Could 2010 be Linux' breakout year? Linux is already making huge waves in mobile computing, with the rise of the Android operating system, the momentum behind Meego, a bevy of Linux-powered netbooks, and an army of Linux-toting tablets on the horizon. With Web-based computing becoming the norm, flexible and robust Linux could finally become the OS of choice for device manufacturers.
Now you can advance your proficiency in free and open source software solutions as the Linux Professional Institute (LPI (News - Alert)) has launched a brand new program for it service organizations and other technical solutions providers.
“Devices shall be built using the Linux operating system with either glibc or uClibc” (libraries of the C language).
All new projects would involve GNU/Linux based operating systems. “The state has a successful history of GNU/Linux adaptation, and has a near cent-percent success rate,” observes Dr. Ajay Kumar. “We avoid proprietary software as much as possible. However some applications need legacy software, which are proprietary. In such cases, we are forced to use proprietary softwares,” he admits.
Autocue will show its first four standalone, Linux-based video servers.
The AIX and Linux operating systems support either raw disk in 200 GB format or RAID mirroring performed by the operating system in 177 GB format for the new SSDs. The IBM i platform assumes you will use RAID mirroring, either RAID 0 mirroring of whole controller and SSD ensembles or RAID 5 or RAID 6 data protection within a single ensemble. (RAID 5 means striping across all four SSDs in the unit, while RAID 6 means striping across three drives in the set and keeping one as a hot spare.) You cannot mirror hard disks and SSDs against each other no matter what operating system you choose.
Make no mistake: Broadcom didn’t open source this driver to support peace, love and Linux. Companies who have included their drivers in the mainline Linux kernel do so because it benefits them. Once the driver is included in the mainline, the maintenance costs associated with keeping up with kernel changes drop considerably. Also, as Katherine points out, they undertook this work because they see a market and realize that many of their competitors, like Intel, have been enjoying an advantage their open-ness affords them.
Sometimes as a sysadmin the logfiles just don’t cut it, and to solve a problem you need to know what’s really going on. That’s when I turn to strace — the system-call tracer.
A system call, or syscall, is where a program crosses the boundary between user code and the kernel. Fortunately for us using strace, that boundary is where almost everything interesting happens in a typical program.
Shutter is probably the most powerful screenshot application for Linux, and the main reason for this is that it comes with tons of configuration options for the final process of taking a simple screenshot. And why not, considering there are people out there who need to take a screenshot of a single window or a desktop region instead of fullscreen only, like the GNOME default screenshot program. Of course, there is KSnapshot which offers these two options too, but that's where similarities stop.
The Yorba developers have released version 0.7.2 of their open source Shotwell photo manager for the GNOME desktop. According to the developers, the latest update to their free digital photo manager includes several "crucial" fixes and includes translation updates.
Shotwell 0.7.2 addresses a "major startup problem" caused by users having a symbolic link in their Pictures directory and a potential crashing bug related to directories containing a large number of subdirectories. Other changes include copying and linking updates, PicasaWeb fixes for passwords containing a '+' character and other bug fixes.
The ivi TV player allows users to select a channel by using a simple channel guide, the company said. The TV player can be downloaded to any Windows, Mac, or Linux computer. ivi says it will soon be available on platforms such as mobile devices, tablets, and set-top boxes.
Paessler's PRTG Network Monitor Version 8 adds new agents for physical and virtual machines along with new methods to monitor Linux-based systems.
A Linux class, based on Ubuntu 10.04 Desktop Edition, will be offered. The first session starts Wednesday. All computer classes cost $20. The sessions are for those 55 or older. The classes are taught by members of the Licking County Computer Society.
As the title suggests, TORCS is a free and open-source racing simulator available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. I'll list here some of its features:
- 3D graphics using OpenGL - 42 different car models - 30 racing tracks - 6 racing types - different camera angles
It's also available for Linux.
I played this game at 12:30 AM, in a dark room with the door closed and using high quality head phones. It scared the crap out of me. No, I mean it scared me. Not a simple sneak-up-from-behind-and-yell-boo scared. I'm talking about crescendo-swelled music and sound effects. I mean, they let you know the horror is approaching and it still frightens you when you see the threat.
