10.15.12

Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• Revisiting The Linux Sweet Spot

  Two years ago I wrote The Linux Sweet Spot, where I speculated that a sub-hundred dollar tablet computer that did one thing, launched a browser and let me connect to the web, would be the perfect competitor to the iPad. Over the course of the past two years, several devices have launched that come close to what I was envisioning, but none at the price I thought.

• The Linux survival guide

  Although Windows 8 brings to the forefront a huge array of innovation in how we use our computers, many people think that the new UI is obstructing them from doing their own work. Some people hate it simply because some guy sat in a corner chewing his keyboard going over in his head about how terrible his life had become after using Windows 8 for five minutes and the resulting document was posted online. Many of you just don’t like it and you want something that you’re used to.

• Veriton N – What That Other OS Really Costs

  Acer shows side-by-side Veriton N with GNU/Linux and with that other OS “Pro”. Want to spend 67% more for the same hardware and functionality? Pay M$ $160 for a PC worth about $240.

• Linux Format 164 On Sale Today – Linux at CERN!

• More Linux!

  The Linux world stands still for no one. New releases of Fedora, Ubuntu and others are always in the works, each a unique mixture of upstream software versions and patches. It takes more than just a kernel to make an operating system. This is why each version of Linux is a little bit different even if almost all the software comes from the same sources.

• Desktop

  • Linux Desktops Described In Terms Of Beer

    With GNOME starting the GBeers initiative, for the weekend I couldn’t help but to think about what beer pairings I would do if needing to match the popular Linux desktops with beer.

• Server

  • ARM server start-up Calxeda gets $55m cash infusion

    The funding doubles Calxeda’s war chest as investors bet on the hardware specialist’s low-power ARM-based servers as a good fit for the datacentre.

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • Linux Outlaws 279 – Double Oh Seventy

• Kernel Space

  • systemd for Administrators, Part XVI

  • Linux Now Has Audio Run-Time Power Management

    The sound pull request for the Linux 3.7 kernel was finally sent in today and it provides a few new features for the Linux kernel audio drivers, including run-time power savings support.

  • 30 Linux Kernel Developers in 30 Weeks: Jiří Kosina

    This week we talk to Jiří Kosina in our 30 Linux Kernel Developers in 30 Weeks series. He tells why Linux is like a “Who Done It” story and also explains why working on Linux to be cool isn’t enough.

  • Btrfs Gets New Features In Linux 3.7

    Key changes for Btrfs in Linux 3.7 include hole punching, send/receive fixes, improved fsync performance, and a disk format extension that allows more hard-links inside a single directory.

    Hole punching in file-systems comes down to marking a portion of a file as being unneeded and the associated storage to that file portion can then be relieved. Hole punching was previously added to the Linux kernel as a standard interface and has been implemented by XFS and others, while now Btrfs can too punch a hole in a file.

  • Btrfs-Progs Sees A Pile Of New Changes

  • AMD A10-5800K Performance On Ubuntu Linux

    Continuing on from last week’s initial benchmarks of the AMD A10-5800K Trinity APU on Linux, the Trinity memory performance testing, and then more benchmarks of the Radeon HD 7660D integrated graphics, here is the large Ubuntu Linux comparison of the AMD A10-5800K compared to the previous-generation AMD A8 Llano APU, an AMD FX-Series Bulldozer, and several Intel Core i3/i5/i7 CPUs from the Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge families.

  • Linux 3.7 + Mesa 9.1-devel Running On Ubuntu 12.10

    For those Intel Sandy Bridge owners wondering if there’s any worthwhile performance improvements when upgrading from Ubuntu 12.10 with Mesa 9.0 and the Linux 3.5 kernel up to the early Mesa 9.1-devel state with the Linux 3.7 Git kernel, here are some benchmarks.

  • Graphics Stack

    • Running GStreamer Over VA-API On Wayland

      For those wanting to use the GStreamer multimedia framework on Wayland while leveraging VA-API for video hardware acceleration, here’s some setup information from Intel.

    • Nine Good Things About Mesa 9.0

    • Wayland/Weston 1.0 Is Going To Happen Next Week

      The release of Wayland 1.0 is expected to happen next week. Originally it was set to happen this week, but there’s some last minute API and protocol changes.

