• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Kernel Space

• Graphics Stack

  • Three Priorities For Open-Source Radeon Graphics

    While we still haven’t been able to deliver any Radeon HD 7000 series Linux benchmarks, we do know what are AMD’s three priority projects right now for their open-source Radeon Linux driver stack.

    The three priorities right now for AMD and their open-source Linux driver stack come down to Southern Islands support, OpenCL, and UVD/video. If you’re part of the Phoronix Forums community, this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise since it was there where this information was first shared.

Applications

• Instructionals/Technical

  • 11 useful commands for Linux/Unix administrators

  • Updating the ROM in Your Mobile Device

    Follow the forum instructions carefully, because it’s possible to brick the device. Often, the first release day of any community-released code will be athwart with danger — the experimenters that day know it and like the thrill. We don’t. The first day of a recent Google TV upgrade bricked numerous devices. As a beginner, wait a few days after a release for the kinks to get ironed out, and always reads the forums carefully.

Distributions

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Tame the Ubuntu 11.10 Unity interface with MyUnity

        The new interface introduced with the latest version of Ubuntu has had a mixed response. MyUnity offers an easy way to change some of the visual settings. This can make the Launcher and Unity in general easier to use as well as that satisfaction in having it set up exactly as you want.

      • Hands-on with Ubuntu TV, above and under the hood

        At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas on Monday, platform vendor Canonical unveiled a special version of Ubuntu that is designed for televisions. The platform has an integrated media library manager and will offer DVR capabilities. It includes a variant of the Unity shell that is intended to be operated with a television remote control.

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Linux Mint 12 KDE screen shot preview

          The first release candidate of Linux Mint 12 KDE was made available for download yesterday, but do not be surprised if the “stable” version is released next week. While we await that, here are a few screen shots for your viewing pleasure.

Devices/Embedded

• CMOS camera platform from Kappa Optronics enables motion detection

  The CMOS camera platform transmits image data directly to the monitor via HDMI/DVI or is directly saved on the memory card. The processor and the embedded Linux operating system are directly on-board. The platform provides high-definition live streams, up to 5 Mpixels, with a maximum 20 frames/s. Facial recognition and motion detection may also be implemented.

• Diminutive, Linux-based Raspberry Pi Computer Heads to Production

  The tiny motherboard seen in the photo here forms the core of the Raspberry Pi computer, which has generated a lot of interest, as we originally noted here. Last month, as both CNet and Business Insider noted, the Raspberry Pi ultra low-cost computer was moving toward the manufacturing stage. It’s designed to run Linux via an ARM processor, and there will reportedly be versions available for $25 and $35. Now, there is word that manufacturing has begun, and there are more details about this diminutive, low-cost, yet surprisingly powerful computing device.

• Raspberry Pi PCs are being built

  FIFTEEN QUID Raspberry Pi computers are being manufactured and will soon be on sale.

  Sadly, perhaps, the home grown PC on a USB stick is being made overseas due to a desire to keep costs down.

• Phones

  • Tizen OS alpha released, may debut on Samsung I9500 smartphone

    The Linux Foundation’s Tizen project has previewed an alpha version of its MeeGo and LiMo-based mobile operating system and SDK. The HTML5-oriented release — including components from the carrier-backed WAC interoperability standards and the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries — follows rumors of Intel-based Tizen tablets, plus a screenshot leak that suggests an appearance on an upcoming Samsung I9500 phone.

  • Intel Teases Tasty Tizen Tablets

    Remember Tizen? You know, Intel’s Linux-based OS, which evolved from MeeGo when Nokia bailed. Surprise: It’s one of three OSes Intel is hoping to get onto tablets this year, along with the better-known Windows 8 and Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich.”

    “In our tablet business, we made a commitment to move a lot faster,” said Mark Miller, director of marketing for Intel’s netbook and tablet segments. “We have a lot of room to make up.”

    Here at CES, that includes showing off a slim, light Lenovo Android-powered tablet that runs on Intel’s new Medfield Atom Z2460 chipset. The Lenovo tablet (shown at left) is under 9mm thick and runs for up to eight hours on a charge. It’ll be coming midyear, Miller said.

  • Android

    • HDMI Dongle: Portable set-top box runs Android 4

      HDMI Dongle is an Open Source, USB-sized set-top box from Always Innovating, a technology outfit based in San Francisco, CA USA. A TV on a stick, it is designed to turn any TV with USB and HDMI ports into a connected TV running Android 4. Like the Cotton Candy, it has an HDMI and a USB port. The magic comes via the HDMI port, while the USB port is to power the device from the TV it is attached to.

      The hardware specs of the device are: Texas Instruments Cortex-A9 OMAP 4 processor (1.0 GHz to 1.8 GHz), 1 GB RAM, a microSD slot, and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth modules. It comes with a simple remote control that has voice control and Near Field Communication (NFC) capabilities. On the software side, it “can run Android Ice Scream Sandwich and is technically compatible with Google TV.”

    • AT&T offers HTML5 SDK for third-party mobile Web app developers

      AT&T is planning to launch a store for mobile Web applications that run in the browser. The company has released a set of JavaScript APIs and a software development kit (SDK) that provide Web developers with access to certain mobile network features.

High-quality scientific graphics with MathGL: An interview with Alexey Balakin

F4S: What is MathGL?

Alexey: MathGL is …

* a library for making high-quality scientific graphics under Linux and Windows;
* a library for the fast data plotting and data processing of large data arrays;
* a library for working in window and console modes and for easy embedding into other programs;
* a library with large and growing set of graphics.

