05.25.11

Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• Server

  • Platform Gets Graphic with HPC Cluster Manager

    Not everybody who needs to build a cluster wants to be a Linux expert. And that is why Platform Computing has slapped an all-encompassing Web-based graphical user interface onto the 3 release of its Platform HPC cluster management tool.

• Applications

  • Syncany: A Great Dropbox Alternative Which Supports Multiple Storage Types

    Syncany is a brand new open-source file sync software (similar to Dropbox, or Sparkleshare). “Oh no, not another Dropbox alternative” you might say. Well Syncany is different and has the chance to become better than other such applications. Read on!

  • 13 Reasons to choose GIMP over Photoshop!

    Photoshop is one of the most popular image editing proprietary software, with extensive capabilities and a rather un-affordable price! It will be interesting for you to note that most of the Photoshop copies running on thousands of computers are illegal, that seems to be obvious as even professionals cannot afford to buy such an expensive piece of software. On the other hand, GIMP, photo manipulation software is a free counterpart that is fairly popular in the Linux circle. GIMP is preinstalled on some Linux

    distributions or it can be installed with great ease. In this post we will draw a comparison between the two softwares! The debate is old yet it interests many. In this post we will compare the two softwares, according to current standards.

  • Proprietary

    • 10 Commercial Apps for Linux That I Never Knew Existed

      One thing that keeps Linux in the back foot is the lack of good quality applications that can compete with the best out there. The advent of paid softwares section in Ubuntu Software Center is a start, things like that can kick start application development for Linux in a big way. But things were not as bad I thought it would be. On further browsing, I found out that there are indeed a good number of paid applications for Linux, some of them were a total surprise for me. Here are some of those paid applications for Linux which I found interesting.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • How To Boot Into Ubuntu 11.04 After Installing Fedora 15

    • Create Fedora 15 LiveUSB On Linux

    • Muktware’s Fedora 15 Manual

    • How To Upgrade From Fedora 14 To Fedora 15 (Desktop & Server)

    • Firebird Nagios plugin check_firebird.py

    • Customize the Ubuntu Desktop

    • How To Install Fedora 15

    • Importing iptables Configurations Into Firewall Builder

  • Games

    • The State of Gaming on Linux

      We recently covered the best paid games that are out there for Linux. We know that the list was too small and disappointing for any Linux fan. The size of the list can only be attributed to the lack of any major progress in this area for years. To be honest, most of the games that are available for Linux are graphically poor with loose plots and terrible AI levels. However, before you start bashing Linux developers for that, let’s take a look at why gaming sucks so badly on Linux.

• Desktop Environments

  • A bit about Fluxbox

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

    • KDE Ships First 4.7 Beta

      KDE has released a first beta of the upcoming 4.7 release of the Plasma Desktop and Netbook workspaces, the KDE Applications and the KDE Frameworks, which is planned for July 27, 2011. With API, dependency and feature freezes in place, the KDE team’s focus is now on fixing bugs and further polishing new and old functionality.

• Distributions

  • Red Hat Family

    • Fedora

      • Fedora 15 Released and First Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelet Build Now Available

        The Red Hat-sponsored Fedora Project has released version 15 of its Linux-based operating system. Beyond an updated kernel, updated standard package updates, and the switch to LibreOffice from OpenOffice, the most significant changes are the adoption of GNOME 3 and RPM 4.9. In other news, the first daily builds of Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot are now available to download and test.

      • First look: Fedora 15 arrives with GNOME 3.0 and systemd

      • Fedora 15 Review / Thoughts

      • Fedora 15 KDE Plasma Workspaces celebration

        And what we’re going to offer you now? You can have 4.6.2 and fresh 4.6.3 already available in updates.

      • Fedora 15 – 8 services you can most likely disable

      • GNOME 3 and Fedora 15

  • Debian Family

    • China Has Its Own Debian GNU/Linux Mirror

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu: Design for all, keep custom options open

          So, here’s the thing. I have two monitors set up in my office, one plugged into my primary Ubuntu machine and one plugged into a Windows PC that I keep around for my business accounting. (Yeah, yeah, I don’t like GNUCash, okay?)

          To move my mouse and keyboard control between them, I use a neat little tool called QuickSynergy that enables control signals to move across the LAN so I can just use both operating systems as if it were one big screen. Normally, the Windows monitor is off the left and the Linux monitor is centered in front of me because it’s the giganto monitor and I use it 90 percent of the time.