It's really impressive how good Krita is getting these days. A look through the Krita showcase demonstrates quite admirably what someone can do with it. What strikes me most while looking through those images is how not all of them look like they were done with a computer, but could just as easily be scans of natural media artwork.
I have Plasma on the brain, however, so of course I immediately jumped into thinking about what this could mean from a Plasma perspective. Yes, I'm aware that any connection between a great natural media painting app and a component framework for building primary user interfaces is probably not immediately obvious. No, I wasn't thinking about how to use Plasmoids in Krita, either.
How will it work? Each attendee can pick the Plasmoid or aspect of Plasma Desktop of their choice, announce their intentions in the irc channel and then start writing about it. You'll have the support of KDE people to answers technical questions, proof-read and help with wiki-fu as needed. Personally, I'll be working on documenting the new Activies features and user interface.
The SystemRescueCd developer and Partimage author François Dupoux has released version 1.6.0 of the SystemRescueCd Linux distribution. Based on the Gentoo LiveCD and using Xfce as its default desktop, the SystemRescueCd is configured as a tool kit for administering or repairing an operating system and recovering data after a system crash. Supported file systems include Ext2, Ext3 and Ext4, ReiserFS, XFS, JFS, VFAT, NTFS, ISO9660 and Btrfs.
Tiny Core lead developer Robert Shingledecker has released version 3.1 of Tiny Core Linux. Tiny Core is a minimal Linux distribution that weighs in at just over 11 MB in size. The "tiny frugal" desktop distribution features the BusyBox tool collection and a minimal graphics system based on Tiny X and JWM. The core can run entirely in RAM, allowing for very quick booting. With the help of online repositories, Tiny Core Linux can be expanded to include additional applications.
The collectively developed software is distributed under open source licenses, such as the GNU General Public License and GNU Lesser General Public License, permitting access to the human-readable software source code. These licenses also provide rights for licensees to use, copy, modify and distribute open source software.
I might add, which Shuttleworth didn't spell out, that if you need help to do anything with Linux, you're more likely to find online help on how to do it on Ubuntu than openSUSE, Fedora, Debian, or any other Linux. Ubuntu's popularity combined with that attitude of helping everyday users get the most from Linux has made it the go-to Linux for users who want and need a helping hand.
Notwithstanding these moments of suspense, the upgrade was surprisingly trouble-free. My applications work just as they did before. My scanner and printer both work as well, and because Lucid kept my desktop settings, my windows control buttons are on the right side, and not on the left where Lucid puts them by default.
All in all, it’s worth going the upgrade route because the longer installation time is more than offset by the time you save from not having to reinstall programs and tweaking your system all over again. In my case, that could mean a savings of a day or more.
CrunchGear, TechCrunch's hardware-focused sister site, makes a compelling argument for buying a "janky old computer" off Craigslist or from another source, then simply loading it up with Ubuntu and classifying it as a simple work/email/Facebook/MP3 machine.
Ubuntu creator Mark Shuttleworth shot back against detractors today, pointing out that his project has made Linux more marketable and successful on the desktop.
As expected, the x86 processor runs Windows 7 Pro, while the ARM TI OMAP powers Ubuntu LXDE, Midori Web Browser and Gimp.
D-Link’s Boxee Box can now be ordered from Amazon for November delivery (to US destinations only). Additionally, the company disclosed today that its device is based on an Intel Atom processor CE4100, representing a significant triumph for Intel over ARM Ltd.
The Linux-powered gaming handheld known as Pandora is now available for pre-order, ever since the first 1,000 pre-orders have already been shipped ever since they became available back in May. Why Linux? Well, it was done so in order to take advantage of existing open source software, and the fact that Linux is a primary target for home-brew development is not lost on the Pandora as it is a miniature computer device which off Linux.
Pandora, the Linux-based gaming handheld, is back on pre-order. The first 1,000 pre-orders have been shipped since they became available in May.