SMEs opt for free and open source software to cut costs

Free and open source software is steadily growing in popularity in Kenya as firms move to cut costs and achieve more customised technology solutions.

Many companies particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have adopted free and open source software (FOSS) to power their systems in the wake of increasing costs and shrinking IT budgets.

Adoption of FOSS is also seen as a promising solution to software piracy in countries like Kenya.

Google Maps Pricing Sends Real Estate Site to Open Source

In October Google announced pricing for its popular Google Maps API. Though most sites won’t hit the free limits, those with a lot of traffic may be scrambling for a solution. That was the case for a New York real estate service, which discovered their bill would be $200,000 – $300,000 per year.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• Oracle fills another gap in its big data offering

  With Oracle’s announcement of general availability of the big data appliance, it is filling in the blanks by disclosing that it is OEM’ing Cloudera’s CDH Hadoop distribution, and more importantly, the management tooling that is key to its revenue stream.

Education

• For Mobile Strategies, Open Source Offers Flexibility

  As universities transition to a mobile-friendly campus, more and more IT departments are considering the benefits of open source technology. Cost is definitely a factor, but schools are just as attracted to the flexibility that open source gives them.

  When the University of Chicago (IL) first introduced mobile technology two years ago, a key goal was to launch a product as soon as possible. Developer skills for mobile apps were hard to come by, so it made sense to go with a vendor. “It was faster to have a turnkey product,” explains Cornelia Bailey, user experience consultant for IT Services. Today, the mobile landscape and the university’s thinking have changed. The original product is now “not flexible enough” for the fast-evolving world of mobile technology. Instead, Bailey and her team decided to explore the possibility of going open source.

Semi-Open Source

• Jaspersoft aims its open-source analytics suite at PaaS developers

  Open-source BI (business intelligence) vendor Jaspersoft wants its software to become another arrow in the quiver for developers using commercial PaaS (platform-as-a-service) offerings.

• At the Intersection of Open Source and Cloud Computing, You’ll Find…Jobs

  As 2012 launches, some good news has rolled in on the employment front, but there are still many people looking for work. As noted in this post, it’s entirely possible to graduate with a technology-related degree but not end up offering in-demand skills to employers. Meanwhile, many tech workers with outdated skills are having to brush up on new skills. For prospective workers looking to differentiate themselves from the pack, new data shows that the intersection of open source and cloud computing can not only lead to a new job, but can lead to a job that will last.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• In Which Eben Moglen Like, Legit Yells at Me for Having Facebook

  Yesterday afternoon, this reporter was scrambling to finish reporting a forward-looking story about how banks are exploring the possibility of using social media data to judge loan and credit applicants. My editor wanted a quote from a privacy advocate, so I immediately thought of Eben “Spying for Free” Moglen, a militant digital privacy advocate, founder of the uber-secure personal server FreedomBox, and the inspiration for the decentralized social network Diaspora. In hindsight, perhaps I should have just called Cory Doctorow.

Openness/Sharing

• ‘Open-source’ robotic surgery platform going to top medical research labs

  SANTA CRUZ, CA–Robotics experts at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the University of Washington (UW) have completed a set of seven advanced robotic surgery systems for use by major medical research laboratories throughout the United States. After a round of final tests, five of the systems will be shipped to medical robotics researchers at Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, University of Nebraska, UC Berkeley, and UCLA, while the other two systems will remain at UC Santa Cruz and UW.

Programming

• IBM updates EGL Web Developer Tools

  IBM has released an updated version of its Enterprise Generation Language (EGL) as part of its updated Eclipse EGL Web Developer Tools 0.7 (EWDT),. The open source EWDT is designed to simplify web application development using a combination of web services and JavaScript (Dojo and others). The development environment is of particular interest to businesses that are looking to migrate classical COBOL/RPG applications to current Java and JavaScript environments using solutions from the open source community.

Standards/Consortia/ODF/OOo

• Open Document V1.2 OASIS Standard published

  The Open Document V1.2 OASIS Standard has now been published.

• The Community Forum: New Year Status

  After 4 years of existence, the Community Forum has moved on the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) servers at the end of October 2011 (see details). Here are some figures about how we are doing on the English forum. We will try to make this kind of report on a monthly basis in the forum and perhaps quarterly on the blog.

• Features for GraphicObjects and OLEObjects

  I just wanted to send some notes about added features which are part of AOO3.4 version. This one is actually the result of fixing tasks #118558#, #118485#, #108221# and #67705# which are all about GraphicObjects, OLEObjects (OLE means Object Linking and Embedding) and their geometrical attributes and properties. You may take a look at the tasks if you are interested in details, here I want to describe the benefits.

  GraphicObjects are used when you insert a picture (pixel and vector data) or convert something to it. They already supported the full attribute set, so line style, fill style, text and shadow are possible. Geometrically, they could be transformed widely, but could not be sheared. Because now the content of GraphicObjects is displayed using primitives (and these are fully transformable) it is possible to also use shear and thus now completely support all geometrical transformations used in the office.

M$ Shrinks

The bottom line is that shipments of PCs (notebooks and desktops only) are about flat for 2011/2010, with just 1.6% growth. For Q4 only, there was a decline of 0.17%. Worse, for M$, USA, the most M$-friendly country on Earth, was off 6.7% for the quarter and 4.9% for the year. You know the USA, the country where people want to pay extra for words like “super-dooper” and such,

Security

• Force firms to disclose data breaches, report urges

• Go Daddy not liable for cybersquatting, US court rules

  Go Daddy was not liable for a form of trademark infringement when a system that the domain name registrar operates was used to redirect visitors from allegedly ‘cybersquatting’ web domain names to a pornographic website, a US court has ruled.