        • Ubuntu Showcase, Computex: May 31st

          Next week, Canonical will present an executive briefing on developments in Ubuntu Desktop, Cloud and Server. Christopher Kenyon, Canonical EVP, will be sharing developments in Ubuntu, including:
          * Introducing Ubuntu 11.04 with critically acclaimed interfaces and developer APIs

        • Clipboard manger Diodon debuts Unity Lens

        • Linux User’s Ubuntu Column #100 with Mark Shuttleworth

          To help us celebrate the 100th issue of Linux User & Developer, Ubuntu founder, Mark Shuttleworth, agreed to take the reins from our regular Ubuntu columnist (Dave Walker) and take us through why he believes it was the right decision for Ubuntu to embrace the future with Unity…

        • Ubuntu Light review

          Ubuntu Light is an alternative OS designed to sit on a separate partition to a PC’s Windows operating system. With a look and feel that’ll be familiar to users of Ubuntu Netbook Remix – whose Unity interface has now been rolled out across all versions of Ubuntu – it’s neither full featured nor powerful. But it is fast.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Phones

    • New-Gen Virtualization Will Extend to All Devices, Including Mobile Phones

      If you haven’t expanded out to using multiple operating systems on a single device through virtualization, definitely try it.

    • MokaFive Supports Multiple Virtual Machine Types

    • Android

      • Samsung Galaxy S Beats Apple iPhone In Japan

        Galaxy S smartphones from Samsung outsold Apple iPhones in Japan during Q1 2011, which places Samsung in the ranks of the top four handset vendors of Japan for the first time, according to Strategy Analytics. Android smartphones are now outselling iOS smartphones in Japan.

      • Samsung Confirms Galaxy Tab to Launch with Android 3.1 in “Few Days”

  • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

    • All-New Nook offers monochrome touchscreen

      Barnes & Noble announced a Kindle-like six-inch monochrome touchscreen version of its Nook e-reader, featuring an E Ink Pearl display. The Android 2.1-based “All-New Nook” offers 2GB of RAM, a microSD slot, Wi-Fi, and that’s about it — but it weighs only 7.48 ounces, lasts up to a claimed two months per battery charge, and costs just $139, says the company.

    • Google NFC to be unveiled May 26, say reports

      On May 26, Google will introduce a widely anticipated near field communication (NFC) mobile payment system for Android 2.3x phones with Sprint, Mastercard, Citibank, and VeriFone Systems, say multiple reports. Meanwhile, Motorola says its Droid X, Droid 2, Droid 2 Global, and Droid Pro phones are all getting Android 2.3 (“Gingerbread”) updates this year.

Free Software/Open Source

• Apache Libcloud is now a top level project

  The Apache Libcloud project has left the Apache Incubator where projects mature and has become a top-level project of the Apache Software Foundation. Libcloud is a Python implementation of a common vendor-independent API for cloud services which supports multiple backends to work with cloud provider specific APIs. The project hopes to allow developers to write cloud applications for a single API without the need to write vendor-specific code. The current Python implementation has back-end driver support for over twenty cloud platforms including Amazon EC2, Eucalyptus, OpenStack, Rackspace, GoGrid, IBM Cloud and Linode.

• Apache Libcloud Graduates

• Web Browsers

  • Deconstructing browser trends

    All right, the big moment has come. In the past dozen weeks and a similar number of Internet-related articles, I have alluded, hinted and clear-stabbed at various trends and hypes that seem to be gripping the modern browsers. In my Taming Firefox 4 article, we had a brief if heated piece on Tabs on Top thingie. Firefox came into spotlight again with Aurora, a dev-build, and so did Internet Explorer, with its version 10 preview.

  • Mozilla

    • Firefox 5 for Android adds CSS animation, support for Do Not Track browsing

      The Firefox team is moving as quick as a…well, you get the idea. Nearly two months after releasing its latest browser to the masses, the folks at Mozilla have unleashed Firefox 5 for Android as a beta for willing souls who happen upon it in the Market. The latest rendition will hook you up with support for CSS animations,

• Public Services/Government

  • Romania to recommend open source “wherever appropriate”

    Romania’s minister for Communication and Information Society, Valerian Vreme, said at a conference in Bucharest that the country’s public authorities should “use free and open source systems, such as Linux, when a mature evaluation shows it is the proper solution”. According to a report at OSOR.EU, Vreme said he would not support a law which required institutions to use open source, as the job of the ministry was to present the pros and cons of a product and its alternatives.