The Universal MediaLibrary 7200 has a 10GigE storage infrastructure and has Linux-based servers that offer constant access to all drivers with a massive storage capacity of up 144 terabytes.
Tanner EDA has released a Linux version of the company's HiPer Silicon full-flow design suite, giving designers a complete analog design flow from schematic capture, circuit simulation, and waveform probing to physical layout and verification. HiPer Silicon v15.02 includes all the functionality of the recently-introduced HiPer Silicon v15 while allowing customers to choose between the Windows and the Linux platforms.
Both Mac OSX and Linux systems now support read and write of DNxHD files with the optional DaVinci Resolve DNxHD Update. This optional $500 update allows native DNxHD media files to move instantly between Avid and DaVinci Resolve.
Smith added, "We are delighted that we now support the OpenTV Linux-based client middleware and look forward to continuing our successful relationship with Nagravision".
But most of the Android powered phones (interesting usage this), are really powered by a Qualcomm chip. According to Harald Welte, who lead the team of developers that gave us the Neo 1973, the problem with the Qualcomm chips, from a Free Software point of view, is that the company is very secretive about their products. Their lack of public documentation, and the ever-increasing integration between the application processor (AP) and baseband processor (BP), make it more difficult to run custom software on phones powered by these chips.
Qualcomm is a member of the Open Handset Alliance (OHA) and proud of its Android innovation success story. Sy Choudhury, Product Manager at Qualcomm CDMA Technologies, who is heading up the company’s involvement in the OHA, reasons that due to Android's open source nature, "developers can find and debug problems much easier and quicker because they can see the code and understand how it works."
- The launching of a retail version of the Bria for Linux softphone and the deployment of the enterprise version by two Fortune 500 customers. Bria for Linux gives enterprises a new option for extending VoIP across multiple operating systems and enabling them to reduce communications and travel costs, while improving productivity and responsiveness.
The first tablet to feature the MeeGo operating system is set to hit the shelves next week.
Initially the WeTab will only be available in Germany, but Intel – which launched the OS with Nokia back at Mobile World Congress in February – is hoping the device will catapult the operating system into the consciousness of consumer and business alike.
What makes the German-exclusive WeTab so special? First, its 1366 x 768, 11-inch capacitive touch screen is over an inch larger than the iPad’s and has a lot more screen real estate. Considering that a 720p video is 1280 x 720, the WePad more than makes the cut, while the 1024 x 768 iPad and the 1024 x 600 Samsung Galaxy tab have to downscale. Amongst 10 and 11-inch tablets we’ve seen, only the Viliv X10, which hasn’t come to market yet, has a resolution this high.
DeviceVM’s Splashtop quick boot software is designed to let you run a handful of apps including a web browser, Skype, and email software without waiting for Windows to boot on your computer. It comes preloaded on a number of netbooks and laptops from major PC makers. Today DeviceVM announced that future versions of Splashtop, which is already based on Linux, will use MeeGo Linux technology.
Intel’s AppUp application portal for apps running on the MeeGo and Windows OSes has come out of beta and gone gold, and soon will be available on Samsung and Asus netbooks.
Amidt the turmoil in the executive ranks - with first its chief executive exiting abruptly on Friday, and then its recently-appointed head of mobile resigning on Monday - the question for developers is a much more simple one: what phones is Nokia going to offer, will there be compelling reasons to develop for them, and will people want to buy or use apps on them?
Nokia has been showing off its new N8, C7, C6 (two of them; you tell them apart because one has the -00 an the other has the -01 suffix, obviously) and E7 models. They all run on Symbian^3, the latest version of Symbian.
Speaking to some of the developers on the floor it's clear that quite a few had been hoping - and expecting - to see something using MeeGo, which is a Linux-based mobile OS that is going to be part of another strand in Nokia's smartphone attack.
Open source license compliance in general has been a hot topic in recent years. Multiple vendors have had legal suits brought against themfor non-compliance. In an effort to help developers and vendors comply with open source licensing requirement the Linux Foundation recently launched a new compliance program in an effort to make compliance easier to achieve.
The world's biggest chip maker, Intel, has unveiled the chipset it is banking its immediate future on and one it hopes will shake up the market.
