07.26.12

Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• Flemish voting machines to run on Linux operating system

  The new voting machines to be used by the government of Flanders, Belgium, will use the Linux open source operating system, according to a report by Binnenband, a magazine targeting Flanders’ public administrations.

• Let’s talk: how to help your team share more with Linux-based communication tools

  Communication and collaboration are crucial to business success; and can be improved when supported by Open Source enterprise unified communications and collaboration platforms. No matter where they are, teams and individuals can work together closely with tools like Linux-based instant messaging, email, document and knowledge management systems and mobile applications. Employees can improve their productivity and performance within teams or between departments.

• Murchison radio astronomers to get Linux cluster

• TLWIR Special: Three Signs That GNU/Linux Has Arrived

  Three recent news items provided evidence that the age of GNU/Linux on the desktop is arriving. The years of GNU/Linux languishing on the pc desktop are finally drawing to a close. Here are the three news items:

• Desktop

  • Dell re-enters high-end Linux laptop market with Red Hat Enterprise Linux

    UPDATED: Through the years, Dell has had an on-and-off relation with Linux. It looks like they’ve kissed and made up, judging by the pair of new high-end laptops running Red Hat Enterprise that Dell unveiled today. These systems will be available worldwide.

  • Dell Opens Up To Open Source Again

  • Why Dell is selling Linux again

    As news is revealed that Dell is releasing not one but three new laptop models preloaded with Linux, the conventional wisdom that the Linux desktop and the desktop in general may be in decline is getting turned on its ear.

    When Dell announced its two new business-class laptops, the Precision M4700 and M6700 devices, yesterday, they included the option to come loaded with Red Hat Enterprise Linux instead of Windows 7. This adds to Dell’s Linux inventory, joining the recent addition of the XPS 13 Project Sputnik developer’s laptop loaded with Ubuntu that’s coming this fall.

  • Dell Launching Ubuntu Linux Developer Laptop After Successful Pilot Program Dubbed ‘Project Sputnik’

  • Linux comes to ultrabooks: Dell to preload OS on XPS 13

  • Open-Source Goes Ultraportable With Dell Pre-Installed Ubuntu XPS 13 Offering

  • Linux fans rejoice: Dell XPS 13 will come with Ubuntu

  • 5 Reasons to Consider Ubuntu for Your Small Business

    Ubuntu is a Linux-based operating system focused on ease of use, simplicity, and security. This operating system is a good alternative to either Microsoft Windows or Apple’s OS X, and may help small businesses get improved performance while saving money.

  • Innovation on Linux points the way ahead for desktops

    SOME PEOPLE have privacy screens on their laptops to prevent prying eyes. I just have my desktop. The moment people see it, they spin off into confusion.

    Half of the screen is some impenetrable, always scrolling, set of digits and letters that looks, in the word of one co-worker, “crashing cashpoint machine”. The rest is the usual set of icons, but madly distributed in all the wrong places. Why is the time in the top middle of my screen? Where are my folders? Why does everything fling around like a tornado whenever I hit the Windows button? And where the hell is the Start button?

    I don’t use Macs and I don’t use Windows, which makes me a freak in all kinds of ways. But I’m actually a particularly freakish kind of freak in that my desktop is what’s called Gnome 3. It’s Linux, of course, the free operating system custom-made for dorks like me, but Gnome 3is, one might say, the freest of free desktops.

  • Dell’s Increasingly Excellent Linux Adventures

    “I think it’s great that a prominent OEM like Dell is releasing a Linux based laptop,” said Google+ blogger Linux Rants. “I think they all should, and they should market those computers to the general population.” The average consumer would surely be interested in Linux’s many advantages “if only they knew about them.”

  • Dell Launching Ubuntu Linux Developer Laptop After Successful Pilot Program Dubbed ‘Project Sputnik’

• Server

  • VortexBox 2.1 Includes Logitech Media Server 7.7.2

    Yesterday, July 24th, Andrew Gillis announced the release of VortexBox 2.1, a Fedora-based operating system that turns any computer into a music server or jukebox. The new version comes after six months of hard work and includes important updates and various neat features.

  • Google Partners Up to Sell Cloud Computing and Storage

    Google is launching a new Cloud Partner Program that will formalize the ecosystem around its cloud compute and storage products and bring new ways for customers to tap into Google’s cloud offerings. They’ll also offer levels of service and support that might be difficult for Google alone to provide.

    The new Google Cloud Platform Partner program, announced Tuesday on Google’s Enterprise Blog, will feature two types of partners: service partners and and technology partners.

  • ARM Server Ships From Boston Limited

    Boston Limited on Monday said it was manufacturing and distributing a low-power server with ARM-based chips, becoming one of the few companies to make such a server commercially available.

  • New Online Trading System for Daiwa Securities Goes into Full Operation

    One of largest Linux-based systems in Japan; Uses Fujitsu Primesoft Server high-speed in-memory data management software

  • New Report Ranks Quest NetVault Number One for Linux Backup in Japan

• Kernel Space

  • TI Releases Linux Kernel Support For “Keystone”

    Texas Instruments has published their initial Linux kernel patches for providing support for their forthcoming Keystone platform, which is an interesting ARM-based platform dealing with many-core SoCs using Cortex-A15s.

  • DRM Drivers On Linux 3.6 Kernel Aren’t Too Fun

  • Apple OS X Mountain Lion vs. Linux

    As far as why Apple OS X Mountain Lion is being mentioned today on Phoronix is just to say that new OS X Mountain Lion vs. Linux benchmarks will be available on Phoronix in the near future. From earlier this year using development versions there were preview benchmarks of OS X Mountain Lion vs. Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, but new benchmarks from multiple Macs will be done in the near future for a more in-depth Phoronix comparison.

