07.11.12

Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• BetterLinux to debut at HostingCon 2012

• Linux.org comes back to life

  After several months of reconstruction, the popular Linux.org site quietly relaunched what it terms an “alpha release” on May 4.

  Though the site’s Twitter feed makes reference of an announcement to be made on May 7, no such announcement seems to be visible on the usual Internet news sources.

• Mini X TV Box runs Android, Linux for under $100

  The Mini X is a small Android device that plugs into a TV to let you run Android apps on the big screen. But since it’s powered by the same Allwinner A10 processor found in the Mele A1000 and MK802, the Mini X can also run a range of Linux-based operating systems including Ubuntu, Fedora, and Puppy.

• Desktop

  • Google’s Chrome OS Has a Future on Dual-Boot Systems, Starting Now

    Lately, there have been some signs of rejuvenation for Google’s Chrome OS and Chrombooks based on the platform. As noted here, Chrome OS and Chromebooks got off to a shaky start due to the fact that they require users to use applications and store data in the cloud–a two-fisted approach that alienated some users who wanted local apps and data storage.

  • Chron: FixMeStick gets virus-infected PC up and running

• Kernel Space

  • 30 Linux Kernel Developers in 30 Weeks: Greg Kroah-Hartman

    This week we talk to Linux stable kernel maintainer and Linux Foundation Fellow Greg Kroah-Hartman. This is the fifth profile in our 30-week series that shares the stories of 30 Linux kernel developers. You can see all the profiles to date on our Special Features page.

  • Graphics Stack

    • X Server 1.13 to offer better support for hybrid graphics

      Changes that will improve Linux support for hot-pluggable, hybrid graphics hardware have been merged into the development tree for X.Org’s X Server. Support for this feature is currently considered to be lacking in Linux and was one of the reasons behind Linux creator Linus Torvalds’ recent headline-grabbing “NVIDIA, fuck you!” outburst.

    • AMD’s Catalyst Evolution For The Radeon HD 7000 Series

    • Imagination Releases New PowerVR GPUs

    • PRIME DRI2 Offloading Pulled Into X.Org Server

• Applications

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Backing up Your Desktop Settings with Ubuntu-Tweak

    • How to Add, Disable, Remove, Purge a Launchpad PPA in Ubuntu

    • Disable popup window when running scripts in Ubuntu / Linux Mint

    • DNSCrypt, crypt your DNS request

    • How to Install Latest Version of Chromium Browser in Ubuntu

    • Managing A Headless VirtualBox Installation With phpvirtualbox (CentOS 6.2)

    • Striping Across Four Storage Nodes With GlusterFS 3.2.x On Ubuntu 12.04

  • Games

    • Gamification: The Art of Attracting and Keeping Users

• Desktop Environments

  • E17 developers set sights on an official release

    It appears that a stable release of the E17 desktop interface may finally be on its way, despite having been beaten to release by Duke Nukem Forever. According to a blog posting by Jeff Hoogland, developer of the Enlightenment-based Bodhi Linux, the developers of the E desktop environment are apparently preparing for a major stable release.

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • digiKam 2.7.0 Released With Better RAW And Thumbnailing Support

      Over 30 bugs have been fixed in this release, 9 of which caused digiKam to crash. Also, support for a lot of cameras like Canon 5D Mark III, G1 X, 1D X and Powershot SX200, Nikon D4, D800/D800E and D3200, Fuji X-S1 and HS30EXR, Casio EX-Z8, Olympus E-M5, Panasonic GF5, Sony NEX-F3, SLT-A37 and SLT-A57, Samsung NX20 and NX210 have been added in this version. You can download the latest digiKam from this link.

    • digiKam 2.7.0 improves RAW processing support

      Version 2.7.0 of the digiKam Software Collection has been released and is now compatible with a variety of new camera models. The developers say that the update to the open source digital photo management application for KDE has improved RAW file processing thanks to it using the latest 0.14.7 release of the LibRaw image decoder library.

• Distributions

  • Long-Term Review: Chakra 2012.05 “Archimedes”

    For those of you who don’t know what this is about, this post should clear things up. Essentially, I now have another computer upon which I can do tests of installed distribution sessions for several days at a time. There will be three more posts like this one this summer; I may or may not be able to continue it through the semester. For reference, I used the 64-bit minimal CD for live testing and installation. Follow the jump to read my experiences with Chakra over more than a week of use.

