12.13.12

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Links 14/12/2012: Linux 3.8 Previews, CrossOver 12.0.0

Posted in News Roundup at 9:52 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Linux Format on Google Play Magazines

    Sorry for the lack of updates. We’re manically trying to finish 1.5 issues before Christmas. But we just wanted to let you know that, to coincide with the launch of Google Magazines in the UK, Linux Format is now available on Google’s magazine store – £4.99 per issue, £3.99 with a rolling subscription or £44.99 for the year. As always, DVD images are freely downloadable from http://www.linuxformat.com/archives. Issue 166 (the zombie one) should also be available on the Ubuntu Software Centre.

  • Video: What a Year for Linux

    It’s also hard to ignore that this holiday season’s most popular gifts, like the Chromebook and Amazon’s Kindle HD, are all powered by Linux.

    Part of the reason Linux is experiencing so much success is because of the network effect created by its collaborative development enviornment: Embedded engineers work on power savings for their devices; that same code is then used in the data center to lower power bills. The defense industry improves the real time capabilities of the Linux kernel and automakers benefit and add to it. Also, because Linux has no branding restrictions, Android (of the Kindle or a Chromebook) can be Linux without you knowing its Linux. This freedom allows companies to innovate at a pace that is simply unmatched.

  • Desktop

    • $299 version of Acer’s C7 Chromebook kind of defeats the purpose

      When we reviewed Acer’s $199 C7 Chromebook, we didn’t think it was perfect, but we were willing to overlook many minor flaws in the face of its $199 asking price. Today, Slashgear unearthed an upgraded model—there’s an Acer product page that lists a $299 version of the C7 with a larger battery, 4GB of RAM instead of 2GB, and a 500GB hard drive instead of a 320GB model.

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

    • 15 Greatest Open Source Terminal Applications Of 2012

      Linux on the desktop is making great progress. However, the real beauty of Linux and Unix like operating system lies beneath the surface at the command prompt. nixCraft picks his best open source terminal applications of 2012.

    • Instructionals/Technical

    • Wine

      • Announcing CrossOver 12.0.0!

        I am delighted to announce that CodeWeavers has just released
        CrossOver 12 for both Mac OS X and Linux.

      • CrossOver 12 Released

        Today, the software company CodeWeavers has released a new version of the Windows emulation software CrossOver for Linux and Mac OS X. The new version is based on Wine 1.5.15 and now has a better integration with the desktop systems Unity and Gnome 3 and has a better support for transparent windows with an activated compositing manager.

    • Games

      • Linux Games: Spirits the modern version of lemmings

        Perhaps someone is old enough to remember the original Lemmings game, a puzzle-platformer video game developed by DMA Design and published by Psygnosis in 1991. Originally developed for the Amiga, Lemmings was one of the most popular video games of its era, the basic objective of the game is to guide a group of humanoid lemmings through a number of obstacles to a designated exit. In order to save the required number of lemmings to win, one must determine how to assign a limited number of eight different skills to specific lemmings that allow the selected lemming to alter the landscape, to affect the behavior of other lemmings, or to clear obstacles in order to create a safe passage for the rest of the lemmings.

      • Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition Is Coming To Linux

        Back in August I wrote that a Linux port of the Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition game was being considered. There’s now word that a native Linux port of this game is indeed coming.

        The year 2013 is looking to be the year of Linux gaming and Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition of Overhaul Games will be among the native Linux titles. Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition is a remake of the original Baldur’s Gate role-playing game and its Baldur’s Gate Tales of the Sword Coast expansion. The game was released last month for Windows while the Mac OS X port is expected this month.

      • Valve Has A Christmas Present For Linux Gamers

        Valve is becoming quite comfortable with the state of their Linux activities so beginning next week will be a more “open” beta program. If you’re a Linux gamer who wasn’t yet selected to be part of the beta program, you should be able to gain access in time for the holidays. Help them test out their Linux ports to ensure the Valve Linux-based game console will be a great success.

      • Cultures : Northland now available on Desura, another may follow

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Amarok 2.7 Beta To Be Released Soon, Try Statistics Synchronization!
      • Why Kolab Groupware uses Submission

        Kolab Groupware has a strong focus on security, and data integrity – not just your own mailbox but the flow of traffic between you and your peers as well.