  Petronas, the national oil company of Malaysia, had argued that Go Daddy was in breach of US trademark law because it “used” the two domains to re-route visitors to the allegedly infringing sites to the pornography website through its servers in bad faith with the intent of profiting from its actions.

• Microsoft kicks off 2012 with seven security bulletins

  The first Patch Tuesday for 2012 brings seven bulletins from Microsoft. One was held over from December, and only one of the seven is regarded as being critical.

Censorship

• EU Commission Paves the Way for Privatized Net Censorship

  In a milestone strategy document on Internet policy, the EU Commission is getting ready to propose new repressive policies. With the upcoming consent vote on the anti-counterfeiting agreement ACTA and the revision of the “Intellectual Property Rights” Directive (IPRED), the controversial censorship schemes currently discussed in the United States will soon arrive in Europe.

• Bulgarian police raid two filesharing web sites

  TWO BULGARIAN filesharing web sites have been raided by the country’s organised crime unit.

• Holland moves to block the Pirate Bay

  INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS (ISPs) in the Netherlands must block access to the Pirate Bay website within ten days, following a court ruling.

  Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN demanded the ban, and the Court of The Hague approved it, so now two ISPs in Holland, Ziggo and XS4ALL have been ordered to block the web site.

Internet/Net Neutrality

• Is internet access a human right?

  A recent United Nations Human Rights Council report examined the important question of whether internet access is a human right.

  While the Special Rapporteur’s conclusions are nuanced in respect of blocking sites or providing limited access, he is clear that restricting access completely will always be a breach of article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the right to freedom of expression.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • Why The Movie Industry Can’t Innovate and the Result is SOPA

    This year the movie industry made $30 billion (1/3 in the U.S.) from box-office revenue.

    But the total movie industry revenue was $87 billion. Where did the other $57 billion come from?

    From sources that the studios at one time claimed would put them out of business: Pay-per view TV, cable and satellite channels, video rentals, DVD sales, online subscriptions and digital downloads.

  • Music Industry v. Ireland

    The long suffering Irish taxpayer will be delighted to learn that the music industry has joined the queue of those seeking a payout and yesterday issued a plenary summons against the State in the High Court for alleged failure to implement aspects of EU copyright law.

  • Is the Trans Pacific Partnership a re-writing of NAFTA? iPolitics Insight

    When Prime Minister Noda announced that Japan intended to join the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations, a grim reality set in. Canada knew it needed to be at the table. This was decided even before President Obama invited Prime Minister Harper to join at the APEC Summit last November.

    Canada cannot allow Japan, its fourth most important merchandise export market, to become another Korea, with the US inside the tent enjoying discriminatory preferences and eroding Canada’s market position.

  • Response to Federal Register notice seeking comments regarding Canada’s interest in TPPA negotiations

    On December 7, 2011, USTR issued Federal Register Notice 76480-76481 requesting comments on “Canada’s Expression of Interest in the Proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Agreement.” USTR issued similar requests for comments regarding Japan’s (Notice 76478-76479) and Mexico’s (Notice 76479-76480) expression of interest in the TPPA.

  • EMI Records launches action against State over anti-piracy order

    THE IRISH arm of multinational music group EMI has launched a High Court action against the State as part of its bid to stop the illegal downloading of music.

    The Government recently pledged to issue an order to allow copyright holders to compel internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to websites that they consider are engaged in piracy.

  • Anonymous will shut down to protest SOPA

    HACKTIVIST GROUP Anonymous will turn off its lights for twelve hours in protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the US.

    The hackers are following Reddit’s lead, and will join a communications blackout on 18 January that will begin at 8am and end at 8pm.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Review: Saline’s Linux-Based OS For Desktops

The mission statement of developers for the Linux-based SalineOS for desktops puts it this way:

“The primary goal of the SalineOS project is to deliver a fast, lightweight, clean, easy to use and well documented operating system based on Debian GNU/Linux.”

With a wide range and assortment of Linux-based desktop operating systems available for free, developers seeking to attract eyeballs to their software have a particular mission: Standout with something people will need or want real bad.

Short Notices: News In Linux Audio

I hope all my readers enjoyed the best of the holiday season. I’ve been busy with the predictable confusions and minor crises that attend this time of year, but I managed to find time to jot down some recommendations for my readers. Go on, you’ve been good, give yourself a few extra belated gifts and don’t worry if your budget’s busted – it’s all free software, you can’t beat these deals.

Desktop

• A First Look at New Ubuntu Laptops and PCs from CTL

  I had the opportunity yesterday to visit CTL Corp located in Portland, Oregon and sit down with Erik Stromquist, Executive VP and COO and Michael Tupper, Director of Business Development.

• You made a mistake, your noob!

  Linux will make it big the moment the kernel strings becomes unimportant in the desktop sphere. If you must know it, you will fail. As simple as that. Once the software becomes agnostic to the point that you can use it any way you want, including not looking at little strings or looking as much as you want or need, then we will have passed to the next level in the game. Till then, we will get defeated by tiny mistakes in the major and minor numbers, and woe the fool to cross a number-strict geek.

• Chinese Lenovo Secures Biggest Deal With India

  Chinese PC maker Lenovo has hit a mega deal with Indian state Tamil Nadu. The state will buy 3 lakh (0.3 million) laptops from the company making it one of the biggest deals for the Chinese maker. The Tamil Nadu government recenly announced the free laptop project for students of state-run colleges and high schools. ELCOT earlier issued a controvercial tender where it removed Linux as the requirement. Muktware broke this story. Within a few weeks ELCOT was forced to change its pro-Microsoft policy and put Linux on these computers.

