• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Open Ballot: What is Linux’s killer feature?

As we rev up our podcast engines for the next recording, we want to hear your words: what do you think is the killer feature of Linux? What’s its strongest selling point, the thing that makes it better than its competitors? Perhaps you reckon the kernel’s rock-solid stability is key, or maybe you think the plethora of desktop environments gives it an advantage.

Desktop

• LPI Announces New Affiliate in East Africa

Google

• Google Launching Chromebook for Business on June 15

• Google may offer £12 a month Chromebooks on contract

  Google is rumoured to be set to announce a scheme where students can get a Chrome OS toting laptop for a $20 (£12) a month contract, mimicking the way in which many people get the latest mobile phones.

  According to Forbes, Google will announce the deal later in the day at its Google I/O conference, and the package will include Google Apps.

• It’s Not A Linux Laptop

  I’ve been watching the commentary on Google’s announcements yesterday that their Chrome OS will be available on laptops from partners – ChromeBooks – and that they will offer a scheme where they provide a ChromeBook to businesses and students for $20-$30 per month. It’s clear that some people are not seeing the real deal here. I’ve seen comments on early reviews, Identi.ca and Twitter saying this is just a Linux laptop and asking why it will be any more successful than previous abortive attempts at the same, such as putting Ubuntu on “netbook”-style laptops.

• Samsung Chromebook: 12 things you need to know

• Five Reasons why Google’s Linux Chromebook is a Windows killer

  When Google first started talking about Chrome OS, I thought it might be turn into a Windows killer. Well, now we know that the first commercial Chromebooks will be available in mid-June and there’s no question: Google is aiming right at the Windows business desktop market.

• Why Google Chrome OS is Crucial for the Linux Desktop

  As Google Chrome OS nears a grand release, everyone is excited about a brand new operating system entering the monopolized desktop market. On the other hand, Mark Shuttleworth has set a target of 200 million Ubuntu users in the next four years. With Ubuntu 11.04 ‘Natty Narwhal’ not being as good as expected, Shuttleworth’s plans, if not impossible, may seem a bit too ambitious.

  Many people believe that Chrome OS’s release can further hamper Ubuntu’s stagnating growth. However, if we consider the recent desktop trends, and if everything goes well for Google, Chrome OS might actually be the magic boost Ubuntu so desperately needs. Here’s why:

• Sergey Brin: Only 20% of Googlers still on Windows

  Google co-founder Sergey Brin has said that only about 20 per cent of Google’s employees are still using Microsoft Windows, and that all of those users are on Windows 7.

  He stressed, however, that he is not sure of the exact percentage.

  Rumors had indicated that within the company, Google had almost entirely banned Windows. Speaking at Google’s annual developer conference on Wednesday, where and when the company announced that it will offer Chrome OS notebook for a subscription fee, Brin said that Google hopes to move most of its employees to Google’s Chrome OS, an operating system that puts all applications inside the browser.

Audiocasts/Shows

• LB – Episode 69 – Not Dead Yet by Linux Basement

Kernel Space

• Btrfs Support For Ubuntu’s Update Manager

  Eventually we will see Ubuntu Linux deploy Btrfs as the default file-system. While we will likely not see the switch from EXT4 to Btrfs with Ubuntu 11.10, there is work underway on Btrfs integration support into Ubuntu’s Update Manager.

  With Fedora 13, Red Hat introduced system roll-back support whereby anytime a yum transaction takes place for installing a new RPM package on a Btrfs root file-system, a snapshot will be created. Btrfs supports efficiently creating copy-on-write snapshots. Fedora has been quicker to adopt Btrfs installation support and its features, but now Canonical is finally supporting this path.

Applications

• Proprietary

  • Skype-ing out an open source future

    Now, be honest: do you remember that aQuantive deal? Are you aware of any benefit that Microsoft has managed to extract from a purchase with that “shocking” purchase price? No, me neither. Now compare that acquisition with its current move, which has also “shocked” people for its “substantial overpayment”. Sounds like déjà vu all over again.

    But leaving all this shock aside, what will the impact of an undoubtedly important move be for open source?

    Whatever else it might mean, one consequence of the deal is that Microsoft now has less money in the bank, which will have knock-on consequences in all the markets it is active in. Given that it started out with $50 billion, and now has “only” $42 billion, you might think that effect will be minimal. But according to this interesting analysis, most of Microsoft’s money is held outside the US, which means that it’s actually quite constrained in the things it can do with it.

  • Evil Empire Buys Skype

    Now, before any Skype fan-boys get on soap boxes to tell Mr. Vaughan-Nichols and myself just how wrong we are, that Skype is worth every penny being paid and maybe even more, let me dig-up a few facts to explain our position. eBay bought Skype when it was a two year old start-up, in 2005, for $2.6 billion. A few years later, eBay was forced to admit to their shareholders they’d paid way too much. In 2009, they were happy to dump the company onto a group of investors for $2 billion, a $600 million loss. In the first six months of 2010, Skype finally realized a $13.2 million profit, after losing $99 million in 2009.

    As I like to do sometimes, let me quote the great television sage, Thomas Magnum: “I know what you’re thinking…”
    Easy AdSense by Unreal

    You’re thinking that Skype has to be worth gazillions of dollars because practically everyone on the planet is using it and it’s finally making a little bit of money.

  • Linux Community Working On Skype Alternatives!

