07.15.11

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• Kernel Space

  • Graphics Stack

    • Two Months To The X.Org Chicago Conference

    • VP8 Gallium3D Support In Mesa Is Being Worked On

      Besides pipe-video landing in Mesa, there’s some more good news to report when it comes to accelerated video playback over Mesa/Gallium3D. There’s a VP8 state tracker for this Google format that’s actively being developed.

      Back in March one of the proposals this year was to create VP8 support over VDPAU in Gallium3D. Originally this began as an H.264 VDPAU state tracker and then targeting WebM or Theora instead. In the end the GSoC proposal was for VP8 in Gallium3D via the VDPAU state tracker. However, the proposal was not accepted by Google due to technicalities.

• Applications

  • Genuine People Personalities

    Perhaps this topic is best left as a thought, a ‘what if’, but terminals have been around for dozens of years and little has changed since then. Perhaps giving terminals some people personality could help us leap into J.A.R.V.I.S.-like Operative Systems?

  • 10 small Linux applications I can’t live without

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Booting with EFI

    • Enabling Compiz Fusion On An OpenSUSE GNOME 11.4 Desktop (NVIDIA GeForce 8100)

    • Running the Tribler BitTorrent client in Fedora 15

    • How to Disable Automatic Workspaces in Gnome 3 (And Other Shell Tweaks)

    • Maximum Calculus with Maxima

  • Games

    • Free Puzzling: Puzzle Moppet Awareness Day

      I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that it’s Puzzle Moppet Awareness Day. The puzzle game by Garnet Games is adopting a trick widely used in the iOS world (gratuitous plug for Free App Hero, which offers a daily round up all the best free games for iThings) of going free for a day. While the PC has recently been enjoying Steam sales, pay-what-you-want schemes, and so on, few have adopted the model that’s working so effectively on Apple’s handhelds of just being free for a single day so word gets out.

• Desktop Environments

  • Intel AppUp Workshop at Desktop Summit

    The DesktopSummit 2011 team is pleased to announce the Intel AppUpSM Application Lab: MeeGo Series. The session will take place at the Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany as part of the Desktop Summit. Intel® is the Platinum Sponsor of the Desktop Summit.

  • GNOME Desktop

    • Trending Gnome 3 alternative distros

      Gnome3 on its release on April 6 2011 was touted as the next generation of GNOME in nine long years. The highlight of Gnome 3, is the brand new user interface, modern desktop for modern technologies. Besides, Gnome 2 had a very long life and maintaining it, technically, was reaching the point of ‘critical mass.’ Secondly, Gnome 3 aims to get rid of a lot of clutter on the desktop.

    • Expected Changes In GNOME Shell 3.2

      Here’s a list of what to expect in GNOME Shell 3.2 (to be released on September 28), according to Allan Day, one of the main GNOME Shell developers:

• Distributions

  • New Releases

    • NetSecL 3.2

    • Aptosid 2011-02 arrives with KDE 4.6

    • Linvo 2010.12.6

      The image passes the 700MB barrier, so I recommend you burn it on DVD or USB Flash Drive using UNetBootin.

  • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • PCLinuxOS KDE MiniMe 2011.07 is now available for download

      PCLinuxOS KDE MiniMe 2011.07 for 32 bit computers (works on 64 bit computers too) is now available for download.

    • Extending support for 2010.1/2010.2 releases

    • Mandriva Linux 2010.x reaches end of desktop support

      French Linux distributor Mandriva has reminded users that Mandriva Linux 2010.1 Spring and 2010.2 have both reached their end of desktop support. From 8 July, no new updates to the desktop environments, web browsers and major apps will be provided.

    • Passing on the Linux dream

      The question, then, of whether Android is Linux seems to be settled in the mind of Google. Android is most definitely Linux. But there’s more to it than that: Google believes that Android is the natural successor of Linux, succeeding in areas that the parent operating system could not.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Scientific Linux: Enterprise Infrastructure on the rise

      Scientific Linux, among other distros, tries to provide an answer to this whole fiasco. If you are, for example, a grade school or a high school you can’t really afford to pay Microsoft for 40+ Windows 7 licences and a Windows 2008 Server, especially if your students are going to use those computers to do a little C++ or Java programming at most.

      The researchers at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) know how limited funds can be. Ironically, in the world, research and education are among the most underfunded branches of society, so the less you have to spend on necessities, the more resources you have for your actual research.