Server

• Plug Computer takes on education with Marvell SMILE Plug micro server

  Marvell announced an education platform combining its Plug Computer, Arch Linux, and software developed in collaboration with Stanford University. The SMILE Plug micro server runs on a 2GHz Marvell Armada 300 processor, sets up a secure Wi-Fi cloud for up to 60 students, and provides a “Classroom 3.0″ connected, secure, interactive learning environment.

• AT&T Jumps Into OpenStack Cloud

Audiocasts/Shows

• Overtone

Kernel Space

• Linux Foundation details conferences and summits in 2012

  The Linux Foundation has announced its schedule of conferences, summits and training for 2012. In Europe, and co-locating as they did last year, LinuxCon Europe and Embedded Linux Conference Europe will run from 5-7 November in Barcelona, Spain, alongside the KVM Forum.

• New Year, New Linux Kernel

• Graphics Stack

  • Where Things Fall Short: Eight Shortcomings Of Mesa 8.0

    While Mesa 8.0 has a lot to like about it from advertised OpenGL 3.0 support to performance improvements and new Gallium3D features, there are also several shortcomings of this major Mesa release for open-source graphics drivers.

Applications

• How to make coffee through Linux Application

• Instructionals/Technical

  • [CES] USB Stick Size Computer ‘Cotton Candy’ Running Ubuntu 11.04 and Android 4.0 ICS

  • How to make coffee through Linux Application

  • Installing Apache2 With PHP5 And MySQL Support On CentOS 6.1 (LAMP)

  • A Bash Shell Script to Update Firefox Nightly

  • Book Review for “JBoss AS 7 Configuration Deployment and Administration”

  • Launch DOS Games In Ubuntu From Unity’s Dash!

  • Formatting the output from tail

  • A Beginner’s Guide to Editing Text Files With Vi

  • Easily Install Daggerfall, Doom and Many Classic Games on Linux

  • Keep Configs Under Control With Etckeeper

  • Documentation – Or The Lack Thereof

    The point of all this is, when did the transition from printed documentation to “online” documentation, which I agree is a good thing because of the paper and weight saved, get changed to “no documentation”? Is this happening just because it is not obvious, nobody is looking, nobody cares, or what?

• Games

  • Editorial Humble Indie…Store?

    So the web has been abuzz with news of Humble Bundle doing a Humble Indie Store.

  • 10 Greatest Android Games for 2011

    It’s 2012 already and the impact Android had on the overall mobile eco system in the year 2011 was nothing short of spectacular. Nearly 700,000 Android activations are happening everyday(which doesn’t include Amazon, Nook tablets apparently) and Android Market is teeming with some 400,000 applications. I have never been a good PC gamer of sorts, but I’m really enjoying many Android games. Here are my favorite 10 Android games for 2011.

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • The Mystery of KDE Activities

    No feature defines the KDE 4 release series more than Activities. At the same time, no feature is so little understood — Fedora even has a package for removing the desktop toolkit, which provides mouse access to Activities.

    But, when you take the time to learn about Activities, you’ll find them a natural extension of the desktop metaphor that just might help you to work more efficiently.

    Activities are a super-set of Virtual Desktops. They don’t replace Virtual Desktops — in fact, each Activity can have its own set of Virtual Desktops if you choose. Instead, Activities are alternative desktops, each of which can have its own wallpaper, icons, and widgets.

  • When Unity Meets KDE: Video Spotlight

    Today’s video spotlight is a very polished and well-edited one by Youtube user GhindaUcigasa who aims to show us what happens when Ubuntu’s Unity Shell meets KDE. It’s an interesting concept, to be sure.

• GNOME Desktop

  • Spice Up Your Desktop With These 5 Cool GTK2/3 Themes [PPA]

    Are you bored with your current theme? Here are 5 cool GTK2/3 (some also come with a Shell theme) themes that are optimized to work on any “shell”: Unity, GNOME Shell or the GNOME 3 fallback session.

  • Staying happy with Gnumeric: text as “text” (instead of “dates”)

Distributions

• New Releases

  • Webconverger 11.0

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

  • January 2012 Issue Of The PCLinuxOS Magazine Released

    The PCLinuxOS Magazine staff is pleased to announce the release of the January 2012 issue of the PCLinuxOS Magazine. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is a product of the PCLinuxOS community, published by volunteers from the community. The magazine is lead by Paul Arnote, Chief Editor, and Assistant Editor Meemaw. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license, and some rights are reserved.

• Red Hat Family

  • Journald: just a reinvention of the wheel?

    Two months back, Red Hat developers Lennart Poettering and Kay Sievers proposed a fundamental change to the structure of Linux in the shape of the Journal daemon, meant to replace the venerable syslog.

  • File System Encryption on CentOS 6

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Ubuntu TV for human being.

      • Ubuntu User Days — This Weekend!

      • Unity 5.0 Available For Testing In Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin [Video]

      • Browse Ubuntu’s Software Offerings Online On Any Computer [Linux]

        Explore the thousands of programs available by default in Ubuntu, online, regardless of what operating system you’re using at the moment. Whether you’re a would-be Ubuntu user curious about the software options or a current Ubuntu user occasionally stranded in Windows-land, Ubuntu’s clean and simple online catalogue is a great place to explore.

      • Top 10 Ubuntu apps that are worth every penny

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Mint With Cinnamon: A New Sweet Spot for Desktop Linux?

          “I gotta ask….why?” said Slashdot blogger hairyfeet. “I don’t see why, now that mint has grown in popularity, they don’t follow Canonical’s lead and pick their own DE which can be customized to their distro instead of trying to keep some horrible kludge of GNOME 2 and 3 running, which I bet will be a buggy nightmare.”