    The message that Skype is being acquired by Microsoft got GNU/Linux community worried. There are indications that Microsoft may stop the Linux client of Skype. Microsoft won’t have to pull the binaries from the site. They can delay the development of Skype for Linux, either way Skype’s Linux kind is behind its Mac/Windows version.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Removing Files in Linux with rm

  • How to Install KDE In Ubuntu Natty [Quick Tips]

  • The Perfect Server – Ubuntu Natty Narwhal (Ubuntu 11.04) [ISPConfig 2]

  • Easily tweak the Unity desktop with ‘GUnity’

  • Suspend broken for X200 and X201 Thinkpad in Natty

  • How to manage networks in KVM – Tutorial

  • Removing Files in Linux with rm

  • How to Tweak Your SSD in Ubuntu for Better Performance

  • Three Ways to Identify Non-matching Records in MySQL

  • Track Multiple Files Simultaneously With MultiTail

  • Save your money: Three bad Linux books

    Not all Linux books are created equal. Some are amazingly good, and definitely worth buying. Others are a waste of money. Three specimens identified in this article are of the latter variety.

    The technical book market has seen legions of Linux-related books come through Amazon and brick-and-mortar store chains like Barnes & Noble. Over the years, I have acquired quite a few of them. On my shelf right now are:

Desktop Environments

• glibc – inconsistent interfaces due to arrogance

  To start off, I don’t actually mind arrogant people as long as they back their attitude up with some semblance of sanity, however arrogance without ability pisses me off, and it seems that its the number 1 trait to be a maintainer of glibc.

• The Desktop Linux Paradox

  Believe me, I used to think Linux on the desktop was one user interface revamp away from hitting it big time. Now I realize the problem is much more fundamental: Linux was never created to serve an end-user market, and end users are hard to serve properly. The only way Linux can be so reworked is if someone removes it from its native environment and single-handedly shapes it into something else.

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • New Features in digiKam 2.0: XMP Sidecar

  • I need a new distro version 2

    Recently I’ve been surveying a lot of KDE distros. I tried a lot of live cds and looked at a lot of videos and screenshots. Things have changed a little bit since I last searched for a distro. People have started modifying KDE (KDESC?) a bit more from the defaults but not by much certainly nothing that compares to how much Gnome2/Kde3 were/are customized. In any case I eventually decided I had to settle on something. So I went to my s.o.p for distro selection. Make a list and use each distro long enough to decide if it was something I could use with minimal annoyance. Here are my findings so far.

    [...]

    My next distro was going to be Arch. I have a great many good memories of my time on Arch.

  • Next Gen KDEPIM Coming in June with KDE 4.6.4

    KDEPIM users have been suffering through a variety of bugs and lagging development releases since KDE 4 first hit download mirrors. Developers tried to fix some, but others were just ignored or given up on. Now word is coming out of the project that KDEPIM 4.6 is finally coming, but will that fix users’ problems?

    Bugs have plagued KDEPIM ever since KDE 4 was released over three years ago. Some did get some attentions, but for the most part users were told to wait for the next major release. Well, that next major release is immenent, but according to a recent developer’s blog post, some of the same issues experienced in 4.4 will rear their wiggly heads in 4.6. In addition, other regressions are being reported as well.

  • Some News from the ALERT Project

    The ALERT Project, as already explained, aims to improve bug tracking and resolution in free software communities. KDE is participating as a project partner by providing expertise on how free software communities work and by providing testing and feedback for the ALERT software.

  • Resources and Activities

    After an update by Sebastian Kügler on the status of PlasmaActive, let’s see what’s happening lately on its semantic Contour user interface and backend.

    During Tokamak together Sebastian, we designed a plugin system for delegates of arbitrary Nepomuk resources.

  • What’s new in Plasma Active?

• GNOME Desktop

  • Deja Dup (backup tool) to become default in gnome 3.2?

    As you probably know after the gnome 3.0 release developers are back on releasing the second iteration of the ‘awesome’ desktop, gnome 3.2. There have been discussions going on in gnome development lists. One of the discussions is about including deja dup backup as default in gnome. This will help to create a unified experience from the start.

  • Deja Dup (backup tool) to become default in gnome 3.2?

  • GNOME Board of Directors Elections 2011

    I can’t believe it’s been this long already, but it is time for yet another Board of Directors Election! Having had the opportunity to serve on the Board for these last 12 months, I want to encourage anyone who have the time and interest to improve the GNOME project to run for one of the seven spots on the Board of Directors! For more information on this, please read the official announcement here!

Distributions

• New Releases

  • BackTrack 5 Release

  • Zenwalk Live version (ZenLive) 7.0 has been released!

    We are happy to announce the highly awaited Zenwalk Live 7.0, which will allow more people to try out Zenwalk without having to install it first.

    Zenwalk Live 7.0 is based on the sophisticated Slackware-Live-Scripts, being the first distribution using the brand new and not yet official released version 0.3.3

• Gentoo Family

  • Sabayon 6, Entropy 1, a new Era is about to come

    It’s been some time since my last blog post, but if you’re a Sabayon user, you may know that I’ve been busy with a lot of stuff lately. Entropy eventually entered the final Beta phase: API documentation is complete, Entropy Services infrastructure has been rewritten from scratch taking advantage from the best communication protocol ever invented: HTTP (and JSON as “data format”), Sulfur eventually got its awaited speed boost (1.0_beta15), packages.sabayon.org has been deployed, www.sabayon.org will follow, Python 2.7 is now the default, same for GCC 4.5, and Entropy in general is as rock solid (and fast) as ever in all its 300.000+ lines of code, millions of line changes, that I’ve been able to work out in 4 years. You know, when you’re 20 you think everything is possible. Well, this time I was right and we can, today, all enjoy the most advanced and crazy package manager ever written by a single human being.