The product, code-named Sandy Bridge, is Intel's first architecture to merge a microprocessor and graphics processor onto a single chip.
The company is now going 'tough' against App Store name warehousing. App Store may be bloated with many app names without any binaries being uploaded. These name hogs keep other developers from creating and uploading genuine apps with the same names for the App Store.
In our last article we examined the steps required to prepare an Android application for publication to the Android Market, or for that matter, any number of other venues for distributing Android applications.
This article picks up where the prior article left off as we demonstrate the steps required to upload a signed and packaged application to the Android Market.
gvSIG Mini development team is proud to announce the release of the stable version gvSIG Mini for Android 1.0.
This version offers, among other features, the ability of a direct download of maps from the phone to the storage card, for a further map displaying in offline mode, with no data connection.
Jeff Orr told iTWire: "The tally at the end of 2009 had global netbook shipments consisting of around 24 percent for all types of Linux compared to 76 percent for all versions of Windows.
If you are a professional photographer or an aspiring one, then the article Photography with Open Source / Linux will be a great help for you. This article written by Nathan Willis delves deep into the various tools that aid you to create photographic masterpieces.
Bangalore's premiere Linux event, FOSS.IN, turns 10 this year. What started out as Linux Bangalore in 2001, organised by a group of hackers and Linux technology enthusiasts from the Bangalore Linux Users Group, is today a well-attended conference. In 2004, it was re-christened as FOSS.in.
Firefox 4.0 is still a bit away from final release, but the time to think about switching is now. The Mozilla Project is releasing Firefox 4.0 beta 6 this week, and the current builds are really good. Why switch? I'll give you five excellent reasons to jump on the 4.0 train today.
One of the great things about open source development is that you don't have to wait for the final product to ship to get your hands on it. Case in point, I've been running development builds of the Firefox 4.0 series off and on for weeks. You can too, if you don't mind some rapid changes and possible instability.
At the VLDB conference in Singapore, researchers from Saarland University have presented the results of the Hadoop++ project which aims to accelerate the distributed computing framework Hadoop when performing analytical queries. The technique involves plugging a kind of query planner into Hadoop using hooks provided for the purpose.
The open source movement already has produced innovations like online encyclopedia Wikipedia and the Linux operating system.
By creating a free or “open” platform that allows people to share and analyze information, the system can tap the collective intelligence of the world to improve technology and solve global problems.
In other words, 6 billion brains are better than one.
Principals from more than 60 elementary, junior high, and senior high schools of Kaohsiung City, Taiwan, signed a "Software Freedom Manifesto" at the invitation of the city's Education Bureau on Sep 9 Thursday morning in a press conference. Also announced in the conference are the the upcoming events of International Conference on Open Source (ICOS), and the "mother tongue tux usb key" workshops designed for the growing population of Vietnamese mothers in Taiwan.
Red Hat employee Matthew Garrett says he has written to the US Customs about the fact that Fusion Garage, the maker of the Joojoo tablet, has not provided him with the source code for the operating system that runs the device.
Garrett sent the letter based on advice offered by former Linux Journal publisher Don Marti on a web forum.
"I can design with tools as good as those that the car companies use, that Intel uses. It's just cheap software that lets me design, simulate and test," he said. "Communication costs are also dropping because of the Internet. That lets users actually undertake bigger problems because each one does a chunk of the work. I can do part of Linux. You can do another part of Linux."
Git, he said, is becoming popular because of its association with Linux and its speed, said Marion. Git was authored by Linux founder Linus Torvalds, Marion noted.
The developers of the Seaside web framework for Smalltalk have announced version 3.0. What had originally begun as development work for a 2.9 version turned out to be such a significant change that the developers say it justified relabelling the release a 3.0. They believe Seaside 3.0 to be a "solid foundation for the foreseeable development" of the Smalltalk web framework.
More schoolchildren are daily being killed by traffic on the highways of the world's poorest nations than by deadly infectious diseases such as Aids, tuberculosis and malaria, prompting campaigners to call for a UN-backed target to halt the spiralling numbers of traffic fatalities by 2015.