  • 5 ways to use Puppy Linux

    Whilst writing my reviews of the various variations of Puppy LINUX I have repeatedly suggested that Puppy would not be the sort of distribution you would use on your main computer.

  • PCManFM Stablizes

    The LXDE file manager, PCManFM is on the way to get a stable release. This news comes after we posted earlier that the LXDE art team is busy building a revamped LXDE.

  • New Releases

    • Suricata 1.3 released

  • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • Open Source Projects Don’t Die, They Get Reborn as Forks

      Open source users are a powerful bunch. The core freedom that open source licenses provide enables developers and users to avoid lock-in. It also enables projects that otherwise would die, to get a second life.

  • Red Hat Family

    • CentOS 6.3 Is Now Available for Download

      On July 9th, Karanbir Singh announced the immediate availability for download of the CentOS 6.3 operating system for both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures.

    • CentOS 6.3 Screenshots (07/10/2012)

    • CentOS-6.3 released

    • Fedora

      • Fedora 18 Will Get 256 Color Terminals

        At today’s FESCo meeting it was approved that Fedora 18 will aim for 256-color terminal support by default.

        As mentioned at the end of June, there was controversy surrounding 256 color terminals by default for Fedora. Most software can handle 256 color terminals rather than only providing a color palette of 8 colors, so it really shouldn’t be a problem, but today it received the official approval.

  • Debian Family

    • Debian Team Still Deciding On Wheezy Successor

      Debian developers are still deciding on the name for the successor to “Wheezy + 1″, but should be announcing a name within the next month.

      Debian Wheezy, a.k.a. Debian 7.0, won’t be released until early next year after having just been frozen. However, at the DebConf 2012 event in Managua, Nicaragua, questions were raised today about the name for Wheezy’s successor.

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • All About Ubuntu One

          With the recent development of cloud computing, many big companies have already launched their cloud sync services. The most conspicuous examples are Dropbox, Sugarsync and Google Drive. And Ubuntu, the most popular Linux distribution currently, also offers its own cloud sync tool. this is Ubuntu One. With 5GB of free storage, Ubuntu is better than Dropbox and equal to Sugarsync and Google Drive. If you want more storage, then you will have to pay for the additional storage space. The good thing about Ubuntu is that their paid storage is split into small 20GB pieces and the cost is more affordable than other service. Also the storage space of Ubuntu One is unlimited so you can just keep adding more and more 20GB bundles to your account in order to have as much storage as you need.

        • Introducing German Ubuntu Forum Lens for Unity

        • Ubuntu TV Progress Report

          Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, announced their plans of brining Ubuntu to smart TVs earlier this year. We have not heard much about the status of Ubuntu after the initial announcement. Users are curious about how the project is moving forward.

        • Unleash your Chromebox: How to dual-boot Ubuntu Linux on your Chrome OS device

          Google’s new Chromebox has some compelling features for large-scale IT shops. Capable of providing solid, secure performance at a reasonable price with almost no administrative overhead, they will no doubt find their way onto trading floors and into hospitals and universities, among other places. For many of the rest of us, the Chromebox, and the Chromebook before it, are a waste of perfectly good hardware. The Chromebox given out at Google I/O, for example, comes with a Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 16GB SSD. It also has plenty of USB and video ports as well as a built-in speaker. That’s more than enough muscle to run a full-on OS like Linux instead of trying to live within the tight, web-only, confines of Chrome OS.

        • Samsung Galaxy S3 GT-I9300: Setting up and running Ubuntu Linux on your phone

• Devices/Embedded

  • Raspberry Pi Summer Code Contest for children announced

    The Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced a programming contest for children, to take place over the summer holidays. The only requirement for entering the contest is that the submitted application runs on the Raspberry Pi. The foundation is providing $4,000 total in prize money divided between the six best entries in each category. The contest runs until 1 September, being scheduled over the summer to cover as much of the holidays in countries in the northern hemisphere as possible.

  • Phones

    • Jolla aims to revitalise MeeGo

      Finnish start-up Jolla Ltd has announced that it aims to continue “the excellent work that Nokia started with MeeGo”. Despite having one MeeGo-based phone, the critically applauded N9, on the market, Nokia is committed to developing Windows Phone based devices now. This has left the descendant of Nokia’s Maemo mobile operating system, which was merged with Intel’s Moblin to create MeeGo, at a developmental loose end.