• Red Hat Family

  • Rancore wins JBoss and Red Hat Innovator Awards

  • Why Choose Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Over VMware or Microsoft?

    Talk to Navin Thadani, Red Hat’s senior director, virtualization, and he’ll tell you that RHEV’s attractions are that it offers high-performance server virtualization, it’s scalable, and it’s very secure. And, perhaps most importantly, it offers “solid economics for customers.” What does that mean? It’s less expensive than Hyper-V and VMware, in other words.

    Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) doesn’t seem to sell RHEV based on the features it offers, and that’s probably because it lacks a few key ones. Despite Thadani promising as long ago as February 2010 that “you will be able to do an apples-for-apples feature comparison between us and VMware,” RHEV is still quite a few pieces of fruit short of a full picnic basket vis a vis VMware.

  • Fedora

    • Sometimes I just want my Computer to Work!

• Debian Family

  • Debian Project at LinuxTag 2011

    The Debian Project is happy to announce that it will be again represented at the LinuxTag event in Berlin, Germany, this year. At the booth members of the project will be available for questions and discussions.

    The Debian booth will be at Hall 7.2b stand 118c. We invites users, developers and everyone else interested to visit it and ask questions, discuss technical issues and meet the Debian project and its developers in person.

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Ubuntu Weekly News Revival

      • Riding the Narwhal: Ars reviews Unity in Ubuntu 11.04

        Ubuntu 11.04, codenamed Natty Narwhal, rose from the depths last week. The update brings a number of significant new features to the Linux-based operating system. It includes a much-improved refresh of the Unity shell and a number of other significant improvements throughout the application stack.

        This is the first version of Ubuntu to ship with Unity on the desktop. Due to the far-reaching nature of the changes that accompany the transition to a new desktop shell, this review will focus almost entirely on Unity and how it impacts the Ubuntu user experience. We will also look at how Unity compares with GNOME 3.0 and the classic GNOME experience.

      • Nouveau Gallium3D, LLVMpipe In Ubuntu 11.10?

        - Nouveau Gallium3D will finally be enabled by default, hopefully. For the past few releases it’s been optional in the package repository, but now it’s finally ready to enter the limelight. Why? Largely because upstream Nouveau developers are willing to look at Gallium3D bug reports, according to Canonical. There’s still some concerns by the Ubuntu X developers over the state of the OpenGL driver, but following my comments — and noting that the Nouveau support can be like a game of Russian Roulette depending upon the kernels — they’ll still likely move forward. In enabling this open-source NVIDIA driver, users could then use the new Unity (3D) desktop without the NVIDIA binary driver. The enabling will likely occur soon for Oneiric but if there’s too much fall-out around the time of Ubuntu 11.10 Alpha 3, the feature could be reverted.

      • [UDS Updates] Evolution For Now, But Thunderbird Will be Default if Proper Desktop Integration Can be Done in Time

      • Ubuntu 11.10 To Switch From GDM To LightDM

        Earlier, during the Natty development cycle we reported that LightDM is being considered as a replacement for GDM. That did not happen for Ubuntu 11.04, but today it has been confirmed at the Ubuntu Developer Summit at Budapest that LightDM is finally replacing GDM.

      • Lubuntu 11.04 review – If it’s good enough for Mark Shuttleworth…

        This lightweight distro could be the perfect match for your netbook or for that old computer you’ve refurbished. Find out why Mark Shuttleworth has seen fit to welcome Lubuntu into the official Ubuntu family…

        Pros: Lubuntu 11.04 is a mature Ubuntu derivative featuring the LXDE desktop environment and lightweight applications
        Cons: Some software choices are odd, and Lubuntu lacks the Ubuntu Software Center. i586 processors aren’t supported any more
        Homepage: Lubuntu.net

      • LightDM, or: an examination of a misunderstanding of the problem

        LightDM’s a from-scratch implementation of an X display manager, ie the piece of software that handles remote X connections, starts any local X servers, provides a login screen and kicks off the initial user session. It’s split into a nominally desktop-agnostic core (built directly on xcb and glib) and greeters, the idea being that it’s straightforward to implement an environment-specific greeter that integrates nicely with your desktop session. It’s about 6500 lines of code in the core, 3500 lines of code in the gtk bindings to the core and about 1000 in the sample gtk greeter, for a total of about 11,000 lines of code for a full implementation. This compares to getting on for 60,000 in gdm. Ubuntu plan to switch to LightDM in their next release (11.10).

Devices/Embedded

• Timesys adds LinuxLink support for MIPS SoC, announces free embedded Linux training series

• Camera supports multiple machine vision apps

  Ximea GmbH announced Linux-compatible “smart cameras” that include Intel Atom processors and color image sensors ranging from WVGA (752 x 480 pixels) to five megapixels. The Curerra-R devices offer 1GB to 4GB of flash storage, microSD slots, VGA and Ethernet ports, and isolated digital I/O, the company says.

• Phones

  • Android

    • How Google Is Winning the Hearts and Minds of Software Developers

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • Cisco gains new carrier for Android tablet, but warns of new layoffs

    AT&T announced it will offer Cisco Systems’ seven-inch Android-based Cius tablet this fall, tuned to its 4G HSPA+ network as part of a new billion dollar plan by the carrier to offer “next-generation services for businesses.” Meanwhile, struggling Cisco announced fiscal 3Q earnings showing a 17.6 percent loss in net income, and warned of more job cuts to come.

GNU Radio – Opensource Software Defined Radio (SDR)

GNU Radio is an open source Software Defined Radio (SDR) project that was started about ten years ago by Eric Blossom, an electrical engineer. The main idea which is behind this project, as its founder says, was to turn all the hardware problems into software problems, that is move the complexity of a radio equipment from the hardware level to the software one, and get the software as close to the antenna as possible.

