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Links 27/11/2012: GNOME Desktop in the Headlines



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux

  • Thin Clients Eating M$’s Lunch
    10% of desktop PCs being thin clients seems small but it is not. They last three times as long as thick PCs and they can run GNU/Linux instead of that other OS. That’s huge, a potential 30% loss of share for Wintel. That’s right; thin clients don’t need to be x86. They can be ARMed as well.


  • Upcoming Linux Benchmarks For The Holidays
    For those Linux users hoping to do PC upgrades this holiday season, a number of interesting Linux hardware benchmarks are imminent to help you with your buying decisions.


  • Cheap and silent desktop Linux box!
    In the tech news in the last couple of weeks, there was an announcement of an intel branded mini-pc. There have been many of these small desktop machines in the last few years. Very small footprints, low power consumption, most are silent due to a fanless design.

    The appeal of such small machines is obvious. Taking negligible desk space, they can sit out of the way, or even be hidden. They can be mounted to the back of a monitor for use as industrial signage, or a pseudo all-in-one design for the desktop. They are ideal for limited space installations like in mobile homes, or a small collage dorm room.


  • Why I Use Generic Computers and Open Source Software
    Do you depend on your computer for your living? If so, I'm sure you've thought long and hard about which hardware and software to use. I'd like to explain why I use generic "white boxes" running open source software. These give me a platform I rely on for 100% availability. They also provide a low-cost solution with excellent security and privacy.


  • Desktop

    • $1,499 Gaming Laptop is Ready for Steam on Linux
      Alternative, Linux-based operating systems like Ubuntu haven't historically carried much weight with PC gamers. Very few PC games have been made for Linux, over the years, ever since the company that was porting AAA gaming titles to Linux (Loki Games) went bankrupt in 2001. And while it's possible to use a "compatibility layer" such as Wine to run Windows PC games in Linux, the results are mixed at best and require a lot of technical tweaking, sometimes even in between updates.

      Colorado-based indie PC hardware company System76, however, clearly expects that not only are there PC gamers on Linux out there, but that some of them are willing to pay $1,499 for a tricked-out gaming laptop -- the 17.3-inch Bonobo Extreme. Like all of System76's machines, it runs the Ubuntu flavor of Linux; and its actual price tag is $1,599, but it's gotten a $100 discount for the holidays.


    • Why Google Shouldn't Pursue a Touchscreen Chromebook
      Is Google preparing to release a Chromebook device with a touchscreen? That concept was reported in a Taiwanese newspaper and discussed by DigiTimes and CNet. The idea isn't out of the realm of possibility. After all, Google has been exploring the touchscreen arena with its Nexus tablets, and Chrome OS includes a touchscreen keyboard. Furthermore, new, low-cost Chromebooks such as Acer's $199 entry (seen here) are arriving at a fast clip. Touchscreen Chromebooks aren't a great new opportunity for Google, though.


    • Google Reportedly Preparing To Sell Self-Branded Chromebooks
      Google is committed to the Chromebook and a report out of China indicates a Google-branded model is on its way. If true, this is a smart move and would help the fledgling desktop platform gain traction. The sellout success of recent Nexus products shows Google finally knows how to do hardware.

      China Times reports Google intends to launch Chrome OS netbooks equipped with touchscreens. Compal, a Taiwan-based ODM, is tasked with the manufacturing. Per this report, Google placed the order itself rather than relying on a 3rd party like Acer or Asus as with the Nexus products. Internal components will begin shipping to Compal this month, a sign that China Times takes to mean the product itself will ship yet in 2012.




  • Server

    • AWS Marketplace pages for Debian, CentOS and FreeBSD
      The AWS Marketplace, which is generally used by software companies to market their commercial appliances and software for use in Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), now also lists free basic images of the Debian Linux 6.0.6, CentOS 6.3 and FreeBSD 9.0-Release operating systems.






  • Kernel Space

    • AMD Geode Open-Source Driver Updated For X 1.13
      While no future generation Geode processors are coming out of AMD, the open-source community still continues to maintain the Geode X.Org graphics driver. Released on Sunday was the xf86-video-geode 2.11.14 driver.