  • 30 Linux Kernel Developers in 30 Weeks: Paul Mundt

    In this week’s 30 Kernel Developers in 30 Weeks profile, we talk to Paul Mundt, who works on the SuperH architecture and core parts of the AMR-based SH/R-mobile platforms. He shares a variety of stories from his nearly 20 years of experience working on the kernel, including one that proves collaboration never sleeps, even when you do during an inter-contentinetal flight.

  • 5 Best New Features of the Linux 3.5 Kernel Release

  • Linux 3.5 Boosts Ext4 Filesystem

    For many Linux distributions, the Ext4 filesystem is the default choice, following the decade-long legacy of Ext2 and Ext3. While Ext4 provides a higher degree of performance and reliability in comparison with its predecessors, it has trailed other fileystems. Both Oracle’s ZFS, used in Solaris, as well as Btrfs, which is part of the Linux kernel, have gone a step further than the Ext filesystem family with integrity checks. In the Linux 3.5 kernel a feature called metadata checksum has been added to help narrow the filesystem integrity gap.

  • RIP Andre Hedrick: The engineer who kept the PC open

    ndre Hedrick, a principal engineer and operating system architect at Cisco Systems and a Linux kernel contributor, has died. He leaves behind a wife, four young children and many friends.

  • Linus Torvalds holds ‘ultimate authority’ on Linux

    Below you can view a nice video explaining the mechanics of how Linux is actually built from a real world software application development perspective.

    The video explains that 10,000 patches go into each new release of Linux, but that after each submission has been checked over by a senior level Linux developer or “maintainer”, when the maintainer finishes his or her review they will pass it on to Linus Torvalds himself how holds “ultimate authority” on Linux before each new kernel can be released.

  • Graphics Stack

    • Radeon Driver Commit Activity Is On The Decline

      After delivering development statistics on the Nouveau driver and the Intel driver, here’s some numbers looking at the development pace of the xf86-video-ati X.Org driver for Radeon graphics cards.

      The Git stats on xf86-video-ati go back to 14 November 2003 with there being 2,970 Git commits in this time from 151 developers. The current size of xf86-video-ati is 64,148 lines of code spread across 83 files.

    • VIA’s OpenChrome 0.3.0: “A Major Step Forward”

      The xf86-video-openchrome DDX driver has been updated today with a version 0.3.0. Xavier Bachelot from the OpenChrome camp describes this release as “a major step forward for the openchrome X.org driver.”

    • RadeonSI Gallium3D Gets New State Handling

      AMD pushed a load of commits this morning into the mainline Mesa Git repository that provide a new state handling implementation for the Radeon HD 7000 series “RadeonSI” Gallium3D driver.

    • Intel Releases 12.07 Linux Graphics Package

      Like usual, the Intel Linux graphics package isn’t some new software component release, but rather it’s just what Intel recommends their customers and Linux distributions use for appropriate versions of the upstream Linux components to deploy when running Intel integrated graphics.

    • Wayland 1.0 With Weston Is Near: v0.95 Is Released

      Version 0.95 for Wayland/Weston marks the point of maintaining protocol and client API stability. They will attempt not to break any Wayland clients or toolkits written against this 0.95 protocol/API. The interfaces aren’t completely frozen until the 1.0 release in the near future, but they will to resist breaking things and use appropriate versioning.

    • Radeon Driver Commit Activity Is On The Decline

      After delivering development statistics on the Nouveau driver and the Intel driver, here’s some numbers looking at the development pace of the xf86-video-ati X.Org driver for Radeon graphics cards.

      The Git stats on xf86-video-ati go back to 14 November 2003 with there being 2,970 Git commits in this time from 151 developers. The current size of xf86-video-ati is 64,148 lines of code spread across 83 files.

    • Mesa 8.1 Will Offer Some Speed Improvements For Nouveau

    • Binary Driver Blobs Aren’t Yet Ready For Wayland

    • Intel SNA vs. UXA On Ivy Bridge

    • Intel updates its open source Linux drivers

      Intel’s developers have released version 12.07 of the open source Intel graphics package for Linux systems. The package includes the new X Server drivers for Intel cards as well as several other components that have been tested with these drivers.

• Applications

  • Polly, One Of The Best Twitter Client Available In Linux

  • Transmission 2.61 Now Requires GTK3

    Transmission 2.61, the open source, cross-platform and famous BitTorrent client used in many of today’s Linux distributions, has been released last evening, July 23rd.

  • DrWright for Linux Forces You to Stop Typing and Take a Break

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Ubuntu For Beginners: Introducing Ubuntu’s Home Folder

    • Calculating Day of the Week, Finally

    • Virtual Hosting With PureFTPd And MySQL (Incl. Quota And Bandwidth Management) On Ubuntu 12.04

    • How to create a launcher in Linux Mint 13 Cinnamon

    • SSH Key Management for Businesses

    • How to customize power management in Linux Mint 13 – MATE

    • Virtual Hosting With PureFTPd And MySQL (Incl. Quota And Bandwidth Management) On Ubuntu 12.04

    • Tips and Tricks to Optimize MySQL

  • Games

    • We Haven’t Forgotten About Diablo 3′s RMAH Victims, Forum Bans, Missing Money
      

      Readers who have been following our coverage of Diablo III since May 15th probably noticed that we’ve had an article up just about every other day about Diablo III. While this week and last week were no exception, diligent followers keeping track of a lot of unresolved issues regarding the services that govern Diablo III may have noticed that these issues haven’t quite been in the news regarding the actual outcome of some player cases, specifically the Linux bans, victims of the Real-Money Auction House as well as the forum goers who claim they’ve been wrongfully silenced and censored.