What Do Your Processes Say About Your Free Software Project?

In an effort to broaden my horizons beyond writing code, I’ve been reading a lot of business books lately. Coming from a mostly Free Software background, it’s been an enlightening experience1. One thing sticks out the most: Processes matter, and they matter more than I ever thought.

It’s common for me to contribute to random projects. Launchpad and Github and the like make it easy (can we get a Launchpad version of this shirt2?). However, I’m not likely to contribute to a project that has a HACKING document longer than any source file in the entire tree. If it takes me longer to figure out how to send a patch than it takes to write the patch, there might be some problems.

Open source designer Ian ‘Izo’ Cylkowski talks tools, design tips and talent

If the name sounds familiar then it should. Ian is an active designer within the open source community – for example, he created the logo for the semantic app launch tool ‘Synapse’ and has been working with the Novacut team on creating a brand identity for the project.

Events

• First day at Solutions Linux 2011

• Second day at Solutions Linux 2011

  I attended in the morning the round table on Governance lead by ALexandre Zapolsky (Linagora)

Web Browsers

• Chrome

  • Angry Birds for Chrome Browser

    Just noticed that Angry Birds is now online at http://chrome.angrybirds.com
    Plays pretty well in Chromium Browser. Takes a tad longer to load in Firefox. Most people seem to be able to play the game. Some though appear to have some graphic issues. I’m using the fglrx driver along with Flash 10.3 RC without issue. Check it out if you need a little time waster. *Warning* Game can be addictive. Level 20 here I come!!!

• Mozilla

  • Mozilla: It Has a Spinal Cord

    I know I’m a little late with this news, but that’s because I was kind of busy earlier in the week. Anyway, the news (Nate Anderson, Ars Technica) is that the US government (specifically, the Department of Homeland Security) tried to force Mozilla to remove an add-on for Firefox called MAFIAAFire. The DHS a few months ago seized tens of thousands of website domains without a warrant and without due process; only a few (countable on two hands) of those were truly harmful in any way, while the vast majority of those sites were perfectly legal. MAFIAAFire, whose name jabs at the RIAA and MPAA (frequently referred to as the “MAFIAA” in technology circles), essentially redirects searches for the old domains to the new domains where the content is now hosted. The DHS claims that such redirection violates the orders regarding the original seizures.

  • Mozilla Halts Updates For Firefox 3.5

    Mozilla is currently preparing to phase out Firefox 3.5 and said that it will not release further major updates for the browser version.

Project Releases

• Review: Boxee Box firmware v1.1 arrives

  Boxee released the second major update to the D-Link Boxee Box’s firmware today. The new v1.1 release adds a variety of content channels for both movies and shows, enhances the device’s browser functionality, improves the consistency of its user interface, and squashes numerous bugs.

  The new firmware (numbered 1.1.0.19036) will be pushed out to users’ Boxee Boxes gradually over the next 48 hours, according to Boxee VP of marketing Andrew Kippen. While there will be numerous mostly unseen fixes, changes, and enhancements under the hood, here’s a run-down of the more noticeable improvements…

Censorship

• Is Vietnam blocking Facebook?

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

What Linux Needs Is Some Good Marketing

That’s a great and powerful thing for Linux in general–regardless of the resistance Unity has encountered from some longtime users–and it amazes me to see how far Canonical has come with its mainstream focus. If Linux is to enjoy more success in “the masses,” then this step had to be taken.

Now that we seem to be getting this close, however, it’s making me think more than ever about what Linux still needs, and one of the biggest things I see is marketing.

Linux Heavily Used in the Enterprise by 1999 – And SCO Knew It or Could/Should Have

Remember how SCO told the court in SCO v. IBM that Linux wasn’t ready for the enterprise until IBM got involved in the year 2000 and allegedly worked to make it “hardened” for the enterprise by donating code? It said that it wasn’t until 2001, with version 2.4 of Linux, that Linux was ready for enterprise use. Linux, SCO said, was just a bicycle compared to UNIX, the luxury car, until IBM did all that.

Server

• Portable thin client has dual-core AMD G-Series processor

  Wyse introduced a mobile thin client using AMD’s dual-core G-Series T56N processor, with integral Radeon HD6310 graphics, and soon to be available with SUSE Linux. The X90m7 offers a 14-inch display with 1366 x 768 pixels, gigabit Ethernet, 802.11a/b/g/n wireless networking, 2GB of RAM and 4GB of flash storage, plus a “2G/4G capable” ExpressCard slot and optional smart card reader, the company says.

Kernel Space

• The kernel column #100 with Jon Masters – 100 issues of kernel updates

  To help celebrate Linux User’s landmark 100th issue which goes on sale tomorrow, celebrated Linux Kernel contributor, Jon Masters, recounts some of the biggest developments in the Linux Kernel over the magazine’s last 100 issues…

  I remember the first article I wrote for Linux User & Developer, way back in issue number one. It was a review of the first OpenOffice.org release, following the announcement by Sun Microsystems (now Oracle) that it was open-sourcing its Star Office product. Times have certainly changed. Sun is no more, and indeed OpenOffice.org has itself been forked (somewhat without enthusiasm from Oracle) into LibreOffice. In that same time period, untold changes have occurred within the Linux kernel community, which has grown in both size and complexity, along with its body of code…

• Graphics Stack

  • A Look At Nouveau Driver Power Usage

    There’s been many individuals asking how the work is going in tracking down the major Linux kernel power regression I brought to light late last month (actually, there’s at least two power regressions in the kernel). Not much progress has been made since then as I’ve been out of the office (and country) so I’ve been preoccupied with other matters, but I do happen to have another power test today to satisfy other reader requests.