    • Virtual Bridges Joins Open Virtualization Alliance, Extends Support for Linux Desktops

  • Debian Family

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot Alpha 2 Review, Screenshots, Download Links

          Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot Alpha 2 is released already and the changes we expected to see in Ubuntu 11.10 is slowly starting to show up. Among other things, the most important change is the arrival of GNOME 3.0 stack. Ubuntu is not based on GNOME 2.x anymore. Most of the default Ubuntu themes have been ported to GNOME 3.0 and lot of other things are changing as well. Read our detailed Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot Alpha 2 review.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Phones

    • Android

      • 11 Server Apps for Android OS Devices

        Mobile phones can do more and more every day. There’s an app for just about everything and everybody, including server admins. With these 11 server-related apps for the Android platform, you’ll never again have an excuse to not take time off. These apps will enable you to monitor and manage your systems, all via your mobile phone or tablet.

      • Android Now Seeing 550,000 Activations Per Day

  • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

    • Amazon’s Android tablet’s rumored as ad-supported Kindle 3G launches

    • The Five Best Linux Netbook Distributions: 2011 Edition

      Though netbooks have waned a bit in favor of tablet devices, there’s still a lot of demand for netbooks and netbook-friendly Linux distros in certain circles. Whether you’re looking for a brand-new netbook or to keep an older device current, there’s plenty of options for the Linux crowd. Let’s take a look at the top five netbook Linux distros.

Free Software/Open Source

• Just how “open” is open source vendor-neutrality?

  This week’s release of Jaspersoft Studio represents a new option for Eclipse-based business intelligence (BI) design environments.

  This product release sees Jaspersoft become an official member of the Eclipse Foundation — which is interesting, as its tools compete with those of existing Eclipse projects.

  If you’ve not visited Eclipse for a while, in it’s own words, “Eclipse is an open source community, whose projects are focused on building an open development platform comprised of extensible frameworks, tools and runtimes for building, deploying and managing software across the lifecycle.”

• As Facebook Shows Its Fear, Open-Xchange Bounces Back

  The arrival of the Google+ social network has caused a battle to erupt over ownership of Facebook users’ contact information, and on Wednesday open source provider Open-Xchange fought back against Facebook’s earlier deactivation of its OX.IO export tool.

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Mozilla in the New Internet Era — More Than the Browser

      Mozilla’s mission is to build user sovereignty into the fabric of the Internet. We work to ensure that the the Internet remains open, interoperable and accessible to all. To do this we build products, we build decentralized participation worldwide, and we build the ability for people to create their own experiences in addition to consuming commercial offerings.

      Internet life is undergoing immense changes. The mobile revolution has huge implications, from new devices to operating systems to user expectations. The social experience means a lot of personal data about me becomes central. The increasingly ubiquitous nature of computing devices (phone to tablets to microwaves to lights and electric meters) means the amount and kinds of data being generated are changing dramatically.

    • Mozilla Delivers New Firefox Versions at Rapid-Fire Pace

      Mozilla announced its intent to pursue a new rapid release cycle early this year, and while the company’s recent release of version 5 of the Firefox browser is being met with much less criticism than the previous version 4, we’ve reported on the fact that not everyone is happy with the speed of the releases. Enterprise IT administrators may be among the most unhappy observers. Still, if you’re keeping track, Mozilla is more on target to please users with rapidly delivered, high-quality versions of Firefox than it ever was before.

      It’s worth remembering that heading into this year, just before Mozilla announced its new rapid release cycle plans for Firefox, the browser hadn’t even reached version 4.0. Meanwhile, Google Chrome was snapping up browser market share with new and improved versions showing up every couple of months. In fact, Chrome’s development cycle is a big part of why Mozilla stepped up its release cycle for Firefox.

    • Firefox Leaps Ahead With Versions 6, 7, and 8

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Symphony contribution

    Also, as the PC Magazine review notes, we’ve done some really good UI
    work. I invite you to download Symphony [2] and take a closer look at
    this. Yes, it is different from what OOo has today. And a move of
    that magnitude has an impact on documentation and translations as
    well. But the feedback we’ve received from customers and reviewers
    is very positive. Do we integrate parts of the Symphony UI? That is
    something for the project to discuss and decide on.

    Finally, we will be proposing [3] a new incubation project at Apache,
    for the ODF Toolkit. These Java libraries enable new kinds of
    lightweight document processing applications. We think this would
    work well as an Apache project, and we look forward to moving that
    into incubation and developing that complementary project forward.

  • IBM to donate Symphony code to Apache for consideration

  • IBM throws its source code and support behind OpenOffice

    Of all the companies that support OpenOffice, there were only two that didn’t support the LibreOffice fork: Oracle and IBM. I could understand Oracle. While Larry Ellison, Oracle’s CEO, didn’t really care about OpenOffice–after all Oracle essentially gave OpenOffice away to The Apache Foundation–I also know that Ellison wasn’t going to let The Document Foundation, LibreOffice’s parent organization, dictate terms to him. But, I’ve never quite understood why IBM didn’t help create LibreOffice. Be that as it may, IBM will be announcing tomorrow that it’s donating essentially all its IBM Lotus Symphony source code and resources to Apache’s OpenOffice project.

