10.16.12

Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• Linux Top 3: UEFI Secure Boot, Amazon AMI and Ubuntu 12.10 Donations

• Server

  • MooresCloud Light runs Linux, puts LAMP on your lamp (video)

  • Juniper Brings 80 TB Router to the Edge

    The JunosV App engine further enhances the MX routers with a Linux powered KVM virtual hypervisor.

  • SWIFT introduces Linux support for key connectivity products

    SWIFT, the financial messaging provider, has announced that customers can now deploy Alliance Access, its messaging interface, on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

• Kernel Space

  • Linux 3.7-rc1 Kernel Released With Many Features

    The first release candidate of the Linux 3.7 kernel was released on Sunday.

  • Linux 3.7 will be armed for ARM

    For too long, Linux and ARM chips haven’t lived in harmony. Sure, flavors of the open source operating system are demonstrably capable of running on ARM chips, but it’s required programmers to build and tweak their code on a case-by-case basis. Last year, Linus Torvalds famously described “this whole ARM thing” as “a f*cking pain in the ass.”

  • Penultimate version of Linux kernel 3.5.x released

    In the release notes to Version 3.5.6 of the Linux kernel, maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman warned users that there would likely be only one more version of that branch of the kernel, and that users should get ready to move to the 3.6 branch as soon as possible.

  • Linux Kernel Gains Better ARM Support

  • Linux 3.7-rc1

  • Linux 3.7-rc1: 10K Commits

    You know a software-project is on fire when there are even a few hundred tweaks to the code. 10K commits for the release-candidate for Linux 3.7 is amazing. How Linus can herd that much change is beyond me. He handled hundreds per day… I feel really old…

  • Reiser4 Benchmarked On Linux 3.5 Against EXT4, Btrfs, XFS, ReiserFS

  • 30 Linux Kernel Developers in 30 Weeks: Chuck Lever

  • Graphics Stack

    • Intel X.Org Driver Gets A Number Of Core Bug-Fixes

    • NVIDIA’s CUDA 5 Boasts Interesting New Features

      NVIDIA released CUDA 5.0 on Monday morning and it boasts many new features for this popular GPGPU environment.

• Applications

  • Park Media Releases Signage Software for Android, Linux Media Players

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • How to sync Google Contacts, Calendars and Tasks in KDE4

  • Games

    • M.O.R.E. – old school turn-based 4X space strategy game.

    • 5 Best Free Games For Ubuntu

      We have been sharing some pretty good Ubuntu apps and tutorials with you lately. And in this post, we would sharing some cool open source Ubuntu games with you. There is a myth that Ubuntu is mostly used by geeks, but I contradict it as I know dozens of people who are not all geeks but love using Ubuntu.

      In this post, we would sharing some free games for Ubuntu which adds more to our Ubuntu apps lists. I have tried to include the top games of top genres so that everybody finds something for themselves in this post.

• Desktop Environments

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • KDE Plasma Active Three Boosts The Performance

      KDE Plasma Active, the desktop environment’s device-independent user-experience, is now up to its third release. KDE Plasma Active Three boosts the performance while also bringing new applications.

    • Plasma Active Three

      After several months of concerted team work, we have put the final wrapping on the next major release of Plasma Active. The last two weeks were spent testing on both ARM- and Intel-based devices to identify and fix show-stopper defects. It was time well spent, resulting in a polished release that shines as a successor to Plasma Active Two.

    • KDE Plasma Active 3 Improves Performance, Comes With New Apps

      The KDE Foundation has released a new version of the KDE Plasma Active, a mobile implementation of KDE for wide range of devices.

    • Plasma Active 3 Improves Performance, Brings New Apps

  • GNOME Desktop

    • Gnome Welcome Tour Video Demo

      The Gnome foundation has released a video of a welcome tour of Gnome. This video will likely be integrated with the Gnome desktop and will startup when the user uses the desktop for the first time. This will help new users to get started with Gnome and use the desktop efficiently.