    • Valve Teases L4D2 With Zombie Penguins

      Visitors of the Left 4 Dead “Cold Stream” portal are being greeted with tasty Tux morsels this morning as Valve’s makes no bones about the impending release for Linux.

      The creepy, decaying and reanimated corpse of Tux is a beacon for Linux gamers everywhere. Since Michael Larabel first outed the news of Steam For Linux back in May, news-sources have been in a frenzy with updates and speculation about what this means for Windows, Linux and gaming in general.

    • Serious Sam BFE coming to Steam Ubuntu, with “the whole shebang”

    • Because Penguins Like to Blow Shit Up Too, Serious Sam 3: BFE Linux Version Announced

    • Serious Sam 3: BFE Blowing Up On Linux

    • Digital Blend: Beck releasing three new songs in PS Vita game Sound Shapes, Valve commits to Steam for Linux

      Welcome back to Digital Blend, our weekly look at the world of downloadable video gaming that exists at the fringes of the mainstream. That means we look at the hottest new mobile game releases, downloadable content drops on consoles and PCs, indie darlings that deserve your love and attention, and the best gaming values under $20.

    • ‘Serious Sam 3: BFE’ coming to Steam’s Linux client

    • Serious Sam 3: BFE Will Bring the Pain to Linux Players

    • Serious Sam 3: BFE runs screaming to Linux via Steam

    • Left 4 Dead 2 Hitting Linux This Year, Cold Stream on 360 Next Week

      Fans of the Left 4 Dead series on 360 were disappointed yesterday as a promised DLC update, Cold Stream, was delayed at the last minute in order to fix a few bugs. Instead, Valve have made a set of announcements that will no doubt excite quite a lot of people, not least of all that Left 4 Dead 2 will see a Linux release later this year. The game will be made to run natively on Linux, without the use of additional programs like WINE, via a Linux version of Steam.

• Desktop Environments

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • Linux Mint 13 KDE Review

      The Linux Mint team has announced the release of Linux Mint 13 KDE. This is an important release for KDE and Linux Mint users as it brings the latest and greatest technologies from KDE and Ubuntu.

    • KDE’s Rekonq browser turns 1.0

      KDE developer Jonathan Riddell has announced that the Rekonq web browser has now reached version 1.0 and is available to download. Rekonq is a QtWebKit-based alternative to the more feature-rich Konqueror browser for the KDE desktop; it uses the WebKit rendering engine and aims to be faster, lightweight and simpler to use.

    • Akademy: Freedom and the internet

      Mathias Klang opened this year’s Akademy with a keynote look at freedom and the internet. It was something of a cautionary tale that outlined the promises that technology brings, while noting that the dangers are often being overlooked. Klang comes from an academic and legal background—he is currently a researcher and senior lecturer at the University of Göteborg in Sweden—which gives him something of a different perspective on technology issues.

      Klang’s talk was titled “Expressions in Code and Freedom”, but he came up with a different title the night before the talk: The TiVo-ization of everyday life. That title is “silly”, but it does reflect some of the dangers he sees. He noted that he is not a programmer, but is surrounded by them, and they “put up with my stupidity”. His background in the law means that he “likes reading licenses” and thinks everyone should. His current research is looking into social media, particularly in the area of control by the providers.

    • Qt 5.0 Beta Likely Coming In Early August

      After facing some delays, the Qt 5.0 Beta will likely be published in early August.

      In response to questions raised on the Qt development list, Marius Storm-Olsen of Nokia has shared that the Qt 5.0 beta is likely to come next month. “We are pushing as hard as we can to make it happen asap, but with all the vacations happening in Europe right now I think it will happen in early August.”

    • [Development] Latest stable Qt5 code

    • Project Neon provides daily builds of KDE modules

      The KDE project has announced Project Neon, an effort to provide daily builds of KDE modules for Kubuntu. The aim of this is to give developers and testers the ability to easily install cutting edge builds of programs from the KDE Software Collection without the risk of creating problems in their working KDE desktop environment.

  • GNOME Desktop

    • GNOME Committed to Accessibility

      Accessibility is overlooked by many people because they think that it doesn’t affect them. But as Jonathan Snook points out, “accessibility is a spectrum. On one end, there are those with severe cognitive and/or physical disabilities; on the other end… well, what is the other end? People who wear glasses, or are color-blind? What about those who choose to use the keyboard instead of a mouse? Where does one draw the line?” Over time, almost all of us will require assistance of some kind to be able to make full use of our computers and devices.

• Distributions

  • LPinguy 12.04.1 Screenshots (07/24/2012)

  • Bridge Linux 2012 Xfce Review

    Here is another wonderfully simplified way for less advanced users to get a taste of Arch Linux. This time I will be looking at the powerful but less-known Bridge Linux distribution.

  • Arch Linux 2012.07.15 drops AIF

    Arch Linux developer Pierre Schmitz has announced the availability of a new installation image for the project’s flexible Linux distribution, the first updated install media since August of last year. Arch Linux 2012.07.15 is a snapshot of the rolling-release operating system for new installations that includes several changes and the 3.4.4 Linux kernel.

  • Gentoo Family

    • Sabayon 9 KDE review

      Sabayon 9 is the latest edition of Sabayon, a multi-purpose distribution based on Gentoo Linux. It is a rolling distribution, which means that existing users do not have to reinstall to get the latest edition. The simple act of installing updates and upgrading the kernel gives those users the latest and greatest edition.

