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Links 23/5/2012: printerd, Mageia 2 Released





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



  • Desktop

    • ownCloud 4 improves ease of use, enhances flexibility for end users
      Earlier this month, at a conference dedicated to Ubuntu, Google developer Thomas Bushnell — who works under CIO Ben Fried — detailed the company’s use of Goobuntu, which has long been an open secret but was rarely discussed in public. According to Bushnell, Goobuntu is based on the LTS (long-term support) releases of Ubuntu, with modifications made to improve security and stability. Fried confirms that Google is currently using the “Lucid Lynx” version of Ubuntu (10.04), but that the company is moving to the “Precise Pangolin” release (12.04).


    • World's 'simplest' Linux laptop reaches the UK
      Back to basics computing the Ordissimo way offers users a simple range of applications that have, the company claims, been hugely simplified to reduce the number of mouse clicks necessary to perform basic tasks.


    • 2 Drivers To Dell's Earnings And $25 Fair Value
      Dell’s PC division constitutes 20% of its stock by our estimates. Looking ahead, another potential source for sales is the open-source Linux based Ultrabook, which is aimed at capturing the web and mobile design market share dominated by Macbook. For this earnings report, we however expect a slight fall in PC sales due to seasonality, but guidance on ultrabook trends could spark investor interest.






  • Kernel Space

    • printerd aims to be a modern print spooler for Linux
      Red Hat developers Tim Waugh and Richard Hughes have announced what they call a "modern print spooler" for the Linux desktop. The printerd daemon is PolicyKit-enabled and uses D-Bus to communicate with other applications. Waugh points out, that as a design decision, printerd will only accept PDF files as input.


    • Announcing printerd


    • New Linux Kernel Adds X32 ABI, Btrfs Updates
      It's been a "calm" release cycle, according to Linus Torvalds, but the 3.4 Linux kernel released on Sunday still has plenty of interesting new features. Top of the bill? A X32 application binary interface (ABI) that will help provide better performance for applications that don't really need huge chunks of memory or 64-bit variables.


    • Graphics Stack





  • Applications





  • Desktop Environments



    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Announcing the Make Play Live Partner Network
        In the wake of the announcement of the first ever KDE powered tablet, quite a few interesting things are happening in the background. One of them is the formation of a professional Partner Network for devices such as the Vivaldi tablet. Let's look at this Partner Network in more detail.






  • Distributions

    • KISS simplicity: Arch Linux


    • Fire up your creativity with the latest Dream Studio release!
      Rock musician and software developer Dick MacInnis, announced a few days ago the availability of the new Dream Studio release which is based on Ubuntu 12.04.


    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Mandriva To Use Mageia For Their Business Servers
        Mandriva, the company behind the GNU/Linux based distribution with same name, recently announced that they are giving the control of the distribution to the community. CEO of Mandriva SA, Jean-Manuel Croset, wrote, "After reviewing all your messages, suggestions, ideas and comments, Mandriva SA took the decision to transfer the responsibility of the Mandriva Linux distribution to an independent entity."

        The development raised questions about the role Mandriva fork Mageia will play in this community controlled Mandriva. Mandriva clarifies that there will be active collaboration between the two teams. For their server product, Mandriva will collaborate with the Mageia community.


      • Our baby’s growing up: Mageia 2 is here
        We’re the Mageia community, and we are very happy to announce the release of Mageia 2!



      • Mageia 2 Released
        The Mageia team has announced the release of Mageia 2, the community-driven fork of Mandriva.


      • Open Source: Mageia 1 to Mageia 2 Upgrade
        I am jumping the gun a bit and upgrading my Mageia 1 installation on my personal / business SOHO desktop PC tonight, May 21st, to Mageia 2. Officially Mageia 2 is not due to release until May 22nd. But the online repository for Mageia 2 is in place at my preferred mirror and I know that it is basically ready to go right now. So, I am upgrading. Ironically, I am starting this article from my soon-to-be-retired Mandriva 2011 install on the SOHO router / Bacula backup server. I have X and fluxbox installed on here just for occasions such as this where my main PC is being serviced. I am publishing this and will update as I go, so any of you that follow this site via RSS can make comments if you wish while this is being written.




    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat CEO: The nuts and bolts of open source
        While the so-called Information Age has been touted since the public opening of the Internet nearly 20 years ago, the real dawn of the Information Age is just about to start.

        That was the central theme of this morning's Open Source Business Conference keynote from Jim Whitehurst, President & CEO Red Hat, who also told the audience that open source is setting off the explosion of new innovation.




    • Debian Family



      • How Debian has grown: Stefano Zacchiroli speaks
        Last month, Stefano Zacchiroli was re-elected as leader of the Debian GNU/Linux project for a third term, the first leader to earn such a mandate. Only the founder, Ian Murdock, has headed the project for anything approaching three years.

        Debian is the biggest volunteer project of all distributions, has the most ports and provides, arguably, the best distribution; its package management tools are the stuff of legend. It serves as the basis for some of the better known and more widely used distributions, like Ubuntu and Knoppix, and also functions as some kind of conscience of the FOSS movement.