    • systemd 196 Drops Support for Various Legacy Concepts
      systemd, a system and service manager for Linux, compatible with SysV and LSB init scripts that provides aggressive parallelization capabilities and uses socket and D-Bus activation for starting services, is now at version 196.


    • Linux 3.7-rc7


    • Intel Driver Update Improves Old Hardware Support
      The highlight of the latest xf86-video-intel 2.20.14 point release is improving the Intel "Gen4" support, which spans Intel hardware from the i965G chipset through the GM45 chipset.


    • NVIDIA Publishes Open-Source 2D Driver Code
      NVIDIA has published initial patches for providing open-source 2D hardware acceleration support on their NVIDIA Tegra 2 and Tegra 3 SoCs. This work is based upon the experimental open-source Direct Rendering Manager driver to be merged into the Linux 3.8 kernel.

      Times are great with NVIDIA dabbling with more open-source code and Imagination looking at some level of open-source PowerVR support. This weekend I wrote about NVIDIA working on open-source support for their Tegra graphics while this morning new open-source patches arrived from the NVIDIA Finland office.


    • AMD Catalyst vs. Linux 3.7 + Mesa 9.1-devel Gallium3D Performance
      In this article is a large OpenGL performance comparison looking at the frame-rates in different Linux games for different AMD Radeon Linux graphics cards when running the stock Ubuntu 12.10 operating system (Mesa 9.0 + Linux 3.5), the Catalyst Linux driver (fglrx 9.0.2) as found in the Ubuntu Quantal archive, and then when running the very latest Radeon Git code: The Linux 3.7 kernel, Mesa 9.1-devel, and xf86-video-ati 7.0.99 Git.


    • 30 Linux Kernel Developers in 30 Weeks: Jonathan Corbet
      Whether or not you know Jon a little or a lot, we hope you learn something new about him in this profile, from how he ended up in Boulder, Colorado to the ski run named after his father, to what he's running on his desktop and how he suggests Linux newbies get involved in the community.


    • The Kernel Column with Jon Masters – Linux Kernel 3.7
      Jon Masters summarises the latest goings-on in the Linux kernel community, including a look at the features being merged for the upcoming 3.7 release


    • Graphics Stack

      • 1.0.1 Releases are out


      • NVIDIA Still Working On Open-Source For Tegra Driver
        With the Linux 3.8 kernel in early 2013 there is going to be an open-source NVIDIA Tegra 2 DRM driver. NVIDIA is currently working out initial patches for applying 2D acceleration atop this mainline Linux kernel driver.


      • Linux Users Might See A PowerVR Holiday Surprise
        It seems the binary curtain among ARM graphics vendors may finally be falling. Aside from NVIDIA contributing to the open-source Tegra DRM driver and other interesting actions recently in the ARM Linux space, Imagination Technologies may finally becoming more open. It's looking like there may be a surprise open-source play out of Imagination for PowerVR graphics in the near future.

        In recent days I have heard from two independent sources about Imagination Technologies likely having a "modestly open" reference driver to deliver for PowerVR graphics processors in the near future. It seems thanks to greater competition in the ARM graphics space (e.g. ARM's Mali), more openness among SoC vendors, Intel switching to in-house HD graphics on future Atom SoCs, the continued success of Linux/Android in the mobile space, and new requirements being presented on the Linux desktop (i.e. Wayland), we are finally on the verge of seeing a fundamental shift out of Imagination Technologies.


      • AMD R600 LLVM Back-End Still Being Tried For 3.2
        There's just a few weeks to go until the release of LLVM 3.2, but AMD is still trying to get its "R600" GPU back-end merged into this next compiler infrastructure release.

        Going back to March, AMD has been trying to merge its R600 GPU back-end that is optionally used by their open-source graphics driver stack and is a requirement for the Radeon OpenCL support with the open-source driver. The LLVM back-end can be used as part of the R600 Gallium3D shader compiler. (See benchmarks of the R600 LLVM compiler back-end from several months ago.)