  • SAP joins OpenJDK Java project

    SAP has joined the OpenJDK project, an Oracle-led initiative producing an open source implementation of Java that also has gained support of such companies as IBM and Apple in recent months.

• Business

  • Open Source Earns New Opportunity With Channel Partners

  • Semi-Open Source

    • Jaspersoft joins Eclipse Foundation

      Open source business intelligence software specialist Jaspersoft has joined the Eclipse Foundation and presented Jaspersoft Studio, which integrates into the Eclipse IDE. The development environment enables developers to build reports and integrate them into existing applications free of charge. Potential data sources for reports include relational, “big data” and NoSQL databases, as well as text files.

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Hurd Progresses – Debian GNU/Hurd by end of 2012?

    The GNU Hurd developers are moving forward with their work on the free software operating system. According to the most recent progress report from the project, there is now a “real plan” to release a Hurd variant of Debian with the release of Debian 7.0 Wheezy.

• Project Releases

  • Compiz 0.9.5 Has Arrived

    Sam Spilsbury has just tagged Compiz 0.9.5 for release as the latest development milestone for this compositing window manager.

• Licensing

  • The Open Game License: A case study in open source markets

    The history of the roleplaying game industry in general, and the Dungeons and Dragons game in particular, serves as an interesting case study in the relative benefits of openness in business models.

• Openness/Sharing

  • New book from Creative Commons celebrates the power of open

    By the end of 2010, more than 400 million works had been licensed with Creative Commons licenses. That’s 400 million musical compositions, news items, academic manuscripts, artworks, blueprints, presentations, photographs, books, blog posts, and videos whose owners believed traditional copyright restrictions didn’t allow their creations to properly circulate, grow, and flourish.

Leftovers

• Health/Nutrition

  • Insurance Exchanges Tilted Toward Health Insurers, Not Consumers

    The insurance industry made it abundantly clear this week that it is in the driver’s seat — in both Washington and state capitols — of one of the most important vehicles created by Congress to reform the U.S. health care system.

    The Affordable Care Act requires the states to create new marketplaces — “exchanges” — where individuals and small businesses can shop for health insurance. In the 15 months since the law took effect, insurers have lobbied the Obama administration relentlessly to give states the broadest possible latitude in setting up their exchanges. And those insurance companies have been equally relentless at the state level in making sure governors and legislators follow their orders in determining how the exchanges will be operated.

• Defence/Police/Aggression

  • ‘Ex-terrorist’ rakes in homeland security bucks

    Walid Shoebat had a blunt message for the roughly 300 South Dakota police officers and sheriff’s deputies who gathered to hear him warn about the dangers of Islamic radicalism.

    Terrorism and Islam are inseparable, he tells them. All U.S. mosques should be under scrutiny.

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. drops bid for BSkyB

    Political and public outrage over the phone-hacking scandal involving some of its newspapers forces News Corp. to withdraw its $12-billion offer to take over Britain’s biggest satellite broadcaster.

• Privacy

  • Apple Pays Out $946 in ‘Locationgate’ Settlement

    Apple has begun shelling out dough for its location-tracking debacle lovingly referred to as “Locationgate.”

    Apple was ordered to pay out 1 million South Korean won ($946) in compensation for collecting user geolocation data without permission in May, Reuters reported Thursday. The payment was made to a lawyer named Kim Hyung-suk.

• Internet/Net Neutrality

  • Rogers facing Internet throttling deadline

    nada’s largest cable Internet provider admitted to unintentionally throttling access to World of Warcraft — a popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) with more than 11 million subscribers around the world.

    The Toronto-based company disclosed its activities after one of its customers filed a complaint with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) in February.

  • What to do About Retail Usage Based Billing: A Modest Proposal

    OpenMedia.ca, which spearheaded the public uproar over usage based billing earlier this year, launched a Vote Internet campaign that quickly attracted political support. The campaign asks candidates to be pro-Internet, which includes standing up for an open and accessible Internet and stopping the “pay meter on the Internet.” While this predictably raises claims of retail price regulation, addressing concerns about retail UBB need not involve a return to regulatory approvals over retail pricing of Internet services.

    I’ve argued that UBB is fundamentally a competition problem and that addressing the competition concerns (which OpenMedia also supports) will address many of the concerns. Increased competition takes time, however, and in the meantime there are legitimate concerns about the use of UBB in Canada at the retail level given the approaches in other countries and the pricing far above costs. In addition to discussing those issues, my UBB paper makes a modest proposal for addressing retail UBB that includes greater transparency and a reasonableness standard. The proposal – which I’ve called the creation of Internet Billing Usage Management Practices or IBUMPs – is explained below.