    • Gnome Disks gains a “Create RAID Array” feature?!

      Another cool feature seems that will soon land in Gnome. This time Gnome makes “RAID Creation” easy, a work of Red Hatter David Zeuthen.

      David (G+, blog) mostly hacks gnome-disk-utility and together with the UX team is responsible for the new options and design in Gnome Disks.

• Distributions

  • Review: Slackware 14.0

  • New Releases

    • Clonezilla 2.0.0-29

    • Updated Waldorf testing images: 20121015

    • Release Notes: Release Notes for the first development release of siduction-noX 2012.1.7

    • Mageia 2 KDE Desktop Review

      After finally trying Mageia 2 I can clearly see why the download numbers appear to be skyrocketing. Though only recently introduced, Mageia already has much to offer its users, as you will soon see.

  • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • Mageia 3 Alpha 2 Out

    • Mageia 3 Alpha 2 Features GNOME 3.6

      Anne Nicolas announced a few minutes ago, October 14th, the immediate availability for download of the second Alpha release of the upcoming Mageia 3 operating system.

    • Second Mageia 3 alpha arrives for testing

    • Mandriva Foundation gets a name – Update

      In a post on the Mandriva Project’s Community Blog, Jean-Claude Vanier has announced that the foundation for the Mandriva Linux distribution will be called “OpenMandriva”. The new name of the foundation was chosen as it was both the winner of an online poll and the name selected by Mandriva SA, the French company entity behind Mandriva.

    • Mandriva Foundation Gets A New Name – OpenMandriva

      The foundation behind Madriva Linux has got a new name. OpenMandriva was chosen based on an online poll of users and by Mandriva SA, the software company behind Mandriva Linux. Though the foundation’s name has been fixed, the name of the distro is yet to be decided.

    • Mandriva Foundation gets a name – Update

      In a post on the Mandriva Project’s Community Blog, Jean-Claude Vanier has announced that the foundation for the Mandriva Linux distribution will be called “OpenMandriva”. The new name of the foundation was chosen as it was both the winner of an online poll and the name selected by Mandriva SA, the French company entity behind Mandriva.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Fedora

      • Why Fedora doesn’t ship Chrome and Chromium?

        About Chrome the reasons are clear, Google’s Chrome is a proprietary software, it contains not open source modules, so end of story.

        In the case of Chromium which is an OS project, things are getting more complicated and go way back in November 19, 2009, when a discussion started about shipping Chromium in Fedora. Almost three years later, we are still in starting point.

  • Debian Family

    • Debian Project News – October 15th, 2012

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu Server Community, You Rule

        • Canonical Creates Monetary Donation System for Ubuntu

          The Ubuntu Linux distribution, however, had long stood apart from many other major open source projects because it never sought public donations. To be sure, the Ubuntu community has benefited considerably from the philanthropic gestures of former Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth, who invested $10 million in the Ubuntu Foundation. But Ubuntu developers never solicited gifts from the public at large.

        • Two new Asus laptops offer an Ubuntu Linux option

• Devices/Embedded

  • Linux Based LED Lamp Can Run LAMP

    MooresCloud, a Australian electronics company have created a LED lamp that can run Linux and the LAMP server. The project is currently fundraising in Kickstarter and once complete, it will be priced at just $99 and use Linux as its core OS.

  • Raspberry Pi Model B Upgraded To 512MB RAM

    Eben Upton writes on the official blog, “One of the most common suggestions we’ve heard since launch is that we should produce a more expensive “Model C” version of Raspberry Pi with extra RAM. This would be useful for people who want to use the Pi as a general-purpose computer, with multiple large applications running concurrently, and would enable some interesting embedded use cases (particularly using Java) which are slightly too heavyweight to fit comfortably in 256MB.”