  • Applications



  • Desktop Environments



    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Kate/KDevelop October Sprint: What's new in Kate
        After the successful developer sprint in Berlin in 2010, the Kate and KDevelop teams met for the second time from the 23rd to the 29th of October. This time, the developer sprint was held in the beautiful city of Vienna. In total, 13 contributors discussed and collaborated on the future of Kate and KDevelop for a whole week.


      • KDE Commit-Digest for 18th November 2012


      • Qt Developer Days 2012 Slides: KDE 5, Qt Quick, Ports
        The Qt Developer Days conference took place earlier this month in Berlin, Germany. For those not in attendance at this open-source development conference, the slides for many of the Qt talks have been uploaded with coverage on Qt Quick, KDE Frameworks 5, and other interesting areas surrounding this tool-kit soon to finally reach its major 5.0 milestone.

        Slides for the different 2012 Qt Developer Days talks can be found on this KDAB Qt Conference page. At the time of publishing there aren't slides available for all of the talks, but a large number of them.


      • KDE 4.10 Brings Better, Smarter Dolphin
        If you are someone like me who missed the icon resize feature you can rejoice as the feature is "coming back" with Dolphin 2.2. Well, it's not coming back in sense the way it was but the developers are adding an option to the context menu of Places Panel, similar to the one found in the context menu of tool bar where you can resize the icon. So, while icons in the side panel won't resize automatically, you can use the context menu to manually resize them.


      • What’s new in Kate


      • Rapidly Build Distributed Applications with ITTIA DB and Qt
        The ITTIA DB SQL embedded database is now available as a plugin for the Qt application and UI development framework from Digia. The combination of ITTIA DB SQL and Qt enables rapid development of user-friendly data-driven applications with a level of performance that is only possible with native code.

        Qt is a cross-platform C++ application and UI framework that is widely used to develop software with a graphical user interface (GUI), as well as non-GUI programs. Non-GUI features include SQL database access, which can both execute arbitrary queries and map results to lists and fields in the user interface.




    • GNOME Desktop

      • GNOME: Can this Linux desktop be saved?
        Once upon a time, GNOME, along with KDE, ruled the Linux desktop. Then, in 2010, GNOME's designers decided to ignore their users' wishes and introduced a radically new desktop interface: GNOME 3.

        Many users hated it. Not even two years later, even GNOME's programmers were wondering if their interface was "staring into the abyss?" Now, GNOME developers have woken up and are offering a way for GNOME users to go back to a GNOME 2.x style interface.

        But is it too little, too late? Will GNOME actually be offering a real, return-to-the-past desktop interface?


      • If GNOME 2.x Wasn’t Broken, Why Fix It?


      • A Crack In The Monolith
        Yet the good news is they finally responded on this one issue in some form, at least in theory. Perhaps.


      • The Next Step
        The GNOME Project has been working hard to evolve and improve GNOME 3 since it was initially released in April 2011. We’ve made substantial progress, introducing new features, like GNOME Online Accounts, the lock screen and integrated input sources. We’ve also adjusted and refined many parts of the core UX, including improvements to the Activities Overview, the new-look Message Tray and ongoing work on System Settings. This is important work, and there is more that still needs to be done.


      • An Alternative Windows Switcher might come in Gnome 3.8
        Switching between Applications is one of the core functionality for every Desktop. While Gnome3 does this perfectly with choosing Apps through Overview, some complains have raised against the (Alt+Tab/Key Above Tab) functionality.


      • GNOME 3.7.2 Kills The GNOME Fallback Mode
        The GNOME 3.7.2 development release was made available today. The two major changes with this latest GNOME 3.8 pre-release is the elimination of the GNOME Fallback (non-Shell) mode and now depending exclusively upon GStreamer 1.0.


      • GNOME Control Center 3.6 Available In The GNOME 3 PPA [Ubuntu 12.10]






  • Distributions



    • With 'Cinnarch,' Arch Linux gets a sprinkle of Cinnamon
      Hard on the heels of the news that the old GNOME 2 desktop is coming back by popular demand, the Cinnarch project late last week announced that its new Linux distribution combining Arch Linux with the alternative Cinnamon desktop environment has now reached beta.