  • Red Hat Family

    • German Manufacturing Firm Modernizes IT Systems with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization

      Red Hat, Inc. [...] the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that Ferrotec, a global market leader in technologies based on the magnetic liquid Ferrofluid that is used in multi-phase motors, dampers for shaft ends and transformer cooling, has deployed Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization at the core of its infrastructure. Through this Red Hat technology combination, Ferrotec is increasing scalability, flexibility and performance while lowering operating costs.

    • Analysis: Nimsoft, Red Hat Collaboration Sets Stage for Mixed Virtualization, Clouds
      [print article]

      Nimsoft is expanding the reach of its Nimsoft Monitor, adding support for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization.

      In specific, Nimsoft Monitor for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization streamlines administration for IT using virtualized environments from multiple vendors, Steve Smith, Nimsoft’s senior principal manager for product marketing, told IDN. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization is an open source virtualization management solution for servers and desktops.

    • Fedora

      • Fedora Shows Contributors Some Love

        Fedora (and probably Red Hat) really really appreciate the contribution community developers bring to the popular Linux distribution. So much so, they want to give out some presents – 220 presents to be exact. Since that isn’t enough to go around, contributors will be randomly chosen from a sweepstakes pool.

  • Debian Family

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu Accomplishments: Call For Volunteers

          As some of you will be aware, we have working on a project called Ubuntu Accomplishments in recent months. We are making good progress with the project and are working to our 0.3 release. The goals of this release will be:

          * Assure quality and stability in the platform.
          * Provide the ability to publish your accomplishments online.
          * Expand our range of accomplishments.
          * Expand and improve the documentation for our accomplishments.
          * Provide a greater breadth of translations coverage.

        • FiberCloud Adds Ubuntu to its Supported Open Source Operating Systems

        • Amazon EC2 Benchmarks With Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

          …here are new benchmarks highlighting Amazon’s public cloud computing platform using all of the major instance types.

        • Help PC Pro write its Linux distro Labs

          In the past couple of years, we’ve seen huge interest in the reviews we’ve published of the different versions of Ubuntu. The popular free operating system has a massive following, and rightly so. It’s a fully fledged operating system, complete with office software and a host of useful tools and utilities. And Ubuntu, which has now reached version 12.04, is now a usable, mature operating system.

          But what of the rest of the Linux landscape? There’s a whole selection of other desktop distributions, or “distros” to give them their collective name, and the choice ranges from simple, lightweight distros designed to run on older hardware to more fully featured operating systems such as Linux Mint and openSUSE. How good are they? Can they challenge the usability of Ubuntu?

        • Foundation introduces software

          While introducing the Ubuntu Linux software — a free open source software (FOSS) — at the University of Fiji on Saturday, Software Foundation Fiji founder Prof Rohitesh Chandra said the new system was readily available at no cost.

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Linux Mint 13 KDE released: But does it live up to expectations?

            Hot on the heels of its Xfce build, the final release of Linux Mint 13 KDE is now available for download. This is an iteration that a lot of people have been anxiously awaiting, because it combines a lot of good things in a single package.

          • Peppermint OS Three Review

            Peppermint OS Three, released yesterday picks up from where it left off in version two of this great lightweight distribution. It is based on an Ubuntu 12.04 variant, called LUbuntu which is geared towards the lightweight end of things. Peppermint OS Three is using Openbox as its desktop environment.

          • Bodhi Linux

            Along my quest to find a Linux distro to call home I stumbled across quite a gem – Bodhi Linux. It has to be said that is one of the less popular distributions but, it is by far the most fun!

            Originally an Ubuntu varient I think this one in particular has grown very well on its own. The only noticeable thing that it relates to ubuntu with its the package manager.

          • Xfce edition of Linux Mint 13 released

            The Linux Mint developers have released the Xfce version of their latest release, Linux Mint 13 “Maya”, with version 4.10 of the lightweight desktop environment. The Linux Mint team describes the Xfce environment as user friendly and good looking, and recommends it for systems with constrained resources. As with the other editions of Linux Mint 13, the Xfce version is based on Ubuntu 12.04.

          • Review: Linux Mint 13 LTS “Maya” KDE

            About a week ago, I reviewed the Xfce edition of Linux Mint 13 LTS “Maya”. While I was quite pleased with how that turned out, I held off on going ahead and installing it because I wanted to try the KDE edition as well. Now that is here, so I’m reviewing it.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Arduino Leonardo released

    The long awaited Arduino Leonardo is now finally available in commercial quantities. It contains a 16 MHz Atmega32U4, which also takes care of USB communication with the host. On the Arduino Uno, a separate chip is required to take care of this. The simpler layout and smaller number of components means that the Leonardo is around £3 cheaper than the Uno. It is available with or without headers for the shields.

  • Microchip Giant ARM Reports Q2 Earnings: Sales £136M, Net Profit £39.4M, EPS Of £3.58; ‘Record Order Backlog’

    ARM Holdings — supplier of microchips for Apple’s iPhone and iPad products, Samsung’s Galaxy line and soon technology for Microsoft’s Windows 8 devices — continues to report strong results while riding the wireless device boom and expanding to newer areas. The company reported Q2 earnings (ended June 30) of £135.5 million ($213 million), beating analyst estimates of $206 million. Net profit was up by 48 percent, to £39.4 million compared to £26.6 million for the same quarter a year ago.