        • Linux Mint 12 KDE Almost Ready

          Last month Linux Mint 12 was released to quite a buzz. It addressed many of the issues disaffected users experienced with GNOME 3 (and Unity). This was great for GNOME users and Linux Mint in general, but hey, what about us KDE users? Well, the KDE version is nearly ready and users can test a release candidate now.

        • Download Linux Mint 12 KDE Release Candidate

          Clement Lefebvre, father of the Linux Mint project, unleashed a couple of minutes ago, January 11th, the Release Candidate version of the upcoming Linux Mint 12 KDE operating system.

          Linux Mint 12 KDE Release Candidate features updated applications, general improvements and new features, all to make your desktop experience more comfortable.

        • A wild Minty Customer appears!

          First, I must say that all that follows here is my own demented view. But blog thingy already implies that, and about the ‘demented’… well, going against the flow might always be demented, no? Our topic here is Linux Mint. It is very popular right now, but does it really deserve that much popularity?

          I don’t think Linux Mint is really important enough to give that much attention. Most of they have, they have because of Ubuntu. And all they contributed to the FOSS is some shiny panels and menus together with some non-crucial tools for package management, hardly worth mentioning in the greater scheme of the things. Cinnamon is still in the works but more on it later. Ubuntu greatly changed their Debian base and started projects like Upstart (which I am fond of), they made great leaps in desktop hardware recognition and use; Mint made some panels and menus. Comparison here is quite clear that I don’t think my intelligent readers (let me butter you up a bit) might need more clarification.

Devices/Embedded

• US killer spy drone controls switch to Linux

  The control of US military spy drones appears to have shifted from Windows to Linux following an embarrassing malware infection.

  Ground control systems at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, which commands the killer unmanned aircraft, became infected with a virus last September. In a statement at the time the Air Force dismissed the electronic nasty as a nuisance and said it posed no threat to the operation of Reaper drones, but the intrusion was nonetheless treated seriously.

• Anyone for Raspberry Pi?

  The Raspberry Pi Foundation is planning on revitalising computing amongst young people by bringing back the good old days of tinkering around with programmable computers.

  Production has begun for the credit card sized PC, which has an ARM GNU/Linux box that can be plugged into a TV and keyboard. Its system on chip is a Broadcom BCM2835.

• The Raspberry Pi Computer Is Finally Being Manufactured

• This digital picture frame runs Linux better than you might think

  Ah, the beauty of spreading the guts of some hackable hardware across your workbench. This happens to be the circuit board and LCD screen from a Parrot DF3120 digital picture frame. The device is pretty powerful, considering you can still find them available for around $25. You’ll get a 3.5″ screen, ARM9 processor with 8MB or RAM, Bluetooth, a tilt sensor, and more. It seem that [BusError], [Sprite_tm], [Claude], and few others really went to town and spilled all of the secrets this device has to offer.

• Open Source PID Controller

  I used a PID (proportional–integral–derivative) controller to regulate the temperature of my espresso maker. I wrote about it in my book, Made by Hand: My Adventures in the World of Do-It-Yourself. (You can read an except from the chapter on Gizmodo.)

• Phones

  • Tizen Puts Out Some Code, SDK Preview

    The Tizen Linux project, which is backed by Intel, Samsung, and others, have released some initial code and other information in time for CES 2012.

  • Android

    • ‘Medfield’ Atom breaks cover — will be in Lenovo and Motorola phones

      Intel and Motorola announced a multi-year agreement focused on the development of Atom-powered, Android-based phones and tablets. Meanwhile, Intel showed off an smartphone reference platform and a Lenovo K800 handset that both run Android on the “Medfield” processor — now unveiled as the Atom Z2460 — and third-party benchmarks rated the CPU high marks in performance and power consumption.

    • Google’s Schmidt Does the Android Definition Boogie

      Google Chairman Eric Schmidt doesn’t seem to like it when the word “fragmentation” is applied to his company’s Android mobile OS. Android isn’t fragmented, he said during a recent interview — it’s “differentiated.” But to developers and users, the change of wording may not make much difference. “If developers say Android is fragmented, then it is,” said Flurry Analytics CEO Simon Khalaf.

    • Google’s Schmidt: Android’s not fragmented, it’s ‘differentiated’

    • CyanogenMod surpasses 1 million installations

      CyanogenMod development team member Koushik Dutta has announced that the project’s open source modified Android firmware has been installed on more than one million devices around the world. At the time of writing, the CMStats web page currently shows a total of 1,001,177 installs of CyanogenMod across all versions, with 7,895 having been added in the past 24 hours.

    • Android A85 Superfone with Gesture Control

      Micromax and eyeSight partner up to create what seems to be a new type of smartphone. Although, their Android A85 Superfone boasts ordinary specs for today’s standard. This devices offers a 1GHz Dual Core processor, of the Tegra 2 variety, a 3.8” display, and offers Gesture Control.

    • HTC Desire News – Several Desire Models get Unlocked Bootloader

    • Huawei Annoucnes Android 4.0 Powered MediaPad, Along with Line of Color Series

      Huawei is a brand which is rapidly making a highly ranked place in the mobile market. They started from China as a small brand, they are now famous all over the world. Last year in June, they introduced their first ever Honeycomb tablet which was launched as Huawei MediaPad, and it featured Honeycomb and a dual-core processor. Now Huawei is back with the announcement of Huawei MediaPad, which is the world’s first tablet to feature Android 4.0; also the announcement of Huawei MediaPad Color series but this series will be Honeycomb powered, just like the original model.