    • "Which Linux Distro is Best?"


    • Reviews: A look at Superb Mini Server 2.0.1


    • [Chakra:] Toolchain, kernel, nvidia changes moved to stable


    • There's a New Package Manager in Town
      Every now and again a project springs forth to tout the advantages of a generic or all-distribution package manager. A one-size-fits-all approach was the Holy Grail of Linux for a while and several ideas came and went silent. However, hope springs again and Guix is its name.


    • Guix: A New Package Manager & GNU Distribution
      GNU Guix is a new free software project that aspires to be a package manager and associated free software distribution for the GNU system.


    • New Releases



    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Accelerates Open Source Virtualization in RHEV 3.1 Release
        Red Hat is putting the final touches on the next major release of its Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) 3.1 platform.


      • Why I work at Red Hat
        West Point’s motto is “Duty, Honor, Country.” I graduated in 1993. Why did a former Army Officer end up at Red Hat?

        Red Hat is an “Open Source Software Company”. In order to work here, you have to understand those four words.

        Software. The world is run on Software now. There are more computers in your life than you are aware of. You carry one in your pocket. One wakes you up in the morning. One runs your coffee maker, another your oven. Your car has multiple computers in them. But computers do nothing without software. Without software, a computer is a corpse. Software makes things happen, things that were not even dreamt of in our parents time. Software is the magic we dreamed of after seeing the Magicians Apprentice. Software is the Force we wanted to control after seeing Star Wars. It is that incantation that makes the world conform to better suit our mood.


      • Fedora





    • Debian Family

      • Debian Project News - November 26th, 2012
        * Help your language reach 100% support in the Debian Installer * Debian Installer 7.0 Beta4 released * Debian newcomer experience survey * Interviews * Other news * New Debian Contributors * Release-Critical bugs statistics for the upcoming release * Important Debian Security Advisories * New and noteworthy packages * Work-needing packages * Want to continue reading DPN?


      • Derivatives



        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Solving design problems


          • 10 reasons to choose Ubuntu 12.10 over Windows 8
            Microsoft's Windows 8 dominated countless headlines in the weeks leading up to its launch late last month, but October saw the debut of another major operating system as well.

            Canonical's Ubuntu 12.10 "Quantal Quetzal" arrived a week ahead of its competitor, in fact, accompanied by a challenge: "Avoid the pain of Windows 8." That slogan appeared on the Ubuntu home page for the first few hours after the OS's official launch, and attracted considerable attention.


          • Rumour: Wii U Demo Booths Running Ubuntu
            The Nintendo Wii U in-store demo booths maybe running a modified version of the Ubuntu operating system instead of the Wii U itself.

            One user on Reddit obtained a snapshot of one of the systems that hadn't booted correctly because it was missing a "USB key". Instead of showing the games available to try out, in this case Rayman Legends, it displayed a screen for the Ubuntu OS.


          • The Ubuntu Heartbreak: Amazing Potential Stunted by Major Showstoppers
            Believe it or not, this isn’t meant to be inflamatory. This is an honest reminder of showstoppers that persistently prevent Ubuntu from becoming what I really do want it to become, and what I think it has a chance of achieving: a complete replacement of Windows or OSX.

            In fact, I will confess that I like the user interface on Ubuntu more than one on Windows, and find it almost on par with the one in OSX. You might even find me proclaiming Ubuntu as the OSX of the PC world. It at least could have the potential of becoming that.


          • Flavours and Variants











  • Devices/Embedded

    • Raspberry Pi vs MK802
      There has been a ton on news in the open source world revolving around the Raspberry Pi. It was one of the first low cost, ARM computers to be targeted at the hobbyist and educational markets. I've owned a Raspberry Pi for many months now and while it does an alright job at playing media files and acting as a small server - for most computing tasks it simply didn't have enough resources available to be useful.


    • Reclaiming the Buffalo router with free and open source LibreWRT distro
      I would like to take a few moments to introduce Buffalo, the access point and router which provides network connectivity to portable computers in the Free Software Foundation's office. More specifically, we are using Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH, which features the free-software-supported Atheros AR9132 chipset with 32MB of flash memory and 64MB of RAM.