    • Remember MeeGo? It’s Coming Back This Year in Two New Phones

      Anyone who has been paying any attention to the MeeGo mobile operating system over the past year or so can surely be excused if they’re suffering this week from a severe case of deja vu.

    • Jolla rows away from burning Nokia

    • Nokia Bridge: Nokia’s Incubator Gives Departing Employees €25k And More To Pursue Ideas That Nokia Has Not

      Nokia may still be fighting some pretty major fires on its burning platform, but it’s also building some bridges — namely the Nokia Bridge incubator program — to help those running from the flames, with financing of up to €250,000 ($308,000) to pursue new startups, before they’ve even paid a visit to VCs and angel investors.

    • Android

      • Android Jelly Bean 4.1 given to Android Open Source Project

      • Google releases Android 4.1 source code

      • Jelly Bean source code released

      • Jelly Bean source code released

      • Jelly Bean hits open source community, geeks rejoice

      • Google releases Android 4.1 source code

      • Google open-sources Android ‘Jelly Bean’ 4.1 for third-party modification

      • Google releases Android 4.1 Jelly Bean source code

        Google is releasing Android 4.1 Jelly Bean source code to the Android Open Source Project today. This will allow device makers to bring the latest version of Android to their phones and tablets. It will also make it a lot easier for independent developers to design custom firmware based on Android 4.1 for existing phones and tablets.

      • Android 4.1 source code released today in Android Open Source Project

      • Google Releases Android 4.1 Source Code: Jelly Bean For Everyone

      • Android 4.1 “Jelly Bean” source code released

        Jean-Baptiste Queru, Technical Lead for the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), has announced that Google is in the process of releasing the Android 4.1 source code to the AOSP repository. Android 4.1, code-named “Jelly Bean”, was released at the Google I/O conference at the end of June.

      • Tutorial Using a sideloaded Launcher with USB HID and rooted system for profit

      • First Sony Xperia J images leak online

        Void of any green ball logo or Xperia branding, the ST26 will be an entry-level device.

      • Verizon support blames Samsung for locked bootloader in Galaxy S III (updated)

      • Open Source Android Console Fully Funded with $1 Million

        Since I originally posted this story three hours ago, the Kickstarter campaign to fund the Ouya Android console doubled its funding total. The campaign is fully funded with more than $990,000 raised, and by the time I press the publish button, the total will likely be more than $1 million. I guess the little startup Ouya struck a nerve.

      • Verizon Galaxy S3 Source Code Released

        It may be close to 220 MB, but for the American app developers’ community, the news couldn’t be any better. Samsung recently made the source code for Verizon’s version of the Galaxy S3 available for download on their open source website.

  • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

    • Google Nexus 7 tablet available through Staples

      Staples expects to ship the tablet between July 12 and July 17. Consumers can opt to have the tablet delivered to their homes or to their nearest Staples store. Either way, shipping is free.

Free Software/Open Source

• Teaching the open source way: An interview with Sameer Verma

  Dr. Sameer Verma first learned about open source software when a college friend gave him a weekend crash course in Linux. Now a professor of information systems in the College of Business at San Francisco State University, Verma has taken those lessons to heart—and is teaching his own students the open source way.

  Recently, we talked with Verma about the challenge of open source pedagogy, about integrating open source technologies and values into the college classroom, about the benefits of learning open source project management, and about his work with One Laptop Per Child.

• Apache Lucene/Solr making gains in enterprise search

  Open source hasn’t made huge inroads in web search but Apache’s Lucene/Solr platform is beginning to make gains in enterprise search, particularly in light of the acquisition binge of proprietary giants.

• Cultivating A Culture of Free

  Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is based on a principle: Software Freedom. It is given away under a license that allows you to do with the software as you please. You can modify it, redistribute it, and never pay a penny for it so long as you abide by the terms of the license. This model has worked very well for FOSS. But this model doesn’t work for everything.

• Syoncloud Released Syoncloud Logs 0.3 Log Processing Software as an Open Source

• The Apache Software Foundation Announces Apache Nutch(tm) v2.0

• Open source Java projects: TomEE

  Apache TomEE aims to provide application developers with a best-of-breed technology stack that can be deployed to a simple and lightweight Java EE container. In this return to the Open source Java projects series, author Steven Haines introduces TomEE, explains how it differs from Tomcat, and helps you set it up in your development environment. He then walks through the process of configuring TomEE to integrate resources such as database connection pools and JMS destinations — bread and butter for today’s enterprise apps.

