06.12.11

Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• Linux (and Windows) on a new HP Pavilion laptop

  Second surprise: copying 13000 files (4 GB) from a DVD to the hard-disk is extremely slow in Windows 7: 10 hours! Well, estimated. I lost patience after 2 hours and rebooted. Doing the same operation on Linux: 7 minutes. Amazing.

• Applications

  • The 10 Most Popular Desktop Applications for Linux

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Getting started with Sage

    • Weekend Project: Find Hidden Treasures in XFCE 4.8

  • Games

    • Steel Storm: Burning Retribution For GNU/Linux Weekend Special

      Alexander Zubov from Kot-in-Action Creative Artel the developers of Steel Storm: Burning Retribution announced a GNU/Linux weekend special !

• Desktop Environments

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

    • KDE SC 4.6.4 Is Available for Download

      The KDE team has just announced a few minutes ago (June 10th) the fourth maintenance release for KDE Software Compilation 4.6. This is a minor update, focusing on bug fixing and translation updates.

• Distributions

  • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • X.org, wayland and all that awesome low-level stuff

      So, as of today, I am proud to announce that Mandriva 2011 is powered by the latest, shiniest and greatest X.org server 1.10.2 and Mesa 7.10.2, with all the awesomeness which comes with that. I had to write some small patches to fix some Intel Sandy Bridge crashes here and there, but I think that Mandriva today has probably the most up-to-date X.org stack out there.

  • Gentoo Family

    • Review of Sabayon 5.5 Xfce

      Sabayon, despite being in the top ten on Distrowatch, isn’t as publicized as other popular distributions. Xfce is my desktop of choice, so I thought that I would review the Xfce version of Sabayon 5.5, the newest edition.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Fedora

      • Projects I would love to see packaged in Fedora

        I suspect this won’t be my last post like this. I use to just package them up myself but I’m finding that the amount of packages I maintain is increasing and the time I have to actually maintain them is decreasing and I know there’s people that are likely better suited to some of these packages than I am.

  • Debian Family

    • People behind Debian: Philipp Kern, Stable Release Manager

      Philipp is a Debian developer since 2005 and a member of the release team since 2008. Since he took the responsibility of Stable Release Manager, the process has evolved for the best. I asked him to explain how the release team decides what’s fit for stable or not.

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Review: Pinguy OS 11.04 Mini

          Upon the advice of a commenter in one of my previous posts, I am reviewing Pinguy OS 11.04 Mini today. That commenter asked that I test Pinguy OS 11.04, and mentioned the existence of a Mini edition, so I became intrigued, because Pinguy OS is more known for being an “everything-and-the-kitchen-sink” distribution than anything else, so I thought it would be cool to see what the Mini edition would have in store.

Free Software/Open Source

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org: Missing the Big Picture

    LibreOffice (LO) was forked from the LGPL’ed version of OpenOffice.org some 8 months ago, while also creating a new organization for this: the Document Foundation (TDF). During this time the LibreOffice community has worked on cleaning up the source code, integrating features from another fork, (Go-oo, which was used in most Linux distributions), merging features from subsequent versions of OpenOffice.org and also creating new features themselves. They have a healthy community going with a number of core developers (mostly employed) and a large number of volunteers. There is also work on creating a real foundation much like the KDE e.V in Germany, and they received substantial donations to this goal.

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • ‘Proprietary software keeps users helpless’

    Richard Matthew Stallman started the GNU’s Not Unix project in 1983 to create a totally free operating system, and later the General Public License to guarantee its freedom. By 1991 much of GNU was finished, although it was lacking a kernel – that’s where Linus Torvalds and his Linux kernel come in.

    Despite the success of GNU/Linux, Stallman hasn’t opted for an easy life: he campaigns tirelessly to protect our software freedoms, alerting us to potential threats that new technologies bring.

Reader’s Picks

• Defence/Police/Aggression

  • WSJ and Al-Jazeera Lure Whistleblowers With False Promises of Anonymity

    Handing information to the Wall Street Journal or other corporate controlled media is foolish. The HB Gary scandal showed that powerful companies routinely threaten journalists that don’t toe the line.

• Cablegate

  • Wikileaks shows that the US, under Obama, killed an attempt by Haiti to increase the minimum wage and that the US, EU and UN were aware that the Haitian presidential election was totally unfair while they supported it.

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • The US House Subcommittee on Energy and Power will strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its ability to protect the public from pollution spewing from utility plants.

    The specific rule that Whitfield is working to repeal involves standards that would require utilities to install devices to capture as much CO2 as possible from industrial boilers and waste incinerators, a move the EPA estimates would prevent thousands of premature deaths from heart attacks and respiratory illnesses every year.