    • P-P-P-Pick up our PENGUIN-POWERED Pi PIPER of Python
      The Raspberry Pi, an ARM-powered €£20 computer sold as the educationalists' dream, is finding its place as a media player in many tech-aware homes, but installing media player XBMC and plugging in a TV is hardly the spirit in which the Pi was conceived, especially when one can get one's hands good and dirty with the minimum of effort.


    • Camera for Raspberry Pi almost ready for production
      The camera for the Raspberry Pi that was announced back in May is now taking shape. A prototype of the Pi Cam was presented at Electronica 2012. It offers a 5 megapixel sensor and can record 1080p H.264 video at 30 frames per second. The camera connects to the Pi's free CSI pins and is controlled via the I2C bus. Potential fields of application include low-cost surveillance camera systems and robotics. The camera is set to cost $25.


    • Tiny MAME cabinet built from Raspberry Pi


    • The $35 Raspberry Pi: The cheapest way to play Minecraft
      Over the last 18 months, the $35, Linux-powered, education-oriented Raspberry Pi credit-card-sized computer has experienced an almost-unabated success story. The 700MHz ARMv6-powered computer has sold tens of thousands of units to beardies and educational establishments alike, is still on back order, and has attracted hundreds of hackers who have contributed alternative operating systems, software packages, supplementary hardware daughterboards, and more. Today, we’re happy to announce that Raspberry Pi has made perhaps the biggest step towards mainstream adoption: Notch and his Mojangstas have unveiled Minecraft: Pi Edition.


    • 15 Weird/Surprising devices and Systems that run on Linux
      It’s incredible to see how Linux runs on devices of various sizes, power and built for diverse purposes. Linux is, like technology itself, deeply integrated in our daily lives and we don’t seem to even realize it! While looking into supercomputers I was pleasantly surprised to find different/weird devices that run on Linux: Weird, in a sense that they run on Linux and we never expected them to do so!

      We expect that you already know that Linux is running on 94% supercomputers and on various high-end computers and devices in science centers for research purposes. Also the popular Android operating system too is based on Linux kernel. This implies all the Android handsets (currently claiming major share in smartphone market) and tablets are in turn employing Linux at heart! Now let’s investigate some places you might not have expected to be running on Linux.


    • Phones

      • Announcing The New Tizen.org
        Just in case you missed it, the Tizen project just launched a brand new site at tizen.org. It's been substantially redesigned and updated to make it easier to find project information, and reflects the new look and feel of Tizen.


      • Android



        • Facebook Asking its Employees to 'Droidfood' Android
          That's what Facebook's calling it, at least – a clever play on the word "dogfooding," which is itself a term used to describe when a company tests or uses the very products it's trying to push out into the consumer market. In other words, the notion that, "our product is so good, we'll use it ourselves."

          In Facebook's case, TechCrunch's Josh Constine has pulled up some pictures of just how dramatically the company is hoping to get its own employees on board with Facebook apps on the Android platform.


        • Samsung Galaxy Note II ‘Phablet’ Passes Five Million Channel Sales In ~Two Months
          At the start of this month Samsung announced that channel sales of its mini-tablet-sized smartphone, the Galaxy Note II, had passed three million unit sales in 37 days on sale. Now the Korean mobile maker has announced that cumulative global channel sales of the device have exceeded five million after around two months since launch.

          Samsung does not typically break out device sales to consumers but its channel sales measure provides an indication of how much end-user demand its sales channels are experiencing.


        • Install Android MTP Support In KDE


        • [Exclusive] How To: Unlock The Droid DNA's Bootloader


        • Could Open Source Java Come to Android?
          The online newsgroup for OpenJDK, the official open source Java implementation, has been airing discussion of a Java version for Android. Such an option would allow Java developers to work directly within the most widespread mobile operating system.


