05.24.11

Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• The Linux Week in Review (May 23 – 30, 2011)

  Fedora 15: Lovelock Continues the Fedora Heritage of Innovation

• Desktop

  • Xi3 Spins Desktop As Google-Based ChromiumPC

    At Google I/O earlier this month, Google introduced (briefly) a Samsung-labeled Chrome desktop box. But while it looked a lot like the Mac Mini, there still aren’t any true details to show people what it may be capable of. Google also stated that they’d continue to push Chromium for those who want a taste of Chrome on a non-sanctioned machine, and it looks like Xi3 is jumping on that notion to make a timely announcement.

  • Mini-PC offers Chrome OS, modular design

• Server

  • FAUMachine: First Impressions

    For those of you who don’t already know about FAUmachine (FAU), it’s a virtual machine that allows you to install full operating systems and run them as if they were independent computers. FAUmachine is similar to VirtualBox, QEMU, and other full virtualization technologies. It is a project sponsored by the Friedrich Alexander University Computer Science Department in Germany (Erlangen-Nuremberg*). FAU is a computer simulator that is an independent virtual machine project. The CPU is based on the virtual CPU in QEMU.

  • Software AG acquires open source caching experts Terracotta

    Terracotta, home of open source projects such as the Ehcache Java cache and Quartz scheduler, has been acquired by Software AG. The acquisition will, says the German company, act as a foundation for its in-memory and cloud offerings, allowing it to run business processes which use in-memory cached data access at “up to a thousand times faster than database access”; it expects to offer the first combined products in the fourth quarter of 2011.

  • Software AG To Acquire Terracotta

    Software AG has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Terracotta. Terracotta provides in-memory technology for high performance applications and cloud services. The company also owns the de facto caching standard for enterprise Java used by over 1 million developers worldwide.

• Kernel Space

  • Graphics Stack

    • MeeGo Tablet UX Can Already Run On Wayland?

      The MeeGo conference is running from tomorrow through Wednesday in San Francisco. This is the first conference for the Moblin-Maemo-mix since Nokia parted ways to team up with Microsoft and ship Windows Phone 7 on their future devices, but there’s interesting work still going on in the MeeGo world. In particular, of interest to many Phoronix readers will be the fact that it sounds like the adoption of the Wayland Display Server is going quite well within the MeeGo world. It appears that there’s already an experimental version of MeeGo Tablet UX working atop Wayland.

• Applications

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • 5 Useful Linux Commands for Complete Newbies

    • Set up Spice-Gtk-0.6 on Ubuntu 11.04 ( Natty Narwhal )

    • Set up Spice-Gtk-0.6 on Ubuntu 11.04 ( Natty Narwhal )

    • Install Firefox 5 Beta in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal(PPA)

    • BlueProximity – Unlock your Computer with your phone

    • Using Firewall Builder Objects for Linux Firewalls

  • Games

    • Hacker Evolution Duality : New Hacking Simulation Game Coming to Linux

      Hacker Evolution Duality, new hacking simulation and strategy game developed by Exosyphen studios will be available for Linux and you can pre-order the game now for $19.95.

• Desktop Environments

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

    • KOffice evolves: first Calligra Suite snapshot released

      The Calligra project, part of the KDE community, has announced the release of the first snapshot for version 2.4 of the Calligra Suite, a set of productivity applications. According to the developers, since splitting with KOffice five months ago, they have improved their core libraries as well as the applications themselves, adding that their goal is to “provide the best application suite on all platforms based on open standards.”

  • GNOME Desktop

    • Advaicium: Adwaita Theme Ported To GTK2

      If you use GNOME 3 and Adwaita theme, GTK2 applications look different (as in ugly) than GTK3 apps. That’s why maximo1010 @ Ubuntuforums has ported Adwaita GTK3 theme to GTK2.

    • Nautilus Elementary Ambiance Theme + Orange Themed Clarity Icons = Looks Nice in Unity

      Even more Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal customization tips. We have seen some of the most beautiful themes for Ubuntu 11.04 Unity desktop already and one of the highlights of that list was Nautilus Elementary Ambiance Theme. We think we have just found out an icons theme that gels pretty well with Nautilus Elementary Ambiance Theme and it’s called Clarity.

• Distributions

  • Red Hat Family

    • 5 Reasons to Engage the Open Virtualization Alliance

  • Debian Family

    • Why mozilla.debian.net is down

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Ensemble at UDS-O

          UDS-O is now over, I had a chance to meet with the Ensemble team (a bunch of awesome engineers), also had a chance to attend or lead a few sessions concerning future directions of Ensemble. I’ll try to summarize UDS outcome wrt Ensemble from a project newcomer perspective

• Devices/Embedded

  • Phones

    • Android

      • Is Android Really the ‘Open’ Platform?

        Rooting and jailbreaking are not illegal, but they usually will void your phone’s warranty. Typically, though, you can restore the original OS before taking a phone in for service, and the company would never know.

