01.07.12

Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• Replacing Proprietary Windows Software with GNU/Linux

  I’ve written recently about main points on migrating from Windows to GNU/Linux. Those reasons included one which pertains to the software included with the GNU/Linux distributions, and replacing those proprietary products with those on GNU/Linux that you will never need to re-buy or pay upgrades for again in the future. But how is this done? With time and patience, which not everybody has. But if you do, it will pay off dearly over the years you stay on the open source road. One warning though, migrating is not for the timid, it IS a lot of work.

• Desktop

  • Userful to Demo Ultra-Low-Cost School Computing Solution at BETT 2012 (in the HP Booth)

  • Desktop Linux increases presence

    On The H, in 2011, 25.36% of visitors used Linux, 57.21% used Windows and 7.89% used Mac OS X.

  • New ThinkPad laptop and ultrabook from Lenovo

    The Qualcomm dual core processor offers up to 16GB of memory and uses a custom Linux-based operating system.

  • The Desktop Isn’t the Holy Grail for Linux, But It’s Growing There

    There is no doubt that Linux is seeing healthy adoption at the server level, and arriving in many variants and embedded applications, but it’s worth noting that it is seeing growth at the desktop level as well. Netmarketshare has published its latest round of statistics on desktop Linux usage, with data updated through December of 2011. While Linux has desktop market share of under two percent, its share did grow at a very healthy clip last year.

• Server

  • The 7 Best Servers for Linux

    System administrators who need a Linux system will often opt to purchase a bare-metal system and install Linux on the system their way. After all, Linux folks are a rogue, radical ilk. They think differently. They administer servers differently. And, they purchase systems differently. The CXO, purchasing agent or other money-responsible party, on the other hand, has the corporate trust to buy the best available technology at the best price he can negotiate. That’s a tremendous burden.

• Kernel Space

  • Linux p-p-picks up power profiling for peripherals

    Linus Torvalds has signed off on the latest release of the Linux kernel, version 3.2, and it contains several additions aimed at power-management. The new code modules have been submitted over the past year by engineers working at Samsung and Texas Instruments, among others.

  • Weekend Project: Get to Know Btrfs

    The Butter/Better/B-tree Filesystem, Btrfs, is supposedly destined to become the default Linux filesystem. What makes it special, and what’s wrong with good old tried-and-true Ext2/3/4?

  • Graphics Stack

    • Intel SNA Architecture Is Constantly Evolving

      Intel’s experimental “Sandy Bridge New Acceleration” (SNA) acceleration architecture is a constant work-in-progress that even in the past two weeks over the holidays has received more than 100 changes. How though is this new 2D acceleration architecture fairing these days rather than the stock UXA configuration? In this article are our first Intel SNA benchmarks of 2012 when enabling this architecture.

• Applications

  • The Best Application Launcher for Linux

  • Linux New Media Awards 2011: Choose Your Favorite Linux Desktop Application!

    The Linux New Media Awards are back! Organized by the publisher of Linux Magazine and Linux Pro Magazine, these awards recognize projects, organisations, people, and companies for their outstanding contributions to the Linux/FLOSS community.

  • You Don’t Need Flash To Watch YouTube, Minitube Releases Version 1.7

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • From Zero to Drupal in 30 Minutes

• Desktop Environments

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

    • Oxygen Font, The New KDE Desktop Font Family, Available For Testing

      Oxygen font family is already available for testing (currently in alpha!) and comes with regular, bold and monospace variants, however, only the basic character shapes are done for now and the font is currently using the basic ‘auto spacing’ from FontForge.

• Distributions

  • New Releases

    • Linux privacy distribution Tails updated to version 0.10

      Version 0.10 of Tails, the live distribution of Linux that aims to protect privacy and anonymity, has been released. Tails is essentially a Debian Linux, combined with Tor and other privacy or anonymity respecting applications, which can be booted and used from either a USB stick or CD. All internet traffic is routed through the Tor network, which should make all communications anonymous. Tails, an acronym for “The Amnesic Incognito Live System”, was inspired by the now abandoned Incognito LiveCD.

  • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • Mandriva Linux Maker Could Face Bankruptcy in 10 Days

      “I regret to inform you that none of the recapitalization schemes that were proposed at the meeting of shareholders on December 5 was accepted,” wrote Mandriva CEO Dominic Loucougain in a letter to shareholders dated Dec. 23, 2011, and published on the Mandriva Forum on Friday.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Red Hat Moving Headquarters From NCSU To Downtown Raleigh

      The City of Raleigh announced today during a press conference hosted by Mayor Nancy McFarlane that Red Hat will move its global headquarters from NC State University’s Centennial Campus to the RBC Bank Tower in downtown Raleigh.

    • Red Hat recruiting open-source firms to Raleigh

      As Red Hat Inc. (NYSE: RHT) prepares to move its headquarters to downtown Raleigh and expand its operations, the company is also trying to build an open-source community in the city.

      Chief Executive Jim Whitehurst said Friday that he has already persuaded another open-source software development company to open a 12-person office in Raleigh, but he declined to identify the firm.

    • City, Red Hat tout Raleigh as open-source leader

      Mayor Nancy McFarlane formally welcomed Red Hat to downtown, saying Friday that the software company’s presence will help Raleigh become a national hub for open-source technology.

    • Incentives Lure Red Hat Downtown: Are They Worth It?

      When Red Hat began a search to expand in fall 2009, reports indicated they were considering sites in other states as well as a site in the Tobacco District of Durham County. For the past several months, three governments have offered incentives to the open source giant Red Hat to retain its presence.