    • Linux Developers Still Reject NVIDIA Using DMA-BUF

    • Intel’s Linux Driver Continues To Be Most Popular

• Applications

  • Ubuntu Tweak 0.8 brings back Apps functionality

    The latest version of the Ubuntu Tweak tool, which provides users with an easy way to access configuration options that are not easily exposed by Ubuntu’s user interface, brings back the Apps feature that was taken out in previous versions of the tool. In the newly released Ubuntu Tweak 0.8.0, users are once again presented with a menu that allows them to install applications that are currently not available through the Ubuntu Software Centre. While all of the applications are available from different sources, the tool makes it much easier to install them and presents users with a one stop solution to install additional software.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • How To Synchronize Dropbox and ownCloud on Linux

    • How To Set Up An IPS (Intrusion Prevention System) On Fedora 17

    • How to Change the Linux Date and Time: Simple Commands

    • Search Dictionary Right From Unity Dash

    • Debian and Ubuntu Tutorials: How to identify the current mode of CPU protection on ScreenOS devices

    • How To Use Glx-Dock/Cairo-Dock On Ubuntu 12.04

    • Set up a IPsec/L2TP VPN with Ubuntu 12.04 with OpenSwan, xl2tpd and ppp

    • Stella 6.3 – Simple, elegant and beautiful

    • How to restore MBR in dualboot system

    • Install the new Rhythmbox 2.98 in Ubuntu-Based Distro

    • How To Use Glx-Dock/Cairo-Dock On Ubuntu 12.04

    • Two Simple Tricks with Shell Scripts To Improve Your Productivity [Linux]

    • Maintaining history – done wrong

      This week the Trinity Desktop Project released a bug fix release with very bold statements in their release announcement especially emphasizing on the 141 bug fixes and 1193 applied patches.

    • Build an Arch Linux system from scratch

      Arch Linux has two distinct advantages over most systems: it’s customisable and it’s educational. Michael Reed shows us how building Arch is also a lesson in how Linux works…

  • Games

    • Steam’s Linux list is growing

    • Gamecaster Updated for Ubuntu 12.10

      Gamecaster is a graphical frontend for open source project glc. It can capture real time footage of any Linux game that uses ALSA for sound and OpenGL for drawing.

    • Divine Space

• Desktop Environments

  • A New E17 Snapshot Before The Big Announcement

    A big Enlightenment E17 snapshot was released, days ahead of their big announcement during LinuxCon EU 2012 concerning an official release of the window manager.

  • Nick Schermer, Xfce Developer

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • Razor-Qt Sees A New Major Release

      Razor Qt is a lightweight and fast desktop environment based on Qt libraries which is attractive as well as fun to use. The desktop is under high development and still not very stable. However, those who like KDE and need a light alternative will love this desktop.

    • KDE celebrates Ada Lovelace Day with tutorials

      Today, KDE celebrated its 16th birthday. On October 14, 1996, Matthias Ettrich started KDE. Since then, amazing women have helped make KDE what it is today. Women like Anne-Marie Mahfouf, Eva Brucherseifer, Alexandra Leisse, Celeste Lyn Paul, Anne Wilson, Claire Lotion, Lydia Pintscher, Myriam Schweingruber, Claudia Rauch and many many more. Women have shaped both KDE code and KDE community.

  • GNOME Desktop

    • GNOME Launches GBeers Initiative

      While there’s many critics to the GNOME Shell desktop, will GNOME gain more followers through promoting the consumption of beer at monthly meet-ups?

      There’s now GBeers, a world-wide initiative for GNOME meet-ups that has lightning talk presentations while drinking beer. The GNOME project is encouraging users and developers to organize GBeers in your own city; the first GBeers happened recently in Madrid, Spain.

• Distributions

  • Arch Linux To Support Systemd By Default On New Installations

    Arch Linux will now support Systemd as the boot framework on on all its new installations. The news was announced in official Arch Linux site by Thomas Bächler. The systemd-sysvcompat package has been added to the base group and users will be able to use Systemd by installing this package.

