01.09.12

Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• Softpedia Linux Weekly, Issue 181

• Download Linux From Your Desktop With Get Linux

  How do I download Linux? That’s a question that I hear fairly often. It usually leads to follow-up questions, like what is a distribution, which distribution should I download or how do I install Linux on my PC.

  While it is possible to download a Linux distribution from a project website or developer homepage right away, it is often more comfortable to download it from the desktop without having to search for the download links and homepage in the first place.

• Desktop

  • A snapshot of Linux on the desktop

    The Linux desktop landscape is a diverse place. As an open-source operating system, anyone can take the code, make whatever changes they want, and release it as their own custom distribution. A land of diversity, however, also has its pitfalls. Mandriva Linux seems like the most recent candidate to fall, with the company purportedly going under on January 16th if it doesn’t receive an infusion of funds. The funds are being blocked by a shareholder dispute, and it will be a sad story for the once-popular Linux distribution. How many Linux distributions have gone quietly into memory, and which have stayed? What makes Ubuntu so popular? Let’s take a quick look into the the history of Linux on the desktop.

• Kernel Space

  • FIOPS: A New Linux I/O Scheduler For Flash/SSDs

    Last week a new I/O scheduler was presented for the Linux kernel. This new scheduler, FIOPS, is designed around modern flash-based storage devices like solid-state drives.

    Shaohua Li presented FIOPS, the Fair IOPS scheduler, under an “RFC” state last week on the Linux kernel mailing list.

• Applications

  • 7 Best Free Linux Time Tracking Software

    Time tracking software is a type of computer software that records time spent on tasks. This category of software can enable users to run billing reports, and prepare invoices for clients.

    The deployment of this software offers a new level of productivity to organisations, as it provides management with information on what time is spent by employees on different activities such as projects and tasks. This can help to measure productivity over time. This software is commonly used by professionals that charge clients by the hour such as accountants, solicitors, and freelancers. The generation of automatic invoices with minimal or no data entry removes the inconvenience of billing and invoicing clients, and improves efficiency.

  • Proprietary

    • Corel debuts AfterShot Pro photo management software

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Search for .torrents through Unity Dash with the Pirate Bay Scope

    • How to install Cinnamon on Ubuntu 11.10

    • Learning Automatic Configuration Management with Puppet

    • SysAid – IT helpdesk installation on Linux system

    • Three simple steps to change page numbering style in OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice Writer.

    • Web Filtering On Squid 3 With QuintoLabs Content Security 1.4 And Windows Active Directory Integration

    • Create and Record Surveys with LimeSurvey

  • Games

    • Tomes of Mephistopheles Teaser

    • Are sales bad for games?

      Some of you may know of the game Cardinal Quest (a fast paced rougelike – it’s pretty cool go check it out) by a guy named Ido Yehieli, well he wrote a blog post I have been meaning to bring to light for a while but kept forgetting (I have a back log of articles to cover!).

• Desktop Environments

  • ‘The Workspace Strap’, A New Experimental Way to Manage Space on Your Virtual Desktops

    Anton Kreuzkamp, a 15 year old KDE developer has come up with a fantastic new way of managing space on virtual desktops.

• Distributions

  • First look at VectorLinux 7.0

    I wanted to start the year off by looking at a Linux project which doesn’t generally get much of the spotlight. The project I chose is VectorLinux whose team, toward the end of 2011, launched version 7.0 of their distribution. The project advertises their credo as “keep it simple, keep it small and let the end user decide what their operating system is going to be.” It certainly sounds good on virtual paper, especially for people who are interested in resurrecting older hardware. The latest version of VectorLinux comes in two editions, Standard and Live. The latter doubles as both a live CD and as installation media. At the time of writing, both editions are available in 32-bit builds only and both ISOs are about 700 MB in size.