  • Hardware Hacks: Pi in the sky and Linux on the MK802

    Hardware Hacks is the section on The H that collects stories about the wide range of uses of open source in the rapidly expanding area of open hardware. Find out about interesting projects, re-purposing of devices and the creation of a new generation of deeply open systems. In this edition, Raspberry Pi in the sky, Linux distros for the MK802, Chromium on Pi and cheaper ARM quad core boards.

  • Smartenit Adds the Sweetness of Linux Home Automation to Raspberry Pi Making it HomAidPi à la mode

    There is nothing as tasty as homemade raspberry pie in the summer, and the ice cream on top makes it even more delicious, especially when it’s free. Smartenit®, a home and building automation solutions provider, has added the popular Raspberry Pi® board to their repertoire of Linux platforms that run its XML-socket based automation package. The firmware enables the RPi to become a fully-featured and sophisticated automation gateway that manages large home/building automation networks based on ZigBee®, INSTEON® and X10® protocols. “HomAidPi” in a Raspbian equipped RPi plus one of several USB automation interfaces available from Smartenit and other suppliers, provide access to a large ecosystem of automation devices that include lighting, HVAC, irrigation, appliance control, energy management, water management to name a few.

  • Phones

    • Enyo’s Out of Beta – but Will Devs Give it Love?

      Enyo 2 was rewritten from the ground up to enable cross-platform development, supporting mobile and desktop browsers from iOS to IE8. However, its focus is on mobile devices. “Enyo is a good JavaScript/HTML 5 framework,” said Sam Abadir, chief technology officer at appMobi.

    • HP’s Enyo 2 Open-Source WebOS Offshoot Exits Beta

    • Enyo 2 HP open source app is more than webOS

    • HP’s open source Enyo 2 app framework goes gold, not just for webOS anymore

      Uptake of Enyo 2 in the web development community will be an important metric to watch over the coming months; the team says that its vision of a “web-centric future [...] won’t come to pass overnight,” but the final code drop is an important checkpoint nonetheless.

    • Android

      • Android apps for the London 2012 Olympic Games

      • Apple Slides Further on Walmart’s Best-selling Tablets

      • XBMC coming to Android soon

        XBMC Media Center is a very popular free and open source cross platform media player application that is developed by the XBMC Foundation. Being an open source application, XBMC media center software is available for multiple operating-systems and hardware platforms. The latest version features a 10-foot user interface that can be used with televisions and controlled using remote control. What makes XMBC unique is that it lets its users to play and view videos, music, podcasts, and other digital media files of various formats from local and network storage media and the internet right out of the box.
        It has been a popular alternative to Windows Media Centre and likes, and now the popular platform is finally going to be available for Android. Previously, there were applications like XBMC remote on the Android Play Store which could control the desktop software, just like the VLC remote app, but this is not just a remote application, nor is it a stripped down “mobile” version of the actual application. It is the real deal, and it promises to deliver the exact same experience that users enjoy with XBMC on a TV set top box, a computer, or any device on which XBMC is available.

      • Encrypted calling app RedPhone goes open source on Android

        Have you ever heard that mysterious click, or burst of static on a phone call and wondered if someone was listening in? Obsessing over such things might be a sign of a larger issue, but if you want to be sure no one is spying on you, there is always RedPhone for Android. Whisper Systems released an official app a while back, but now the product is going open source.

      • This week: Apple vs. Android

        Innovation and litigation meet again this week and next when Apple squares off in courts around the world with rivals Samsung and Motorola. With over a 60 percent market share in mobile device litigation, will Apple, the company that wanted you to “Think Different”, prevail? So far, the results have been mixed.

        Apple lost its patent case against Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in the U.K. while the same tablet was blocked for sale in the U.S. by a preliminary injunction. Apple has been ordered to run ads in the U.K. stating Samsung did not copy the iPad. The Galaxy Tab patent case in the U.S. is set for trial starting July 30 in California.

  • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

    • Linus Torvalds Loves Google Nexus 7

      Linus Torvalds posted a review about his newly bought tablet, Google Nexus 7, and it seems he is quite satisfied with it. Linus finds Nexus 7 ‘So far: very positive’, as he writes on his Google+ page.. Linus finds Nexus 7 ‘So far: very positive’, as he writes on his Google+ page. He also is not bothered about the fact that the tablet has only a front facing camera – “It’s probably fine enough for some video conferencing, but since that’s not my thing let’s just say “whatever”.”

    • Why a 32GB Nexus 7 is almost inevitable

Free Software/Open Source

• Tor Project to Begin Paying for a Faster, More Secure Network

  We’ve written about the Tor project–one of the primary resources for those who want to surf the web anonymously–and the overall anonymous web surfing arena many times. Tor is widely used by people in areas of the world that place restrictions on the Internet, because users want open access to the Internet and Tor’s anonymity features can guarantee that. Using Tor is not without its risks, though, and now reports are coming in that the folks behind The Tor Project are considering paying monthly fees to operators to host exit relays that would boost the speed and security of the Tor global anonymity network.

• How VMware Embraced Its Open Source Nemesis

• Why VMware is spending $1B-plus to buy Nicira

• Kerio Updates Open Source Operator Telephony Solution

• Open source for MBAs: A primer

  If you’re neither a scientist, nor active in the open source community, it can be difficult to properly understand why people write open source software. Why would people just give away the products of so much hard work?

  I fully understand why one would be wary of a free product with no apparent profit model. After all, it’s only proper caution to check for Trojans when receiving a horse.

• OpenDNS vs. The Real World

• Open Source Initiative changing governance

  The organization responsible for ensuring open source licenses of all stripes adhere to the Open Source Definition is adding individual memberships to its roles, which will fundamentally change the way that organization is governed.

