11.30.11

Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• Server

  • Why Nvidia’s chips can power supercomputers

    Nvidia chips are now in three of the five fastest supercomputers in the world. How did Nvidia get there so fast?

• Kernel Space

  • A pile of stable kernel updates

  • Graphics Stack

    • The Gallium3D Intel 965 Driver Gets Dropped

• Applications

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Improving How OpenStack Nova Runs Privileged Commands

    • Dnsmasq For Easy LAN Name Services

• Distributions

  • New Releases

    • Clonezilla live clone system with multi-restore

      Version 1.2.11-23 of the Clonezilla live CD has been released with an updated software collection. Based on the unstable branch of Debian (known as “Sid”) from 28 November, this update to the open source clone system for hard disk partitioning and duplicating includes the 3.1.1-1 Linux kernel, version 0.2.38 of the Partclone partition image utility and Gdisk 0.8.1

  • Debian Family

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu team questions Distrowatch share slide figures

          Ubuntu developer Michael Hall has questioned the latest data from Distrowatch, which suggests that it is slipping in popularity when compared to rivals such as Linux Mint.

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Does Linux Mint 12 Measure Up?

            After a fairly routine release with Linux Mint 11, the team is back with a new look and a lot of changes in the offing. As with any release with a major overhaul, Linux Mint 12 has some hits and misses.

            We took an early look at Mint 12 after the team pushed out the first release candidate. As far as the look and feel goes, there’s not been a lot of changes with Mint 12 since the RC. But now that the release is final, let’s take a look at some of the changes and see whether you should be rushing to upgrade or install Mint 12.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Phones

    • Android

      • In the Mobile OS War, Can Android Ice Cream Sandwich Save Google’s Lead?

        If your answer to which mobile device operating system has the most market share is “iOS,” this article will set you straight. Google, with its open source Android OS and multiple manufacturer strategy (which leverages HTC, Samsung, and Motorola to create Android phones), has managed to take the lead in terms of market share, capturing 45% of users in the US alone.

      • Android signage system includes 10.2-inch touchscreen

        I Display announced an interactive digital signage computer that runs Android 2.3. The I View Android is equipped with a 10.2-inch, 1024 x 600 resistive touchscreen that swivels on an optionally battery-powered base, a microSD slot, a USB 2.0 port, and Wi-Fi, says the company.

  • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

    • Lenovo unveils three new Android tablets–5, 7, and 10 inchers

      Lenovo is hoping to shake up the tablet market with three new devices scheduled to hit its home base of China as early as December.

    • Wait Two Years and See How Android Is Doing on Tablets

      The funny thing is, these sentiments echo the reactions that Android itself got shortly after its release. As recently as March of 2009, everyone was questioning why there weren’t more smartphones running Android, including us. And what happened just before March of 2009? Mobile World Congress did. This is the conference where everyone decides what is going to succeed and fail each year on the mobile front, but in 2009, people who saw few Android phones and pronounced Android dead were dead wrong. Android is now flourishing.

    • Lenovo spins two Android tablets, one five-inch smartphone

      Lenovo announced three dual-core Android gadgets destined for China: a five-inch LePad S2005 I smartphone, a seven-inch LePad S2007 tablet, and a 10.1-inch LePad S2010 tablet. In the U.S., meanwhile, AT&T announced the 4G LTE-ready LG Nitro HD smartphone, featuring a dual-core 1.5GHz processor and a 4.5-inch display with Galaxy Nexus-like 1280 x 720 resolution.

    • CyanogenMod 7 Hacked Onto The Kindle Fire, Let The Modding Madness Begin!

      The $199 Kindle Fire just took one step closer to instant fame. XDA-Dev member, JackpotClavin, managed to flash CM7 onto the Fire using ClockworkMod. The result is a Fire running a custom build of Android and a whole lot of excited fanboys.

Free Software/Open Source

• New Open Source Search Engine YaCy Gives Users More Online Control

  A new open source search engine has been launched to take on Google, Bing and Yahoo.

  The YaCy, backed by free software activists, comes with desktop software and allows users to index search results on their own. The search engine developers believe it makes the platform much more accurate and more difficult to censor.

• FBSOTD: Benefits of ‘Open Source’ software

  In Tuesday’s Facebook story of the day FOX 31 fans wanted to know how they can benefit from open source projects.

