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Links 19/12/2011: Linux Kernel 3.2 RC 6, Razor-qt 0.4.0





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux

  • Application Development: Linux Skills Open Huge Job Opportunities


  • Server

    • Raytheon banners COTS data transfer system
      The servers run a hardened Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system.


    • File Sharing Made Easy With Media Servers and NAS


    • LinuxForce Cluster Service Now Available
      LinuxForce, Inc. announced today the availability of LinuxForce Cluster Servicesâ„ , a new IT (Information Technology) service offering. LinuxForce Cluster Servicesâ„  design, provision, and maintain redundant, high availability (HA) clustered servers. HA servers are needed by organizations to assure a reliable system for delivery of critical business applications whether on-site, colocated, or "in the cloud". LinuxForce's advanced approach to implementing HA server clusters protect valuable data and assure continuity for virtualized systems while minimizing overall costs and maximizing performance without burdening existing staff.




  • Audiocasts/Shows





  • Kernel Space



  • Applications



  • Desktop Environments

    • ANNOUNCE: Razor-qt 0.4.0
      We are glad to announce the release of Razor-qt 0.4.0, after a months of development since the last release...


    • Razor-Qt: A New Qt-Based Desktop Environment
      The Razor-Qt desktop was just updated to version 0.4.0 after being in development for months. This release improves stability of the lightweight desktop, introduces several new components, offers new translations, a new theme, new panel plug-ins, and much more. The new Razor desktop components are azor-runner, razor-config, qtxdg, and Razor own menu.


    • Users voted for best XFCE-based Linux distribution
      Most Linux distributions use one or more mainstream desktop environments. To be honest with you, I prefer KDE. My next preference is XFCE, followed by GNOME. And LXDE brings up the rear of the mainstream desktop environments for me. Every user has his own preferences, of course. That's why arguments over Linux distributions and desktop environments will never end. People will always have differences of opinion.


    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)





  • Distributions

    • McRae: Pacman Package Signing - 4: Arch Linux
      Back in March 2011, LWN examined package signing (or the lack thereof) in the Arch Linux distribution. Things have advanced considerably since then. Allan McRae has now posted the fourth in a series of articles about the adoption of signed packages in Arch.


    • New Releases



      • Chakra Edn 2011.12, The Arch Linux Fork Released
        The Chakra Development Team has announced the release of Chakra 2011.12. Chakra is one the most popular Arch Linux forks. This version is Linux 3.1 and KDE 4.7. With this release KDE is updated to 4.7.4, kernel to Linux 3.1.4. The sound group has been rebuild/updated, latest networkmanagement and mesa-stack are also included. Chakra is now offering a DVD and CD version.


      • SystemRescueCd and GParted Live updated
        The SystemRescueCd and GParted Live developers have each released new versions of their Linux distributions for administering and repairing systems. Both of updated distributions include the recent 0.11.0 release of the open source GParted partition editor and new kernels, as well as other changes and package updates.




    • Red Hat Family



    • Debian Family

      • The newsletter for the Debian community


      • Derivatives



        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Canonical Will Remove Java From Ubuntu
            Canonical announced a few hours ago, December 15th, that it will remove all Sun JDK (Java Development Kit) packages from the Canonical Partner repository.


          • Oracle Java Dies On Ubuntu


          • MyUnity: A configuration tool for Unity


          • Puppy Linux Racy Review
            Puppy Linux is a tiny distribution that is geared towards older PCs and giving them a second life. Puppy Linux can be run from a Live CD or USB (for faster performance) or just install it onto your system.

            The software programs that come part of Puppy Linux are those that are specifically picked out to ensure that resources are not wasted while providing a productive machine. The programs that are part of Puppy you will not usually find on a distribution such as Linux Mint or Ubuntu which are geared towards more modern systems but that does not mean they are any less useful.


          • Ubuntu; apparently, a Linux apart from Linux
            When I decided to start a blog and write about Linux, I never thought that I would see this. Since this surprised me somewhat, I decided to share it.