  • antiX M11 in Review – Sadly Not So Great

    As most readers will already know antiX is a light weight distribution based on Debian GNU/Linux and SimplyMEPIS, or just Mepis if you prefer, which is itself based on Debian. antiX sports a custom IceWM as default window manager and environment with tools from the ROX desktop. It is supposed to mainly be used on older machines and as a consequence there is no x86_64 edition, only two 32-bit optimized for i486 and i686 processor instructions.

  • Redo- A simple live CD to Backup-Restore your computer

  • Red Hat Family

    • 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.

    • File System Encryption on CentOS 6 | Linux Hangout

  • Debian Family

    • Debian Project News – January 9th, 2012

      * Debian Edu/Skolelinux 6.0.3 beta2 released
      * Bits from the DPL
      * Forthcoming new release of the X server
      * Scientific article on Debian in PNAS
      * New Debian Infographic
      * New interface for Debtags website
      * apt-get purge defoma
      * Further interviews
      * Other news
      * Upcoming events
      * New Debian Contributors
      * Release-critical bugs statistics for the upcoming release
      * Status of Debian Installer localisation
      * Important Debian Security Advisories
      * New and noteworthy packages
      * Work-needing packages
      * Want to continue reading DPN?

    • Debian is now the most popular Linux distribution on web servers

      Debian is now used by 9.6% of all websites (up from 8.9% one year ago, and 8% two years ago), which is equivalent to 29.4% of all Linux-based sites.

    • I’m using Debian Live-based Tails from a live USB stick to preserve privacy and anonymity

      Courtesy of Distrowatch, I learned about Tails, a live Linux distribution based on Debian Live that uses Tor and other cryptographic- and privacy-minded features to protect a users anonymity while using the Internet.

    • Claudio’s Art

      Claudio has designed some art which describes the history of Debian GNU/Linux structurally and with some statistics

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Introducing Ubuntu Binary Clock Lens for Unity

          Following our previous articles, Ubuntu YouTube Lens and Scope, Ubuntu Calendar Lens, Ubuntu Web Sources Lens, Ubuntu Gwibber Lens, Ubuntu Books Lens, Ubuntu Cities Scope, Ubuntu Grooveshark Scope, Ubuntu Calculator Scope and Pirate Bay Torrents Lens for Unity, today we are introducing the Ubuntu YouTube Lens and Scope for the Unity interface.

        • Ubuntu bringing smart TV concept, more ‘consumer’ products to CES 2012

        • Let’s Watch Ubuntu TV, Right Now

        • Ubuntu Bringing Linux to your TV

        • Canonical Demonstrates Ubuntu TV

        • Ubuntu TV Will Be Revealed By Canonical At CES 2012

          Canonical introduced a new online entertainment experience with Ubuntu TV. It will allow you to watch movies, and TV shows over the web with need to additional devices except the Ubuntu TV. It will be a strong competitor to satellite TV and many online TV streamers because you will be able to search through millions of movies and TV shows and watch it directly or record it to watch it later.

        • Ubuntu TV Will Be In Your Living Room This Year

        • Ubuntu TV has Unity-inspired UI, will ship on televisions by end of 2012

        • Why Ubuntu One DB Won’t Necessarily Fail Utterly

          This is a subject that all users should be interested in, but probably aren’t paying close enough attention to have followed closely. I’m talking about databases. Not in a very technical sense, but what you can do with them.

        • Ubuntu TV Will Be Announced At CES 2012

          Mark Shuttleworth shared his ambitious plans for Ubuntu a few months ago when he gave hints about Ubuntu TV. Now, we can see the product taking shape. According to reports Canonical will be showcasing Ubuntu TV at CES 2012 (Consumer Electronics Show).

        • System and Sound Settings to be Redesigned for Ubuntu 12.04

        • Ten factors that make Ubuntu 11.10 a hit

        • Ubuntu TV unveiled

          Canonical has demonstrated Ubuntu TV for the first time, as the company moves to broaden the reach of its open-source OS beyond the PC.

        • CES: Canonical shows off Ubuntu TV

          Canonical is showing off what it describes as ‘an exciting concept design’ at the CES tradeshow in Las Vegas, this week – Ubuntu TV.

