted to be very clear on the distinction between free software and open source.
Standards/Consortia
- A Primer on HTML5 <Video> and Why You Should Care About It
  
  Kaltura, the world’s first open-source video platform, has developed one such library available at www.html5video.org and has created an industry resource to involve developers.

Leftovers

The Most Powerful Colors in the World
Science
- South Africa Develops Nanotech ‘Tea Bag’ To Filter Water for Pennies (video)
  
  Provide people cheap access to clean water and you could save billions of lives. South Africa may use tea bags to do just that. Researchers at Stellenbosch University’s Water Institute have developed a new water filtration system that uses activated carbon and nanofibers to quickly filter out pathogens. The carbon and nanofibers are placed in common tea bags and then fitted into a bottle. Fill the bottle with dubious water, install a filter, and drink. It’s that easy. According to SciDev Net, the ultimate price for these ‘tea bag’ nanfiber filters will be around half a cent (USD) each and be able to handle around 1 L before being replaced. A super cheap, portable, easy to use system to purify water? Sounds amazing. Watch developer (and SU dean) Eugene Cloete describe the project in the video below. You know a scientist believes in a product when he’s willing to test it on himself in front of a camera.
Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights
- Privacy and Safety Questions Loom Over Federal Program to Track Preschoolers
  
  The ACLU of Northern California (ACLU-NC) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) are calling for answers to critical privacy and safety questions that loom over a controversial federal program to track preschoolers with radio frequency identification (RFID) chips at George Miller III Head Start program in Richmond, California.
  
  In an open letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Contra Costa County Employment and Human Services Department, ACLU-NC and EFF are asking officials to disclose what technical and security measures are used by the system to safeguard the privacy and safety of preschoolers, as well as what data is collected, how long it is retained, and who has access to the information. The letter also calls on officials to publicly address why and how the government decided to track Head Start students, and if the government plans to expand such tracking.
Intellectual Monopolies
- Copyrights
  - Digital Economy (UK)
    - Cor blimey! British ISPs must fund P2P copyright crackdown
      
      For months now, the brightest minds in the UK—well, the brightest minds in the Department for Business, Innovation, and Skills, anyway—have been pondering a thorny question: who should pay for all the warning letters that will soon be winging their way by e-mail and post to (suspected) P2P users? Today, we learned the answer (PDF): rightsholders will pick up 75 percent of the tab, but ISPs will pay the rest.
      
      Under the Digital Economy Act, passed earlier this year, the UK gave its courts the power to order complete blocks on websites, required ISPs to start sending P2P warning letters from copyright holders, and opened the door to throttling and Internet disconnection for repeat infringement at some future date.