• Events

  • GUADEC 2012 Program Published

    The Gnome Foundation has announced the schedule for GUADEC to be held from July 26 to August 1st in Coruña, Spain this year. The event will consist of over 46 talks, with 4 keynotes and a number of lightning talk sessions.

• Web Browsers

  • Chrome

    • Chrome Apps Can Access Webcam Without A Plugin

      Google Chrome team has made life easier for web developers and users. Google has implemented getUserMedia API in the beta channel of Chrome browser which allows users to grant web apps access to their camera and microphone right within the browser, without a plug-in. It opens doors to immense possibilities for developers to create ‘open’ and standard based apps which can use your webcam and microphone.

    • Google Chrome 21 hits beta

  • Mozilla

    • Firefox: Can this Web browser be saved?

      Usage is down, users are unhappy, and a former developer has no kind words for the once popular number two Web browser. Can we hope for a Firefox revival?

    • Thunderbird: “Pining for the fjords”

      Like TechRepublic’s Jack Wallen, we are not migrating our email to the cloud. We’ll still use desktop email clients to download mail from our POP3 server. Fortunately, we still have alternatives. ZDnet suggests five: Opera, eM Client (Windows only), SeaMonkey, Eudora OSE**, and Zimbra. I’m sure I’ll turn up others in the next few weeks.

    • Mozilla Sets New Priorities, Thunderbird Development Apparently Not Among Them

    • Firefox To Add Social Platform Provider API

• SaaS

  • Lew Moorman: Open Cloud Key to Modern Networking

  • Interview: Whamcloud Wins FastForward Contract for Exascale R&D

    Today Whamcloud announced that the company has been awarded the Storage and I/O Research & Development subcontract for the Department of Energy’s FastForward program. FastForward is set up to initiate partnerships with multiple companies to accelerate the R&D of critical technologies needed for extreme scale computing. To learn more, I caught up with Eric Barton, Whamcloud’s CTO.

  • Beyond MapReduce: Hadoop hangs on

    Hadoop is all the rage in enterprise computing, and has become the poster child for the big-data movement. But just as the enterprise consolidates around Hadoop, the web world, including Google – which originated the technology ideas behind Hadoop – is moving on to real-time, ad-hoc analytics that batch-oriented Hadoop can’t match.

  • Stealthy Big Switch plugs into OpenStack clouds

    Big Switch Networks is not even out of stealth mode and has not yet revealed its aspirations and products for software defined networks – SDNs, in modern parlance – and yet the company is nonetheless contributing to the open source efforts to build more flexible and virtual network infrastructure and hoping to build awareness ahead of its eventual launch.

• AbiWord/LibreOffice

  • First Peek at LibreOffice Android port Prototype

    That LibreOffice continues to respond to requirements of end-users became truly evident when news of it being developed for Android OS arrived a few months ago. And now with screen shot of the progress made so far being released by its developers, LibreOffice’s progress is good to note.

    In the developers own words, the screen shot only “look like – well, that gives a fairly horrific, bolts and all, barely usable (even with keyboard and mouse) office suite on your tablet.”; However, despite the lackadaisical images of the screen shot, the host of features that will finally come through for an Android OS are evident.

  • AbiWord is ready to work with you

• Semi-Open Source

  • Jaspersoft 4.7 Adds Interactivity to Open Source Business Intelligence

    New Big Data analysis lands in Jaspersoft’s open source business intelligence suite as data caching accelerates information delivery.

    The whole point of using business intelligence applications is to get better insight out of data, a task made easier by better engaging end users. Given this, the ability to visualize and interact with data is a key focus for open source business intelligence vendor Jaspersoft in its latest 4.7 release out today.

• Funding

  • Andreessen Horowitz Bets Big on GitHub

    “When you look at the size of this investment, you have to look at why GitHub is special,” said Forrester’s Jeffrey Hammond. “And that’s because of their focus on open source. It is becoming the core of the system, and GitHub is at the center of that. We’re looking at the evolution of open source. It really drives the industry right now.”