          • Move unity launcher to the bottom with Unity Bottom Launcher | PPA Ubuntu


          • Ubuntu Squeezebox music server: update and modifications
            Six months ago I wrote about a weekend project to install the SqueezeServer Squeezebox media server on an aging PC (a Hush PC based on a 1.2 GHz Via system with 40GB hard disk and 1 GB of memory) running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.

            This is an update. I have spent the last few months tweaking the setup and buying additional Logitech Squeezebox devices, allowing me to stream music throughout the house with the same song playing in different rooms, or each room playing different music.


          • Thunderbird 70-100% CPU idle in Ubuntu Oneiric 11.10
            Dear People From The Future Use gtk-theme-switch2 to change from Oxygen-Molecule to some other theme, Oxygen-Molecule caused me massive CPU usage for Thunderbird and *some* other GTK software. Oxygen-Molecule-Flat works fine.


          • Ubuntu targets smartphones, clouds
            Ubuntu 11.10 has some jagged edges and documentation isn't easy to locate, but Canonical is certainly dreaming big with this latest update, dubbed Oneiric (dreamy) Ocelot.


          • New Canonical portal a sign of mobile to come?
            Canonical is showcasing a new effort to reach out and touch hardware manufacturers… an effort that coincides well not only with its ongoing desktop PC push, but perhaps also Canonical's latest drive to target the mobile device market.


          • Flavours and Variants

            • Pear OS Linux Panther 3 review
              Pear OS is a new Linux desktop distribution based on Ubuntu Desktop with the graphical installer. Its development started in early August 2011 by David Tavares (from France), and on August 15 2011, Pear OS 1.0, the first version marked “stable,” was released. The latest edition, release on December 14 2011, is Pear OS Linux Panther 3.

              Though a Linux distribution running the GNOME 3 desktop, Pear OS’s desktop is fashioned after Apple’s Mac OS X, and each major version’s code name is taken from the Mac OS release with a corresponding version number. So, “Panther,” the code name of Pear OS Linux 3, is taken from the code name of Mac OS 10.3. If you have not been following Apple’s flagship operating system, each Mac OS edition is named after a big cat. Like all reviews published on this website, this one is based on test installations of the 32-bit edition of Pear OS Linux Panther 3 (a 64-bit edition is available too) in virtual environments and on real hardware.


            • Create desktop launchers in Linux Mint 12












  • Devices/Embedded

    • Timesys Expands Professional Services and Training Programs


    • Linaro scheme recognizes effort by contributors
      Linaro, the open organization focused on improving Linux on ARM, has formed the Linaro Community Contributor Process and Team. Linaro Technical Leads now have the opportunity to nominate any individual who has made sustained contributions over a significant period of time as a Community Contributor of Linaro.


    • Phones

      • How HP and Open Source Can Save WebOS


      • Android

        • Google Starts Rolling Out Android 4.0 To Nexus S
          Yesterday Google made available Galaxy Nexus in the US and today the company started rolling out Android 4.0 to its Nexus S phones.

          The Google + page of Android posted that "We're rolling out Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, to GSM/UMTS Nexus S devices over the coming month, starting today."


        • 6 Best Free Android FTP Tools
          File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a popular and time-honored method of transferring files to and from remote network sites and devices. FTP is built on a client-server architecture and uses separate control and data connections between the client and server applications. The FTP client connects to the FTP server, and enables the user to send and retrieve files from that server.


        • Pilotage Assistant LE
          Released with a GNU GPL license (see notice below), this is the application only. The distribution package contains the version 1.0 application .apk, source code, and all resources in an eclipse IDE workspace. There is a user's guide.


        • How to: view core Android Java sources in Eclipse










Free Software/Open Source



  • EGL Goes Open Source
    Last week, IBM announced that it was taking Enterprise Generation Language (EGL) into the open-source realm with the debut of Eclipse EGL Web Developer Tools version 0.7, which is built on an open, extensible compiler and generator framework. ( You can download it and get more information here.)