  The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is now accepting applications for individual memberships, a move that marks another big step in a shift for the OSI to become a member-governed non-profit.

• Senate Not Concerned About How Often NSA Spies On Americans, But Very Concerned That It Built Open Source Software To Do So

  Wired has a troubling story of how the Senate Armed Services Committee is pushing a bill that would likely kill off an open source NoSQL project that came out of the NSA called Accumulo. Like many other such NoSQL efforts, the NSA basically took some Google white papers about its BigTable distributed database setup, and built its own open source version, with a few improvements… and then open sourced the whole thing and put it under the Apache Foundation. It’s kind of rare to see such a secretive agency like the NSA open source anything, but it does seem like the kind of thing that ought to be encouraged.

• Is NSA’s Accumulo open source or Google knock-off?

  A new bill on Capitol Hill could have far reaching implications for government use and development of open source platforms – potentially requiring all open source projects to “prove adequate industry support and diversification.”

  S. 3254, the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, would bar the Department of Defense from using the National Security Agency’s Accumulo open source software platform after September 30, 2013, unless the DOD’s CIO can demonstrate either the software’s industry success and uniqueness or that there are no viable commercial open source alternatives, according to a report from Wired.

• Great open source map tools for Web developers

  A long time ago, when Web 2.0 was just Web 1.0, we had to ask people for directions, copy them down, and hope we had a foldable map to help us find our way. Then along came MapQuest, followed by Google Maps in 2005. Today, it seems impossible to imagine finding our way without handheld phones and Web-based maps.

• First open source initiative for CARIS

  CARIS, the world’s leading marine GIS organization, has released its first open source API. CARIS OSCAR-js, a JavaScript Map API, allows you to create and embed custom web maps on your website.

• Smart Grid Researcher Releases Open Source Meter-Hacking Tool

  A smart grid researcher today released a free open-source hacking tool to test the security of smart meters. But this is a different researcher than the one who pulled his talk and public release of a similar tool earlier this year amid concerns by a smart grid vendor.

• Open-source: so much more than just software and freebies

• Trentino Joins Italy’s Open Source Alliance

• OS In The Enterprise And The Component Revolution — What Startups Need To Know

  Today’s software applications are largely built by assembling software components, most of which are open source and come from outside the organization building the final application. More than 80 percent of a typical Java application is now assembled from publicly available open-source components and frameworks. This is a dramatic departure from the past, when software was coded, line-by-line, by engineers working inside an organization. This new process for software creation allows developers to move much more quickly, deliver continuously, and only write code from scratch when absolutely necessary. For businesses, this means faster time-to-market and lower costs.

• Smart meter hack framework goes open-source

  Security outfit SecureState’s smart meter hacking framework, Termineter, has gone live over at Google Code.

• Open source smart meter hacking framework released

• First Open Source Smart Meter Hacking Tool Released

• Open-source code tests security of smart meters

• Opening minds

  A chat I had last week with a political science professor reminded me that many people are still in the dark about the benefits—or even the existence—of open source software.

  As we exchanged notes on the computers we used for class, she remarked how expensive it was to buy MS Office and seemed delighted when I showed her LibreOffice, a free and open source alternative to Microsoft’s productivity suite that runs in Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

  “Where can I get it?” she asked, after I showed her the word processor, spreadsheet and presentation modules that can read and write files in MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint formats.

  I pointed her to the LibreOffice Web site (http://www.libreoffice.org) where the program can be downloaded for free, hopeful that I had won over one more convert to open source software.

• Kerio Updates Open Source Operator Telephony Solution

• Events

  • Open house at Open Source

    Have you ever heard of a school where children tell their teachers what they want to learn? If you haven’t, and you want to find out more about it, check out Open Source Learning’s open house Saturday night.

    The late scientist Albert Eisntein was once quoted as saying, “It’s a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”

  • The Linux Foundation Announces Keynote Speakers, Co-Located Events for LinuxCon Europe in Barcelona

  • Torvalds and Shuttleworth to Speak at LinuxCon Europe in November

  • Torvalds and Shuttleworth to speak at LinuxCon Europe

  • The vision thing

    The Linux Foundation posted this on Facebook this morning: “TODAY’S NEWS: Torvalds, Shuttleworth and other Linux/OSS visionaries to be in Barcelona Nov 5-7. Will you be there?” Of course, it links to the press release here.

    I would grant you that Linus Torvalds is a visionary — perhaps, arguably, an accidental visionary in the sense that he never expected the kernel he developed would grow into what it has become. But fortunately for everyone involved, Torvalds is a visionary who has kept a significant degree of humility amid the vast contribution to society he has made.

  • Open Source Leaders to Keynote the Liferay North America Symposium

  • UAV, Esri Mobile GIS, and Open Source GIS Experts to Keynote at the 2012 Field Technology Conference

  • OW2 announces OW2con’12: “The Open Source Alternative”

  • Linux, Open Source & Ubuntu: OSCON 2012: The Open-Source Creative Engine Drives the Economy

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Firefox OS available for test on desktop computers

    • Firefox OS – New Pictures Emerge

    • Mozilla Firefox 14 Secures Google Searches

    • Firefox 15 kills leaky zombies

      Mozilla Firefox 15 continues the open-source project’s efforts to reduce rampant memory consumption. This time, the focus turns to add-ons; it prevents the extensions from leaking memory from ‘zombie’ DOM structure references. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers wonder if it’ll now run in 640K.

• SaaS

  • Rackspace Adds ARM-based Testing for Open Source Cloud

    Rackspace, one of the main backers of OpenStack, has added a free ARM-based environment for testing the open source cloud deployment project.

