03.16.12

Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• Server

  • Amazon EC2 cloud is made up of almost half-a-million Linux servers

    We know that Linux on servers is big and getting bigger. We also knew that Linux, thanks to open-source cloud programs like Eucalyptus and OpenStack, was growing fast on clouds. What he hadn’t know that Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), had close to half-a-million servers already running on a Red Hat Linux variant.

• Kernel Space

  • Ubuntu 12.04 LTS – Benchmarking All The Linux File-Systems

    When running Linux file-system benchmarks at Phoronix it is most often a comparison of EXT4 vs. Btrfs, since they are the “hot” Linux file-systems at the moment. Sometimes others like ZFS, Reiser4, and XFS also join the party. In this article is a look at all of the Linux file-systems with install-time support under the forthcoming Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. When carrying out clean installations each time with changing out the root file-system and using the default mount options, ReiserFS, JFS, EXT2, EXT3, EXT4, Btrfs, and XFS are all being compared in this article.

  • Can Linux Win in Cloud Computing?

  • Graphics Stack

    • Canonical Publishes Apple Hybrid Graphics Driver

      Seth Forshee, a kernel engineer at Canonical since last year, published the Apple GMUX driver to the kernel mailing list. From the commit message, “Apple laptops with hybrid graphics have a device named gmux that is used for switching between GPUs and backlight control. On many models this is the only reliable method for controlling the backlight. This series adds initial support for the gmux device, along with anciallary support for disabling apple_bl when the gmux device is detected. Initially only backlight control is supported.”

    • X.Org Foundation Elects New Board Members

      They barely had enough members voting to meet the minimum 25% quorum to carry out an official election. Only 40 of 144 members voted this year, which comes in at just 27.77%.

    • Participating in Google Summer of Code 2012

      Hello, Wayland developers!

      It’s high time to begin discussing application ideas with mentoring organizations.

• Applications

  • DropBox on Linux ! No more scattered files on USB Stick or external hard disk.

    How many times have you searched for an important file but can not remember where is it ? Have you left the USB stick in your briefcase? Or, HDD backup in the office? Or even left in the USB in your car ? What a mess, right?
    What do you think of a way to save all your files in a safe place and have it always at your disposal? I have the right solution for you! DropBox! It’a multi-platform online storage service. It runs on Linux, Windows and even on your Android smartphone!

  • VLC 2.0 Review

    The cross platform, open source media player du jour VLC has just had a massive update to VLC 2.0 that should excite media consumers from every level

  • Jupiter Applet now with Appindicator support

    The new and improved applet supports both the traditional notification area used by most desktop platforms, and Ubuntus Appindicator library. This should allow Jupiter to sit in the notification area of most desktops out there.

    In addition to the new applet, the underlying scripts have been updated adding support for Glidepoint touchpads, and also fixing up a few bugs.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • How-To: Get My Desktop with MATE in Ubuntu

    • Virtual Hosting With Proftpd And MySQL (Incl. Quota) For Arch Linux

    • To Stay Informed, Let Your Computer Email You

  • Wine

    • The Wine development release 1.5.0 is now available.

  • Games

    • 10 Must-Play linux games for 2012

    • Wasteland 2 Looks Towards Linux Client

      It looks like another game is likely to come to Linux: Wasteland 2. Wasteland 2 is the sequel to the wildly successful post-apocalyptic role-playing video game from 1988.

      Following in the success of Double Fine Adventure on Kickstarter, Brian Fargo and others involved with the original Wasteland game from more than two decades ago have gone to Kickstarter to crowd-source the funding of a sequel. This game has also been extremely well received on Kickstarter and has raised more than $1M USD.

• Desktop Environments

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

    • Kubuntu Active To Run On Tablets

      The lead Kubuntu developer Jonathan Riddell has announced the activation of Kubuntu Active project targeted at tablets. The project has started creating daily builds. At the moment the builds are available only for the i386 architecture, but will soon be available for ARMv7.

      “The project is aimed at creating a Kubuntu version of the Plasma Active tablet interface,” writes Fabian Scherschel on H-Online.

• Distributions

  • Guadalinex 8 Screen Shots

  • New Releases

    • Welcome aboard UE 3.2!!!

  • Red Hat Family

    • Ubuntu: More Popular Than Red Hat Enterprise Linux?