  • Santoku a new Linux distro focused on Security

    There’s a new GNU/Linux distro designed to help you in every aspect of your mobile forensics, mobile malware analysis, reverse engineering and security testing. It’s called Santoku Linux. Santoku is a general purpose kitchen knife which originated from Japan, meaning “three virtues” or “three uses”. This distribution is not from Japan, but the name was suggested by Thomas Cannon of viaForensics (who happens to be the project leader of Santoku Linux) because the distribution was crafted specifically for Mobile Forensics, Mobile Malware Analysis, and Mobile Security Testing. The current alpha release is based on a fork of the OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) MobiSec Ubuntu distro thus making this alpha release an OWASP MobiSec Remix (released under GPL) with added tools from viaForensics and some of its contributors or supporters. This project or platform is sponsored and launched by viaForensics which is a known and very innovative digital forensics and security firm that focuses or specializes on computer and mobile forensics, mobile application security, enterprise security, information security and penetration testing, and forensics training.

  • Stella 6.3 – Simple, elegant and beautiful

    Distro forking is a dangerous business. The attempts either end up a rather brilliant product like Linux Mint, or not all, mostly the latter. Moreover, most distro forks tend to brand themselves as unique operating systems, usually failing in the said branding and QA tests.

  • Fuduntu: Best of Two Worlds!

    Unlike Crunchbang Linux Fuduntu it is most definitely a Linux which can be used out of the box with little and no modification from the user themselves. Add to this the fact the desktop is very close to Windows including features like desktop short cuts and start like menu it would be very quick for a Window User to learn how to get around it.

  • Snowlinux 3.1 Screenshots

  • Santoku a new Linux distro focused on Security

    There’s a new GNU/Linux distro designed to help you in every aspect of your mobile forensics, mobile malware analysis, reverse engineering and security testing. It’s called Santoku Linux. Santoku is a general purpose kitchen knife which originated from Japan, meaning “three virtues” or “three uses”. This distribution is not from Japan, but the name was suggested by Thomas Cannon of viaForensics (who happens to be the project leader of Santoku Linux) because the distribution was crafted specifically for Mobile Forensics, Mobile Malware Analysis, and Mobile Security Testing. The current alpha release is based on a fork of the OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) MobiSec Ubuntu distro thus making this alpha release an OWASP MobiSec Remix (released under GPL) with added tools from viaForensics and some of its contributors or supporters. This project or platform is sponsored and launched by viaForensics which is a known and very innovative digital forensics and security firm that focuses or specializes on computer and mobile forensics, mobile application security, enterprise security, information security and penetration testing, and forensics training.

  • New Releases

    • Slackel 14.0 has been released.

    • Parted Magic 2012_10_10 Comes with GParted 0.14.0

      Patrick Verner announced a couple of days ago, October 10th, the immediate availability for download of the Parted Magic 2012_10_10 Linux operating system for partitioning tasks.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Red Hat Integrates OpenStack with Linux Platform and Management Tools

      The open source OpenStack cloud platform is the basis for a number of cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) distributions from different vendors. Enterprise Linux leader Red Hat is one such distribution vendor and is currently building out its first production release of Red Hat OpenStack Enterprise.

    • Fedora

      • Fedora 19 Might Be A Prime Rib Or Crop Circle

        It’s time to begin proposing codenames for Red Hat’s Fedora 19 release. While the codename proposal process just began this morning, as usual, there’s already a variety of funky codenames being shared.

      • Fedora: Some basic tips with Yum

      • Text Mode for Fedora 18

  • Debian Family

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Canonical includes Donations screen in Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu 12.10: 32-bit vs. 64-bit Linux Performance

          In past years on Phoronix there has been no shortage of 32-bit vs. 64-bit Linux benchmarks. Assuming you don’t have a limited amount of RAM and under memory pressure, 64-bit distributions tend to be much faster than the 32-bit versions. However, some Linux users still often wonder whether they should use the 32-bit or 64-bit version of their distribution even when on 64-bit hardware. So with that said, here’s some more 32-bit vs. 64-bit benchmarks of Ubuntu 12.10 with the Linux 3.5 kernel.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Linux-based Lamp offers ‘illumination as a service’

    A Sydney company will use a Kickstarter program to launch a programmable light running a LAMP stack.