        Please allow me to take the opportunity to explain to you some of the background of what Kolab Groupware does, and why. In this blog post, I’m zooming in on our use of the submission port (587).

      • 15 years of KDE e.V. – Behind the Scenes

        As reported here two weeks ago, KDE e.V. has grown up since it was founded 15 years ago on November 27, 1997. From a body handling a few thousand euros for the yearly KDE meetings governed by a dozen members, it has evolved into a lean execution machine supporting many large and small events each year, taking care of legal matters, promotion, community management and more. KDE e.V. now has a dedicated employee and many members. Today, we take you on a virtual tour around Blue Gear Headquarters, to show you what’s going on at the German registered non-profit association and how it affects the KDE community world wide.

      • Qt 5.0 RC 2 released

        We are happy to announce that the second release candidate for Qt 5.0 has just been released.

  • Distributions

    • LuninuX OS 12.10 Screenshots
    • The Brightest Distro Stars of 2012

      “By taking Linux away from the devs and instituting real quality control and making it truly UI-centric and consistent, Google has managed to do in a couple of years what dozens of distros absolutely failed to do in a couple of decades,” said Slashdot blogger hairyfeet, “and that was bring a Linux-based OS out of the nerds’ basements and into the home of Joe and Sally Average.”

    • New Releases

    • Gentoo Family

      • Who Needs Ubuntu? Steam for Linux Running Under Gentoo

        In the post I made last week about some of the system requirements Valve has been applying to select Linux titles on Steam, I mentioned that I’ve been curious to know how running the official Steam client would fare on other distros. After all, Linux is Linux at the core, so where there’s a will, there should be a way.

        Well, sitting around with a bit of time on my hands late last night, I decided to fool around and see if I couldn’t get the client to run under Gentoo. Believe it or not, a guide exists on making it happen, and it’s a good one. However, the one thing to bear in mind is that because few Gentoo installs are exactly alike, you may have immediate luck getting Steam to work or none at all. You’re likely to need updated packages, and you’re even more likely to run into some trial and error. C’est la Gentoo.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Debian Linux vs. Debian kFreeBSD With Squeeze & Wheezy

        This is far from the first time doing benchmarking of Debian GNU/kFreeBSD, the port of the Debian operating system that pairs the GNU user-land with the FreeBSD kernel rather than the Linux kernel. The last time doing Debian GNU/kFreeBSD benchmarks extensively was back in July so new tests were warranted of 6.0.6 Squeeze and using the latest Debian testing bi-weekly images. The Debian testing ISOs used of Debian GNU/Linux and Debian GNU/kFreeBSD were dated from 3 December 2012. This testing not only shows how the Linux versus FreeBSD kernel performance compares with a similar user-land but how the Debian performance has progressed in moving from 6.0 Squeeze to 7.0 Wheezy.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • New Dash Icons Proposed for Ubuntu 13.04
          • Welcome to the new Ubuntu shopping centre

            A post on the official blog of Canonical, the compnay behind the GNU/Linux distribution, said that version 12.10 had taken “another important step towards fulfilling its intended purpose of being an online, global search tool that helps users find anything, instantly, right from their home environment”.

            This would be extended in 13.04 with the use of “smart scopes” – daemons capable of presenting local or remote information within the Dash (seen above with theresults of a search for the word Beatles) which is the search window for Ubuntu’s Unity interface. These “scopes” would be category-wise; depending on the search term a particular “scope” would be triggered.

            “For example, a search for “The Beatles” is likely to trigger the Music and Video scopes, showing results that will contain local and online sources – with the online sources querying your personal cloud as well as other free and commercial sources like YouTube, Last.fm, Amazon, etc,” said the post, written by Cristian Parrino, vice-president for online services at Canonical.

          • Ubuntu 13.04 Desktop Comparison: 6 Desktops, 5 Driver/GPU Combinations

            In this article are benchmarks of six different desktops (Unity, GNOME Shell, GNOME Classic, KDE Plasma, Xfce, and LXDE) on five different GPU/driver configurations (Radeon, Catalyst, Intel, NVIDIA, and Nouveau) running the very latest Ubuntu 13.04 “Raring Ringtail” development packages to look at the latest state of the Ubuntu Linux gaming OpenGL performance.