    • Fedora

      • Linpus 1.7 (Lite Desktop)

  • Debian Family

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Here Comes The New Ubuntu Unity Spread Design

          Be prepared to be amazed because this is huge and would change the way you interact with multiple applications in Unity. The Compiz window manager has been around in Ubuntu for quite a long time, in fact I cannot think of a time when it wasn’t present. The good old days where people in fact use Ubuntu because of the fancy cube effect and other effects. With Compiz, you have a huge list of Compiz plugins like Spread, Expo, Alt-Tab and many more etc. And this has remained the way it has for the past few years, sticking out like a sore thumb in light of the new modern, gorgeous Unity interface. Well, all that is about to change soon.

          John Lea, the lead designer of the Ayatana Team has just provided insights of the new Spread that has been designed. We will be covering the new design here but the detail he goes into is overwhelming. It gives an idea of how every minute thing is thought of during the design process. All right, enough with all this beating around the bush. Let’s dive straight into it, shall we?

        • Sure It’s Popular with Consumers, But Ubuntu Increasingly Means Business

          Most of us who follow Linux know that it has been a huge success at the server level, and powers much of the server infrastucture of the Internet. The fact is, many Internet and enterprise users don’t even realize the extent to which they depend on Linux and related platform technology every day. In addition, Linux is playing a bigger part in business technology deployments, which companies like Canonical and Red Hat are extremely focused on. Now, Canonical’s Mark Shuttleworth is out with some hard-hitting data that shows just how effectively Ubuntu is competing with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Here are the details.

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Preliminary analysis of Anonymosus-OS: lame, but no obvious malware

          • SourceForge Closes Anonymous-OS Live CD Project

• Devices/Embedded

  • Phones

    • HP’s former CEO Leo Apotheker killed WebOS

      The mystery has been solved. Hewlett-Packard’s short-lived CEO Leo Apotheker was responsible for ending the young the life of Palm WebOS, according to the company’s former CTO.

    • HP webOS Developer Blog: A Community Release

    • Android

      • Rumor: Nexus tablet is a “done deal”, to retail for as low as $149

        Earlier this month we revealed that Google had chosen ASUS to produce their upcoming “Nexus tablet.” This report was later echoed by Digitimes, who said the 7-inch tablet could arrive as early as May. This has been the hottest Android rumor of the month so we have continued to ask around and dig up more details. We just received some new information, so read on for the full report.

  • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

    • Android Tablets Gain Market, Apple Loses

      According to a study by IDC Android tablets made some strong gains in fourth quarter of 2011. This growth can be attributed to Amazon which introduced its Kinde Fire tablet running cutom Android OS. Android tablets increased their market share from 32.3% in 3Q11 to 44.6% in 4Q11. This is an impressive 12.3% increase. On the contrary iOS slipped from 61.6% market share to 54.7%, losing around 7% market to Android.

    • Spark Linux tablet renamed Vivaldi

Free Software/Open Source

• NYSE Opens Up About Giving Up Control

  We also had the opportunity to talk to NYSE Technologies’ Head of Global Alliances Feargal O’Sullivan. He will be a keynote presenter at the Collaboration Summit and will be talking about “Open Middleware Standards for the Capital Markets and Beyond.”

• Cool, Free Open Source Tools for Producing Music

  Music-making technology has improved dramatically in recent years, and software and hardware tools even play a bigger role in the production processes of huge bands ranging from Coldplay to Metallica. Free and open source music making and production technologies have also become very sophisticated, and are worth looking into. If you play and produce music here are some must-have free tools that you can leverage.

• Zytronic encourages creativity with open-source driver for touch sensors

  In order to increase the depth of support it can deliver to the market, Zytronic has introduced the first in a series of new software drivers for use with its range of Projected Capacitive Technology (PCT) touch sensors and touch controller products. Designed to work with Zytronic’s latest ZXY100 touch controller series, the initial drivers will support the increasingly popular Linux operating system, and for industrial users Microsoft Windows CE . The Linux drivers are supported on both Ubuntu 10.04 and Debian 6.01/6.02 distributions.

• Events

  • The Future Web at DrupalCon Denver

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Thunderbird 11 Released: Lots of Fixes, Frustratingly Few New Features

    • Thunderbird 11 arrives with tabs on top, IM coming in future version

    • Firefox in 2011 – Firefox plans for 2012

• SaaS

  • Eucalyptus refocuses on open source values

    Even as its competitors generate the headlines and talk more than a little smack, Eucalyptus Systems has been quietly and carefully re-aligning its business practices, while steadily growing. Now the cloud computing company is ready to take on the sector with less quiet and more open source attitude: including a radical shift in how it will deploy its main product.