    TryStack is a sandbox for developers to test a live version of the two most recent OpenStack software releases, dubbed Diablo and Essex. It now supports both an x86 zone and an ARM-powered zone, Rackspace announced Wednesday at OSCON, the open source convention in Portland, Ore.

  • OpenStack Quantum Project Aims to Define Future of Networking

    Much debate has occurred recently over whether Amazon’s API should be considered a de facto standard by cloud computing service providers. Those who reject this notion (ahem, Lew Moorman) say you can’t clone Amazon’s cloud by copying its API alone.

    “Having API compatibility for the basics like loading and getting an object is very easy but these technologies do complex things and will always be different because there are different technologies underneath,” Moorman, president of Rackspace, said in an interview for our July 10 Leaders of the Open Cloud article.

  • OpenStack developers move from Rackspace to Nebula

    According to a report on technology blog GigaOm, seven OpenStack developers have left Rackspace to work for Nebula. Nebula, which was founded by former NASA Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Chris C. Kemp, is also heavily involved in development on OpenStack as it forms the basis for its cloud computing hardware appliances.

  • Morphlabs Launches Compact OpenStack-Based Cloud Platform

    Morphlabs announced the launch of a new, compact, OpenStack-powered cloud infrastructure at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention 2012.

  • VMware Sees Cloudburst Ahead

  • ARM rides open cloud computing testbed

    A handful of vendors have created a trial version for ARM-based servers of the OpenStack cloud computing software now available for testing online. The open source offering fills in another small piece of software puzzle for the low power architecture working its way into the data center.

  • Twitter’s Open Source Big Data Tool Comes to the Cloud Courtesy of Nodeable

  • HP: OpenStack v 3 “Folsom” is serious contender

    At Oscon 2012, HP Cloud Services Fellow Brian Akers said the next generation version 3.0 OpenStack platform code named “Folsom” is a serious platform and that no one should be laughing at the open stack cloud technology and HP’s cloud aspirations anymore

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • NetBeans IDE 7.2 Released With Improved Performance And Expanded Support

    Oracle has released a new version of the popular Java IDE, NetBeans. The new version, NetBeans 7.2, comes with several improvements in performance and also expanded support. Some of the key changes are given below.

  • Oracle abandons Fortress

    Oracle will not pursue any further development of the object-oriented programming language Fortress. The database maker had acquired the research project when it took over Sun in 2010. The announcement was made in a blog post by Guy L. Steele, a member of Oracle’s Programming Language Research Group, which has been largely responsible for designing, developing and implementing Fortress. Steele stresses that ten years is a long time for a research project, most of which last for just three years, according to him.

  • Oracle readies Exalogic 2.0 ‘engineered systems’

    Software giant Oracle is not so much in the server business as it is in the stack business, and it has made no pretense about it whatsoever. In fact, the company has gone out of its way to remind Wall Street and customers alike that it has no desire to be in the volume x86 server business, but rather bought Sun Microsystems two and a half years ago (yes, it has been that long since the $7.4bn deal closed) to create what it calls “engineered systems” – and there’s a new one in the Exalogic family, designed to run middleware, coming out this week.

  • Oracle Introduces NetBeans IDE 7.2

• CMS

  • The Drupal Association Announces its First DrupalCon Downunder in Sydney 2013

• Business

  • Semi-Open Source

    • Pentaho wants to make Hadoop easy

      Everyone wants to be in on the Big Data gold rush. But the fact is using Hadoop and many other Big Data tools takes some specific skills and experience that put the power of big data analytics beyond the reach of many us. Pentaho, the open source powerhouse in the business intelligence space, wants to change that equation.

    • Flex releases its first open-source version

      Apache Flex (formerly Adobe Flex) has emerged from its incubation phase, transformed into a new open-source piece of software which is, for now, superficially identical. But is there really much sense in continuing its development?

• Funding

  • Ouya Android Open Source Gaming Console Passes $5 Million In Pledges (video)

  • Open-source Ouya game system gets a zombie-filled exclusive

  • How can we pay for Free Software?

    One of the great things about free software is that it’s free in both senses. But it’s also a problem for the people who write it, since it makes earning a living from doing so hard. How people have managed to do that has gradually evolved over time.

  • LittleBits Raises a $3.65M. Series A to Build Toys That Aren’t Cheap Trash

    The company describes itself as “an open source library of electronic modules that snap together with tiny magnants for prototyping and play.” And what does that mean, precisely? Think wired Erector Sets.

  • Toys Grow Up: LittleBits Picks Up $3.65M, PCH Deal To Build Out Its Open-Source Hardware Vision

• Project Releases

  • Qualys Open-Source Mobile Security Tool Debuts at Black Hat

• Public Services/Government

  • Open Source for America Asks Administration to “Free the Code”

    Open Source for America (OSFA), an organization of technology industry leaders, non-government associations, and academic and research institutions promoting the use of open source technologies in the U.S. Federal Government, today launched a petition to “Free the Code,” in an effort to encourage the government to release custom-developed, taxpayer-funded software as open source by default.

  • Should Software Created By The Federal Gov’t Be Open Source Licensed… Or Public Domain?

  • Open Source In Politics: GOP Open Sources Their Platform

    Politics is one area not known for being free and open, but the Republican party has taken a step forward by open sourcing their platform process.

    They are harnessing the power of the Internet and truly putting the power of the people in the people’s hands by letting anyone submit their proposals for the GOP platform. People can then second any proposal and, depending on the amount of support it gets, it could make its way into the platform.