        • Looking for Alternatives to Unity in Ubuntu 11.10: LXDE and XFCE

          The Unity desktop, which comes as the only out-of-the-box desktop environment with Ubuntu 11.10, has attracted a great deal of criticism from Linux lovers.

          While some users may be impressed by the “stunning good looks” of the Unity desktop, many are angry at the attempt to use the glitz factor to popularize Ubuntu. Some reports such as this one indicate that this has in fact backfired in some ways, and resulted in Ubuntu’s popularity falling among users who have loved the traditional simplicity of the various Linux flavors.

        • Flavours and Variants

          • 5 reasons Linux Mint is better than Ubuntu

          • Linux Mint 12 offers a traditional Gnome feel

            The recently released Linux Mint 12 offers a two pronged approach to supporting those who prefer the traditional Gnome desktop. Firstly, the Mint Gnome Shell Extensions (MGSE) transform Gnome 3 into something resembling Gnome 2. Secondly it ships with Mate, the Gnome 2.0 fork project.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Boxee Box gets a major facelift plus live TV support

    Boxee Box users who enjoy staying on the bleeding edge of features and functions can now download and install beta v1.5 firmware on their devices, by following a fairly straightforward procedure.

    Version 1.5.0.23422 implements quite a few new features and enhancements to the Boxee Box’s user interface. It also adds support for the soon-to-be-available Boxee Live TV adapter option.

  • Phones

    • Emerging markets push growth in handsets, mobile workers

      Smartphone manufacturers are increasingly focusing their efforts on emerging markets, says ABI Research, which forecasts the mobile handset market in general growing 8 percent in 2012, representing 1.67 million shipments. Meanwhile, IDC projects that by 2015, the world’s mobile worker population will reach 1.3 billion, representing 37.2 percent of the total workforce, with the greatest growth expected in emerging markets.

    • Samsung-backed open-source mobile OS Tizen leaks in new screenshots

      Tizen, a new open-source operating system backed by Intel, Samsung and a number of other smartphone manufacturers, has leaked in a number of new screenshots, providing a first look at the new platform that will power new smartphones, tablets, smart TVs and in-car devices.

    • Android

      • Android Powered 3D Goggles To Be Revealed At CES 2012

      • Android Powered 3D Goggles To Be Revealed At CES 2012

      • Wind River Solution Accelerators for Android Released

        Wind River, the maker of embedded and mobile software, has presented Wind River Solution Accelerators for Android, a series of software modules which the company claims can accelerate Android device development and reduce engineering time and cost to help developers turn around high quality devices faster.

      • From the Las Vegas Strip to your living room: Google TV partners at CES

        Last October, we launched an update to Google TV: a simpler interface, a new way to discover great web and TV content, a more TV-like YouTube experience, and Android Market. Since launching the update, we’ve seen our activation rates more than double. New features and new apps are coming to the living room via Google TV almost every day. We now have more than 150 apps which developers have specifically built for TV with thousands more Android apps from the mobile world available to deepen your living room TV experience. We’ve also been working with our hardware partners to bring new Google TV-powered devices to consumers.

      • Lenovo impresses at CES with Android

        The magic that is CES is starting a bit early, thanks to Lenovo. They’ve unveiled several new Android devices, and each is just as impressive as the next.

      • Lenovo outs Ice Cream Sarnie telly

        Lenovo has announced what it claims is the world’s first TV to sport Google’s latest OS, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. It’s also the first set with a dual-core processor.

        Having already pitched its new ThinkPad laptop range for the Consumer Electronics Show 2012, the company turned attentions to the living room tech-head, introducing a smart TV, the K91.

  • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

    • OLPC News: The OLPC Tablet at CES?