          • Flavours and Variants

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Android

        • New YotaPhone will feature LCD screen on one side, E-Ink on the other
        • 6.3-inch Samsung Galaxy Note 3 tipped for 2013

          Samsung‘s stylus-enabled “phablets” are set to get even bigger, sources in South Korea claim, with the Galaxy Note III tipped to have a whopping 6.3-inch display when it arrives in 2013. The growing smartphone stepped up to a 5.5-inch display in its second-generation, from the 5.3-inches of the original Galaxy Note, but according to whispers to the Korea Times, Samsung plans to maximize display real-estate with a new OLED model for the new year.

        • More details emerge about high-end ZTE Grand S
        • Google Chairman Says Android Winning Mobile War With Apple: Tech

          Google Inc. (GOOG)’s Android is extending its lead over Apple Inc. (AAPL) in the mobile-software market at a rate that compares with Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)’s expansion in desktop software in the 1990s, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said.

        • The real threat that Samsung poses to Apple

          The problem that Apple is facing right now has nothing to do with their designs being copied. There is a long history of copying in the tech industry; patents being deployed in lawsuits by giants often signify desperation more than anything else. Rather, the problem that Apple faces is that it now is going up against at least one competitor that has been a beneficiary of the scale that Apple has achieved on the business side. Samsung has clearly demonstrated that, like Asus, it was not satisfied being a low-margin ODM — of doing all the menial work while somebody else made the big bucks. Suing Samsung over Android patents isn’t going to change that — if Google’s operating system gets too expensive to use, there’ll be a switch made to Microsoft. Or to another operating system altogether. It doesn’t really matter, because design in the smartphone space has been commoditized. It’s good enough. Manufacturers are now creating performance that most consumers aren’t able to absorb. Instead, as we’ve moved into a world where performance is now “good enough”, the world has flipped into one where it’s the business side — operational scale — that matters most.

        • OwnCloud Android App Review

          onwCloud is one of the most important open source projects today, considering the invasion of ‘storage/data syncing’ cloud in our day-to-day life. This invasion is also posing a new threat to our privacy and ownership of our data, especially when there are players like Microsoft. It was quite shocking when Microsoft blocked access to a user’s account on finding some nude/semi-nude images in his SkyDrive folder. What was Microsoft doing in a ‘private’ as the user claims folder? Don’t confuse SkyDrive as your ‘private’ cloud where you can store whatever data you want. It’s not like a bank. The last think I would want is Microsoft peeping inside my SkyDrive folders. So, I would strongly recommend not to touch the SkyDrive even with a stick.

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • In-depth review: Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1

        I recently spent a month using Samsung’s new Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet, running Android 4.0. Let’s find out what the tablet’s “Note” rather than “Tab” designation means, and how it compares to its less-expensive sibling, the Galaxy Tab 10.1, and to Google’s Nexus 10.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Migration to open source—a personal experience

    The term open source (OS) arose in late 90’s; although, much of modern internet infrastructure predated and evolved from active code sharing between researchers after the dawn of modern computing age. It is difficult to trace its origins due to space constraints, but suffice to say that it arose out of ambiguity in “fair use doctrines”, with significant access barriers for community to examine source code or modify it. Interestingly, these ideas have spawned crowd sourcing for open source hardware, notably robotics and influenced scientific publishing for open access traditionally encumbered by copyright protection. Over the time, several unique and hybrid models of licensing have evolved for implementation.

  • The most talented youth choose open source tools

    At my public library job, all day long I help people use the library’s public access computers. At the end of a long day’s work, I enjoy kicking back and listening to some YouTube music videos. One way I do this is to search YouTube for new Bob Dylan cover songs. I search YouTube for: Bob Dylan cover, this week.

    Imagine my happy surprise to come across this fabulous multitrack video of Knockin on Heaven’s Door. But wait a second, is that a Tux penguin poster hanging on the wall behind this musician? Indeed it is. Hmmm, was that poster placed there intentionally, or was it just an accident?

  • Apache web server, more than “a patchy web server”

    The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is readying itself for the 25th outing of its ApacheCon North America official conference, training and expo event.