  • GitHub Pours Energies into Enterprise – Raises $100 Million From Power VC Andreessen Horowitz

  • GitHub gets $100 Million Investment

  • $100 Million Reasons why Open Source Git (and GithHub) is the greatest thing since sliced bread

  • Ouya Lures Investors With Cheap Console, Free Games, Open Source

    Ouya might have assembled the right ingredients to make its open source entry into the video game console competition a success. “It is a good time, and I’m glad to see it start,” said M2 Research analyst Billy Pidgeon. “This is one area where third parties can easily build on top of Android and do so freely.”

  • AlienVault Raises $34 Million for Open Source Based Unified Security Management

  • Sonatype, Manager of Grown-Up Open-Source Software, Lands $25 Million from NEA

    I’m no expert on how software gets made, but over the years I’ve learned that, more often than not, rather than write brand-new code, it’s more efficient for developers to assemble an application from existing building blocks.

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Gnucash For Android Released

    If you use Gnucash on your PC to track your expenses and accounts, here is great news for you. Now you will be able to do the same from any Android powered device. This application has been ported to Android and should run on Android version 2.2 and above.

• Project Releases

  • TeX Live 2012 released

    Over the weekend, the TeX Users Group (TUG) released a new 2012 edition of the TeX Live distribution. New features this year include many detailed improvements. For instance, the MetaPost program can now be called by default when compiling a file in the \write18 primitive’s restricted execution mode. Output files from the pdftex TeX extension and the dvips driver can now be larger than 2GB, and dvips automatically embeds the 35 default PostScript fonts in the output file to ensure that typesetting is consistent on all systems.

• Public Services/Government

  • An open source city takes shape: The impact of Open Raleigh

• Licensing

  • Richard Fontana blows hot and cold on GPLv3 fork

    A lack of clarity on the part of Red Hat open source licensing and patent counsel Richard Fontana as to whether he has, or has not, created a fork of the GPLv3 free software licence has led to well-known free software advocate Bradley Kuhn dissociating himself from the project.

  • Copyleft.next and the Future of GNU General Public Licenses

    “I am puzzled as to why this might be thought a newsworthy story at all,” says Richard Fontana, talking about his new licensing project, Copyleft.next (formerly, GPL.next). “Copyleft.next is just a toy research project, motivated initially by a mere desire on my part to learn more about using Git.”

    Fontana is perhaps being mildly disingenuous. Although the importance of Copyleft.next has been greatly exaggerated, he is not ruling out the possibility that it might play a role in the development of future versions of copyleft licenses such as the GPL family of licenses.

    If nothing else, the project seems to reflect the critique of GPL licenses that Fontana has been quietly making for some months now, which deserves wider recognition and discussion.

Leftovers

• Hardware

  • Introducing the ARM 64-bit Architecture

    ARM announced a few days ago, on July 6th, that they posted a set of Linux kernel patches, implementing support for the AArch64 architecture, also known as the ARM 64-bit architecture.

    The initial support for the ARMv8 64-bit architecture has been added by ARM in the Linux kernel via a set of 36 patches.

• Finance

  • Satyajit Das: Mr. Smith Goes to Leaves Wall Street

    In his 1933 inauguration address, Franklin Delano Roosevelt attacked the “callow and selfish wrongdoing” in banking and business. Roosevelt told the crowd of over 100,000 that attended that the “rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed” and that “unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion”. Some 80 years later, the money changers have not “fled their high seats in the temple of our civilisation”. “Ancient truths” have not been restored to that temple. Something corrupt and rotten continues to fester at the heart of high finance, economic life and, indirectly, modern society.

  • City of London Corporation: a lesson in lobbying

    For almost 1,000 years, the City of London Corporation has resisted virtually every attempt by monarchs, governments or the people to rein in its vast wealth and influence. From the murder of peasant revolt leader Wat Tyler by the lord mayor of London and his men in 1381, to the dispatching from the City to Northern Ireland of rural refugees forced off their land in 17th-century land reforms, the corporation has long been a guiding hand in British history.

• Copyrights

  • ACTA

    • CETA, the Zombie ACTA, Must Face the Same Fate

      A leaked version of the Canada-EU trade agreement (CETA) contains the worst parts of ACTA. The EU Commission appears to be once again trying to bypass the democratic process in order to impose ruthless repression online. Commissioner De Gucht cannot ignore the decision of the EU Parliament on ACTA. CETA must be cancelled altogether (or its repressive ACTA parts must be scrapped), or face the same fate as ACTA in the Parliament.