    • Sony Xperia S coming to Orange UK, Vodafone has no plans to offer it

      Yesterday, O2 and Three UK have confirmed that they would launch the new Sony Xperia S. And today it was Orange’s turn to do the same.

    • Sony Smartwatch accessory launched for Xperia range

      Sony have announced a range of ‘smart’ accessories for their latest Xperia smartphones including this the Sony SmartWatch which connects via Bluetooth

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • Intel’s educational PC gets dual cores, 12-hour battery

    Intel announced the fifth generation of its reference platform for education-focused portable PCs. The Classmate now features a dual-core Atom N2600 processor, delivering battery life of up to 12 hours, plus optional capacitive multitouch functionality, according to the company.

  • Android 4.0 tablet sells for $170

    At CES, ViewSonic announced a seven-inch ViewPad E70 tablet that runs Android 4.0 on a 1GHz processor and costs a mere $170. The company also unveiled a 9.7-inch ViewPad 10e tablet for $270, a 10.1-inch, dual-boot Windows/Android model (the $849 ViewPad 10pi), and a 3.5-inch ViewPhone 3 (Latin America-bound with Android 2.3).

  • ZTE shows off a 7 inch, 720p tablet with Tegra 3

    Chinese device maker ZTE has been promising to enter the North American phone and tablet market for a while, but so far hasn’t made much of a splash in the States. So I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for this sleek new 7 inch ZTE tablet to come to the US. But it’d be kind of nice if it did.

Big Switch open-sources Floodlight, an OpenFlow controller

Big Switch Networks, a startup using the OpenFlow protocol to help companies build software-defined networks, has open-sourced its controller software, dubbed Floodlight. The company, which is one of several startups trying to solve networking issues that arise from virtualization and webscale systems, said on Wednesday that it would release the source code for the controller it developed on its website and will focus on developing an ecosystem of applications around the Floodlight code.

A response to a FOSS skeptic

Don Parris wrote a book a while back called “Penguin in the Pew.” The book is an outstanding guide for nonprofits — aimed at churches, but it can apply to any other nonprofit — in the way to use Free/Open Source Software, which Don like to call “libre,” but you know it’s the same thing.

Liferay 6.1 portal software gets new setup wizard

Liferay logo Liferay has released version 6.1 of the Community Edition of its open source and Java-based enterprise portal software. Designed to power corporate intranets and extranets, it combines a content management system and a web application framework in one platform. The Community Edition of Liferay contains the latest features and enhancements for the platform which will appear in a few months in the Enterprise Edition.

Using open source to build the ultimate walled garden

That’s no slam on OpenStack, mind you: the Rackspace-owned cloud computing project is much-beloved in the open source community for the technology and the Apache license that covers the project. The fact that governance will be shifting from Rackspace proper to a planned OpenStack Foundation definitely helps, too.

Google open sources Zygote 3D human body viewer

Google Body has open sourced the enjoyable to use 3D visualisation of the human body built by Google labs engineers in their “20% time”, the fuzzily-measured time slot employees are allowed to use to work on personally inspired creative projects.

The open sourcing of this code is a result of the Google Labs division being closed last year. The code now sits with Zygote Media Group, who provided the imagery for Google Body in the first place.

Open-Source, Real-Time Bus Tracking Is Coming to All of New York City

Second Crack: New Open Source Static Blogging Engine

Admit it, you’ve got something to say, you’ve got something that the world needs to hear. You’ve got something on your mind that you need to get out, and you want to do it in style. Marco Arment may have exactly what you are looking for. He has released the blogging engine that powers his personal site, Marco.org as open source, available on github under a basic BSD style license. If you do not know who Marco is, you might wonder why this is interesting. Marco’s last side project turned out to be a little thing called Instapaper, and the last web publishing platform he helped build was Tumblr, so his new project is worth taking a look at.

Geospatial services with FLOSS: Interview with Oslandia

In this interview Olivier Courtin and Vincent Picavet, founders of geospatial service provider Oslandia, share with us their business story, some advice and how free and open source geospatial software plays a major role in their company. Enjoy the interview!

Rackspace Open Sources Dreadnot for Data Center Software Deployment

Open Source software is created in a number of different ways, but the most common is simply when a developer has an “itch.” Rackspace’s Cloud Monitoring Team had such an itch when it came to having the right tools for the continuous deployment of software to their data centers and that’s how the new Dreadnot tool was born.

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Mozilla Plans for Firefox Enterprise – Will it Slow Innovation?

    One of the perceived shortcomings of Mozilla’s rapid release cycle, with new browsers every 6 weeks – is that enterprises couldn’t keep up.

    So now Mozilla has officially embraced a plan for an Enterprise release version of Firefox dubbed Extended Release Support (ESR). Personally, I don’t think it’s a great idea. In fact, I think it could hurt Mozilla’s mission for improving the web for us all.

SaaS

• AT&T joins ‘Linux for cloud’, boosts HTML5 apps

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• Oracle Makes Bold, Risky Move With Big Data Appliance Launch

  Oracle’s speed to market with its Big Data Appliance is indeed impressive, but what still remains to be seen is whether the product will be a success. “Something like 40 percent of computer PhDs are working on Hadoop projects, sometimes unsuccessfully,” noted Schooner CTO John Busch. “It can be a very complex process, so I don’t know if bundling it with hardware will be easy as one-two-three.”

• Oracle’s Big Data Powered by Cloudera’s Hadoop

CMS

• Big rise in registrations for Drupal Downunder

  There has been nearly a 25 per cent rise in the number of registrations for the Drupal Downunder conference this year as compared to 2011, according to one of the main organisers, Donna Benjamin.