      • Derivatives



        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu 12.04: Parentally Precise
            My mother in law, Sue, has what can be best described as a dog-earred mess of a laptop. A reasonably modern Lenovo Thinkpad with Windows Vista, it was painfully slow to use, crammed with all manner of bloatware and pre-installed rubbish that came with the machine and the applications she installed, and likely hiding some spyware, viruses and other uglyness.

            Now, I am not a fan of Windows at the best of times, but this was beyond software preferences: the machine was barely usable. Sue though, being the trooper she is, gritted her teeth and just got on with it, going about her business as usual.


          • Flavours and Variants

            • Five Things to Look Forward to in Linux Mint 13 'Maya'
              There's been much attention focused lately on Canonical's recently released Ubuntu Linux 12.04 “Precise Pangolin,” but it's by no means the only popular Linux distribution out there with a major update in the offing.












  • Devices/Embedded

    • Raspberry Pi team teases camera add-on
      The Raspberry Pi $35 Linux computer, which is equipped with a 700MHz processor, 256MB of RAM, an SD card slot, two USB ports, an Ethernet jack and both HDMI and RCA outputs, will soon feature support for a camera add-on. The current prototype features a 14-megapixel camera that can be connected directly to the Rapsberry Pi through its CSI pins.


    • Raspberry Pi foundation demos 14MP camera module for $35 computer
      A blog post published by the Raspberry Pi foundation offers the first look at an experimental camera module that is designed to plug into the organization’s popular $35 Linux computer. The camera component, which will likely be available for purchase later this year, is relatively small. The foundation says that it is “ideal for some robotics and home automation applications people have been wanting to build.”


    • VIA Launches its Banana PC, i.e. The $49 Android PC
      Couple of days ago, WonderMedia (subsidiary of VIA Technologies, which in turn is a subsidiary of Formosa Plastics) announced its latest SoC processors, the 800MHz WM8950 and the faster 1.2GHz WM8850. We’re not sure why exactly the higher number part is the lower-performing one, but we’ll leave that one to you to figure out.


    • Phones

      • Samsung And HTC Working On Tizen OS-Powered Smarphones, Acer And ASUS Netbooks Will Follow
        After we have seen Tizen OS in action on a Samsung slate a few days ago, today we are bringing fresh news about this fresh platform. As probably know, Intel, Linux Foundation, Samsung, Sprint and many other big names of the telecom industry are involved in the Tizen Project.


      • Open Source Won the Mobile Platform Wars, Industry Executive Claims
        At the Open Source Business Conference 2012, the president of mobile data synchronization software company Funambol explained how open source software, such as Google Android, came to dominate the mobile space.


      • Android

        • Google Acquires Motorola Mobility


        • Page: Motorola Mobility acquisition is key to Google's future
          Google announces completion of its deal to buy Motorola Mobility and enter the hardware market. The marriage will likely bolster Google’s Android-based smartphone business and Xoom tablet business but maybe not its OEM business. The extent of its success will also be determined by its support in the greater open source community, especially among open source developers, in the Software-as-a-Service era.


        • Why China Stuck Its Foot in Android's Door
          Google has cleared the final hurdle standing in its way of acquiring Motorola Mobility. The government of China has given the pair its blessing, but one of the conditions regulators set was that the Android OS must remain open for at least the next five years. Google will have to file a report with China's Commerce Department every six months.


        • Promising words of Google 5-year free & open source plan
          Some readers may remember that back in February we discussed the planned Google acquisition of Motorola Mobility and concerns over the possibility that Google’s Android might not remain an open-source platform. The promising news today for Android enthusiasts is that as part of the recent agreement for China to approve the giant search company’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility, Google has said it will maintain a 5-year free and open source plan.


        • Motorola Acquired By Google, Sanjay Jha Steps Down As CEO
          With the final nod from China, Google has closed the acquisition of Motorola Mobility this morning. Motorola will be run as a separate company, just the way YouTube is run as a separate company. So, there is no fear of Motorola getting an edge over competitors. On the contrary Google recently announced that they will give partners early access to Android to be able to bring products to the market in time. Motorola will remain a licencee just like other Android partners.


        • Why AT&T's CEO is flat-out wrong about Android
          Randall, Randall, Randall. AT&T's CEO has a habit of getting himself in hot water when he talks about his company's network, and with his latest remarks about Android, he's managed to make himself look like a fool yet again.










Free Software/Open Source



Leftovers



  • Hardware

    • The Only One
      Confused, mentally ill or just failing in facility due to advancing age, M$ is clearly not adapting to a new reality but trying to create a comfortable hallucination in which it alone can save mankind from ARM… Reality is that mankind must be saved from M$ by real innovation and unfettered imagination stimulated by FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software).




  • Security





  • Finance

    • Goldman Sachs made billions by pushing AIG to bankruptcy
      An investigative report published Sunday by the New York Times provides a glimpse of the predatory practices of major Wall Street banks that played a central role in the financial meltdown and global economic crisis.

      The article, headlined “Testy Conflict With Goldman Helped Push AIG to Precipice,” documents the role of Goldman Sachs, the biggest and most profitable US investment bank, in pushing the insurance giant American International Group (AIG) to the brink of bankruptcy.






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