Applications

• Talking Point: Overlapping Windows

  Back in the 80s, a GUI paradigm called WIMP (Windows, Icons, Mouse, Pointer) began to establish itself as the new way in which most people interacted with computers. When it comes to one of the most significant elements of that system, overlapping windows, I’m beginning to wonder, has it had its day?

  One of few things that Microsoft can claim to have developed from scratch is an efficient method of application switching called the taskbar, although it’s now in the process of being superseded on most GUIs by the application dock. One side-effect of that form of program management is that it doesn’t penalize the user for running applications fullscreen, and it therefore encourages it. You can glean some ideas about modern user behavior by observing that, in the most popular WM themes and skins, the areas of the window that are used for resizing have almost disappeared. The truth is, if you use Gnome or KDE, you probably run most of your apps fullscreen, most of the time.

• Proprietary

  • Skype to Microsoft ? It’s time to know XMPP/Jingle

• Instructionals/Technical

  • How to install django (or run it without installing it at all) without administrative permissions

• Games

  • Exclusive Hands On Review : Steel Storm ‘Burning Retribution’ Released for Linux

    Alexander Zubov from Kot-in-Action Creative Artel sent us the announcement news about availability of Steel Storm : Burning Retribution a.k.a Episode II on Steam, Desura, Ubuntu Software Center and Kot-in-Action e-Shoppe for the price of $9.99.

Desktop Environments

• Starting to see more systems with Xfce 4.8 and KDE 4.6.3

  Xfce and KDE are the two desktop environments that I most commonly use, so it is nice when I see distributions that update these environments and keep them close to the most currently available software. In the case of Xfce, Version 4.8 was released near the end of January, so any distribution that offers Xfce really ought to have Version 4.8 available, and the good news is that most of the distributions that I use are now offering Version 4.8, and most of them have the patches that have been added to Xfce 4.8, and some packages are labelled as high as 4.8.3.

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • Responses to Qt 5

    It’s great to see so much feedback coming in about my Qt 5 blog two days ago. We’ve read and gone through all the comments, but it’s easier to try to answer the questions and concerns in a follow-up post rather than replying to comments.

    We have now created a mailing list for discussions about Qt 5. If you’re interested, please consider subscribing. This will allow us to have better and more structured discussions around Qt 5 than replies to a blog post.

  • relax

    After my last blog about a possible future KDE Platform 5 due to Qt 5, it was interesting to watch the number of “Oh no, not another big release that will break the interface we know!” type comments. Let me put all of that to rest:

    The Plasma team has no intention, desire or need to start “from scratch” nor engage in a massive redesign of the existing netbook or desktop shells.

• GNOME Desktop

  • Gnome 3 And Ubuntu Unity Interfaces: Review

    The next Long Term Support version of Canonical’s Ubuntu is set to ship a year from now, with an October release of the OS in between to address usability and hardware fallback issues. A 2D version of Unity is already available in the Ubuntu repositories. As for GNOME Shell, it’s not clear when the new interface will make its way into the enterprise operating systems from Red Hat, Novell or Oracle.

Distributions

• New Releases

  • BackTrack 5 Has Been Released, Download Now

    Offensive Security, leaders in Online information security training, proudly announced a few minutes ago, May 10th, the immediate availability for download of the new and highly anticipated BackTrack 5 release, an extremely popular security oriented operating system.

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat honors UW-Madison partnership, contribution to research computing

    Red Hat Inc., the world’s largest open-source software company, has given the first Red Hat Cloud Leadership Award to the Center for High Throughput Computing (CHTC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and named the CHTC its first Red Hat Center of Excellence Development Partner.

    Red Hat and UW-Madison have worked together for four years to integrate into the company’s products research and software produced by the university’s Condor Project — technology widely adopted worldwide by the scientific community to distribute complex computing problems across existing networks (“grids” or “clouds” of computers).

  • Red Hat Elected to DMTF Board of Directors

  • Red Hat’s KVM: A better way to virtualize the data center?

    When you virtualize your servers, do you divide them by operating system, or is it practical to use a bare-metal hypervisor to support all your x86 operating systems?

    That’s what Red Hat thinks is the best idea – which is why it thinks you would be better off virtualizing using KVM, included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

    With Reg users reporting that the cost of licenses, the problems of managing multiple platforms and virtual machine sprawl are hurdles to virtualisation, the enthusiasm for virtualisation – and the success of early efforts – creates its own problems.

  • Fedora

    • More thoughts on the Fedora Feature Process

      This is the second release running that another component of the Fedora Feature process has come and bitten me in the proverbial. This time its the “Major Features”(tm), must be landed by the Alpha release, part of the process.

      For Fedora 14 the feature that abused this requirement was python 2.7. Rather than landing by the Alpha release it landed moments before we locked down for the Beta breaking things horribly and causing massive amounts of work post Beta when we were suppose to be stabilising the release. This affected Sugar amongst massively as that’s the language its primarily written in.

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • The Goal is 200 Million Ubuntu Users in 4 Years – Mark Shuttleworth at UDS[Video]

        “Our goal is 200 million users of Ubuntu in 4 years”, said Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth, while delivering the keynote address to the attendees of the Ubuntu Developer Summit, currently taking place in Budapest, Hungary.