  • Raspberry Pis Burned by Counterfeit Apple Chargers

  • Phones

    • Mobile Linux Contenders Prep for a 2013 Breakout

      So far, there has been but one big mobile Linux success story: Android. It has come to dominate the smartphone world and is rapidly closing the gap on tablets. While Android has an open source license, Google’s open governance policy has been spotty, inspiring a stream of new mobile operating systems from developers who are more FOSSy about their mobile devices. The projects are typically backed by mobile device vendors and carriers looking for more autonomy from Google and Apple.

    • Android

      • Samsung releases Galaxy Note II source code, gives modders a big fish to fry

      • ZTE to launch Android-powered TV box

        Chinese telecoms equipment maker ZTE is planning to launch an Android-powered digital set-top box with 3D capabilities “in the near future”.

      • HTC and NASA to send Nexus One into space in 2013 as part of PhoneSat program

      • 5 Mobile Linux OSes that Dare to Compete with Android

        Editor’s Note: This article is part two of a two-part series by Eric Brown exploring Linux-based alternatives to the Android mobile operating system. Part one ran Oct. 9: Linux Contenders Prep for a 2013 Breakout.

        Yesterday, I surveyed the latest mobile open source Linux projects and examined the challenges they face against Google, Apple, Microsoft and RIM. I also explored their potential advantages, including an alignment with HTML5 and a focus on emerging markets.

      • Samsung possibly working on Galaxy Premier device

      • 10 Best Android apps this week

        It’s time for our weekly roundup of the best new Android apps for Google-powered smartphones and tablets.

Free Software/Open Source

• Zim text editor 0.57 adds LilyPond and Zeitgeist plugins

  With the release of version 0.57, Zim developer Jaap Karssenberg has reworked the side panes in his graphical text editor, while also improving existing plugins and adding new ones. Written in Python using GTK+ libraries, Zim maintains a collection of locally stored wiki pages, each of which can contain simple formatting, as well as links to other pages, images and attachments. Pages are stored as plain text with wiki formatting and the software can be expanded with various plugins, such as a spell checker and an equation editor.

• Three new widgets in jQuery UI 1.9.0

  Three new widgets are the highlights of the new features in jQuery UI 1.9.0, as the developers work towards completely refreshing the HTML5/JavaScript UI toolkit for a future 2.0 release. One widget, Menu, was technically in the previous release, 1.8, but was bundled within the autocomplete widget; now it has been broken out and promoted to being a first class widget for inline and popup menus and for use as a basis for more complex menus.

• Twitter open sources Clutch.io mobile A/B testing tool

  Following its acquisition of Clutch.io in mid-August, Twitter has announced that Clutch.io’s software for developing, deploying and integrating native mobile applications is now available as open source. Described by Chris Aniszczyk, Open Source Manager at Twitter, as “an easy-to-integrate library for native iOS applications”, Clutch consists of two projects: the Clutch A/B testing service and the Clutch Framework.

• The Next Battleground for Open vs. Closed? Your Car

  It all seems upside down: a major toy company releases its first tablet; a major search company works on its first car. Yet all of this makes sense when you realize everyone just wants to be – or may already be – in the mobile device business. Including car companies.

  A friend recently showed me his shiny new luxury sports car. Did he rave about the 333-horsepower, six-cylinder engine, or 14-speaker, noise-cancelling stereo system? No. His first point of pride was the car’s ability to become an internet hotspot, powering Wi-Fi devices throughout the vehicle. This makes sense when you realize cars have become our portable offices and homes, a shared mobile experience for the entire family.

• Contribution of open source to Europe’s economy: 450 billion per year

• Events

  • One Week To LinuxDays In Prague

    Coming up next weekend is the first-ever LinuxDays event in Prague, which will happen alongside a Gentoo mini-conference, an openSUSE conference, and the SUSE Labs conference.

• SaaS

  • Open Cloud Means APIs, Data and Code, Says Mickos

  • OpenNebula survey shows industry use dominating

    OpenNebula, the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud project, sees the majority of its deployment in industry, according to C12G’s latest Cloud Architecture Survey. The survey, conducted by the commercial company behind OpenNebula over the second and third quarters of 2012, polled 2,500 users of OpenNebula and only analyses the responses from the 820 who reported having OpenNebula up and running.