Applications and desktops that run on Windows, Oracle Solaris, Oracle Enterprise Linux, and other UNIX and Linux versions are supported, as well as mainframe and midrange applications.
I was detained last night by federal authorities at San Francisco International Airport for refusing to answer questions about why I had travelled outside the United States.
The end result is that, after waiting for about half an hour and refusing to answer further questions, I was released – because U.S. citizens who have produced proof of citizenship and a written customs declaration are not obligated to answer questions.
The Times-Picayune reported yesterday, “A new wave of black oil suddenly came ashore west of the Mississippi River on Friday and Saturday, coating beaches and fouling interior marshes, according to anglers’ reports.”
Like BP PLC’s Maconda well, which spewed more than 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the Ixtoc spill began with rig explosion and a failed blowout preventer.
Ambitious targets to increase the amount of rubbish recycled in the UK could help create more than 50,000 jobs, a report suggested today.
The study by Friends of the Earth said 51,400 jobs could be created if 70% of waste collected by local councils were recycled.
The nine victims want a ban on finning, a gruesome practice in which fishermen cut off a fin for shark fin soup and then dump the fish back in the water to drown or bleed to death. An estimated 73 million sharks are killed by finning each year. Nearly a third of all shark species are threatened or near threatened with extinction, conservationists said.
Unsurprisingly, the inability of global oil production to have bested the peak year of 2005 is being driven by its largest component: Non-OPEC supply.
First of all, I'm not calling anyone out to put them down. I have had a long time to think about these topics. I've been in the workforce for over thirty years now, including a long period in which I earned the absolute minimum or close to it (in some cases more, in some cases less).
I earned two associate's degrees (one of which was in business administration), on bachelor's degree (business administration), and one master's degree (information technology) during that time. This means that I have typically had years more education than my bosses. But most of the time, this had little impact on my bottom line.
During this time, I've been a voracious reader with a desire to know and understand what and how and why in things related to business and the economy (and computers, but that's a different article).
No matter what your instructor tells you, you have to look deeper. Look at real world data. Very often, what you've heard is factually wrong. When I was sitting around with business school classmates who commiserated about the low quality of applicants, I could tell them directly that they chose the worst applicants out of the bunch, because many times I had been one of those they chose not to hire.
There are very many personal and group decisions that should be made with an understanding of economic principles. It is a pity that so few people ever learn them.
So the Haystack Affair (is there a Wikipedia page named after this already?) continues generating food for thought for those of us working at the intersection of free expression, Internet censorship, and media development.
Yesterday I blogged about what the Haystack Affair suggested about the responsibility of "Internet intellectuals". Ethan Zuckerman, who was one of the intellectuals I singled out in that post, eloquently responded to my criticism on his blog.
"I’ve not published on Haystack for a very simple reason: I haven’t been able to conduct a proper evaluation of either the tool or the protocols behind it," wrote Ethan.
Google released a statement confirming it fired teen-stalking engineer David Barksdale for "breaking Google's strict internal privacy policies," as Gawker first reported earlier today. Our original exclusive, about Barksdale spying on minors' Google Voice and Talk accounts, has been updated.
Related to the recent Haystack hubbub, here's a basic overview of censorship resistance tools, of which Haystack was an example (unfortunately a fairly broken one).
Software created to help Iranians escape government control of the web has been withdrawn over security fears.
Haystack was designed to help people in the country communicate via the web without revealing their identity.
David Barksdale, a 27-year-old former Google engineer, repeatedly took advantage of his position as a member of an elite technical group at the company to access users' accounts, violating the privacy of at least four minors during his employment, we've learned. Barksdale met the kids through a technology group in the Seattle area while working as a Site Reliability Engineer at Google's Kirkland, Wash. office. He was fired in July 2010 after his actions were reported to the company. [Update: Google has confirmed the security breach. An update appears below.]