        • 30 Must Have Android Games for 2012
          Android is surging, their remains no questions about it. Android is a proven platform now and that is particularly showing in the burgeoning apps market. Google Play Store is now home to nearly 900,000 applications and games. More than 25 billion apps and games have already been downloaded from Google Play Store. About an year ago, we did a brief round up detailing 10 must-have games for Android. But things have drastically improved over a one year period. Here's our "take two". 30 must have games for Android in 2012.


        • 2.5 year old Android bug finally being fixed






    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • Tablet PC Panels Shipment Exceeded Notebook PC Panel


      • Intel kills off the desktop, PCs go with it
        Intel is killing the desktop, but not quite as soon as people expect it to, there will be one last gasp, but that is irrelevant. Word is finally leaking there won’t be a desktop PC chip in a bit over a year. In a story that SemiAccurate has been following for several months, Broadwell will not come in an LGA package, so no removable CPU. The news was first publicly broken by the ever sharp PC Watch, english version here, but the news has been floating in the backchannel for a bit now. The problem? This information wasn’t floating around the OEMs or the majority of the PC ecosystem, they had no clue. What does all of this mean? Quite a bit.








Free Software/Open Source



  • My open source cure for brain cancer
    This was shocking news. Sitting across from a doctor holding a clinical folder with your name on it, and hearing him say the words "low-grade glioma," "language and comprehension areas of your brain," "surgery" and "chemotherapy" is a very weird experience.

    My first idea was to seek other opinions. Maybe this hospital is wrong. Maybe there are other places that wouldn't need to do surgery. Maybe there is a laser, a chemical, an ancient tradition, a shaman, a scientist, a nanorobot.

    I felt incomplete about the way that the medical system was handling my situation.


  • Santa Claus, Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy go open source
    DreamWorks has released its OpenVDB open source C++ library for general community consumption and adaption.

    The animation studio has used the technology itself on its "Rise of the Guardians" fantasy film that features a whole group of childhood legends including Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.

    This in effect means that DreamWorks has spent millions of dollars developing specialised technology to make one of the most expensive animated movies ever produced only to now give it away free of charge on the openvdb.org/ website.


  • Open source deals on Cyber Monday
    We don't condone shopping when you should be working, but everybody needs a break, right? When you're out shopping for the online deals today, here are a few Cyber Monday specials we like:


  • More camera support and geotagging in darktable 1.1
    More camera support, similarity matching, geotagging, image grouping and a Facebook exporter are among the top new features in darktable 1.1, the latest release of the open source photography workflow application. The Canon EOS M is now supported and Samsung NX support is fixed in the new release. The ability to match images that look alike with similarity matching is now a standard feature.


  • Eucalyptus open source cloud aims at simpler management


  • First Release of New Forrester Data on Developer Open Source Use
    Over the past few years, enterprises, particularly in the financial services industry, have had to cut costs while simultaneously enhancing innovation. While this may sound contradictory, it has been possible with the strategic use of open source software (OSS).


  • Nashorn proposed as new JavaScript engine for OpenJDK
    After some time in preparation, Oracle has now proposed a new project for OpenJDK called Nashorn. The Nashorn project sets out to implement a lightweight high-performance JavaScript runtime in Java which runs on the JVM. Under the direction of Jim Laskey, Multi-language Lead at Oracle, and John Coomes, OpenJDK HotSpot Group Lead, the proposal is to create a JavaScript implementation that can run standalone JavaScript applications or be called via the JSR 223 APIs by Java applications. Nashorn, German for Rhino, will be designed to take advantage of newer JVM technologies such as MethodHandles and InvokeDynamic APIs, which were introduced to make dynamic languages operate faster on the JVM.


  • Events



  • Web Browsers



  • SaaS



  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Oracle Wants To Embed JavaScript In Java Code
      Oracle presented a new project in recent names that is named Nashorn. The Nashorn Project comes down to a high-performance JavaScript run-time for OpenJDK and can be used so developers can embed JavaScript within Java code.




  • Business



  • Funding



  • BSD

    • Security Incident on FreeBSD Infrastructure
      The FreeBSD Security Team has announced that on 11 November two servers as part of the FreeBSD.org hosting infrastructure have been compromised.