    • Red Hat picks Raleigh as global headquarters

  • Debian Family

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Canonical launches Ubuntu One Files iOS app

        • Revisiting Ubuntu Design

          In 2010 I wrote about the challenge Canonical faced in revamping the design of Ubuntu, and later looked at the tough road they had ahead of them with Unity and the Community. In the past few days I’ve revisited the operating system to see how far they had progressed, and while the default look of Unity is beautiful, the system still faces significant challenges.

        • Install MPlayer2 And SMPlayer2 In Ubuntu

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Mint is fun, client-focused Linux distro

            When Ubuntu decided last year to abruptly replace the familiar Gnome UI with its own Unity interface, many users were upset. And according to the latest numbers from DistroWatch, Linux Mint has been the major beneficiary, so we decided to test Linux Mint 12.

          • Linux Mint 12 Lisa Review

            Until the release of Ubuntu 11.04, Gnome 2.x seemed to have become the standard desktop interface for Linux. It was the default for Ubuntu, Fedora and Linux Mint, three of the biggest distributions, and many others relied on it too. Of course, lots of people use KDE, but since they released version 4, things seemed to have swung in Gnome’s favour.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Phones

    • Android

      • Intel subsidiary brings windowed apps to Android

  • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

    • OLPC’s XO-3 Tablet to Debut at CES

      One Laptop Per Child’s XO-3 tablet is ready to ship after years in the making, and working units will be shown next week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, OLPC founder and chairman Nicholas Negroponte said.

    • OLPC XO-3 Tablet To Be Shown At CES

    • OLPC outs XO 3.0 tablet at last, will make its debut at CES

    • Marvell and One Laptop per Child Unveil the XO 3.0 Tablet

    • OLPC Gets it Right, Finally

    • New tools for unbricking a Kindle Fire

    • Ice Cream Sandwich Tablets for Just $179? You Bet

      One great advantage of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) being open-source is that it looks like the whole run of the tablet market—from low-end to high-class—will soon be running Google’s mobile OS.

Free Software/Open Source

• opensource Asset Managment software : Uranos

  Unattended Resolution in A Nutshell – OS is an open source software that will let you perform Asset Managment, Monitoring, Software Distribution,Unattended tasks. It’s free for both personal and commercial use and released under GPL license.

• How Open Source Could Drive a Tape Storage Comeback

  The death of tape storage has been loudly proclaimed for what seems like decades now. But a recent breakthrough in tape management could breathe new life into the long-running technology and change archiving and even long-term backup as we know it.

• Some FOSS-Related Predictions for 2012

  The tech industry went through a lot of ups and downs last year, and our ever-expanding FOSS world too, wasn’t all that immune from these huge changes. From the introduction of Unity to the sudden rise of Mint, the Linux community went through a game-changing phase last year.

• Events

  • Drupal Business Summit Brings the Power of Open Source to San Diego

  • FOSS4G-CEE Call for Papers

• Web Browsers

  • Chrome

    • Chrome 17 enters beta, improves speed and security

  • Mozilla

    • The Future of Firefox Security

      The year 2012 will likely be a milestone for Mozilla’s Firefox web browser, as the open source group aims to further accelerate web innovation. Among the ways that Mozilla plans on improving Firefox in 2012 is by way of a number of efforts that could make the browser more secure for a greater number of users.

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • GNU ed updated

  • coreutils-8.15 released [stable]

  • gnutls 3.0.11

• Public Services/Government

  • NASA boldly goes to the open-source frontier

  • Open States adds Oregon to open source state government tracking tool

    Over the past year the Sunlight Foundation has tried to make state legislative data more accessible through a project called Open State.

    The project, based at OpenStates.org, has brought together web developers to scrape data from legislative websites — everything from names of elected officials to bill descriptions and vote counts — to make the process more open and easier to double check.

• Openness/Sharing

  • Will The Food Industry Ever Swallow Transparency’s Bitter Pill?

    A fascinating trend in recent years has been the gradual move from a presumption of secrecy to one of openness, transparency and sharing. This began with free software/open source, and has progressively spread to include areas such as open content, open access, open data, open science and open government.

Leftovers

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Mock commercial undermines new Vote 4 Energy oil advertisement

    Today, the American Petroleum Institute unveiled its 2012 Vote 4 Energy astroturf campaign, centered around a major election-linked CNN advertising package that PolluterWatch helped expose last month with audio recordings from inside the studio. Vote 4 Energy attempts to show ‘real Americans’ who are ‘energy voters,’ meaning they are committing to vote for whichever politicians support Big Oil’s dirty agenda in this election year. Typical. API also bought the back page of the A section of the Washington Post with a Vote 4 Energy ad, space that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to normal people.

• Privacy

  • Private agency paid to monitor protest groups

    THE federal government has outsourced law enforcement surveillance of environmental and other protest groups, with a key monitoring service operating from an inconspicuous Melbourne apartment block.

• Civil Rights

  • Michael Hastings on war journalists

    Rolling Stone‘s Michael Hastings — whose 2010 article on Gen. Stanley McChrystal ended the Afghanistan War commander’s career by accurately reporting numerous controversial statements made in a series of interviews — embodies the pure journalistic ethos. Some of the most celebrated establishment military reporters in America attacked Hastings for that article on the ground that it violated a sacred trust between Generals and war reporters (The New York Times‘ John Burns), and even baselessly insinuated that he fabricated the quotes and then went on to impugn his patriotism when compared to The Great General (CBS News’ Lara Logan).

    Even worse, The Washington Post, ABC News and others irresponsibly published totally anonymous military sources claiming with no basis that Hastings violated ground-rule agreements for the interviews.