    The foundation describes its remit and status as a group of “all-volunteer developers, stewards and incubators” of what amounts to nearly 150 open source projects and initiatives inside Apache.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Hack This Game

        Today, we’re proud to invite game designers, developers and enthusiasts everywhere to take part in this year’s Game On competition. We’re looking for your ideas and playable protoypes for gaming experiences that push the limits of what open Web technologies can do.

      • Mozilla announces Game On Competition
      • Firefox introduces improved private browsing

        A new Firefox feature is being added to the Nightly Builds, with oft requested private browsing mode used by many other browsers to eventually reach the release version

  • SaaS

    • EMC Sees OpenStack As Much Like Linux

      It seems that nearly every tech titan under the sun is throwing its support at OpenStack. EMC is the latest giant to do so, now that it is an official, corporate-level sponsor of OpenStack. Since it owns most of VMware, when VMware recently joined OpenStack it became obvious that EMC would become a sponsor, too. In commenting on the arrangement, EMC officials are likening OpenStack development to Linux development. That’s an apt analogy, and it also tells us how important support and proper documentation and training are going to become in the future of OpenStack.

    • Dell commits to open-source software for its future clouds

  • Databases

  • CMS

    • WordPress 3.5 Elvin Drums Along Open Source CMS

      That’s right I called WordPress a CMS (Content Management System) and not a blogging platform. With WordPress 3.5, officially released on Tuesday, the CMS moves forward with some incremental features.

      I’m a user of both self-hosted as well WordPress.com sites so I’ve noticed some of the WordPress 3.5 changes roll out over the last several weeks. WordPress tends to dogfood releases on the hosted WordPress.com platform first before making the full release generally available.

  • Business

    • Open Source BI Considerations and Implications

      To prepare for software selection and to put all of the pieces together in terms of business and technical open source business intelligence implementation requirements, the following checklists will help you identify the tasks and considerations involved in planning your OSBI implementation.

  • BSD

    • The Grinch That Delayed FreeBSD 9.1

      Originally the plan for FreeBSD 9.1 was to release it in mid-September, but the first release candidate was one month late along with the RC2 and RC3 releases. The plan was then updated to release FreeBSD 9.1 at the end of October, but that too passed. The latest schedule set the RELEASE announcement as going out on 12 November, but that clearly didn’t work either.

  • Project Releases

    • Blender 2.65 Arrives – Most Stable Yet
    • [ANNOUNCE] PulseAudio 2.99.3 (3.0 RC3)
    • First Orion 2.0 Milestone rises

      The first milestone in the development of the browser-based IDE Eclipse Orion 2.0 has been released. A major focus in the development of Orion 2.0 is to bring node.js support to the IDE and while these are described as “large scale efforts” for future builds, the developers have decided to share a prototype of a node-based Orion server. Orionode, the prototype server, is a single user deployment of Orion running on node.js. “Having all the client and server tools written in the same language also raises some new possibilities and makes the Orion architecture very flexible” say the developers, but they note that the project is not ready for prime time yet.

  • Licensing

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Hardware

      • Robotics Hacker Erects Open Source ‘Lego for Adults’

        Jasen Wang once bought a home robotics kit. He had studied aircraft design in college and spent years at an electrics engineering outfit, but he still found the instructions completely incomprehensible. And the pieces were flimsy. And after he broke two of them, he gave up entirely.

  • Programming

    • Why PHP Development Shows an Upward Trend in Open Source Development
    • REBOL 3 open source code arrives

      The latest version of Carl Sassenrath’s REBOL language has been published as open source, marking a major change in how the novel language is made available to the public. REBOL, a previously proprietary language developed by Sassenrath, the primary developer of AmigaOS, was first released in 1997 and is oriented towards task-specific language dialects or domain-specific languages to be used in processing. It has a number of “dialects” for purposes such as data exchange (load), programming (do), pattern matching (parse), function and object definition (make), and GUIs (layout or display). These dialects work together with a free-form syntax to provide an intriguing language, but one which has never become mainstream.

    • Sauce Labs Gives Open Source Projects Free Access to Testing Cloud

      Sauce Labs Inc., the leading provider of web application testing infrastructure for software developers, today announced Sauce Free Open Source Software accounts (Open Sauce), a new program offering open source developers free unlimited use of the Sauce Labs cloud for testing web applications.

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