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Lubuntu to become official Ubuntu derivative

          According to reports, the Lubuntu Linux distribution will become an official Ubuntu derivative. As a fully supported release, its desktop packages will be made available in the Ubuntu repositories for anyone to install – other official derivatives include Kubuntu and Xubuntu.

          In a session at the Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS), which is currently taking place in Budapest, Shuttleworth and Ubuntu Devleoper Colin Watson discussed the details of integrating Lubuntu into the Ubuntu ecosystem with project member Julien Lavergne. Topics ranged from ISO building to Ubuntu One and a global menu.

        • Linux Mint 11 “Katya” Review

          After testing Linux Mint 11, one word comes to mind: Continuity. Katya does include several new features and enhancements which improve the product further, no doubt about it, but are they enough for Linux Mint 10 users to dump their current installation and upgrade? I personally don’t think so.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Phones

    • Android

      • Google Activates 400,000 Android Devices Every Day Now!

        During the Google I/O 2011 keynote address, director of Android product management, Hugo Barra, presented a number of interesting statistics. Google has now activated more than 100 million Android devices worldwide and as of April 2011, Google is activating nearly 400,000 Android devices every single day. That number was just around 100,000 just an year ago!

      • Android 3.1 released, as Ice Cream Sandwich waits in the wings

        At the Google I/O conference, Google announced Android 3.1, an update that fixes bugs, tweaks the UI, improves USB support, and adds an Arduino-based Android Open Accessory gadget control platform. Briefly tipping an upcoming “Ice Cream Sandwich” release that will integrate Android 2.x and 3.x, Google also announced Android Market movie rentals, an 18-month Android upgrade program, and an Android@Home home-automation framework.

  • Sub-notebooks/Tablets/Laptops

    • Google To Announce Chrome Laptops-$20/Month

      Google tomorrow will announce sales of the new Chrome laptop in a $20 a month “student package” that combines both hardware and online services, according to a senior Google executive.
      The product is almost certainly a precursor to an enterprise offering. Google Apps, an online product with features similar to Microsoft Office (word processing, spreadsheets, calendars, and other productivity software) is sold to business for $50 a year

    • Acer and Samsung unveil Chrome OS ‘Chromebooks’

      Samsung and Acer will start selling the first Google Chrome OS notebooks starting June 15, priced from $349 to $499 but also available as part of monthly business/school subscriptions. The 12.1-inch Samsung Chromebook Series 5 and the 11.6-inch Acer Chromebook offer dual-core 1.66GHz Intel Atom N570 processors, 2GB of DDR3 RAM, a 16GB solid state disk, memory card reader, a webcam, USB, Wi-Fi, and optional 3G.

Time for a new open source definition?

Andrew C Oliver recently wrote “I think most know by now that a license is insufficient to make something actually open source.”

What makes this fascinating is that it involves a director of the Open Source Initiative – the stewards of the Open Source Definition – stating that the Open Source Definition is not enough to define software as open source.

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • SeaMonkey: More Than Just a Firefox Clone

    SeaMonkey is a good browser choice and solid alternative to the more popular and traditional Linux-based Web browsers. It will seem like home if you come to it from Firefox.

    If you are an enamored add-on user, the more limited extensions inventory may disappoint you. But its configurability can make up for this. All in all, SeaMonkey is a full-feature

  • [Mozilla] Merge dates vs release dates

    The schedule on the rapid release process specifics document generally focuses on merge dates. There is some confusion as to what to expect on those dates, so hopefully this post will make it clear.

    The main takeaway is that the merge date is not necessarily the date users on a particular update channel will see an update available.

SaaS

• 
  Cloud Computing Class : Lesson 1

• Another cloud deal points to changes, openness

  I recently wrote about big changes afoot in the Linux market, the topic of a current special report I’m writing. We’ve seen significant changes in the Linux landscape and market in the past 10-15 years — including its enterprise fight and victory over SCO, its rise to dominance in HPC and, more recently, the faster, broader Linux kernel development that continues to remain strong. However, no change has been as significant as cloud computing.

• DataStax Releases Dramatically Simpler, More Reliable, High-Performance Hadoop Solution

  Today, DataStax, the commercial leader in Apache Cassandra™, released DataStax’ Brisk – a second-generation open-source Hadoop distribution that eliminates the key operational complexities with deploying and running Hadoop and Hive in production. Brisk is powered by Cassandra and offers a single platform containing a low-latency database for extremely high-volume web and real-time applications, while providing tightly coupled Hadoop and Hive analytics.

• EMC Delivers Hadoop ‘Big Data’ Analytics to the Enterprise

• Mellanox Accelerates Hadoop and Memcached for Web 2.0 Applications

• Ubuntu Cloud: OpenStack Wins, Eucalyptus Loses

Oracle/Java/Sun/LibreOffice

• SGI Expands Support for Lustre File System

  SGI), a trusted leader in technical computing, today announced that it is expanding its support of the Lustre® file system to include Level 3 support, and now provides complete end-to-end coverage for its customers. Lustre is a massively parallel file system, capable of supporting compute clusters of thousands of nodes and many petabytes of storage. The addition of Level 3 support brings the SGI® Lustre® solution for scale-out computing environments to a support level equivalent to CXFSTM, SGI’s own high-performance scale-up clustered file system.

• Sonatype donates Maven 3.x integration, Eclipse Integration to Hudson

  We’re very excited about the proposed move of Hudson to the Eclipse foundation. To get the project off the right start in its new home, Sonatype has committed to donating all our Maven 3.x related work to the Hudson project. This includes the Maven 3.x integration for Hudson itself, our Eclipse integration, and our Maven Shell integration.

• Some Observations on Oracle v. Google, by Mark Webbink, Esq.