      The compromise is believed to have occurred due to the leak of an SSH key from a developer who legitimately had access to the machines in question, and was not due to any vulnerability or code exploit within FreeBSD.




  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC



  • Project Releases

    • OpenELEC 3.0 Enters Beta With XBMC 12.0
      The OpenELEC Linux distribution that aspires to be a leading multimedia OS within an entertainment center is nearing its 3.0 release. The OpenELEC 3.0 Beta was released and now it's based upon XBMC 12.0 Frodo.




  • Public Services/Government

    • Munich Shows How Open Source Saves Big Money
      That compares with just €£218,000 that has been spent on the free software-based solution using the city's own LiMux distro. As well as zero costs for software upgrades, the open source approach also saved money because it was not necessary to upgrade hardware, unlike for Windows - something that is worth remembering.


    • Check out how Obama saved $14.5 mn through open source
      Four more years. This happened because of you. Thank you," Obama tweeted soon after he defeated his Republican rival Mitt Romney in a closely contested 2012 US presidential poll.

      Well, we are aware of the fact that the President of the United States of America and his tech team were all over the Internet embracing different kind of tools -may be from social media or from different online campaigns - to win the 2012 presidential elections, but many of us are not aware that open source software also played an important role during the US elections.




  • Licensing

    • Linux and the GPL: A Storm Erupts
      "This is a hard one," Google+ blogger Gonzalo Velasco C. mused. "The development of FLOSS in such a capitalist and competitive world demands solidarity, talent, idealism and passion. So when it comes to discussing the inclusion (without malice) of not-FLOSS code inside Linux, things get very hot -- that's when the passion comes in."

      [...]

      RTS OS is a unified storage operating system from RisingTide, which is a Red Hat competitor.




  • Openness/Sharing

    • Top ten open source gifts for the holidays
      It's the most wonderful time of the year: time to give open source presents. The opensource.com team gathered ten of our favorite gadgets to help you pick out that perfect present for that special (open source) someone.


    • 8 questions about open source cancer treatment
      Salvatore Iaconesi's essay on his decision to post his medical records on the Internet in hopes of finding a crowd-sourced cure for his brain tumor has sparked a lively conversation on CNN.com.


    • Low-cost TB drugs to be reality soon
      The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research’s (CSIR) collaborative initiative to develop low-cost drugs for infectious diseases like tuberculosis (TB) is all set to become a success.


    • Open Hardware

      • Open source, sonar-controlled vibrator you play like a theremin, with your whole body
        Scanlime's Beth modded a remote control vibrator, replacing the interface with an Arduino-based sonar controller that she can activate with any part of her body, playing it like a theremin. The result is pretty cool -- it "closes the feedback loop" between the vibrator's intensity and the user's physical response. The post includes a detailed technical breakdown of the reverse-engineering steps that she used to work out how to hijack the control mechanism, and the steps that went into building the remote, including a 3D printed chassis. The plans are open source hardware (CC-BY-SA), and posted to Github.


      • Body Hacks: Building An Open-Source, Theremin-Like Vibrator
        For your postprandial pleasure I present the an open-source vibrator that you (or your partner) can play like a theremin. The story of how it came to be is pretty amazing and involves FCC chip lookups, bit-tracing, and lots of assembly code. In short, it’s an amazing effort in DIY hardware hacking that serves the dual purpose of education and giving pleasure.






  • Programming

    • LLVM 3.2 Improves PowerPC Compiler Support
      In addition to featuring an auto-vectorizer, Polly optimizations, and countless other improvements, the forthcoming release of LLVM 3.2 brings numerous improvements to its PowerPC back-end.

      The PowerPC back-end target with LLVM 3.2 and accompanying Clang 3.2 C/C++ compiler feature many improvements for this compiler infrastructure that's due to be released in mid-December.


    • Google Code-In, Focused on Open Source, Begins Today
      In case you didn't know it, Google is one of the largest contributors of open source projects in the world, and runs a number of programs focused on open source development. One of the more fun programs that the company runs each year is Google Code-In, through which pre-university students (13-17 years old) can create open source software for community use, and win prizes for their efforts. This year's Code-In event starts today, and will run for 50 days.