      • No Movie Rentals On Rooted Android: Does It Matter?

        According to reports Google is blocking the installation of its Android Movie Market on rooted Android devices. Google’s decision seemed to be driven by content providers who don’t want rooted phones to be able to copy or download their movies.

      • Miro 4.0 Runs On Android

        The Participatory Culture Foundation (PCF) has announced the launch of Miro 4, the open-source desktop media player (read more about Miro here).

        Miro 4.0 allows users to manage music including iTunes libraries, videos, playlists and apps in one place and to sync these digital libraries with Android devices.

  • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

    • Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 great for media consumption, says review

      Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 is a remarkable media-chomping tablet with Android 3.0, a crisp, 10.1-inch touchscreen, 10-hour battery life, and a slim, lightweight design, says this eWEEK review. Despite the modest three-megapixel camera and lack of ports — or even an SD slot — the tablet is said to best the Motorola Xoom for straightforward media consumption purposes.

    • Asustek sets prices lower for US-bound Eee Pad Transformer tablet PCs

      Additionally, prices for Android 3.1-based tablet PCs to be launched by other vendors in the second half of the year may also be affected, with ASPs of Android 3.1 models likely to be dragged down by US$100, the sources commented.

    • Red Flag Announces MeeGo 1.2 Based Tablet OS

      Red Flag Software, the Linux major of China, is planning to release one of the first tablet operating systems based on the MeeGo open source software platform.

      The Red Flag Midinux Tablet Edition operating system will incorporate the MeeGo v1.2 common code base and a user experience built by Red Flag Software that uses the MeeGo user interface building blocks and demonstrates the flexibility MeeGo offers companies to differentiate their products. The tablet will be demonstrated at Computex in Taipei May 31 to June 4, 2011.

Free Software/Open Source

• Creative Barcode Responds to the Hargreaves Report

  Digital Opportunity – a review of Intellectual Property and Growth, the 132 page report published on May 18, 2011, is the result of an intensive 6 month independent review lead by Ian Hargreaves, commissioned by PM David Cameron in November 2010.

  The basis for the review was a ministerial concern that in a digital age the intellectual property framework was not keeping pace with new innovation an

• The Open Source Road Ahead: Individuals matter

  Jim Jagielski, Simon Phipps and Mark Radcliffe at OSBC unveiled OSI plan during the ”A New OSI for a New Decade: Rebooting the Open Source Initiative OSI” session (presentation). Some reports stressed the importance of organizations, but volunteers are welcome too!

• Events

  • Upcoming Open Source Webinars: OCEG, OpenXchange, Red Hat

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Firefox 5: Track Me, Just Don’t Track Me

      The Mozilla Foundation launched a beta version of its fifth edition of the Firefox Web browser Monday — just eight weeks after it rolled out Firefox 4.

      This includes a mobile version for Android as well as versions for Windows, Mac and Linux desktops.

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • The body coordinates development activities and defines the technology evolution of LibreOffice

    The Document Foundation presents the members of the Engineering Steering Committee, the second body to be announced – after the Membership Committee – of those envisioned by the foundation bylaws. The ESC has come into being in early 2011, and is now officially in place to coordinate all development activities and set future technology directions.

  • LibreOffice Creators Announce The Engineering Steering Committee Members

    The Document Foundation, the organisation behind LibreOffice, has announced the members of the Engineering Steering Committee. This is the second body announced by TDF after the Membership Committee.

    The ESC has come into being in early 2011, and is now officially in place to coordinate all development activities and set future technology directions.

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • May 2011 GNU Toolchain Update

  • GNU Parallel 20110522 (‘Pakistan’) released

    GNU Parallel 20115022 (‘Pakistan’) has been released. It is available for download at: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/parallel/

    This is a major release. So far GNU Parallel has been focused on replacing a single for-loop. The Pakistan release introduces ways to replace nested loops.

    If you are using the {1} {2} syntax for multiple input sources, then you need to read about –xapply as the function has changed.

• Public Services/Government

  • U.S. Department of Defense Details Open Source Lessons Learned

    The 68-page report has the goal of helping the U.S. government to implement what they refer to as open technology development (OTD) for government software projects. As part of OTD, the report includes a number of specific recommendations for open source software usage. Some of those recommendations are somewhat of a surprise, considering that the U.S. military is often seen as an organization that is not likely to be very open about their software development practices.

• Standards/Consortia

  • Cloudy with a Chance of Clarity: NIST Seeks Public Comment on Draft Guide to Cloud Computing

    Next time you feel like your head’s in the clouds, don’t fret: that’s where the action is. Advancements in information technology have made it possible to store virtually endless amounts of information in a system of “clouds.” Opening numerous possibilities, cloud computing is on par with the Internet in terms of its potential to change the face of computing and the way we live and do business.