  Google believed (and believes) it avoided this licensing structure by implementing a clean room version of the Java runtime. The problem with clean rooms is that, while they may help avoid copyright claims, they are not particularly helpful in avoiding patent claims — the ol’ two-edge sword of software. So if you are going to develop a new implementation of something like the Java run-time environment, you have to not only use a clean room in order to avoid copyright claims, you also have to work around any relevant patents (and this doesn’t require a clean room). Suffice it to say that the approach Google has taken has some potential holes in it with respect to patents. Of course, Google believes the Oracle patents are either invalid or not infringed in this instance. [Editorial aside – none of this commentary is intended to imply that patents are a good thing for software; in the eyes of this writer they clearly are not.]

Business

• Global OpenICF Open Source Identity Connector Community Launched

  ForgeRock, the open source identity-oriented middleware company, joined with a global community of contributors today to launch a new open source community, OpenICF, to host multi-purpose connectors using the well-established Identity Connector Framework (ICF). The OpenICF Project will make interoperability between identity, compliance and risk management solutions easier and more reliable.

• Vyatta and Cloud.com Partner to Deliver Advanced Networking in the Cloud

• Semi-Open Source

  • MuleSoft Leapfrogs Integration Rivals with Mule Studio

  • Talend Introduces Industry’s First Unified Platform for Data Services with New ESB Offering

Project Releases

• Puppet Labs Releases MCollective Version 1.2.0

  The 1.2.0 release is the latest production release of MCollective and supersedes the 1.1.4 and older releases. This new MCollective release is fully backwards compatible with earlier releases. It is available for download at http://www.puppetlabs.com/mcollective/introduction/.

Munich Migration Happily Crawls Along

Limux is further along than halfway since all of the applications in use are now FLOSS but the operating system on 6000 PCs is now GNU/Linux. At the rate they are going sometime in 2012 12000 PCs will be running GNU/Linux. Apparently they will have 3000 still running that other OS when the migration is complete.

Defence/Police/Aggression

• Babar Ahmed tells how the UK police that arrested him in 2003 beat him, then squeezed him in a headlock so he could not breathe. Medical tests support his accusations.

• UK policemen told their commanders they saw Tomlinson hit shoved to the ground, and the commanders concealed this information from the investigation.

• An inquest ruled that Ian Tomlinson was unlawfully killed by the policeman

Cablegate

• WikiLeaks’ Assange gets Australian peace prize

  WikiLeaks’ Australian founder Julian Assange, who enraged Washington by publishing thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic cables, was given a peace award on Tuesday for “exceptional courage in pursuit of human rights.”

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Oil Rush.

  A year after the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, Republicans are trying to hasten a repeat performance. They got 4 million dollars from oil companies to promote global heating.

• Aid funded Palm Oil Rush ruins Africa

• Japan’s prime minister has decided to cancel construction of planned new nuclear reactors.

• Peak floods on the Mississippi are a human-made disaster.

• Video of recent flyover showing oil still in Gulf

• The Yes Men take on asthma related bullying with Coal Cares

• Lax NRC oversight in Alabama nuclear citation.

• Concerns for weapons grade plutonium in US power generation. What do you do with 34 metric tons of plutonium?

• Action taken to slow 14 subsidized reactors at seven sites across the US Southeast

• Tokyo Electric building plants in US at taxpayer expense.

  The [Obama] Administration, just months ago, asked Congress to provide a $4 billion loan guarantee for two new nuclear reactors to be built and operated on the Gulf Coast of Texas — by Tokyo Electric Power and local partners. As if the Gulf hasn’t suffered enough.

Finance

• Yves Smith – Financial Advisor and Former Goldman Sachs Employee

  Yves Smith has written quite a bit on the financial crisis. She has experience on Wall Street, Banking and writing as her bio below will show. To more fully inform you, our reader, I felt it important to share with you some of her published articles in which she educates and informs us. Her current blog, Naked Capitalism is one I feel you should bookmark.

• Regulators probe Goldman analyst communications

  Massachusetts securities regulators may charge Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) with improperly passing along analysts’ tips to top clients.

  The Massachusetts Securities Division is weighing administrative proceedings against the bank over communications among its analysts, sales staff and clients, according to Goldman’s quarterly filing with U.S. regulators.

• In Fifty Days, Payments Innovation Will Stop In Silicon Valley

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Meet the Nightingale Nurses

  The tobacco industry spends more than $1 million an HOUR to suggest that cigarette smoking is cool, glamorous, and fun.

• ‘It’s not hard to quit’

• 
  Rule of thumb: the opposite of what the US Chamber of Commerce says is good for the US.

• Broadcasting Regulatory Policy CRTC 2011-308

  Proposed amendments to the Commission’s false or misleading news provisions

  The Commission announces that it will not amend the false or misleading news provisions set out in various Commission regulations.

  The Commission reminds the public that complaints that arise regarding the news content aired by broadcasters should be addressed to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC). The Commission will typically intervene in the complaint process only if the broadcaster in question is not a member in good standing of the CBSC or if the complaint has not been satisfactorily resolved by the CBSC.

  The Commission further reminds the public that for the Commission to take action on a complaint relating to the broadcast of false or misleading news, the breach of the false or misleading news provisions must be flagrant.

Censorship

• Turkish attempts at Internet controls protested

  “Censorship is always an opportunity, because it reveals a fear of reform. And if an organization is expressing a fear of reform, it is also expressing the fact that it can be reformed,” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange boldly stated

• Pakistan censors foreign journalists

• Saudi Arabia

• Iran censors with fake copyright claims.

• Cutting edge censorship, see also Astroturf/PR.