Education

• The UK Bumps Up Its Computer Curriculum, While The US Slides Back

  And there’s no reason that US schools couldn’t do exactly the same.

  I listen to the war stories my kids bring home, from the tiny, reluctant, Medieval amount of computer education they get. Here is what a junior-high-school computer class in Iowa (top education achievement in the country, mind you) is teaching as of last month: “OK, kids, today we’re going to create an account at a web page. Open the broooowser, use the moooouuuse, click on the liiiink… We’re going to open a ‘Hotmail’ email account…”

Business

• Semi-Open Source

  • SMEs Opt for Free and Open Source Software to Cut Costs

    Free and open source software is steadily growing in popularity in Kenya as firms move to cut costs and achieve more customised technology solutions.

    Many companies particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have adopted free and open source software (FOSS) to power their systems in the wake of increasing costs and shrinking IT budgets.

Openness/Sharing

• Open Hardware

  • Joi Ito: Open-source hardware is a no brainer

Programming

• Node.js Selected by InfoWorld for 2012 Technology of the Year Award

• NGINX’s Igor Sysoev Wins 2012 Cloud Award for Developer of the Year

• Developing for Linux under OS X in XCode

The Legend of Apple and Xerox PARC and the Truth About Innovation

Every December for the last few years, NY Times OpEd columnist David Brooks picks the best magazine essays of the year. He describes his choices in two of his cols, with links to the essays in their online versiumns, with links to the essays in their online version. I generally really like his selections. One of his choices this year is a New Yorker article by bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell – Creation Myth: Xerox PARC, Apple, and the truth about innovation.

Security

• Scareware – Symantec come under fire. A sign of a struggling marketplace?
  

  Those who follow my dulcet tones on TechBytes or read my musings on the various social networks I maintain will know that recently (after years of being let down) I changed my ISP. With this change brought the expected, a shiny new router, a nice welcome letter and, shovelled into the box was also a free trial of McAfee Anti virus. Of course there was no way of them knowing that the troubles Windows users may get with malware, virus’s and spyware don’t really have any relevance to a Linux user, but nevertheless their “kind” and “free” trial was put in the same place as probably many a Windows machine when it had been brought to a halt by malicious code and the user (through their own lack of knowledge) merely thought the machine itself was broken.

Finance

• Bureau Recommends: Private Eye alleges second Vodafone tax scheme

  More than a year after first publishing allegations of a multi-billion pound tax avoidance scheme approved by HM Revenue and Customs boss Dave Hartnett, Private Eye has published details of a second tax scheme by Vodafone.

  The Eye alleges that, under the scheme, Vodafone Holdings, a holding company based in the US that owns Vodafone’s 45% stake in Verizon Wireless, borrowed billions of dollars from a second company called Vodafone Luxembourg 5 sarl.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • THE AUTHOR OF SOPA IS A COPYRIGHT VIOLATOR

    US Congressman and poor-toupee-color-chooser Lamar Smith is the guy who authored the Stop Online Piracy Act. SOPA, as I’m sure you know, is the shady bill that will introduce way harsher penalties for companies and individuals caught violating copyright laws online (including making the unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a crime which you could actually go to jail for). If the bill passes, it will destroy the internet and, ultimately, turn the world into Mad Max (for more info, go here).

  • The Other Side of the Internet

    The internet makes it easy to redistribute unauthorized copies – SOPA is an effort to put an end to that, albeit at the price of getting rid of the internet. But the internet also makes it easy to reach audiences. From the point of view of the big distributors represented by the MPAA and the RIAA it’s all bad. I’m pretty sure buggy-whip makers didn’t much like automobiles either. But what about the artist? Chris Phelan points us to a recent article about Louis C.K. a successful but not superstar comedian. Rather than taking the $200K that the big distributors would have paid him, he put up $170K of his own money to produce the video of his show. Unlike the big distributors who hate their customers as much as their customers hate them – Louis C. K. has a good relationship with his customers. He put the video on-sale for a quarter of the price the big guys would have charged – $5 each copy. He did it without DRM, and simply asked politely that people buy it from him and not redistribute it. He took in $2 million, a net of about $1.8 million.

  • Let us Pray: Yea Verily, Filesharing is a Religion. Official.

    You’ve just got to love those crazy Swedes. Liberal, progressive, cool and politically correct. What’s not to like? They’ve excelled themselves this time though. As dedicated filesharers they applied, and succeeded at the third attempt, to register filesharing as a religion.

  • Bach’s Goldberg Variations commissioned for Public Domain Release

    One of the responses to my earlier post about the MusOpen symphony recording project mentioned a project I had overlooked: the Open Goldberg project has created new public domain scores for the Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” using the MuseScore free software musical notation software and is commissioning a studio recording of piano soloist Kimiko Ishizaka performing the pieces, also for public domain release (with CC0).

    This is another fantastic confluence of free software, free culture, and crowd-funding, as the project raised over $23,000 to fund the commission. According to the projects’ site, the score produced will be peer-reviewed, making them on par with commercially produced scores.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Automotive Advances–Linux-Based and Solar–at CES 2012

What to Expect From Linux This Year

One of Oracle’s big contributions to the Linux kernel is Btrfs, a filesystem that adds many features that enterprises would like to see in Linux. For example, Btrfs allows for snapshots, a maximum file size in the exabytes, compression, integrated RAID features and many other features you don’t find in Ext.

However, Btrfs has been missing a few features—most notably a filesystem check (fsck) tool—that you’d want before rolling it out for production use.