  • Butterfiles are weeks early in the UK

• Censorship

  • UK program to scramble publications government does not like

    Whitehall sources have revealed that British intelligence officers successfully sabotaged the launch of the first English language website set up by an al-Qaida affiliate… A pdf file containing fairy cake recipes was inserted into Inspire to garble most of the 67 pages of the online magazine, including instructions on how to “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom” [becomes mom's cupcakes]

    Because they altered the site, we can’t be sure what it originally contained and so Whitehall only manages to discredit itself and terrorize political opposition.

  • A small open source company faces a libel suit in the UK for complaining that the dominant firm has a “Microsoft bias.” The firm was put in the ridiculous position of having the larger rival prove their competitive system would work only to have it branded, “unworkable”.

    the question of whether Computacenter has a Microsoft bias. It’s like asking if the Pope is a Catholic.

    Other small firms have given up, and Microsoft can ruin those who complain. Now we see that libel law is use to threaten firms that realize they are hopelessly locked out.

  • Tell YouTube to bring back FreedomMessenger, an Iranian protest channel which was turned off due to false copyright charges.

    RMS adds, “If you watch videos in YouTube, don’t use Flash. Use the new Webm format. Adding &html5=True to the URL should get you this, without need to identify yourself.”

  • The Fairness Doctrine, a dead letter since 1987, has been officially removed from law by the US FCC. Corporate broadcast can now use public spectrum without even pretending to be fair and balanced.

    It would be better to completely deregulate the spectrum than to bring back this fig leaf. The fairness doctrine was never particularly effective and fake balance is a cornerstone of manufactured consent.

  • hypePhone won’t tell you where the DUI roadblock is

    … government cannot order Google, Apple, or others to ban such apps providing legal information, Congress is trying to apply pressure through the “chokepoints” of major Internet firms … Anecdotal evidence suggests that when many persons know that there are DUI checkpoints on their route, they either don’t drink or find a designated driver who isn’t drinking … Given the realities of this situation, it is difficult to view the Congressional pressures being asserted as much more in the end than political posturing,

    People who want to avoid the delay and humiliation of arbitrary roadside searches will have to turn to the countless websites and other services offering the same information.

• Privacy

  • EPIC urges FTC to force a suspension of Facebook’s facial recognition program.

    users could not reasonably have known that Facebook would use their photos to build a biometric database in order to implement a facial recognition technology under the control of Facebook… Facebook’s constant changes to the privacy settings of users, which they alleged had made it virtually impossible for users to control who gained access to their personal information.

    Read EPIC’s complaint here, it’s much better than FT’s summary.

  • I ask people not to post photos of me on Facebook.

    Facebook has turned on automatic face recognition on photos. Facebook says that it only suggests identifications for faces in photos for people who are the user’s friends. However, it might run the algorithm over every photo posted and not publicly announce the results.

  • Many UK schools make students use fingerprint recognition to get lunch.

    Cameras in the toilets; CCTV in the classroom; pupils’ fingerprints kept in a database … the surveillance state is quietly invading our schools

    As the Philadelphia laptop camera spy scandal illustrates, students have no privacy with school issued computers. I give my kids their own computers with free software and full drive encryption for real research and self expression.

• Civil Rights

  • Alabama outdoes Arizona with odious anti-immigrant laws [2].

    “I campaigned for the toughest immigration laws, and I’m proud of the legislature for working tirelessly to create the strongest immigration bill in the country.” – Govenor Robert Bentley.

    The legislation also makes it a criminal offense to provide transport or housing to an illegal immigrant. The state will have to check the citizenship of students, and any business that knowingly employs an illegal immigrant will be penalized.

    This will be a pain for everyone but especially for people with brown skin who want a place to live, work for a living, send their kids to school or take the city bus. Papers, please. Because Alabama schools require vaccination, excluding immigrant children from schools will immediately impact public health. Conditions for actual immigrants will be worse.

  • Arizonans rejoice Alabama’s folley

    maybe all those tourists who boycotted Arizona for the last year will avoid spending their money in Alabama, and come back and rent our vacation rental guest cottages down here in Tubac. Then again, I doubt if the tourists from New York and Massachusetts who come to Arizona in the winter ever thought about going to the Redneck Riviera.

  • A Stanford University study shows that unionized coal mines are safer in the US.

    unionization is associated with a decrease of anywhere from 17 to 33 percent in traumatic injuries, and a drop of 33 to 72 percent in fatal injuries.

    Burning coal is a bad idea due to global warming no matter how safe mining is but those who work in it suffer most.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • US Citizens, send an email to Congress against ProtectIP. This is more effective than you might think it is.