  • Web Browsers



    • Chrome

      • Lime: Chromium OS with extra hardware support
        Chromium OS Lime logo Following nearly a one year delay, web developer and hacker Liam "Hexxeh" McLoughlin has released new builds of Lime, a customised Chromium OS-based operating system. Chromium OS is the open source branch of Google's Chrome OS, the company's minimalist Linux-based operating system that is built around the Chrome web browser.






  • SaaS



  • Business



  • Funding

    • VC funding for OSS hits new high. Or does it?
      There are still a few days left for funding deals to be announced in 2011 but it is already clear that 2011 will be a record year. $672.8m has been invested in open source-related vendors in 2011, according to our preliminary figures, an increase of over 48% on 2010, and the highest total amount invested in any year, beating the previous best of $623.6m, raised in 2006.




  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • It's been great!
      Hello, it's Andrew the FSF campaigns intern. My internship is coming to a close, so I'd like to share with you what I've done this fall.


    • GNU Telephony plans for 2012
      Today is a good day. I just distributed ucommon 5.1.0, and a second api and utilities snapshot for what will eventually become GNU Bayonne 3.0. I think GNU Bayonne will become strategic to our goals in 2012, along with GNU SIP Witch and the GFC client. We have already discussed internally an outline and possible goals for 2012 development in GNU Telephony, and I have made preliminary plans to attend LibrePlanet2012 in March.




  • Project Releases



  • Public Services/Government



  • Openness/Sharing



  • Programming





Leftovers



  • Security





  • Finance

    • Salon Corporate Challenge: Goldman Sachs
      But what singles Goldman Sachs out for special opprobrium isn’t the culpability it shares with other investment banks for helping to create the financial crisis and then get bailed out with taxpayer dollars. It’s the fact that Goldman Sachs figured out, before any of its Wall Street colleagues, that the housing boom was a house of cards and the entire mortgage-backed security market was headed for a crash. Goldman wasn’t caught by surprise by the revelation that the mortgage securities it was creating were toxic junk. Quite the opposite. But instead of sending up an alarm bell and using its political influence and lobbying muscle to try to fend off the coming disaster, Goldman Sachs simply liquidated the positions in which it would be vulnerable to a downturn and started betting, instead, on the likelihood of disaster. As the Senate report acidly notes, in December 2006, “when it saw evidence that the high risk mortgages underlying many RMBS and CDO securities were incurring accelerated rates of delinquency and default, Goldman quietly and abruptly reversed course.”


    • Occupied Media: Interview With Professor William K. Black


    • Bill Black: Dante’s Divine Comedy – Banksters Edition
      Obama did not explain what Wall Street behavior he found least ethical or what unethical Wall Street actions he believed was not illegal. It would have done the world (and Obama) a great service had he been asked these questions. He would not have given a coherent answer because his thinking on these issues has never been coherent. If he had to explain his position he, and the public, would recognize it was indefensible.

      [...]

      I have explained at length in my blogs and articles why:

      ● Only fraudulent home lenders made liar’s loans ● Liar’s loans were endemically fraudulent ● Lenders and their agents put the lies in liar’s loans ● Appraisal fraud was endemic and led by lenders and their agents ● Liar’s loans could only be sold through fraudulent reps and warranties ● CDOs “backed” by liar’s loans were inherently fraudulent ● CDOs backed by liar’s loans could only be sold through fraudulent reps and warranties ● Liar’s loans hyper-inflated the bubble ● Liar’s loans became roughly one-third of mortgage originations by 2006

      [...]

      As a criminologist, I do not favor sentencing criminals to the fates they richly deserve.




  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Walker Enlists Karl Rove Protégé to Promote New Protest Policy
      As Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's new policies restricting protest in the Wisconsin capitol take effect in advance of the anniversary of 2011's historic labor uprisings, the controversial governor has enlisted a new spokesperson to sell the rules, a 28-year old protégé of Karl Rove and new political appointee of the governor.






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