      It seems that the upcoming OLPC XO 3 Tablet is getting some buzz right before its debut next week at CES. It is said to be an 8″ tablet that may come in a few models. Information about it is currently very sketchy but supposedly some will be revealed next week. I am NOT posting any of the early concept pictures because they are dated and I’m fairly sure the real thing looks quite different… since it is designed to be very rugged for children. Here are some external links to get you in the mood:

    • One Laptop per Child To Unveil XO 3.0 Tablet At CES

      The One Laptop Per Child program’s XO-3 tablet will be revealed next week at CES, according to the project’s founder, Nicholas Negroponte. The XO 3.0 features Marvell’s Armada PXA618 SOC processor and Avastar Wi-Fi SOC, with 512MB of RAM. It can run Android and other Linux operating systems like Fedora. The version that will be shown at the CES will be running Android.

    • Motorola’s Wi-Fi Only Xyboard Tablet Coming Soon!

    • Toshiba launches Excite X10 at CES, redefines the term “sexy tablet”

      Toshiba hasn’t been too involved in the Android tablet world, save for the launch of their Thrive last year. It looks as if they’re aiming to change that in 2012, and they’re starting it off with a bang. Meet the Toshiba Excite X10, the latest in gorgeous Android tablets. Once we get past the brushed aluminum back and incredibly thin (just 7.7mm) profile, the Excite is packing a TI OMAP 4430 dual-core 1.2GHz processor, Ice Cream Sandwich (although it appears to be running stock Honeycomb in the photos), a wide 10.1-inch 1280 x 800 Gorilla Glass display, a 5MP rear camera, 2MP front-facing shooter, stereo speakers, Micro HDMI and Micro SD card ports, and it clocks in at just 1.2 pounds. Impressive enough?

    • Archos G9 101 8GB Android tablet

      Over the years, Archos has pitched much of its kit at the impecunious rather than the technically demanding. However, some of its Android devices like the 43 media player have appealed to both camps. Now it’s trying to repeat the trick with the G9 series of Android 3.2 Honeycomb tablets.

    • Qooq: The French Linux-Based Tablet For Your Kitchen

      The Qooq runs on a 1 GHz Cortex A9 processor, a 10.1-inch display with 1024 x 600 resolution SD card slot, Ethernet port, USB port and a headphone jack under a protective cover. The Linux OS is a specially customised version by Qooq, which it’s it easy to set up and run. Users will be able to access digital cookbooks and other recipe and cooking-related apps and too

    • Qooq: The tomato-proof tablet

      Linux. Designed for the kitchen. The Qooq is one of the weirdest tablet computers we have seen in a while. It’s selling respectably well in France, we are told, and it’s coming to the United States soon.

    • Overcrowded Markets

      Chuckle. The Android/Linux market is only overcrowded to those who are trying to sell that other OS on x86… Newsflash: The world does not owe those who sell that other OS and x86 a living. Free markets work. Manufacturers are making Android/Linux on ARMed tablets and selling them. They make money doing that because there’s no “tax” from M$ and they are not paying twice for the CPU. They will see the same thing on the desktop/notebook markets as well. With a free market, these makers can minimize the cost of manufacture the way sane manufacturers in other industries do.

Free Software/Open Source

• eyeOS 2.5 Open Source review – how the mighty have fallen

  If you can set up a Linux box with Apache, with a bit of fettling you can use eyeOS to create your own personalised cloud desktop. Michael Reed reviews eyeOS version 2.5…

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • GnuTLS 2.12.16

  • FSFE calls for an amendment of Slovak Copyright Act

    Free Software Foundation Europe calls for an amendment of the Slovak Copyright Act that would eventually enable Free Software and Creative Commons licenses for Slovak citizens. Currently, these licenses are considered to be void due to lack of their written form and problems with formation of the contract. Slovakia is thus one of a few countries where these popular licensing tools still struggle with rigid legislative framework. During the last week, FSFE therefore sent support letters to four members of Slovak Parliament that proposed this highly awaited amendment, but later faced its dismissal due to preliminary elections (See the sample letter below). If you also feel that also other 5 million Europeans should have this option, please support our action and write members of Slovak parliament (regardless of your residence). Explain them what is your experience with Free Software or just reuse our letter. Your support is important!.