• Openness/Sharing

  • Why Google is staying away from open-source hardware and Facebook’s Open Compute

  • Google Corporate IT Builds Before Buying

    Bucking the corporate practice of buying instead of building internally, Google’s corporate IT department will typically build management software itself, or adopt an open source software package, before investigating the feasibility of purchasing proprietary software.

    “In the long run, it is cheaper to build and not buy,” said Justin McWilliams, a software engineer in Google’s corporate engineering department, which provisions and manages computers and other technology for Google employees. McWilliams shared some of the company’s practices at the O’Reilly Open Source Conference (OSCON), being held this week in Portland, Oregon. “We typically don’t default to buying a commercial offering. We think about building it from scratch first, or look to the open source world,” he said.

  • ‘Open source artists’ use web to spread the word

  • TEDx ISU Speakers United Art And Science For ‘Open Source Space’

  • Britain’s biggest open recharging network to loosen subscription shackles for EV drivers

    The proposals will be presented by Charge Your Car Ltd during the LCV2012 event in September when it will outline how adopting an ‘open source’ approach to creating and managing EV recharging infrastructure can boost uptake of EVs.

  • Open Access/Content

    • Open Access: Not All That is Gold Glisters

      I’ve written elsewhere about how open access – the idea that academic research paid for by the public should be freely available online – was directly inspired by open source. So it’s great to see open access making huge strides recently, including the following:

      The government is to unveil controversial plans to make publicly funded scientific research immediately available for anyone to read for free by 2014, in the most radical shakeup of academic publishing since the invention of the internet.

  • Open Hardware

    • Arduino Leonardo finally available

      The highly anticipated Arduino Leonardo, the powerful new microcontroller, is now ready for commercial consumption

    • Arduino used as master key for hotel rooms

      Using an inexpensive Arduino microcontroller board, security researcher Cody Brocious was able to open the Onity HT lock system used to secure rooms by a number of hotels around the globe. Brocious presented his findings yesterday (Tuesday) at the Black Hat information security conference in Las Vegas.

• Standards/Consortia

  • HTML5: To Fork or Not to Fork

    Portland, OR: At OSCon, it was evident that the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) and the WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group) were no longer seeing eye to eye on how to organize HTML5, the next version of HTML. Ian Hickson, one of the HTML5 editors and a member of WHATWG, announced that WHATWG is going in a different direction with HTML5.

Leftovers

• Telcos Deny Trying To Turn FCC’s Open Network Diagnostics Into A Closed, Proprietary Affair

• Security

  • Mac malware Crisis as Apple lets slip its Mountain Lion

  • Black Hat: Wintel Flaw Remained Unpatched For Six Years

    Unknown to tens of millions of users, a hidden security vulnerability has been lurking on many Intel-based Windows PCs for the past six years.

    The vulnerability was found by researcher Rafal Wojtczuk from security firm Bromium. Wojtczuk announced his findings at the Black Hat security conference here in Las Vegas. According to Wojtczuk, the vulnerability he re-discovered was actually first exposed and patched six years ago, albeit only on Linux systems.

    The vulnerability involves the unsafe use of an Intel CPU instruction called ‘sysret’. The risk is that if left unpatched, an attacker could have executed a user-to-kernel privilege escalation attack. In such an attack, the attacker could potential get system access and then execute arbitrary code.

  • NSA open source database draws Senate’s wrath

    Lawmakers are questioning in a recently introduced bill whether a massive National Security Agency database modeled on Google’s BigTable is in conflict with a government policy preventing federal agencies from building their own software when they have access to commercial alternatives, reports Wired.

• Finance

  • Goldman Sachs, Bain Seek Dismissal of Bid-Rigging Lawsuit

    Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) (GS), Bain Capital Partners LLC and Carlyle Group LP (CG) (CG) urged a federal judge to dismiss an investor lawsuit accusing the largest investment banks and private-equity firms of conspiring to rig bids on leveraged buyouts.

    The financial companies were among the defendants seeking summary judgment from U.S. District Judge Edward Harrington in the five-year-old class-action, or group lawsuit, according to court filings yesterday in Boston.

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Karl Rove’s American Crossroads Turns the “War on Women” on Obama

    Karl Rove’s American Crossroads is hoping to help the GOP regain ground among women, particularly Latina women. According to a Gallup poll President Barack Obama has a 48 point advantage among Latino voters, while a CNN poll finds that women voters back Obama over Romney by a 16 point margin. Now Rove’s Super PAC is trying to make inroads with these voters, releasing an online ad that attempts to turn the “War on Women” charge on Obama. The Super PAC is testing the video in focus groups, with an eye toward potentially creating a 30-second TV ad, according to CNN.

• Privacy

  • When Privacy Becomes an IT Issue

• Internet/Net Neutrality

  • Time to Fight for Net Neutrality in the EU

    Net neutrality is one of those areas that most people are vaguely in favour of, without giving it much thought. Governments take advantage of this to make sympathetic noises while doing precisely nothing to preserve it. For example, following a UK consultation on net neutrality two years ago, Ofcom came out with a very wishy-washy statement that basically said we think net neutrality is a jolly good idea but we won’t actually do anything to protect it.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • SOPA/PIPA Wakes Up Internet Giants To Realize They Need To Be More Engaged In DC

      Earlier today it was announced that a new industry trade association representing large internet companies, called The Internet Association, is going to be launching this fall, with Google, Amazon, eBay and Facebook as the charter members. Part of the thinking behind this group stemmed from the realization of how little influence various internet companies had in DC when SOPA/PIPA came along last year — and a concerted effort to change that.