  ‘Open Source’ software is a code open to computer programmers who each have the option to make adjustments.

  Computer technicians say sometimes the software can be better than original programs, because they have a whole community contributing information.

• New Open Source Search Not a Google Killer

  Even a company with Microsoft’s financial muscle has failed to make a major dent in Google’s position as the world’s search engine of choice. But a group of European online activists are apparently trying to create a D.I.Y. alternative. Or at least that was what was being reported.

• Web Search By The People, For The People: YaCy 1.0

  The YaCy project is releasing version 1.0 of its peer-to-peer Free Software search engine. The software takes a radically new approach to search. YaCy does not use a central server. Instead, its search results come from a network of currently over 600 independent peers. In such a distributed network, no single entity decides what gets listed, or in which order results appear.

• Events

  • Google I/O 2012 developer conference extended

    Google has announced that its 2012 Google I/O developer conference has been extended from two to three days, and will now take place from 27 to 29 June 2012 at the Moscone Center West in San Francisco. In a Google Code blog post, Product Marketing Manager and Developer Monica Tran says that the company “recently received an unexpected opportunity” to add another day to the event and choose to do so based on feedback from attendees of last year’s conference.

• CMS

  • BitNami Bundles Plugins with WordPress and Drupal Stacks

• Funding

  • Puppet Labs receives $8.5 million in funding from Google, Cisco and VMware

  • Google, VMware, Cisco stuff Puppet with $8.5m

• Project Releases

  • GNUstep Objective-C Runtime 1.6 Released

• Openness/Sharing

  • Why We Chose ‘Open Science’

    The Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle grew out of a simple question I posed in 2002 to a constellation of top people in the field: What’s the most useful thing we could do to propel neuroscience forward? The consensus became our inaugural project—a comprehensive, molecular-level, three-dimensional map of the mouse brain to show precisely where every gene is active, or “expressed.” It was the first step on a long road to understand how genes function in the human brain, knowledge that will point to ways to better diagnose and treat brain ailments.

• Programming

  • NetBeans 7.1 nears as release candidate arrives

    Oracle’s NetBeans developers have published the first release candidate of version 7.1 of their IDE. NetBeans 7.1 is due for final release on 14 December and introduces support for JavaFX 2.0, the UI toolkit that Oracle is planning to release as open source and incorporate in a later release of Java.

  • What’s Exciting About LLVM 3.0 & The New Clang

    LLVM 3.0 with the adjoining Clang update is the first major update to the Low-Level Virtual Machine since the LLVM 2.9 release last April. LLVM 3.0 was scheduled for a November release (but it was delayed slightly) and marks the point of deprecating LLVM-GCC in favor of DragonEgg, which allows for LLVM optimizers to be used with the mainline GCC compiler front-end via a unique plug-in. Other interesting changes for LLVM 3.0 are listed below.

Leftovers

• Security

  • Netfilter developers working on NAT for ip6tables

    Patrick McHardy has announced the release of patches for the ip6tables IPv6 packet filter under Linux on the netfilter project’s developer mailing list. The patches allow the software to replace the address information in IPv6 data packets with different information as an implementation of Network Address Translation (NAT). McHardy says that the netfilter NAT patch modifies the source code, which previously only worked with IPv4, to suit IPV6, making targets such as SNAT/DNAT or MASQUERADE, REDIRECT and NETMAP available to the IPv6 packet filter. The developers have also converted the FTP and SIP NAT helper modules to support IPv6.

• Finance

  • VIDEO: Hilarious Spoof Of Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein Joining Occupy Wall Street

    Some clever Occupy Wall Street supporters decided to send a faux Lloyd Blankfein to Zuccotti Park encampment prior to the protesters’ recent eviction and catch it all on tape.

• Censorship

  • EU Court of Justice: Censorship in Name of Copyright Violates Fundamental Rights

    The European Court of Justice just rendered a historic decision in the Scarlet Extended case, which is crucial for the future of rights and freedoms on the Internet. The Court ruled that forcing Internet service providers to monitor and censor their users’ communications violated EU law, and in particular the right to freedom of communication. At a time of all-out offensive in the war against culture sharing online, this decision suggests that censorship measures requested by the entertainment industry are disproportionate means to enforce an outdated copyright regime. Policy-makers across Europe must take this decision into account by refusing new repressive schemes, such as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), and engage in a much needed reform of copyright.