• Project Releases

  • What’s New In XBMC 11.0 Beta Eden

• Programming

  • RosettaCode vs Stack Overflow

    Stack Overflow is a great site. every time when a search on a problem takes me there i look forward to the helpful and insightful answers. in ways, posting a question on Stack Overflow is similar to creating a task on RosettaCode.

    on Stack Overflow a problem gets posted in form of a question, and people attempt to solve the problem by answering it. question and answers can be discussed and updated. once the poster of the question is satisfied, an answer may be chosen as being accepted.

  • Top languages on Github: JavaScript reigns, Ruby and Python next

  • Adding support for if, while, and do while, to a simple compiler and virtual machine written in Php

  • Visual Diff

    Then came KDE version 4. Apparently not content to leave well enough alone, KDE4 broke Kompare. (KDE4 also messed up kdesvn and kate, but that’s a subject for another post.) Kompare now says “unable to parse diff output.” So now I’m in the market for a new graphical diff tool.

Leftovers

• Why The Verge Is Wrong, Acer Did Not Rip Apple’s iCloud

  Apple fans and fan sites keep reminding us they are still trapped in Steve Jobs’ RDF (reality distortion field) that keeps us from seeing the reality and think everyone else is ripping Apple. Paul Miller of The Verge has written an article “Acer’s AcerCloud unveil is a blatant iCloud ripoff”. He goes on to put images of Apple’s iCloud Slides next to AcerCloud slides. (Business Insider also did a similar story without doing any home work.)

• Security

  • OpenSSL fixes six security holes

  • Israel Basically Threatens to Assassinate Teen Hacker Who Leaked Israelis’ Credit Cards

    Nobody expected Israel to take lightly the leaking of thousands of its citizens’ credit card details by a Saudi hacker. But now Israel says the 19-year-old hacker who lives with his parents is a dangerous terrorist. And we all know what Israel does to people it deems terrorists.

• Censorship

  • Hackerspace Global Grid to make an Uncensorable internet in space?

    The wilder shores of the internet are awash with bizarre stories but the one I’m about to relate just has to be one of the most extraordinary things I have ever heard in relation to FOSS. You will have heard about SOPA and the reaction against it in the open source community including petitions, boycotts of GoDaddy etc. Look, that’s small potatoes. What these guys are plannng is out of this world. Literally. Read on.

    Every hacker, geek and commentator has their own solution to circumvent internet censorship but some people’s reaction has been ballistic. In the actual sense of the word. A bunch of open source enthusiasts, hackers and amateur scientists at the Hackerspace Global Grid project have decided that the only way to escape internet censorship is to, well, reach escape velocity and launch communication satellites into orbit. Ambitious is not the word. Better still, the software and the hardware will be free and open. To track and support satellites there will be a distributed network of ground tracking stations using FOSS.

  • 2011: The Coming of Gestalt Politics?

    If there’s anything 2011 will be remembered for, it’s probably going to be the wave of mass protests that reverberated around the world (and is still traveling). I don’t think we’ve seen the end of this. I think this is the leading edge of an on-going pattern that will continue for decades. What’s happened is that a kind of behavior common online has jumped a groove and found a place in the “real world”.

  • Copyrights

    • Creative Commons and FreeSound.org Phase Out Sampling Licenses, Choose More Freedom

      A few years ago, I discovered a site called “FreeSound.org” which sounded quite exciting, but turned out to be rather disappointing because the content was released under the Creative Commons “Sampling+” license, which is not a free license. This made all of the content incompatible with use on free software or free culture projects, and was very frustrating, especially given the name. Last month, though, Creative Commons decided to retire the Sampling+ licenses, and FreeSound.org is rolling out a new site with a license chooser that favors the “CC 0″ public domain declaration and the “CC By” attribution licenses — both compatible with free projects. This will be a big help for free-culture multimedia projects.