  • Raspberry Pi now ships with more RAM

    The Raspberry Pi Model B has had its RAM doubled to 512MB, but will stay at its original price

  • Raspberry Pi gets its memory doubled

    The Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced a new version of the popular ARM-based mini-computer board with twice the memory of previous versions. The revised board will replace the current Model B variant but will retain the $35 price tag and all other elements of the Raspberry Pi Model B design: two USB ports, HDMI port, SD card slot and Ethernet port.

  • Raspberry Pi doubles the RAM, but resists price hike

  • What happens when computers are cheaper than LEGO blocks?

    The cost of a Raspberry Pi computer you can buy today is $25. It has a 700 MHz CPU with 256 MB RAM.

    In 2001, the Power Mac G4 Cube, with 450 MHz CPU with 64 MB RAM, cost $1,799. That is how much hardware prices have fallen. Meanwhile, a LEGO X-Wing costs $59.99.

  • Raspberry Pi Mini Computer Now Shipping With RAM Upgraded To 512MB (From 256MB); Same Tiny $35 Price-Tag

    The Raspberry Pi mini computer just got a RAM upgrade – from 256MB to 512MB — but the $35 price-tag is staying the same. Eben Upton, chip design and founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, said the extra RAM follows frequent suggestions for a more expensive version of the Pi with more RAM for those who want to use the Pi for general computing purposes. But Upton notes the Foundation is “very attached to $35 as our highest price point” — in a recent interview with TC, Upton described price as “our differentiator”.

  • Preview of OpenWRT 12.09 Linux for routers

    The OpenWRT development team has released an initial beta version of the forthcoming OpenWRT 12.09, named “Attitude Adjustment”. According to the announcement, it will no longer support Linux kernel 2.4. This affects older routers with only 16MB RAM or with slower CPUs (200MHz), such as some WRT54G models from Linksys, on which more recent kernel versions (brcm47xx) run poorly.

  • Phones

    • MeeGo Mobile Startup, Jolla, Names COO As New CEO As It Preps For Sailfish OS Launch; Former CEO To Focus On “Sailfish Strategy”

      Finnish mobile startup Jolla, which is building a new OS based on the MeeGo platform with a strong focus on China, has named a new CEO as it moves towards its first product launch ahead of the unveiling of its Sailfish OS next month. Former CEO Jussi Hurmola will now focus on “Sailfish strategy” (and moves onto the Jolla Board), while Jolla’s former COO, Marc Dillon, will take over as CEO. Dillon’s background includes working in a variety of senior engineering roles at Nokia across Symbian, S40 and MeeGo.

    • Android

      • ZTE To Show Grand Series Of Android Devices At ITU Telecom World & GITEX Technology Week

        ZTE will be showing off it’s ‘Grand’ series of Android devices at this year’s ITU Telecom World 2012 and GITEX Technology Week in Dubai.

        On display will be the ZTE Grand Era, Grand Era LTE, Grand X V970(M) and Grand X LTE (T82), as well as various other devices. The Grand Era LTE is due to launch in Europe in Q4 2012 and in the Middle East and North Africa in the first half of 2013, with plans for the Grand X V970(M) to be available in Saudi Arabia at the end of this year.

      • MK802 III Mini PC: RK3066 dual core CPU and Android 4.1

        There’s a bumper crop of thumb drive-sized TV boxes/computers this year. One of the most popular has been the MK802, both because it was one of the first to market, and also because its Allwinner A10 processor makes running Linux almost as easy as running Android (which is the operating system it ships with.

      • Phonemakers make Android China-friendly

        Mobile phone vendors selling Android smartphones in China replace restricted Google services with local apps and content, to make sure user experience is not compromised.

      • Android co-founder Rich Miner Is Keynote Speaker at The Open Mobile Summit

        Rich leads Google Ventures’ mobile investments and has over 25 years of experience growing businesses in the mobile industry. He is a co-founder of Android and helped lead the development of the Android platform and ecosystem at Google.

      • New Philips Dictation Recorder for Android

  • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

    • Demand for white-box tablets keeps growing despite keen competition

      Demand for white-box tablets rolled out by China-based makers remains strong currently despite the launch of US$199 models by Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Google, and the dominance of Apple’s iPads, according to industry sources.