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • LibreOffice 3.5.1 Continues Open Source Office Cadence

    Simply put, the regular update release cadence of LibreOffice provides the highest quality open source office suite ever created.

• CMS

  • Magnolia CMS 4.5 improves usability

    Magnolia International has announced the release of version 4.5 of its enterprise content management system (CMS). According to the developers, this update to the Java-based CMS – available as an Enterprise Edition or an open source Community Edition – is the “largest upgrade to date”, improving usability and adding a number of new features.

• Project Releases

  • Audacity 2.0 RELEASED

  • LibreOffice 3.5.1 Is Now Available for Download

  • Apache Tomcat Connectors 1.2.33 Released

    The Apache Tomcat team has announced the immediate availability of Tomcat Connectors 1.2.33. This is a stable release and includes both bug fixes and new features compared to version 1.2.32. The complete Changelog for Tomcat Connectors (the changes between 1.2.32 and 1.2.33) include the following:

• Openness/Sharing

  • Open Data

    • OpenStreetMap completing move to Open Database Licence

      The OpenStreetMap project is preparing to delete data from its database on 1 April if data contributors have not agreed to licence their data under the Open Database Licence (ODbL) or assign it to the public domain. The move is the culmination of a near two-year long process to switch the licensing for the data behind the popular mapping project.

Leftovers

• Security

  • Study analyses ten years of security holes

    Since 2001, S21sec has collected all major software companies’ known security holes in a database, including those of Adobe, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Oracle. The “Vulnera Database” is fed from 36 sources, among them well-known contributors such as CVE, Bugtraq and Secunia. It currently lists more than 22,000 products and over 74,000 security holes in total.

  • Exploit code published for RDP worm hole; Does Microsoft have a leak?

    Chinese hackers have released proof-of-concept code that provides a roadmap to exploit a dangerous RDP (remote desktop protocol) vulnerability that was patched by Microsoft earlier this week.

    The publication of the code on a Chinese language forum heightens the urgency to apply Microsoft’s MS12-020 update, which addresses a remote, pre-authentication, network-accessible code execution vulnerability in Microsoft’s implementation of the RDP protocol.

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Understanding the New Price of Oil

    In the Spring of 2011, when Libyan oil production — over 1 million barrels a day (mpd) — was suddenly taken offline, the world received its first real-time test of the global pricing system for oil since the crash lows of 2009.

    Oil prices, already at the $85 level for WTIC, bolted above $100, and eventually hit a high near $115 over the following two months.

    More importantly, however, is that — save for a brief eight week period in the autumn — oil prices have stubbornly remained over the $85 pre-Libya level ever since. Even as the debt crisis in Europe has flared.

• Finance

  • Public Rebuke of Culture at Goldman Opens Debate

    Until early Wednesday morning, Greg Smith was a largely anonymous 33-year-old midlevel executive at Goldman Sachs in London.

    Now everyone at the firm — and on Wall Street — knows his name.

    Mr. Smith resigned in an e-mail message to his bosses at 6:40 a.m. London time, laying out concerns that Goldman’s culture had gone haywire, putting its own interests ahead of its clients.

  • Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • New Toxic Sludge PR and Lobbying Effort Gets Underway

    A trade association known for using the terms “compost,” “organic,” and “biosolids” to describe sewage sludge is investing in a new public relations campaign to influence policymakers and the public. The US Composting Council (USCC), which was founded by the disposable diaper industry, will be expanding its long-standing efforts to “rebrand” sewage sludge, which is increasingly disposed of on agriculture crops and through garden centers without telling the public that their food is being grown in medical, industrial, and human waste.

• Censorship

  • Court Orders SOPA-style Blackout of 100+ Music Sites

    Every single ISP in India has been ordered to block 104 sites offering unauthorized music. A total of 387 ISPs must block the sites immediately via DNS and IP address blocking, backed up with Deep Packet Inspection. While the IFPI praised the action, their Indian counterparts are singing are more interesting tune – they don’t want to destroy their opponents, but bring them into the business.

    “Content theft is a global problem and we must have a global commitment to solving it. This is an important opportunity for the Indian government to move forward with strong protections against online theft,” MPAA chairman and CEO Chris Dodd told the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry conference this week in Mumbai.

• Civil Rights

  • The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • RIAA chief: ISPs to start policing copyright by July 1

      Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon are among the ISPs preparing to implement a graduated response to piracy by July, says the music industry’s chief lobbyist.

    • ACTA

      • German ACTA negotiators in the hiding