  • Amazon Web Services upgrades cloud-based Linux implementation

    The latest version of Amazon Web Services’ Linux AMI is now available, and includes the R language as well as new versions of Apache and PHP.

• Databases

  • How 3.6 nearly broke PostgreSQL

    In mid-September, the 3.6 kernel appeared to be stabilizing nicely. Most of the known regressions had been fixed, the patch volume was dropping, and Linus was relatively happy. Then Nikolay Ulyanitsky showed up with a problem: the pgbench PostgreSQL benchmark ran 20% slower than under 3.5. The resulting discussion shows just how hard scalability can be on contemporary hardware and how hard scheduling can be in general.

• CMS

  • Canada’s Largest Art and Design University Leverages Canvas Open Source for its LMS

    OCAD University, Canada’s largest school for art and design, has moved to Canvas by Instructure for the 2012-13 school year. OCAD U is the first university in Canada to implement Canvas Community Version, the open-source version of Canvas, for its students and faculty. The university has been running Canvas since January 2012 and has 4,500 students and 1,500 courses on the system today.

• Education

  • Education is the new oil that will drive the information revolution

    Jim Whitehurst presented on Saturday morning at the 2012 installment of TEDxRaleigh, speaking to a sold-out crowd in Raleigh’s Lincoln Theatre. Now in its third year, TEDxRaleigh has brought together local innovators, researchers and thought leaders to give local flair to a wildly successful national event.

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • GIMP 2.8 and the Taming of Two Decades’ Graphics Habits

• Project Releases

  • Obnam 1.2 introduces diff command for backups

    Developer Lars Wirzenius has released Obnam 1.2, the latest version of his open source snapshotting backup utility. The new version includes a diff command and several improvements to its existing options, as well as a collection of bug fixes. Obnam, which has been in development since 2006 and graduated to version 1.0 in June, creates generational backup copies that remove the need for the user to care whether they should create an incremental or a full backup. Obnam’s copies share as much data as possible and only changed data is backed up in subsequent runs.

  • Phoronix Test Suite 4.2-Randaberg Hits First Stage

  • Open source framework Zikula now with mobile theme

    The latest release of the open source application framework Zikula includes a number of updates and fixes which, the developers hope, will allow Zikula 1.2 users to upgrade without issues. Along with changes for PHP 5.4 compatibility, the new version, Zikula 1.3.4, includes updated versions of jQuery and jQuery UI, and a default theme for viewing on mobile devices. The password recovery system has also been fixed and there have been fixes and enhancements made to Forms, ContextMenus, Menu Tree and DateUtil.

  • Lucene and Solr 4.0 released

    After entering beta mid-August, the final 4.0 versions of the Apache project’s Lucene search engine library and Solr, the search platform built on top of Lucene, have now been released. Solr allows users to create a full-text web-accessible, dynamically clustered search engine that is capable of ingesting rich documents like Word or PDF files and indexing them for complex searching.

• Licensing

  • NVIDIA wants to remove GPL marker from Linux interface

    NVIDIA developer Robert Morell has proposed removing a marker for the Linux kernel’s GPL licence from a Linux kernel driver interface, apparently in order to permit the use of the interface with proprietary drivers. A discussion thread on the topic has seen several key kernel developers express clear opposition to the proposal and debate over which developers would have to consent to such a change.

• Programming

  • LLVM 3.2 Gets A Release Plan For Mid-December

    Since last month we have known that Apple has wanted to release LLVM 3.2 this year along with an updated Clang compiler. Now the release plans for this next LLVM compiler infrastructure release have been firmed up.

  • Patches For OpenMP Support In LLVM’s Clang

  • The Performance Between GCC Optimization Levels

    For those that have never benchmarked the performance differences between GCC’s different optimization levels, here are some recent test results comparing the performance differences when using an AMD FX-8150 processor with GCC 4.7.2.

Leftovers

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Apple’s Going to Pay Up for the iOS 6 Clock Design It Stole

    Apple’s Going to Pay Up for the iOS 6 Clock Design It StoleApple shamlessly swiped the design of iOS 6′s iPad clock from the Swiss National Railway, and a couple of weeks ago, it was called out. Now that its copycatism has been exposed, Apple has agreed to licensing terms.