Free Software/Open Source

• Twitter Open Sources Clutch.io – Develop iOS Apps Faster And Better

  Twitter Engineering team has open-sourced Clutch.io, a library that will help developers to create iOS based apps faster and better. Developers can also deploy their apps instantly and run several A/B tests make sure their apps run well.

• 5 key forces driving open source today

  From the rise of foundations to emerging revenue models, the open source movement is primed for even greater impact on tomorrow’s technologies

• Events

  • OpenStack Summit Board. Please Stay Open Source (avoid Open Core!)

    Next week is the OpenStack Summit and I couldn’t be more excited. This isn’t just a typical IT conference where vendors pitch their wares (though that will be there too). This is a working conference where the future of OpenStack will be mapped out.

    This is also the first big board meeting since the official formation of the OpenStack Foundation last month. So yeah, lots on the table.

  • Win Your Own LinuxCon Europe VIP Gift

• SaaS

  • Cisco Delivers Its Own OpenStack Distribution

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • LibreOffice for Munich

• Funding

  • Rejected by Kickstarter? ‘Roll your own’ with Selfstarter instead

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • MediaGoblin Looking For Support

    The Free Software Foundation has launched a fund raising campaign on behalf of GNU MediaGoblin, a free software media publishing system for images, video, and audio.

    Coding on the MediaGoblin project, which aims to provide decentralized and extensible tools for media sharing that adhere to free software principles, has been ongoing since 2011 and currently is at version 0.3.1.

  • Lulzbot 3D printer receives FSF hardware certification

    The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has awarded its “Respects Your Freedom” (RYF) hardware certification to the LulzBot AO-100 3D printer made by Aleph Objects. This makes the LulzBot AO-100 the first device to receive the certification since the RYF programme’s launch. The programme was originally created in 2010 to endorse devices that respect the customer’s freedom and use free software in all parts of the product.

  • The Free Software Foundation opens nominations for the 15th Annual Free Software Awards

    The Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the GNU Project today announced the opening of nominations for the 15th annual Free Software Awards. The Free Software Awards include the Award for the Advancement of Free Software and the Award for Projects of Social Benefit.

  • The Free Software Column – Inside the code

    It is in the nature of things that ideas which upset the status quo or challenge the prevailing orthodoxies are watered down to make them more acceptable, which is why the free software movement is an essential part of the landscape

• Project Releases

  • Astronaut VistA 12.10 (Glenn) is Out

• Public Services/Government

  • Open source in U.S. government in five minutes

    Gunnar Hellekson, Technology Strategist for Red Hat’s U.S. Public Sector Group, presents a timeline created by tying together data about software the government has released as open source.

  • Polish Lower Silesia Region corrects procurement following complaint

    The Council of the Polish Region of Lower Silesia corrected its procurement specification following complaints from a civil IT procurement watchdog. In the updated request, published in September, the council no longer asks for a specific proprietary brand of operating system and ditto office suite. The watchdog hopes this opens the way for providers of open source alternatives to participate in the bid.

• Openness/Sharing

  • Open system for seed germplasm mooted

    Linux has changed the way we compute using software tools available through the open source. It opened up a new world of software development for those opposing the proprietary technology solutions.

    How about a Linux for seeds? This is what a small set of scientists, including in ICAR (Indian Council of Agricultural Research), independent scientists and non-governmental organisations, are thinking loudly.

• Standards/Consortia

  • Checking Back in on OpenStand

    In case you haven’t thought about it lately, it’s a fair bet that everything in your life today depends to some greater or lesser extent (usually the former) on the Internet and the Web. And in case you’ve never thought about it at all, what makes those vital services possible has less to do with servers and fiber optics than it does with protocols and other standards. Take that reality a step further, and it becomes obvious that that the processes by which these essential enablers of our interconnected world are created is pretty important.