Just as the MPAA is preparing to offer movies to customers at home while they're still in theaters by limiting playback to DRM-protected digital outputs only, the HDCP protocol they rely on may have been cracked wide open. All devices that support HDCP, like Blu-ray players, set-top boxes and displays with HDMI inputs, have their own set of keys to encrypt and decrypt protected data and if keys for a particular device are compromised, they can be revoked by content released in the future which will then refuse to play. Now, posts have been floating around on Twitter about a supposed "master key" which renders that protection unusable since it allows anyone to create their own source and sink keys.
Make you voice heard by responding to the European Commission's public consultation on Net neutrality! The more citizens and NGOs submit their own responses to the questionnaire, the more chance we have to collectively weigh in the EU policy-making process to ensure that the Internet remains a free and open communications architecture. You have until September 30th to send your submission and tell the Commission to protect the Internet.
The Telegraph is reporting today on how the Digital Economy Act will be met in order to tackle online piracy or copyright infrigement. You can read the Telegraphs article here. People may remember that its proposed that alleged infringers of copyright are sent a number of warning letters before sanctions and eventually a ban is put on their connection.
[...]
Now maybe here Mr Vaizey is making a joke that I don’t get. If the ISP is to pick up the tab for 25% of the costs for this “enforcement” where does he think the money will come from if not passed onto the customer? Whilst that may be fair for the repeated copyright infringer, how is that fair on me or anyone else who thinks that the material “infringed upon” is not even worth a download for “free” and on the rare occasion when they are interested in a title, actually goes out and buys it? - I think far from help enforce an anti-piracy message, many people will just say “stuff it, Im footing the bill, I may as well jump in too”. Just like in my view, the person who came up with the idea of knock off Nigel, when you get people who really don’t know the subject trying to solve it, you only end up looking silly when it backfires. (For those that don’t know, Knock off Nigel was an ad campaign against piracy, that turned into a cult classic and even gave piracy a little kudos)
Rights-holders will bear the brunt of the costs for tackling copyright infringers, the UK government has said.
rsync_compile_howto.avi
Comments
twitter
2010-09-15 20:01:06
That gnu/linux is shipped on one in four netbooks is disappointing given the uselessness of Windows in that form factor but it's still amazing news. Notebooks are the form factor people are buying with a preference for small. Given the bad market, damage Microsoft did to Asus, Xandros and EEEPC, nonexistant advertisement, tons of FUD and other dirty tricks, 25% is miraculous defiance that proves real market demand.
This last point leads me to another, shipped units are not sold units. I've got three reconditioned EEE PCs, where a "Linux" sticker was applied over the "Windows" box and I got them for under $200 each. Despite a lot of hype, no one wants Windows on anything less than a fancy new desktop and not many people want that anymore.
It is a shame that few ARM based clamshells made it to the US market but their arrival is only a matter of time. Makers had better jump on the chance to sell $100 clamshells before India starts cranking out $35 palm tops.
Microsoft has no chance on such a platform. All of their efforts to date have been costly failures. Zune, for example, is a byword for industrial betrayal, greed, poor performance and market flop. Users not forced to non free versions of Android by a phone company are going to want gadgets that don't restrict them so much. Even if Microsoft could be reborn as less greedy and technically competent, their top heavy business model can't stand the price point. Apple is in similar trouble.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
2010-09-15 20:04:55
Mikko
2010-09-16 15:57:14
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
2010-09-16 20:02:36
Mikko
2010-09-16 21:56:50
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
2010-09-16 21:59:30
Mikko
2010-09-17 13:52:14
"The theme of Steve Ballmers speech at KTH is "The new digital lifestyle". How new trends in technology enables interconnected digital experiences across multiple platforms: PC, mobile and television - and how all this is possible because of new services in the cloud.
Steve Ballmer to visit the largest technical university is hardly a coincidence.
- Microsoft has identified KTH as an interesting partner. We have also recently signed a cooperation agreement, and we are interested in discussing further development of this, "said Peter Gudmundson, president of the Royal Institute of Technology.
Marie Ygge, marketing director for the Public Sector at Microsoft in Sweden, is the same line as Peter Gudmunson."
http://translate.google.se/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=sv&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=sv&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kth.se%2Faktuellt%2Fsnart-kommer-steve-ballmer-till-kth-1.66726