Leftovers

• IPv6 transition still a low priority for most organizations

  As the World IPv6 Day approaches, recent research reports show that a majority of organizations are still postponing migration to the IPv6 networking protocol. Despite the growing scarcity of IPv4 addresses, due in large part to the growth of mobile and embedded devices, a British Telecom Diamond IP survey says that only 35 percent of respondents considered IPv6 a “huge concern.”

• How can you trust a cloud? Verify.

  Group developing audit specs that could build faith in cloud applications

• Security

  • Sony hacked again as attackers target Sony Music Japan. This is getting tiresome.

  • EU can help make the UK secure according to report from House of Lords Committee

    A House of Lords Committee report spotlights the vital contribution the EU makes to UK security and urges swift action to implement European Union proposals to improve security in the UK and other Member States.

• Finance

  • Matt Taibbi: Wall St. Has No Incentive Not To Commit Crimes (VIDEO)

    In a video interview with RT America, Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, the author of Griftopia, says that as of now, and until the government more aggressively prosecutes financial fraud, Wall Street has a continued incentive to bend the rules in their favor. (Hat tip to Naked Capitalism.)

    Since the financial crisis, Taibbi has been one of Wall Street’s most outspoken critics. Earlier this month, Taibbi wrote “The People. vs. Goldman Sachs,” a sweeping investigation into the Senate report on Goldman Sachs that accused the investment bank of profiting by misleading investors.

  • The “Road To Recovery” Is A Dead End

    The high profile financial analyst and investment manager Marshall Auerback explains in this exclusive interview his views on: the IMF; the ongoing financial crisis; the commodities rally; the implications of the current oil price; the conflict in Libya/Middle East; the rigging of the precious metal markets; and last but not least this, ironically spoken, “bunch of cranks“ – the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, GATA.

  • Janet Yellen’s QE2 Promise Now Dying on the Vine, in California

    California reported its April jobs data on Friday. The LA Times repeated the figure, laid out in the report from EDD, that on a year-over-year basis the state had created 144,000 jobs. What The LA Times did not clarify is that these were non-farm payrolls. For the fuller picture of the Golden State’s job market, I track the total employment figure. In the same time period called out in media headlines, therefore, the number of employed persons actually fell by 22,000, from 15.960 million to 15.938 million. | see: California Employment in Millions (seasonally adjusted) 2000-2011.

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Look Out, Pearson; Murdoch Is Serious About Online Education

    It was an unusual topic for the News Corp (NSDQ: NWS) CEO. In November, News Corp hired New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein as an advisor, and bought 90 percent of ed-tech provider Wireless Generation for $360 million. In January, Klein got his own education division in News Corp and a $2 million salary.

    Judging from his keynote to the eG8, which was assembled by France’s president Sarkozy to hear tech business’ views to be fed to the French-hosted G8 summit, Murdoch is both passionate and excited about what he sees as both a duty and a business opportunity.

    This could encompass both e-books and learning materials and group learning platforms, and could be a gauntlet thrown down to one of the digital learning sector’s big beasts – Pearson.

• Civil Rights

  • France’s G8 Focuses on Control and Restrictions to Online Freedoms

    A detailed analysis of exchanges between the French President and his former Minister of Foreign Affairs on G8 related matters appears in tomorrow’s edition of the French magazine Marianne. La Quadrature du Net has had access to sources that confirm the existence of a control-oriented policy, explicitly hostile to the support to the freedom of expression on the Internet, in blatant contrast with the farcical “eG8 forum” smokescreen. Governments must be made accountable for the positions they take on these issues when they speak behind close doors.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • Please Help Us Figure Out How Much The Public Has ‘Lost’ Due To Overprotective Anti-Copy Laws

      We recently posted about an ITC report that, among other things, estimated that US companies “lost” $48 billion due to “piracy” in China. This $48 billion number generated plenty of headlines, and since the report was requested by the Senate, you can bet that it will be used politically. The problem, however, was that the methodology was ridiculous. Rather than using any sort of objective measure, the ITC went out and asked 5,000 businesses who were in “IP-intensive fields” what they thought their “losses” were, and then extrapolated out.

    • ACTA

      • FFII calls upon European Parliament to resolve uncertainties regarding ACTA

        We are writing to express our concerns with ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement). Whether the Parliament will ratify or reject ACTA, it will be a landmark decision. Yet, ACTA is still surrounded by uncertainties. We call upon you to decisively resolve these uncertainties. We urge the Parliament to seek an opinion of the European Court of Justice on the compatibility of ACTA with the EU Treaties, and to commission independent assessments of the effects ACTA will have on access to medicine, diffusion of green technologies needed to fight climate change, fundamental rights within and outside the Union, innovation, small and medium sized companies and a fair balance of interests.

        Prior to ratifying the 1994 WTO TRIPS agreement (Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights), the Commission asked the European Court of Justice whether TRIPS complied with the Treaties. The Court decided that the Community was not competent to ratify the criminal measures.