    • Are you game for Google's open source contest?
      Are you one among them, who wants to know what exactly is open source, who has thirst to learn new in open source technologies, a novice developer and doesn't know anything about development and thinking to involve yourself in open source software development?


    • Git v1.8.0.1




  • Standards/Consortia

    • More Open-Source Projects Eyeing Up C++11
      KDE developers are currently contemplating the idea of allowing a subset of the C++11 language to be used within the KDevelop code-base. This C++11 change would happen for the KDevelop 4.6 integrated development environment release. Reasons are shared in this article for why one should consider using C++11 code.

      Milian Wolff, a developer on the KDevelop IDE, has proposed to their development community that a subset of the C++11 language be permitted following the KDevelop 4.5 branching in a few weeks.






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Richard Stallman's Talks in Switzerland This Week
We need to put an end to 'cancer culture'; it's trying to kill people and it is even swatting people
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 28, 2024
IRC logs for Thursday, March 28, 2024
[Meme] EPO's New Ways of Working (NWoW), a.k.a. You Don't Even Get a Desk at Work and Cannot be Near Known Colleagues
Seems more like union-busting (divide and rule)
Hiding Microsoft's Culpability in Security Breaches and Other Major Blunders (in the United Kingdom, This May Mean You Can't Get Food)
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is vast
Giving back to the community
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 28/03/2024: Sega, Nintendo, and Bell Layoffs
Links for the day
Open letter to the ACM regarding Codes of Conduct impersonating the Code of Ethics
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
With 9 Mentions of Azure In Its Latest Blog Post, Canonical is Again Promoting Microsoft and Intel Vendor Lock-in, Surveillance, Back Doors, Considerable Power Waste, and Defects That Cannot be Fixed
Microsoft did not even have to buy Canonical (for Canonical to act like it happened)
Links 28/03/2024: GAFAM Replacing Full-Time Workers With Interns Now
Links for the day
Consent & Debian's illegitimate constitution
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
The Time Our Server Host Died in a Car Accident
If Debian has internal problems, then they need to be illuminated and then tackled, at the very least in order to ensure we do not end up with "Deadian"
China's New 'IT' Rules Are a Massive Headache for Microsoft
On the issue of China we're neutral except when it comes to human rights issues
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 27, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, March 27, 2024
WeMakeFedora.org: harassment decision, victory for volunteers and Fedora Foundations
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 27/03/2024: Terrorism Grows in Africa, Unemployment in Finland Rose Sharply in a Year, Chinese Aggression Escalates
Links for the day
Links 27/03/2024: Ericsson and Tencent Layoffs
Links for the day
Amid Online Reports of XBox Sales Collapsing, Mass Layoffs in More Teams, and Windows Making Things Worse (Admission of Losses, Rumours About XBox Canceled as a Hardware Unit)...
Windows has loads of issues, also as a gaming platform
Links 27/03/2024: BBC Resorts to CG Cruft, Akamai Blocking Blunders in Piracy Shield
Links for the day
Android Approaches 90% of the Operating Systems Market in Chad (Windows Down From 99.5% 15 Years Ago to Just 2.5% Right Now)
Windows is down to about 2% on the Web-connected client side as measured by statCounter
Sainsbury's: Let Them Eat Yoghurts (and Microsoft Downtimes When They Need Proper Food)
a social control media 'scandal' this week
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 26, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
Windows/Client at Microsoft Falling Sharply (Well Over 10% Decline Every Quarter), So For His Next Trick the Ponzi in Chief Merges Units, Spices Everything Up With "AI"
Hiding the steep decline of Windows/Client at Microsoft?
Free technology in housing and construction
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
We Need Open Standards With Free Software Implementations, Not "Interoperability" Alone
Sadly we're confronting misguided managers and a bunch of clowns trying to herd us all - sometimes without consent - into "clown computing"
Microsoft's Collapse in the Web Server Space Continued This Month
Microsoft is the "2%", just like Windows in some countries