  Their new hopes for regaining control are the micromanagement and censorship of search engines such as Google, through the criminalization of Web page linking, laws limiting the ability of Internet users to upload content, and related attacks on free speech and the open dissemination of knowledge. – Lauren Weinstein

• Sri Lanka.

• Facebook. Control and censorship are the point of Facebook.

• China formed a new State Internet Information Office. The Great Firewall of China was built by Cisco, Microsoft and the usual suspects.

Privacy

• US Senate Mobile Privacy Hearings Confused and Distracted.

  PJ opines: These are the guys who write patent law. Sigh. And could someone check and see who Microsoft gives money to in Congress? There is something very odd about this, considering Microsoft’s privacy policies. Why only Apple and Google called on the carpet? Seriously. It feels like a smear campaign to me. And do you see why Groklaw matters? Folks making important decisions about tech don’t understand tech either, let alone patents. It’s scary

• Alberta’s privacy commissioner stepping down

  The province is on the hunt for a new Information and Privacy Commissioner after the man who has served in the role for the past decade announced he is stepping down.

  Frank Work has been with the office for all its 16 years and has been commissioner since 2002. His current term concludes at the end of the year, after which “there are some other endeavours I wish to turn my attention to,” he said in a statement Wednesday.

Civil Rights

• A new Gaza aid fleet will set out in June, including once again the Mavi Marmara on which activists were killed last time by Israeli troops.

• RMS put himself on Amtrak’s “no-ride” list when Amtrak made passengers identify themselves. He’d rather take a bus anonymously. Now US Senator Schumer says Amtrak should check passengers against a real no-ride list as if terrorist needed a ticket to blow up trains or riders could create some unpredictable disaster.

• Utah Court Strikes Blow for Free Speech, Dismisses Trademark and CFAA Claims Against Political Activists

  As we’ve noted before, many trademark owners are none too happy when political activists use their marks as part of a larger statement about the owners’ business or political practices. Sometimes, that unhappiness takes the form of improper legal threats and even lawsuits designed to silence critical speech. In a ruling issued today, a federal judge called a halt to one such lawsuit, affirming the essential balance between trademark rights and free speech.

  The case has its origin in a brief action carried out by members of Youth For Climate Truth (YFCT), a group concerned about climate change. The action targeted Koch Industries, a billion dollar company that has publicly challenged the science behind climate change theories. Borrowing “identity correction” techniques pioneered by groups such as the Yes Men, YFCT issued a press release, purportedly from Koch, in which the company promised to stop funding organizations that deny climate change. The release was posted for a few hours on a website (www.koch-inc.com) that partially imitated Koch Industries’ own website. The action received some media coverage, but no press organization thought the release was real. If Koch were sensible, that should have been the end of it.

Intellectual Monopolies

• US attacks on New Zealand drug agency draw anger

  The US Trade Representative’s latest Special 301 report’s criticisms of New Zealand’s drug agency PHARMAC have drawn angry responses in that country.

  The UTSR’s newly-published annual report on intellectual property rights notes that the US pharmaceutical industry “continues to express concerns regarding, among other things, the transparency, fairness and predictability of the PHARMAC pricing and reimbursement regime, as well as the overall climate for innovative medicines in New Zealand.”

• The Lawful Access Legislation: Does it Really Criminalize Linking & Anonymity?

  The government’s plans to include lawful access provisions within its omnibus crime bill has attracted mounting attention in recent days as many commentators express concern that the legislation could create criminal liability for linking to content that incites hatred and for using anonymous or false names online. The concerns started at the Free Dominion site and have since spread to Brian Lilley at the Toronto Sun and Jesse Brown’s blog at Maclean’s.

• Trademarks

  • Department of Commerce Releases Worthless Report on Trademark Bullying

    if the “duty to police” might be driving trademark owners to be (over)zealous in their enforcement efforts, maybe we should fix the duty to police. After all, this “duty” isn’t in the statute at all; it’s barely in the caselaw

• Copyrights

  • Attack on web anonymity

    The Intellectual Property Constituency has asked that, as a condition of Verisign’s ongoing management of the .NET top-level domain, that they should be required to act as private copyright cops. Among the IPC’s demands are that .NET domains should be subject to suspension on copyright complaints and that anonymous or privacy-shielded .NET domains should be abolished. – Cory Doctorow, boingboing

  • Portugese Socialists attempt to outlaw Creative Commons licenses and sharing without charge.

  • Lilley: Tory crime bill an attack on our liberty

    It is said that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance and that’s just as true now, after the Conservative win, as it was before.

    I’m sure that some Tory supporters have been dancing in the streets singing Let Freedom Reign, but putting your faith in any one political party is having blind faith.

  • Billboard Article Changes Tune on Canadian Copyright Reform

    Last week, Billboard ran an article on what the Conservative majority government might mean for copyright reform. The article placed the spotlight on the sharp divide between the Canadian Recording Industry Association on one side and much of the remainder of the music industry on the other. While CRIA was one of Bill C-32′s most vocal supporters (aided by its Balanced Copyright for Canada site), many other music associations including collectives, songwriters, and publishers were sharply critical. This divide came through in the original article, noting that CRIA’s Graham Henderson told Billboard.biz that “he believes 90 percent of C-32 was agreed upon by members of the music industry ‘with just a difference of opinions on a couple of things’”.

  • ACTA

    • DHS warned in 2008 that ACTA was threat to US National Security

      ACTA would expend international goodwill by requiring other governments to change organizational and legal structures….[and] sweeping powers … could even harm small U.S. exporters competing with foreign companies favored by local governments.