  • Eve Online source code posted online, DMCA takedown quickly follows

    GitHub, for those that don’t know, is an online repository for source code and software projects. It supports both open and closed source projects, and gives developers a central location to both share and store their projects.

    For the most part the projects listed on GitHub are legitimate, and in the case of the open source repositories, viewing and downloading is encouraged. But sometimes code that shouldn’t be available is posted there, and the owner wants it taken down quickly.

    [...]

    They describe it as the “decompiled source code” of the game and that it represents “infringing material”.

  • European states ‘illegally specifying’ brands in IT tenders

    One in eight government IT tenders in the European Union illegally specifies a brand, according to a new report from Openforum Europe (OFE).

    OFE’s annual assessment of procurement in E.U. member states has found that 13 percent of a sample of tenders for IT products published in the Supplement to the Official Journal of the European Union made reference to specific trademarks or brand names. This is usually illegal under E.U. procurement rules as it is anti-competitive.

• Licensing

  • Six Quick Tips Get You Started with Open Compliance

• Programming

  • GNU-based IDE

    Mentor Graphics has developed Embedded Sourcery CodeBench, a next-generation integrated development environment (IDE) based on the open source GNU toolchain. The technology provides embedded developers with a powerful and easy-to-use tool suite for developing and optimising systems based on a broad range of devices from the most advanced microprocessors to microcontrollers.
    Sourcery CodeBench incorporates technologies which Mentor acquired from Code Sourcery in November last year. The tool introduces new support for the NetLogic Microsystems XLP multicore processor, Freescale Kinetis and Xilinx Zynq. The Sourcery CodeBench product is integrated with the Mentor Embedded Sourcery Probes and third-party probes.

Leftovers

• Science

  • 17 lost Egyptian pyramids spotted from space: BBC

    Infrared images identified 17 lost pyramids and thousands of ancient settlements after researchers at the University of Alabama concluded a yearlong research, the BBC reported on Wednesday.

• Finance

  • Goldman CEO Blankfein’s Fate in Hands of DOJ

    Wall Street executives and senior people inside Goldman Sachs (GS) say Lloyd Blankfein may want to hang on as CEO of the big Wall Street firm, but the final decision will not be his to make. Rather, his fate rests in the hands of the U.S. Justice Department, which is probing statements he made before a Senate committee investigating Goldman’s role in the 2008 financial crisis, FOX Business has learned.

    If a probe by the DOJ into Goldman’s conduct ahead of the financial crisis is expedited and the focus turns to Blankfein’s actions, the thinking goes, Goldman’s board of directors will likely offer Blankfein up as a sacrifice in exchange for leniency.

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Move Over Machiavelli: Wisconsin GOP Kills Public Financing to Pay for Voter Suppression

    You are a new Governor pursuing a radical, budget-slashing agenda. In your spare time, you work to pass the most restrictive Voter ID law in the nation, which turns out to be quite costly. What to do? Here is an idea. To pay for your voter suppression efforts, why not rob public financing for elections, a system designed to encourage a diversity of candidates and a flourishing of democracy?

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • Access Copyright Stops Pay-Per-Use Digital Licensing

      Earlier this year, Access Copyright won a Copyright Board decision that granted a new interim tariff for post-secondary education institutions. This is the first of three posts that examine the aftermath of that decision, the current economics behind Access Copyright, and the challenges the copyright collective faces over the long haul. The interim licence, which effectively sought to maintain the status quo as the copyright collective and educational institutions sort through the Access Copyright demand for a massive increase in its current tariff structure, provided the collective with a potential continued revenue stream and delayed what appeared to be a near-universal decision among Canadian universities to drop the Access Copyright licence altogether.

    • Pirate Party Germany server raid – Personal statement by Loz Kaye

      I would like to add my condemnation to that of Sebastian Nerz and Rick Falkvinge, amongst others on yesterday’s police raid of German Pirate Party IT Assets.

      A French investigation into an attack on the IT infrastructure of the energy group EDF resulted in German authorities disconnecting and then confiscating the German Pirate Party’s servers. This had the effect of partially crippling the party two days ahead of state elections in Bremen.

    • Pirate Party Germany Server Raid – Open Letter

      As you will be well aware, German police officers seized a number of servers belonging to the Piratenpartei (The German Pirate Party), provided by AixIT in Offenbach. Some of these servers constituted the information technology and communications infrastructure of the party, a legal and officially recognised political party in Germany apparently at the behest of French investigators.