Server

• Five questions on Linux and z/VM OS for mainframes

  The evolution of hardware development and operating system support has allowed mainframes to endure in the modern data center. Today, open source operating systems like Linux have found a home on mainframe platforms such as the IBM z114. This has spurred important improvements in both the operating system and the mainframe hardware. In this Q&A, James Vincent, a senior z/VM systems programmer and director of conference operations for SHARE, offers his expert insights on the future of Linux and mainframes.

Applications

• Music Management Takes Flight With Songbird

  Songbird does not fit squarely into one particular category of application. Instead, it is a desktop Web player, a digital jukebox and Web browser mash-up all nested in one cozy package. It bears a striking resemblance to the user experience that comes from tabbed Web browsing. And its customization extends far beyond the large collection of plugins.

• Proprietary

  • Corel introduces AfterShot Pro for $99 on Linux, Mac and Windows

• Instructionals/Technical

  • The Linux Command Line

  • Beginning Linux – Part II

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • Kubuntu 11.10 for digital painting

    With the new year, hard to escape to the temptation of upgrading tool and system.
    My last working professional system was done over a Linux Mint 11 installation detailed on this blog so I was first tempted to upgrade with Linux Mint 12, but Gnome 3 provided me bad performances while painting, and the operating system was really missing of simple settings already their in Gnome 2 ( windows colors / thumbnail of my files / panel position / changing ergonomy ). In fact, my Gnome 3 experience was a deception because of that feeling of regression and non flexibility.

    So, I tryed the fork of Gnome 2 : Mate ( also delivered on the Linux Mint 12 DVD ). Mate worked pretty well, but was also a regression compare to the Gnome 2 of Linux Mint 11 because of a lot of things who worked for Gnome 2 to readapt to all the new Mate’s name. Plus this, my home hidden preference folder started to look like this : Mate configuration mixed up with Gnome 2 configuration , mixed up with Gnome 3 configuration. So it started to really look like a big mess. And , I don’t really likes to invest a future into forks ; it’s still good to look ahead.

Distributions

• Red Hat Family

  • CloudLinux Integrates with Vembu StoreGrid

• Debian Family

  • Debian Linux Named Most Popular Distro for Web Servers

    inux may be enjoying great popularity in the mobile arena, thanks to Android–and even on the desktop, to an increasing extent–but there’s no denying its longtime success on servers.

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • The Tiny Cotton Candy Computer Runs Android 4.0 ICS, Ubuntu

      • FXI Demos Ubuntu and Android 4.0 on its Cotton Candy USB Device

      • Canonical Maps out Ubuntu Strategy at CES

        The name Ubuntu is closely tied to Linux, but that doesn’t mean Ubuntu is only interested in Linux servers and desktops. This week at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Canonical, the lead commercial sponsor behind Ubuntu, is showing off where it’s headed in the consumer space.

        Canonical is demoing their Ubuntu TV concept, which puts the Linux vendor’s distribution onto TV sets. They’re also showing In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) systems powered by Ubuntu. Helping to connect those items together with desktop users, the company is also stressing the importance of their multi-platform UbuntuOne service. UbuntuOne enables users to share and synchronize content across desktop and mobile devices.

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Release candidate available for Linux Mint 12 KDE

          The Linux Mint team has announced the availability of a release candidate for Linux Mint 12 KDE, the version of the Linux Mint distribution with the latest version of KDE, 4.7.4. Like Linux Mint 12, it is based on Ubuntu 11.10. This is the first Linux Mint KDE release which, like other recent Mint releases, has hybrid ISO images; this enables the simple creation of a bootable USB stick, which can behave just like a live CD or DVD, using just the dd command. A tutorial is provided to explain how to install Linux Mint via USB.

Devices/Embedded

• Car drivers fuel big demand for in-vehicle web access

  Last year Toyota joined the non-profit Linux Foundation, which is dedicated to accelerating the growth of the open-source operating system. The car maker said it was joining the Linux Foundation as a Gold member to maximise its own investment in Linux “while fostering open innovation throughout the automotive ecosystem”.

• Raspberry Pi’s $35, 700MHz Linux computer enters manufacturing

  The Raspberry Pi Foundation announced this week that its $35 Linux computer has entered the manufacturing stage. The system, which is an open board with a 700MHz ARM11 CPU and 256MB of RAM, could be available for sale within a matter of weeks.

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • Are Tablets Expensive Toys? Not This One

    Many children pick up an iPad and figure out how to use it right away — swiping and poking the screen in a way that just seems to come naturally to them. One Laptop Per Child, a nonprofit organization that produces low-cost computers for developing countries, wants to take the tablet experience to poor children as well. It showcased its XO 3.0 tablet at the International Consumer Electronics Show this week.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• Oracle in hot water with Java makers

  It wanted to bring in modularisation and licensing plans for Java with version eight under the handle of something called Project Jigsaw. But some of the Java contributors are worried that Project Jigsaw conflicts with the OSGi module system already geared to Java.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• Edu-Team 2011 summary

  When I talk to people as a member of FSFE’s education team, there’s always the question what we are actually doing. It is not so easy to come up with something specific. I know we’ve been busy all the time, but ad hoc, it’s difficult for me to name examples, that are worth mentioning. A lot of work that’s being done just doesn’t provide a presentable outcome (more on that below). With this post, I’ll publicly report what we’ve done in 2011 and give a brief overview of what is about to come in 2012.

Finance

• Real Financial Regulators Love Prosecutions of Fraudulent Bank CEOs

  The New York Times published a column by its leading financial experts, Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story, on November 22, 2011 which contains a spectacular charge against the Obama administration’s financial regulatory leaders. I have waited for the rebuttal, but it is now clear that the administration does not contest the charge.